Be The Church Part 1
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You know, in a couple of ways I’ve had it easy the past few weeks.
Arriving here just prior to Palm Sunday and Easter meant that I pretty much had my sermon topics picked for me ahead of time.
Every preacher knows what they’re speaking on during those weeks, and then of course last Sunday we had communion, which also provides a great theme for preaching.
But through, this Sunday, the 1st of May, has always been looming out there for me with a question hovering over it:
Alright…now what’re you gonna talk about?
And as I’ve sat with and thought about and prayed over that question, I’ve had one thought that just wouldn’t go away.
You see…being a new minister at a church has a lot of challenges in the best of times.
Not just developing preaching topics, but the tasks of getting to know the community and the people, of learning about the various ministries and the way the church functions, of discerning what God is up to in the midst of your new charge…
…it can be a little overwhelming, as I say, in the best of times.
But then you factor in a worldwide pandemic.
One that shut churches down left and right, that moved services online, that kept people apart for months and months…
…every pastor I’ve spoken with has said it created whole new challenges seemingly out of thin air, and learning to address those challenges has been very difficult for a lot of my pastor friends.
And I don’t think Gilfillan Church has been immune to that. No church has.
We are all struggling to figure out what it means to be the church in this new normal.
And churches everywhere are facing the same issues: declining numbers, less involvement especially from young people, increasing skepticism in the culture about the claims of the Christian faith, fear and concern about the direction the world is heading…
…it can all be overwhelming.
And so we come back to the question: what does it mean to be the church in these challenging times?
And as I have wrestled with that question, one book in the Bible has come to my mind over and over again:
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church.
One Corinthians, or as we refer to it in the States, “First Corinthians,” is a letter that is perfect for the times and the challenges we face.
Because it’s a letter that Paul writes to a church that is dealing with some significant issues:
They’re dealing with a culture that is hostile to the gospel.
They’re dealing with issues of immorality and greed.
They’re dealing with divisions and fractures in the church.
They’re wrestling with doctrine and worship and idolatry and sin…
…and Paul wants to help shepherd them through all of these.
Because Paul has a special relationship with the Corinthian church.
In our reading from Acts this morning we saw how Paul had planted the church in Corinth following his visit to Athens.
We find out how he arrived in Corinth and begins preaching about Jesus in the Jewish synagogue.
It says in our passage, “Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.”
Eventually he’s joined by Silas and Timothy, but then things go pear-shaped.
The Jewish leaders in the synagogue turn on Paul.
In fact, it says they became “abusive” towards him.
And so Paul, it says, “shook out his clothes in protest.”
That’s an interesting image, isn’t it?
What’s Paul doing there?
Well, it’s an image similar to “shaking the dust from your feet.”
It’s Paul saying, “I want nothing to do with you anymore. I don’t even want the dust from this place to stay on my clothes. We’re finished.”
He’s following Jesus’ instructions, really.
Jesus said, if you go to a community and they don’t receive your words, shake the dust from your feet and feel free to leave.
So Paul does that, saying, “I’ll go preach to the Gentiles instead.”
If you know your early church history, you know that this is a huge part of what happens in the book of Acts.
The gospel of Jesus spreads throughout the Roman Empire, and it’s not just Jewish people who come to faith.
Non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, come to faith as well.
And it becomes a huge problem in the early church, because at first the Jews don’t want the mix with the Gentiles.
They’ve been taught all of their lives that the Gentiles are unclean and should be shunned.
But now they’re supposed to welcome them with open arms?
They’re supposed to worship alongside them? Pray alongside them? Work alongside them?
Truth be told, that’s always been a problem for the Christian church.
We’ve always struggled to create a unified church body from people who are diverse in background and belief and opinion.
That’s why the motto of Gilfillan Church struck me so powerfully when I first began learning about this congregation.
Here let no man…let no one…be a stranger.
That message is so powerful.
Because it reflects the truth that in the church of Jesus Christ, the doors are open for everyone.
We turn no one away.
In some of my research about George Gilfillan, I even found out a fascinating bit of history related to this truth.
It turns out that in January of 1846, George Gilfillan welcomed a very special visitor from the States to his church in Dundee.
A man named Frederick Douglass.
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave from the US who became a world-famous speaker and social reformer speaking out against the evils of slavery.
And in 1845 he sailed to the UK from America for a speaking tour in support of the abolitionist movement, organizing anti-slavery movements in England and Scotland.
In fact, he was officially named, “Scotland’s Anti-Slavery Agent,” and there’s even a plaque commemorating this in Edinburgh.
And that message of anti-slavery caused quite a stir, apparently, in Dundee.
In fact, there was resistance to having him visit the city at all, and potential meeting spaces all closed their doors to Mr. Douglass.
But who opened their door to him and provided an opportunity for him to share his powerful testimony and message?
George Gilfillan.
Here let no one be a stranger.
That truth sits at the heart of the gospel.
And Paul lived that out in Corinth.
The Jewish leaders shut their doors to his message, but a man named Titius Justus opened his door, and Paul got to work.
It had to be hard for Paul, who had been a Jewish leader himself, one of the Pharisees, to be rejected by the Jewish community.
And I find it comforting that God didn’t leave Paul to wallow in his grief.
We heard in verse 9 of Acts 18 that God spoke to Paul in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.”
Which reminds me of an interesting piece of trivia.
Do you know what the most repeated command in the Bible is?
The command God gives more than any other?
[PAUSE]
Don’t…be…afraid.
And he comes to Paul with that message.
Don’t be afraid…I’m with you.
Yes, there are challenges surrounding you on all sides.
But I’m going to protect you.
You are not alone.
There’s a message that the church today needs to hear.
Because we are surrounded by challenges on all sides.
We also have challenges coming from within.
And it’s easy to get discouraged.
It’s easy to just feel like we should just give up.
But the same message God gives to Paul, I believe he gives to us.
Don’t be afraid.
I’m with you.
I’ll protect you.
You’re not alone.
And we see here in Acts how Paul responds to God’s comforting message and presence.
He stays in Corinth for a year and half, faithfully teaching God’s word to the people.
The text tells us that as a result, “many believed and were baptized.”
He plants a church.
And then he moves on to continue his missionary journey.
And it would be wonderful if we could just put a cap on the story there.
It would be great if the church in Corinth just continued to thrive and grow and live happily ever after.
The End.
But that’s not what happens.
The church in Corinth, after Paul leaves, starts to have some significant problems.
Some of them come from outside.
Because the city of Corinth is well-known for its sin and debauchery.
We’ll learn more about that next week. (that’ll be fun)
And, yeah…that outside influence creeps into the Corinthian church and causes problems.
But the real problems in the Corinthian church are coming from within.
Which highlights an important truth for us.
In fact, if you hear nothing else from me this week, hear this:
The greatest threat to the church does not come from outside these four walls.
The greatest threat to the church comes from within.
Churches are most often diminished not by shifting cultural winds and opposition in the larger community.
Churches are most often diminished…and even sometimes disintegrate…because of relational breakdowns and unhealthy patterns that develop amongst themselves.
And that’s what happens in Corinth.
Leading Paul to write a letter.
Actually, what we call 1 Corinthians is actually his second letter to the church.
He references an earlier letter that has been, unfortunately, lost to history.
But in response to that first letter we don’t have, the Corinthians have written a response to Paul filled with questions about what it means to be the church.
How to deal with the problems they’re facing.
How to move beyond them and become a healthy, vibrant church.
That’s why I think this letter can be so important for the church of Jesus Christ right now.
It’s a wonderful word to us, to Christians emerging from a pandemic and wrestling with what it means to be the church in this new normal.
So…
I’m inviting you to join me on a little adventure.
As over the next few weeks we walk through this book called 1 Corinthians.
And we learn together…anew…what it means to be the church.
You’ve already heard a little snippet this morning.
Paul’s introduction, where he says,
“To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul may be writing to a specific congregation, but he’s also writing to all of us.
Those “sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people.”
That’s us.
That’s our mission in a nutshell.
We are called to be God’s holy people.
And it’s my prayer that over the coming weeks we will understand more and more what that looks like.
What it means for us.
What is asks of us.
And as we dive into this book together, may that which Paul wished for the Corinthians be ours as well:
Grace and peace…from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.