UNCommon Good

SCRIPTURE: 2:42-47 CEB, Rev. Billie Watts, Associate Minister

I want to begin today by showing you a photo of the Travis Park UMC congregation in 1955  (from the book We Finish to Begin, a history of TPUMC published in 1991, thanks to the efforts of Josephine Forman and others). Take a nostalgic look. It was the heyday of Travis Park, with a membership of over 4,000. It was once considered the “Mother Church” of our conference. We would call it a silk-stocking white glove church. You will notice a few things – first – the makeup of the congregation (all white) – and secondly, that it is not in this building. In Oct. of that year, the pharmacist at the St. Anthony Drug Store reported a fire, which started in the basement pantry, which caused extensive damage. It was a difficult time, to be sure. The photo you see here is taken during a worship service held at the Texas Theater.

 

The church as we know it today reopened in September, 1958 – almost three years later with its membership intact. But we are NOT that church anymore. This can seem to set a standard at which we look puny in comparison, hovering like a ghost warning us that the glory days are over. While at the same time, there are parts we wouldn’t want to relive. We can feel the same way when we look at the first century church, living this Uncommon life together while we are scattered here and yon, and feel puny and uncommitted in comparison.  

 

I envy the first century church as they are on fire from the fresh experience of an outpouring of the Spirit that we still speak of today – Pentecost, which we will celebrate on June 4^th. A fiery sermon by Peter left them horrified that they had been complicit in the death of Jesus, and they wanted to know what they could do. “Repent,” they were told. Change their minds about Jesus now. it’s not too late! Be baptized. Like cloth being dyed and changed to a different color, they would be immersed in the name of Abba God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. They would eat, drink, live, and breathe it – and we bear witness to the fruit of the Spirit’s work in their lives. They devoted themselves to the apostle’s teachings, connecting the dots as to what Jesus taught and lived, and for which he died, and how he rose. They worshipped in the Temple together (they were still Jews), developing a rhythm to life, praying together, having fellowship, and breaking bread. Perhaps their “breaking bread” was in line with our sacrament of Holy Communion, but more likely, they were just eating together, enjoying life.

 

We tend to focus on the selling of possessions, and suddenly, we want an escape clause. I was relieved to discover by studying this text that it is NOT my job to convince you (or guilt you) to sell your possessions. The root of living on this higher plain is the work of the Spirit among them and in them. This is no checklist of things they must do and no “head” thing of agreeing to doctrines and creeds. Rather, it is a “heart” thing, the effect of the Spirit’s work, leading them to live an uncommon way of life against the grain of Empire. It is the fruit we see.  It is not a “should” but a “can’t help myself.”

 

This Spirit work starts in the human heart, and is an outpouring of the Spirit creates a moment of acute awareness of God’s love and power. I liken it to the movie, E.T, and his homing device – that as the mother ship approaches, he (or it) is revived. Frederick Buechner, a Presbyterian theologian and writer, provides a more eloquent description, writing, “Who knows how the awareness of God’s love first hits people? Every person has his own tale to tell. Some moment happens in your life that makes you say Yes right up to the roots of your hair, that makes it worth having been born just to have happen. Laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. Waking up to the first snow…Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you try to turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to Business as Usual, it may lose you the whole ball game. If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may save your soul.”[1]

 

What are those grace-given and grace-filled moments of connection for you, a conversation we had at dinner with two of our sons on Friday night.  It may experienced by cradling a newborn baby, or a puppy – or holding the hand of the dying; it can be as grand as standing on the ocean’s shore and feeling the bigness of Creator God or as small as the sound of a single bee in the trumpet of a flower, buzzing as if there were an invasion.  These moments are God-moments, when our homing devices are detonated. Embrace them, for they have the potential to open up your whole life. How do we manage to let those moments slip from our consciousness and not hug them like crazy? Buechner also writes, “Do you know anyone who, as far as you can tell, has never had such a moment? Maybe for this person, the moment that has to happen is you.”[2]

 

The early church was alive and living in the shadow of the cross. Are we living in the intersection of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the cross – that place where our relationship with the divine reaches out into our relationships with others? I heard that once, Travis Park UMC used the expression, “A Church alive is worth the drive.” We are not that 1955 church anymore – but let’s take our pulse according to our text for today.

 

If we are living in the Spirit, we are converting our individual “I’s” to a “we.” This is not a call to charity, but to enlarging our family. There is a misconception that we let people in to join us here. This was a controversy in 1963 when TPUMC prepared for their first Black member. God is always on the side of the marginalized, and grace moments shift the concepts of “us” versus “them.” The truth is that this is God’s tent – and as such, God invites us. We are ALL beneficiaries, not gatekeepers, of God’s grace. God says, “Come in…and enjoy, and use your gifts and graces to make a stronger, better church.”

 

If living in the Spirit, we are worshipping together. We NEED the word of God preached. I was surprised to learn of a recent statistic that 86% of people desire to hear a powerful sermon. I remember being told elsewhere that this member didn’t come to hear a sermon or pay attention anyway. I challenged him on that, saying how disappointed I was to hear that given the amount of time spent preparing. Well, it’s a win-win- for we are burning to share it if you are willing to hear it.

 

If under the influence of the Spirit, we enjoy fellowship together This is a rich term (koinonia) meaning more than “eat cake.” This is about the quality of relational life. The deepest work of the Spirit is communal life. It is kinship. It is NOT serving someone else but an organic ONENESS – a re-membering of the fact that we belong to each other.

 

In the Spirit, we pray. We have too narrow and stiff a definition of prayer. Nadia Bolz Weber, the irreverent and real pastor of The House for All Sinners and Saints, says her prayer for herself is sometimes (and I use code here since children are present), “God, please help me not be an *****.”[3] Do we pray for others, standing in the gap when they have no words? Do we pray WITH others?

 

In the Spirit, we break bread together – sharing life with all its good, bad, and ugly. In so doing, you will find companions. People will say, “Me, too!” We are no longer a silk stocking, white-gloves church Being church is not about looking holy, but about seeing the holy is the messiness of life.

 

Through the Spirit’s enabling, we seek equality for all. There is a leveling of the playing field in today’s text. We are called to show up, stand up, speak up, and stand WITH. We empower others when we share knowledge.

 

Through the Spirit’s guidance, we take a hard look at how we are stewards of our resources. Luke has a lot to say about wealth – for it can choke out the Word or be used to plow the road. Do I have my possessions or do they have me? Remember that line at the end of the movie, “Schlinder’s List,” when he laments that the pen in his hand could have saved more lives? Withholding resources can mean life or death for others, as well as ourselves, for pieces of our own souls die when we withhold what is meant to be shared. How will we be the best stewards of this sacred space to be used for the common good? We are in that process of discernment right now.

 

Spirit living produces fruit. It is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithful ness, gentleness, self-control. Are we living with compassion, sharing the pain of others and acting to relieve it? Are we loving what God loves, for love is our compass. Love dismantles all barriers that exclude God’s own children. This is our only hope as a denomination – an outpouring of the Spirit, for UNITY is the Spirit’s work.

 

I close today with a reading from a book Lori Chidgey suggested to me months ago, called Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, by Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest and founder, executive director of Homeboy Industries in California, a gang intervention ministry. Boyle describes a time in 1987 when the Dolores Mission Church declared itself a sanctuary church for the undocumented after the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Acts of 1986 (relevant huh?). This brought attention to the church, and with it, opposition. Someone defaced the building by spray painting on the front steps a derogatory term for immigrants who cross the river, a term which I will not give power by repeating. As they contemplated on having the words removed, one of the women refused to have them removed, deciding instead to stand with those who are disparaged and hated because of where they came from – and declared that they would be proud to be known as “that” church, for Jesus always stands with those relegated to the margins. A man drove by the church who had left the ghetto and now lived a comfortable life. He was waxing nostalgic about having grown up near the church, baptized there and had his first communion there. He looked at the people hanging around it - the gang members, the drug addicts, those facing homelessness, the undocumented and, shaking his head in disgust said, “You know…this USED to be a church.”

Boyle mounted his own high horse and said, “You know, most people around here think it’s finally a church.”

 

Mother Church and Children of God, by the power and contagious holy fire of the Spirit, may it ever be so! Amen.