“This Is The Church”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Text: Romans 8:18-25 and Acts 2:42-47
I was in a patisserie not long ago and a voice came over my shoulder.It said, “Reverend Stirling, there is no doubt these are the best croissants in the whole world!”
I thought about that for a moment before I turned around and responded, thinking, “I wonder if that is scientifically verifiable or not, but, I am willing to embark upon research of all the world's patisseries to find out if it is true.”I turned around, and there is a lady I meet simply in social encounters.She is not a member of the church, not someone who is part of a religious organization, just someone I meet around the city and with whom I have had a number of deep conversations.
After a deep analysis of the croissants that were before us and having filled our bags with them, we had a more serious conversation.She asked me a question:“Reverend Stirling, I am just wondering, as a man of the cloth, does it get you down at times when there are all these newspaper articles talking about the decline in church attendance?Doesn't it worry you and bother you?”You see, that very morning there had been an article in the National Post about the issue of the demise or decline of the United Church.
I had to think about it for a moment, because on the one level I respond with my ego, an ego that is natural for someone who provides leadership within a religious institution.There is egotism in being part of a big body and a church and to be connected with it.When you start talking about the decline in churches and the decline of influence, the ego gets in the way, and you can very easily start to take it personally.It is a dangerous thing to do that, but it is a natural, human response.
Then I thought about the decline of influence that one might have in society with the decline of the church and many parts of it.Is there something then that worries me or concerns me because of declining power and influence that had previously been around?Maybe I was thinking monetarily when she said this:that with declining numbers are declining assets yet increasing needs.Maybe the issue is money.Maybe that is my response to her:I am concerned about money.Then I realized something.I needed to put my own ego aside.
It has nothing to do with power.It has nothing to do with money.The real issue is the church and its welfare is important because Jesus Christ matters.It is not whether the church is strong and healthy and powerful in and of itself.It is that Jesus Christ matters.It is because I want Jesus Christ to matter to people and because I want their lives to be touched by him that I am concerned and then I feel the pangs of worry about any decline or talk of decline in the church.
In our text read from the Book of Acts something amazing happens.The Book of Acts is written about the early church after the death and resurrection and the ascension of Jesus.The very earliest parts of the Book of Acts deals with the power of the Holy Spirit working and influencing the church, and it always struck me how quickly the discussion in The Bible moves from the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus to the state of the church and the community that follows him.
There seems to be a seamless movement between the moment that the church is created at Pentecost, not long after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and then the discussion of how this church lived and acted.It is as if you cannot have one without the other.When you talk about Jesus, you are very quickly talking about the church and that it matters.
For those of you this morning who are joining the church, I want to say that the church matters, and it matters because Christ matters.The two are inextricably joined.Now, in the New Testament, the language that is used to describe the church is that of being “the bride of Christ.” It is one of the images.It is as if you take Christ, and then when you take Christ you take his bride along with him - the church.
I run into people who say, “Oh, look, I am quite prepared to accept Christ.I am quite prepared to believe in Christ.Christ is good.I love the teachings of Jesus. But the church, that leprous bride, I would rather have nothing to do with.” What you have is sort of a Christ-centred idea which is correct, but one that is disembodied from the very body that proclaims Him, worships Him, and celebrates Him.It disembodies Christ and takes Him out of the world if you want to reject the church.On the other hand, I also meet people who love the church, who love its ministry and its words and its music and its fellowship and its outreach and its community and its good deeds, but Jesus just seems to be an added extra that one may or may not choose to adhere to.
It seems to me that both of these errors are not only errors in terms of theology, but in terms of practice.A church without Christ as its head has no power, has no reason, and has nothing unique about it.Likewise, a Christ without a church, without a body, has no witness to him, has no place to worship him.
When I look at the Book of Acts, I am struck by a number of the characteristics of those very early Christians and how their faith in Christ and their presence in the church merged.
In a wonderful book, Tim Keller of New York has written titled,The Reason for God there is a passage about how people sometimes become disillusioned with the church and want to separate it from Christ.He goes through, historically, some of the things that the church struggled with and they are very real and they are very honest, but then he concludes that what the church has to do is reclaim its roots.It has to remember its reason for being.It has to re-unite and re-connect with its original cause.He makes the cogent argument that the church must see itself as a manifestation of Christ in the world.It must understand and embrace what made it so unique.
When we look at the early church in this passage from the Book of Acts we get this photograph of what the very earliest church was like:so connected to Jesus.One of the things we notice is that it was something that was actually growing rather than retreating. Think about it for a moment.There were only 12 people in the Upper Room when Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples in AD 33, but weeks later, we are told in Jerusalem there were 3,000 followers.Three thousand!And, when you look at the growth of the church over the years it is actually quite staggering!
For example, by the year 200 AD, there was believed to be 2 million Christians in the world.By the 1600s, there were 100 million.And in the last world census of religions in 2000, there weremore than 2 billion. I understand that populations have expanded, that the human race has grown, and that Christianity has grown along with the expansion of the human race.It is not a static number. However, even when you factor in the dynamism of the growth of humanity, the growth of the church is still staggering.
Two thousand years after 12 people gathered in an upper room or 3,000 people were touched by the spirit at Pentecost, there are the 2 billion believers in our day and age.Why has the Church sustained itself?Why has it continued to grow?Every day, according to WorldVision, 65,000 new Christians are borne in this world, either through a statement of faith or through birth.This staggering statistic tells me that the presence of Christ is still at work in his church.This church would never survive, would never be able to grow in such a way if it were not for the power of Christ and his message.
When you look at that early church, it grew.But, why did it grow?Well, it grew because they manifested the very things that were part of the life and the ministry of Jesus. They had great joy in the things that they did.They had sincere hearts.The ministry was borne out of sincerity, genuine love, and genuine fellowship.It was one that touched many lives and brought about many changes in people.
There was also a sense in which they shared things.I think this is a very, very important message for us today.They shared things by supporting each other.The church has always been about supporting one another.But we don't support one another in the way that civil institutions support each other.There is something unique about the way we do it.We do it as the “bride of Christ.” We do it as, and in the spirit of, the Christ that is our foundation.
Take for example the support group that we have for people who are grieving, and Jean will attest to this.You can go to many places and will see counselling on grief.Many of them are very eminent and fine people, but when you come to our support group you hear something that you don't hear in the world.You hear about the Resurrection and the life eternal.The support that we give one another is support that is based on the One who is the source of our church, Jesus Christ.
We don't just try to peel it away as the social institution standing on its own; we know that the church is bonded and connected to the person of Christ.When we give support, we give it in his name and on his terms.When we share things amongst ourselves, we do not share them because they are legislated in law, or that they are mandated by the State.We do not have equality within our body just because some great council says that is the case.We do not turn to a Kremlin, we do not turn to a court to treat each other fairly; we do it because of Christ, in whom we share our common bond and therefore something greater.
The church has shared with people throughout the ages its resources, its love, its money, its care over time and over continents because of Christ, but it also does it with a profound sense of the bond and the unity of the Spirit.And, here is the word for those who are new members this morning.
Twenty years ago, I was introduced to a Catholic priest in the area of Roxbury in Boston, Massachusetts.Roxbury is the place that has had somewhat of a tough reputation even though it has produced some of the greatest Americans.Roxbury is a place of poverty and challenge.
I was introduced to a priest, I'll call him Father O'Flynn.That wasn't his name, but he sounded like a Father O'Flynn, by a professor at Northeastern University, who said, “Andrew, you have got to meet this guy.He's different.”Well, he was different all right!He ministered to the poorest of the poor in Roxbury.He ran soup kitchens.He went knocking door-to-door.He provided counselling for the rough and the outcast.The dregs of society were loved by him.He was a wonderful man!
But he did something that I had never seen done before.When he had dinners for the very poorest of the poor, he always invited every single person before they ate to come and join him in the Eucharist, in the sharing of the bread and the wine.And, more than anything else, he wanted people, the outcast and the broken, to feed with something more than just the food at the table.He said to me, quite up front, “I know I probably shouldn't be doing this.It is actually against Cannon Law.But, Cannon Law can wait for heaven!Here on Earth, I want to feed people with Jesus Christ.”
Father O'Flynn has withstood immense criticism and has faced down some of the toughest people that you would ever meet in your life and he has done it because he understood one thing:that the church he represents and the Lord whom he loves cannot be separated. May that be the case for us as well! Amen.