Rethinking Church as a Religious Movement by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
4 Easter Year A – Mothers’ Day
May 11, 2014
Acts 2: 42-47 John 10: 1-10
On this Good Shepherd Sunday, I would like us to take a look at how Jesus, the Good Shepherd, guided the earliest Christians of the first century as St. Luke describes it in the Book of Acts.
How does one capture the promise and the drama of a movement? Contemplate for a moment, if you will, the evolution of the American colonies from accidental discovery by European explorers, through protest, then a revolution, and then the complexities of conceiving and then implementing a new form of government unseen and unheard of before that time. On this day when the Episcopal Church honors the memory of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first person of color to serve on the United States Supreme Court, think of the abolition movement to end slavery, the human carnage that was the hallmark of the War Between the States, the political intrigue behind the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution making the institution of slavery unconstitutional. On this Mothers’ Day, we can think about the movement to grant women the right to vote, known as Women’s Suffrage, and the decades and centuries of struggle that entailed. Consider the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s – part of the unfinished business of the Civil War – with its marches, church bombings, the brave people of all races who risked and sometimes gave their lives in the struggle for racial justice. All of these movements involved political, social, philosophical and religious influences and, in one form or another, each and every one of them continues to this very day, short of achieving the desired goals. More recently, the movement to gain equal rights for all persons regardless of sexual identity has been at center stage in our church and in our society the world over, and even though it gradually becomes settled law in this country, people still die over the issue in many parts of the world, and Christ’s church remains divided.
All of these movements, and many I have not named, have been the subject of books, movies, poetry, song and journalistic coverage of all kinds. They all had – and continue to have -- spiritual, political, and social underpinnings that have been reported over and over, and yet authors, poets, historians, composers, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers and others have been unable adequately to convey or express the feeling of being part of the development of the movement itself: the solidarity, the reverence, the resolve in the face of threat and danger – the struggle which the actual participants experienced. There simply is no way a third party can adequately convey the profound internal wrestling, , the internal conflicts of leadership – the differences of both of style and substance -- the intense periods of hardship and oppression that were experienced by the leading voices of these struggles. Nor can they adequately convey the deeply exhilarating sense of accomplishment when at least the initial goals of the movement are reached to someone who was not there. Those of us who hear or see these accounts can witness the fruit of the struggle but can never truly experience the process by which the fruit became a reality.
This morning’s passage from the Book of Acts is such an account. The entire book chronicles the events that occur following the death of Jesus Christ as the infant movement gradually evolves; as that initially Jewish movement that would become known as Christianity took its first steps in Jerusalem and Galilee, across Greece and Asia Minor and concluding with the travels of Paul to spread the Good News. But it was anything but a linear process. It wasn’t like one day there is the resurrection and the next day there is an organization known as “the Church.” As The Rev. Susan B. Johnson describes the early Christian movement in her discussion of this passage:
As we move through Acts, what we think of as the Christian church is everything from an offshoot of the parent faith tradition to a radical sect. It is a tentative movement and a street festival, a subversive activity and a public forum, a new current within Judaism and its own distinct and separate religion. This did not happen all at once or through a tidy progression, but through the grace of God, the faith of individuals, and the sometimes very messy expressions of human resolve.
This morning’s passage from the Book of Acts gets to the heart of what it meant to be a part of that fledgling Christian community.
Later in the Book of Acts, St. Luke will describe members of this young community as “People of The Way.” Yes, it was rooted in Jewish faith and practice, and yet as it evolved it reinterpreted, expanded and even re-imagined that tradition in the light of the life of Jesus and the experiences of his followers. Far from being a direct, linear process, it was a work in progress and, like all of the other movements that I have mentioned, continues to evolve even to this day.
There is talk throughout the Christian community today – and in this diocese in particular – about new directions for the church in the 21st century. As I follow the conversations, and as I participate in them, I find myself both energized and a bit frightened. And I ask myself, “Why are these conversations frightening?” When I think about it, it never takes me very long to understand why: It is because deep inside, through the course of my life as a Christian, I have in almost imperceptible but yet powerful ways come to take what I know as “the church” for granted. The Church – with its traditions, it’s honored place in society, its perceived and apparent if not exaggerated authority in the world – this is what I have come to know and at least subconsciously accept as The Church.
And yet St. Luke reminds us in this beautiful and succinct passage from the Book of Acts that we heard this morning that “The Church” is not a static thing, but a movement that was founded as a dynamic outgrowth of Jewish tradition. People who encountered it did so not with a yawn or with complacency but with a sense of awe. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. And what did they witness? The faithful practice of those who believed: Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
These were not just empty rituals, performed primarily to meet some expectation that they occur. They were practices that knitted together those early believers both spiritually and in very tangible ways with their fellow believers: All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. They gave with a faith and a gratitude and a commitment that put even our most generous offerings to same. And they didn’t do this only on Sundays: Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple – note that is the Jewish house of worship – they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
When I reflect on what I fear when I think of change, I am quickly reminded that our American way of life, along with the institutionalized reality of the Christian church throughout the world, have combined to remove all of us from the “awesome” reality that is described in this morning’s passage from the Book of Acts. Gone is that sense of becoming, absent is that awe that comes with the thrill of new discovery. Missing is that sense of newness, of the uncertainty, yes even of vulnerability, that comes from understanding that you are a living member of a work in progress, and not simply a lucky heir to a fortune of church tradition.
Today we celebrate the baptism of Elijah Michael and Gabriel Thomas – can’t get much more biblical than that – as we welcome these two newest members of the church – the Body of Christ in the world. We will, as we always do at baptism, renew our Baptismal covenant, that uniquely Anglican statement of beliefs that also commits us to adopting a certain lifestyle and to being people of The Way. As a part of that renewal, we will commit to the very practices that St. Luke describes in today’s passage from the Book of Acts: Will you continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers?
When we say, “I will, with God’s help,” are we going to let God do all the heavy lifting, or will we imagine ourselves as one of that evolving fellowship of which St. Luke wrote? We can perhaps question whether St. Luke was accurately describing practices that actually occurred throughout the entire movement or whether he was perhaps exaggerating a bit in trying to describe the idealized values of some subset of the movement in general. But that should not be our concern. What should really capture our hearts on this day is the renewed understanding that we as individual Christians as well as the church are always in the process of becoming, that we never “arrive” at our destination in this earthly life. The important question for us to be asking ourselves today is: What new momentum, what new leading of the Spirit, what events in the world are leading us to new and awesome understandings of how God is leading us into the Christ-like community? My prayer is that we will continue to grow into a diverse community that is gathered in prayer and worship, that is nurtured with the Word and the breaking of bread, and strengthened to join in the work of reconciliation and restoration of God’s creation. A community of whom it may be said, in the words of our Daily Office: Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to Him from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever. Amen.