5th Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2015
Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21
Among the online articles I read this week was one about
community by the Christian author Philip Yancey. You may recognize that name as the author of
the best-selling books “The Jesus I Never Knew” and “What’s So Amazing about
Grace?” He is also a former editor for Christianity
Today magazine. He now also keeps a
blog and this past Thursday’s entry was titled, “Small is Large.”[1] It was about his recent visit to a megachurch
and how, while there are currently 1,300 congregations in the U.S. which
qualify as megachurches and average more than 2000 in their weekly attendance,
most Americans still are part of churches with less than 200 members. Most Americans are part of churches that are
our size, or perhaps a little larger. And
whereas it’s easy to find the advantages that megachurches have, Philip Yancey
wrote about some of the benefits of attending a smaller church. One advantage is that it’s easier to find a
parking spot! Another is that it causes
us to be in community with people who are not like us. Philip Yancey quotes
another Christian author, G.K. Chesterton, who wrote, “The man who lives in a
small community lives in a much larger world…. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our
companions. In a small community our
companions are chosen for us.” When
there are lots of people to choose who to hang out with, we often choose people
who are a lot like us, whether the same age, or the same gender, or the same
marital status, or same love of fishing, or what-have-you, and that can quite
easily cause the group to turn into a clique.
Only people like us allowed. But
in a smaller group of people, we have to hang out with everyone and it is much
harder work to form a community, to be in
a community, with people who are different from us. Philip Yancey cites Ephesians 3, which talks
about God’s secret plan through the church, which is made up of people from
different backgrounds, which you can see just by looking around at us. “By forming a community out of diverse
members, we have the opportunity to capture the attention of the world and even
the supernatural world beyond.”[2] How do we form a community when everyone’s so
different from each other? With lots of
love, patience, and grace.
We have been reading from 1 John since Easter and it is
an epistle, or letter, that is all about love. This week’s passage tells us that “We love because God first loved us. If we say we
love God, and hate a brother or sister, we are liars, because we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love our brothers and sisters, whom we have seen. The command that Christ has given us is
this: whoever loves God must love their brother and sister also.”[3] Love is how we stay in
community with each other in spite of our differences. No one in close relationships always get
along with each other. There are going
to be disagreements and differences of opinion simply because God made us
different. The key is that even when there
is conflict, we still stay in relationship with each other because we love each
other and we love God. John’s letter
also says, “This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and
sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.”[4] When differences escalate to
the point of conflict, it’s because sin has gotten involved somehow, whether in
the form of pride or greed or arrogance or envy or anger or something
else. And John’s letter reminds us that
God loves us so much that he sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are
forgiven. This is love. God loved us first, love comes from God, and
we are to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our
strength. And we are to love our
neighbor as ourselves, regardless of how much like us that neighbor is.
Patience, one
of the other fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5, is also key in forming
and staying in community with people who are difference from us. Look, for example, at the patience Philip
shows toward the Ethiopian man in our Acts passage this morning. Now, here are two people who are very
different: Philip is one of the original twelve disciples, originally from the
town of Bethsaida, and hand-picked and called by Jesus to “follow me.” In contrast, this man in the carriage is from
Ethiopia, not just a different country, but a different continent, he works for
the government, and he’d never heard
of Jesus. One last difference between
them is that Philip probably had a wife and children whereas the Ethiopian man
was a eunuch, which is to say, he’s sterile, so that he wasn’t a threat to the
Ethiopian queen. So, the Holy Spirit
tells Philip to approach this man, who appears to have practically nothing at
all in common with him. Philip listens
to God and goes over to the carriage and hears the man reading and discovers
that they might have something else in common.
So Philip asks, “Do you understand what you are
reading?” And the man says, “How can I,
unless someone explains it to me?”[5] And Philip takes the time to
not just explain the passage from Isaiah to him but also to share with him the
Good News about Jesus! And then Philip continues to travel with him some
more! I said patience is necessary for community, but perhaps a more
accurate word might be time! Philip spends a lot of time with the Ethiopian man, staying with him until the Holy Spirit
takes him away, but not before the man is baptized and officially joins the community of faith. Because of Philip’s willingness to spend time
with and have lots of patience with someone who was very different from him,
Philip was able to share the Gospel and baptize a new convert to
Christianity. Philip was able to grow his community.
You see, our community of faith, both here locally and on
the grand scale has lots of different people in it. People we’re not always going to get along
with, people we’re not always going to like.
And yet, just because they rub us the wrong way does not make them any
less a child of God, does not make them any less beloved, does not make them
any less deserving of our love, because we are called to love each other
unconditionally. That’s what grace is, unconditional love. That’s
how God loves us, and that’s how we
are to love our brothers and sisters. Our
passage from 1 John says, “There is no fear in love; perfect
love drives out fear, because fear expects punishment. The person who is afraid
has not been made perfect in love.” It
turns out all those times the Bible tells us “do not be afraid” and all the
times we’re told to “love God and love one another” are basically telling us
the same thing. To love God is to not
be afraid. To love each other is to not
be afraid of each other. Our Psalm
this morning says that “all the families of the nations shall worship before
the Lord,”[6] much like
the vision in Revelation 7 where people from every race, tribe, nation, and
language all worship together.[7] In the small church, where
we can’t group by people who have the same hobbies we do, we actually live
closer into this vision of different kinds of people all worshiping
together. We have learned how to get
along, because we have to. There is no
other service to go to instead or different small group to go to instead. We have, more or less, figured out how to
love each other unconditionally and to not be afraid of each other. We have figured out how to show each other
grace, because we have to.
Philip Yancey likens a small church
to a family reunion, where you encounter all kinds of people you might not
normally associate with, if given the choice, and a wide range of people, with
views all over the political spectrum, lives all over geographic spectrum, and
different paths chosen. Yet they all
have in common similar DNA, which makes them all part of the same family. We are also like that. We have a wide range of backgrounds and
careers and life choices all right here, represented among us. And we’re all part of the same family, God’s
family. So, no, we’re not all always
going to get along. But we do form a
community where we can model love and patience and grace, unconditional love,
and when the world sees that happen, well, it’ll blow them away. And what a witness that will be!
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