Tending the Heart of the Church - The Sermon

 Sermon, August 28, 2011

John 20:19-31

Ephesians 4:1-16

John 20:19-31

 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Ephesians 4:1-16

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
   he gave gifts to his people.’ 
(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

In 1979, a young pastor by the name of Michael Slaughter was appointed to a small country church called Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, Ohio. At that time there were 90 members in attendance. Slaughter saw potential in that church to become a teaching church, dedicated to fulfilling the mission of Jesus Christ in that community.  Now over 30 years later, the Ginghamsburg community of ministry locations (aka “churches”) has over 5,000 worshippers.

However, Slaughter is not interested in numerical growth for the sake of having a large membership. His commitment over the years has been to following the ministry and mission of Jesus Christ. Initially that lost him 1/3 of his members. But as he kept the focus upon the difficult and demanding path of following Jesus, and not pandering to those who come to church expecting Jesus to conform to their worldview, people responded. His experience is that people want the transformation of life that Jesus offers. The real Jesus. The real Jesus who hung out with outcasts, sinners, prostitutes and argued with the religious authorities of his time. The real Jesus who said real religion was not about acting religious but loving the people that God loved. The real Jesus who said nothing about homosexuality but did say a lot about the problems the very wealthy have with getting into the kingdom of heaven.

What Slaughter discovered is borne out by what survey after survey has revealed about the perceptions younger people have of the church and of Jesus. Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyon share the following information in their book, Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity: “These days nearly two out of every five young outsiders (38 percent) claim to have a bad impression of present-day Christianity” (p. 24)

In a recent survey by the Barna Group of 18-35 year-olds, which is a generation glaringly absent from churches today, 38% of the respondents said that they perceive the church to be:

• Anti-homosexual (that is, identified by being against something
• Judgmental
•  Hypocritical

Imagine that! Young people perceive Churches to be filled with people who are against something, leading lives and displaying attitudes and behaviors that are in direct contradiction to the teachings and attitude of the very person they worship and claim to emulate.

They are in good company. Jesus himself railed against the religious leaders of his time who were substituting their own prejudices and doctrines for the voice of God’s Spirit, who had spoken through prophets and teachers, and now spoke through him. This is what Jesus said about them:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees (i.e., religious authorities), hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matthew 23:27-28)

Something is seriously wrong. The church today is suffering from heart failure. It is suffering from a malaise of the heart.

Some of this malaise of the heart stems from the fact that many very vocal religious leaders today are substituting their own biases and prejudices for the leading of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is a situation not unlike that faced by the first disciples of Jesus.

In today’s Gospel reading from John, we heard the story of what happened to those first disciples following his death. As we look at this story we need to watch carefully how it is that Jesus leads them away from the narrow viewpoint of their preconceptions and prejudices into the broad vision of God.

1.   The first thing he does is show them that the barriers humans erect cannot keep God out. John says “the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews,’ but suddenly there he is, standing in their midst. Every barrier or fence or wall or border of exclusion we erect, God is going to get through, and God is going to do God’s work in spite of us or around us so why not let God do it through us.

2.   The first thing Jesus says is “peace be with you.” Jesus did not bring rancor or fighting. He came to reconcile and bring together people who had set themselves against each other. Jesus continually spoke about our one Father in heaven. We are all on family. Jesus spread the good news that God loved everyone that religious and social institutions had excluded. Now he expected his followers to do the same. Young people today recognize this. They want to know why the church is ignoring the plain example of Jesus.

3.   He then breathes upon them the same Holy Spirit that had ignited his ministry, inspired his teaching and empowered his miracles. In other words, the walls that Jesus tore down, he expected his followers to keep torn down. Jesus loved and embraced everyone cast out to the edge of society. Giving his Spirit to his followers means that we should do the same.

4.   Thomas missed that first gathering, so he was operating under an older way of thinking. Many in our churches today have likewise missed out on this updating of their Operating System. Thomas received his update and needed to reboot. Everything he understood about life and death needed to change. Everything he understood about reality needed to change. Everything he understood about what God could and couldn’t do needed to change. And it changed. The Holy Spirit made it happen.

That same change in understanding about what God can and can’t do needs to happen today. That same change in understanding about who God accepts in the church today needs to change. In order to tend to the heart of the church, we need to do those things that Christ and the Holy Spirit have done in order to heal divisiveness and to bring together in mutual love those persons and forces in society that have formerly been at odds. That which Christ has opened, we must not shut. That which Christ has freed we must not enslave. That which Christ has blessed, we must not condemn.

Paul declares that all of us are to “come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Christ is our model. Christ is our guide. The Spirit of God is the source of life within our midst shaping us according to love – for one another and for those whom God loves.

This is the love that younger people are craving to experience in concrete, practical ways – beginning with the attitudes of those of us who bear the name of Christ. This is a life that calls to them, a life with which they would gladly associate themselves, if only it were truly lived out.

So how do we tend the heart of the church? By “leading a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called.” We have been called to love one another. Not just in here, but out there as well. When we do this, we will discover what the people in Ginghamsburg UMC have discovered: the real Jesus.