David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: May 21, 2006

A Community of Believers: I
"Within and Beyond"

Last Sunday I said that the next few weeks would be good weeks for us together in our Sunday services to review our mission as a congregation. And I said we would do so in part with the help of our focus statement, a statement adopted six or seven years ago with the adoption of our long-range plan, Plan of Action 2000. It’s printed each week on the front page of your bulletin. I’d like to ask you to turn to that just now. Let’s say in unison together,

Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers.
Called by Jesus Christ and led by the Holy Spirit,
we aspire to love and glorify God within and beyond the Church
through worship, study, fellowship and service.

This is a wonderful statement. Let me say it again: Second Presbyterian Church is a community of believers. Called by Jesus Christ (and we trust we are being) led by the Holy Spirit, (and we have aspirations, we want) to love and glorify God within this community and beyond this community, the Church. We want to do so through worship, through study, through fellowship and through service.

This morning I want to use the statement to think of the importance of our congregation as a community of believers, whose focus is not only inward but it’s outward. Whose focus is within the community, within the church, as well as beyond the church. A community of believers.

A great German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who gave his life resisting Adolph Hitler in World War II, once said that the church of Jesus Christ is the only institution he knew of that preserved both the integrity of the individual and the critical importance of the community. The integrity of the individual and the critical importance of the community. So that when you read your Bible, for example, what you find is the story of numerous individuals. Numerous individuals whose names we know. And who surround us in these stained glass windows every Sunday we worship here, and yet each of them has been called to function within a community, to carry out their mission within their family, within a grouping of people and within the nation – within Israel or the Church.

So we hear of Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Rachael, and David and Ruth, and Isaiah and Abigail, and Amos and Esther, and a host of others whose names we know. And they give their lives in service to God through the family, the descendants of Abraham, through the nation of Israel. Through a whole group of people amongst whom God is at work. And yet, in the midst of this group of people, their individual identity is never lost.

Some of you may remember The Lord of the Rings, whether in the book version or in the recent movie version. In The Lord of the Rings, the rising power of evil personified in a group of beings known as Orcs. And those Orcs are portrayed, especially in the movie, portrayed as a nameless, faceless, host of beings. An army, a mass of beast-like beings whose individuality is buried and lost within the movement of which they are a part. There’s no question they are part of a great movement, moving on its way, relentlessly creating destruction wherever they go. There’s a huge movement, a grouping of beings, but the beings who make up the movement no longer have individuality. It’s lost in the movement. They are turned into machines or automatons.

This can happen in any movement. This can happen in any nation. This can happen in any grouping of people. Think of capitalism and communism.

— Capitalism at its worst creates sweatshops in which people are nothing other than the means of production. So they lose their individuality. People don’t care about their names, their faces, their families, how they are "making it" outside the group, outside the factory. They are there for a purpose and the rest of their lives is lost, consumed by consumption.

— Or think of communism. Think back in China to the days of the Cultural Revolution, back in the 60's, where if you had any individuality at all, it would be stripped away from you. You’re an intellectual? We don’t want you. You’re an artist? We don’t want you. You’re a musician? We don’t want you. You rise up above the crowd and somebody will come along to squelch you or to take you away to a place where you will be re-educated, so that your individuality is gone, consumed by the mass.

Or, we don’t need to go that far, do we? We just need to think of the world of sports – our lives during basketball season at Rupp Arena. Or, as we’re part of a crowd watching football. Or, for me, back home in Scotland, at a soccer match . . . who cares what the names of the people in the crowd are, so long as they’re all wearing blue. So long as they all shout together. So long as the emotion is there at the time. That’s all that matters. It’s not just a game. It’s a movement. It’s a gathering. It’s an event. And individual people are there, but "who they are" can get lost – and at times, very lost. If you think those times when crowds have gone out of control. All individual accountability is lost. Individuality has gone and the mass, the community, the movement, takes precedence.

It can happen. And it can happen easily in different parts of life. But the faith of Israel, the faith to which we have been called by Jesus Christ, the faith portrayed in the pages of holy scripture, is a faith that causes us repeatedly to steer clear of the trap. The trap, EITHER to lose ourselves within the crowd, the community, the mass (and thus to abdicate our responsibility and to lose sight of our individual identity; that’s the trap on the one hand). OR, on the other hand, to live our lives outside of community as solitary, stolid individuals who can make it alone by ourselves. One side or the other.

The scripture calls us to avoid and warns us about both those positions. For example, the truly solitary figures you think of in the Bible are seldom happy ones.

• Think of Cain (Genesis 4), all alone, after slaying his brother, all alone, sent into exile.
• Or Jacob (Genesis 27-28), all alone, after deceiving his brother and his father.
• Think of the woman at the well at Samaria (John 4), all alone, when getting water, which in those days was a communal event: a group of women would normally have come together to the well, but alongside this woman there was no one.
• Or Zacchaeus, the tax collector (Luke 19), all alone, after cheating the people in his community in Jericho.
• Or the prodigal son in the story that Jesus tells us (Luke 15). All alone in a far-off land, having squandered, having squandered his father’s inheritance.

All alone. All unhappy. And all ineffective. Whereas Jesus from the very start of his ministry, calls his followers together. Calls them by name, yes! Peter, James, John, Andrew. . . we know their names. Calls them by name as individuals. BUT calls them together, binds them together as a team, as a people, as a community.

And after his resurrection and his ascension, when the disciples finally get it, that this Jesus is no longer dead but that he is very much alive, they almost instinctively know that if Jesus’s ministry is to continue, that they must come together again. They do not think of themselves as individuals equipped to be good people doing their own thing in Jesus’ name. They think of themselves as belonging to a new community. It is no accident that there are twelve in the end in the inner circle. That twelve reflects the twelve tribes of Israel. A new people, a new community that Jesus has established, and he calls them to be a part of it. So, they come together. Not only to get strength from each other (strength which they desperately need) but because it is the purpose of their lives made known in Jesus Christ. And we hear of this coming together in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (2:42,44-47): "They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple. They broke bread and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the good will of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."

Interestingly, when we look at our second passage of scripture in Matthew 25, we find that in the chapter as a whole, there are two great stories of Jesus side by side that point to our inescapable call to be (1) individual disciples of Jesus with an identity and accountability that is important, as well as (2) disciples of Jesus who live out our faith within the community. We read one of those stories (25:31-46). We didn’t read the other, which we call "the parable of the talents (25:14-30)."

The parable of the talents is a story about individuality. It’s a story about a master and three servants and the master is going away to a foreign country. And he gives to his servants different gifts and talents. A talent was an amount of money. He gives five talents to one, two to another, one to another. He gives to each of these as individuals. The master doesn’t say much, but two of the servants get the picture that they have been entrusted with something that they are supposed to use, and they use their talents while the master is away. They don’t need to be supervised every moment. They get on with it and they do their job, and they use their talents so that when the master comes back they’ve doubled their money. But when the master comes back, he also finds that the third one has done nothing. The third one has been afraid, has allowed fear to rule his life, and he buries that talent in the ground. One talent he has, it’s less than the others. He buries it in the ground and does nothing. As the master says on his return, you didn’t even put it in the bank for somebody else to use. You just buried it in the ground. And the master is furious. He says, "This man ought to be thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. His performance is unacceptable."

He’s an individual, made in the image of God, and though his gift may be different from another, it remains a gift which is to be used individually.

That’s the message of the story. We’re not to look at others. We’re to look at ourselves and our relationship with God and to use what we have been given. A highly individualistic way of looking at things. Me and God, God and me, a gift to be used in God’s service.

And yet, the very next story, the parable of the sheep and the goats, implicitly at least, tells us that we cannot function just by ourselves. It simply is impossible to follow Jesus, and do everything that Jesus wants us to do, by ourselves alone. The last few verses of that story that we read just a few moments ago go like this. We’re at the day of judgement and the king, the "Son of Man" speaks, and he says,

Then he will answer then, Truly, I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous into eternal life."

It’s a rather scary story, especially when we read it as an admonition to each of us only as individuals. Yes, it is an admonition to us as individuals but it’s especially scary when we read it only as an admonition to us as individuals, because I do not know of an individual who does all these things that Jesus tells us to do! Maybe Mother Theresa may have qualified but nobody else that I know is even in the ballpark!

Who can do all these things? Who do you know who feeds the hungry, welcomes strangers, clothes the naked, visits the sick and those who are in prison? We may touch the tip of the iceberg and do a little of this or a little of that, but the list goes on and on, and I do not know of anyone who does these things. And I know my own lack. In fact, I’m convinced that with regard to this parable, we’re all in trouble.

I don’t know an individual who makes it – but I do know of communities. In fact, our own community, our own congregation is in the ballpark! That is, when you put us all together, well, there’s an amazing amount of what Jesus asks us to do which is accomplished – the feeding of the hungry, the welcoming of strangers, the clothing of the naked, the visiting of those who are sick or who are in prison. (Actually, at the moment, we do not have prison ministry and if we want to "fill out" our response, it may be something we need to do in the days that lie ahead). But together, an enormous amount of what is here can be accomplished in a way that it simply cannot be accomplished by us as individuals. And, indeed, a large amount of Jesus’ teaching, which while we must bear our own responsible part in it, cannot be fulfilled unless others play their part with us, or we play our part with others. It’s only together as a community that we can do that. It’s only when we bring our lives, like musical instruments, together as it were into "the orchestra of the church" that we can play God’s music in a way that touches the lives and the souls of people as our Lord Jesus Christ touched their lives and their souls.

There’s a great story that goes back quite a few years about Jimmy Durante and some of you may remember Jimmy Durante: 1920's through the 1960's, a popular entertainer. Apparently, he was asked after World War II to speak to a group of veterans, and he was very busy at the time. He said, yes, he could do it, but he really could only be on stage for about five minutes and then he had to head off to another engagement. The organizer was delighted that he said yes and he said "I’ll take the five minutes."

So, Jimmy Durante turned up, he appeared, he went on the stage, he performed for five minutes . . . and then ten minutes, and then twenty minutes and then thirty minutes. And the applause was raucous. And finally he went off-stage and was asked, "Well, why did you stay so long? Thank you, thank you. You stayed way longer than you said. Was it just the applause?" He said, "Well, it’s the applause, yes. But there was some applause in particular. Come and have a look at this." And the director of the show peered around the curtain where they could see the crowd, and there in the front pew, there were a couple of soldiers. Each of them had lost an arm. And they were using their good arm to clap with each other.

Jimmy Durante continued: "Every time I looked at that, I couldn’t quit. It just grabbed me, it gripped me when I saw what they were doing together."

You can’t clap alone. You can’t clap if you only have one hand. You need somebody else to stand to do it. And the church is like that with the teaching of Jesus. Of course, there’s some of it that is just up to me as an individual. But there’s a huge amount in what Jesus says which is absolutely communal from day one: from day one, Jesus brings those individual, named disciples together. Individual sheep to form a flock. And it’s together that we care for each other within the community.

And it’s together that God gives us the energy to burst out of the community, to care for the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.

And these are categories that aren’t just literal. They are literal but they’re figurative as well. For there are many who are spiritually hungry and thirsty. There are many who are desperately lonely and who need to know God. There are many who need to be clothed with the love and grace of God and there are many who have a sickness in their soul that they know nothing how to deal with it or how to find a cure. And those who are prisons of their making or of others making and they desperately need release. And together, we can bring the salvation of Christ into their lives and others can bring it into ours.

We have been called to be a community of believers.

As I look back on our years together, I see countless ways in which this congregation has fulfilled this kind of communal ministry, and been this kind of community. And it is, of course, our calling for the years ahead as well. As I look back to the past, I think of quite different times in which this has taken place.

The need, on occasion, for our fellowship to have cookies and the phones ring and mysteriously hundreds of cookies appear. And the fellowship has increased and the caring around the table eating, sharing fellowship together, like those first disciples is made possible. Many hands, quite literally, make life work. And as many of you know, I have enjoyed my fair share of those cookies and brownies and other delights.

But I also think, as I think back to our life as a community, that perhaps the most visible sign of change in our life together and that’s the new fellowship hall, off to the side out here. And I think not so much of the fellowship hall, though it itself has helped to develop our community life together, but something about that hall that makes me smile every time I think about it. And that’s the way this whole congregation rose up to provide the resources to make it possible. There were some in our congregation who gave a great deal of money and those gifts were critical. But there were many, many in the congregation who played their part. Which, in the end, made it possible.

Those who were involved with fund-raising know that fund-raisers say that you’re only going to make your project if you think of a pyramid with one or two gifts at the top that perhaps provide forty percent, fifty percent of all projects. And everybody else does the rest. With our project, you can take that top layer off. It was more like a squelched pyramid with some people giving more than others to be sure. But lots of people playing their part. Now, that is a community. A true community.

Individuals. Everyone rising up, knowing that their individual identity is important to God. Responding to God’s call, using the talents that God has given to them, but coming together. All of a sudden, something is possible that was not conceivable before.

Called by Jesus Christ. Led by the Holy Spirit. Together a community of believers focusing within energy focused beyond. The calling of the church, our calling. In the past, in the present and in the future. May God be our helper.

Let us pray.

Holy God, Thank you for the knowledge that you know us by name. And you, Lord Jesus, called your disciples individually by name and loved them one by one. Thank you too for your calling into a people into a nation, into a community in which we can serve you. Help us, each one, to find our part and play it, and play it well. So that our lives together may be sweet music in your sight and in the sight of others. For Christ’s sake, we ask this. Amen.