Trouble in Church

Trouble in Church

 

Acts 4:5-12
4:5 The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem,

4:6 with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family.

4:7 When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?"

4:8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders,

4:9 if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed,

4:10 let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.

4:11 This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.'

4:12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

 

 

I was always getting in some kind of trouble in church. As a young kid, my best friend was our pastor’s son, and my home church was a very old building built over a partial basement and a cavernous crawl space. Of course, we two boys loved exploring this area. One day, we crawled back into the crawl space and found an old shortwave radio, which we thankfully did not drag out and try to plug in, or we might have burned the place down! But we DID find a kind of “Dr. Frankenstein’s lab” switch bolted to a pole, and so we did what any two curious, elementary-aged boys might do, we turned it off. Nothing happened, so we continued playing in the basement until time to walk home (the parsonage wasn’t far, and my house was even closer). Come that following Sunday morning, the pastor’s son and I were seated in our normal seats in the church balcony, which faces another balcony across the way that is both choir loft and location of the main pipe organ console. As it was time for the prelude, we noticed the organist starting to look around the console with a panicked look on his face, and soon, a member of the church trustees was climbing down under the keyboard. I looked over at my friend, with one of those “UH-oh” looks on my face, and noticed his parallel “revelation” as to what that Frankenstein switch might have been for. Then we both looked down at his dad, who just glared back at us from the chancel. Thankfully, another of the trustees knew what to do to return the organ to life without consulting us, and better late than never, the service got underway. Two young boys were soon banned from the church basement.

 

Seeing that I had a habit of making friends with pastor’s kids, a few years later, I had befriended the somewhat mischievous sons of the local Presbyterian pastor. Their church building was much more interesting than our old Methodist church, so we took to playing ping pong in the plush parlor room on the boat-shaped conference table. We would tape an old ping pong net we found to the table, and get a few games in. Of course, we weren’t actually allowed in the recently-redecorated parlor, and playing ping pong on the mahogany conference table was frowned on, I’m sure, and most especially by the family who gave it as a memorial. One night, as we were in the middle of a grudge-match game, the reverend happened to drop by the parlor to see what all the unexpected noise was about. Seeing his dad in the doorway, my friend thought he’d escape trouble by sliding his ping pong paddle across the floor and under one of the sofas, without thinking that the net taped to the table was a giveaway, and that I was still standing there, red-handed, with a paddle, myself. It actually went down worse than all of that, though, as his aim wasn’t very good, as he hastily slid the paddle across the carpeted floor, and instead of parking itself under a sofa, it hit a carved, wooden pedestal that held what I’m sure was a ridiculously expensive vase, of some sort. The vase came crashing down, and even the new, thick-pile carpet wasn’t enough to cushion its fall, so it broke into a thousand pieces, all of this happening as the reverend watched in horror, and in what I’m sure must have looked like slow motion. Two boys were soon banned from playing in the church, save in the fellowship hall, where we certainly couldn’t do much damage. 

 

Interestingly, both of my pastor’s kids best friends were named “Mark.” I think of them every time I read from Mark’s gospel, and remembering how impetuous the young author of that book seemed to be, and how later, he would be the source of a falling out between Paul and Barnabas. I am forever thankful, though, that my two Marks’ dads never compared notes on their sons’ extra-curricular church activities, or they might have discovered that I was the common denominator.

 

God got even with me by calling ME into the ministry, many years later, and giving ME a son, who liked to play in or around the church. I remember one time when my wife and I went off to visit our daughter for “Parents Weekend” at college, leaving our son at home. Honestly, he was a quite responsible young man, so we weren’t concerned, but we DID say he should not hold the typical “post dance” gathering of friends in the house on Friday night. Turns out, he held to the “letter of the law” and didn’t have his friends IN the house, but they did play some music on a boom box and skateboard in the church parking lot, which was between the parsonage and the church. They had forgotten two things: there are neighbors who might not appreciate loud music blaring on a bomb box at 11:30PM, AND that community had an 11:00PM curfew for teens on Friday nights. Upon returning home to what seemed like a peaceful house, our son told us, “Hey dad, you might hear that the cops were here on Friday night.” “Were they?” I queried. “Well, yes,” he said, explaining what had happened, and that they were just given a warning and told to disperse. Thinking of a few of my church exploits, I figured, “No harm, no foul.”

 

This lection passage from Acts 4 brings these tales to mind! Only in Peter and John’s case, they were not dragged before the High Priests for turning off organ blowers or playing ping pong in the parlor. They had actually acted like the Body of Christ they were called to be! They had encountered a lame man, begging outside the temple, and healed the man. Rather than offer coins to his bowl, coins which they apparently did not have anyway, Peter just said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk!” And a man crippled since birth did exactly that, having been instantaneously healed by the power of the Risen Christ. Of course, he did not just walk, but according to Acts 3, he went “walking and leaping and praising God,” and did so in the temple, which must have been a sight even more stirring than Mark’s ping pong paddle bringing down a vase. While the man was jubilant, suffice it to say, the temple priests weren’t.

 

They would have known the lame man, given that he was a regular, begging outside the temple. Their questions as to what had happened that he was now doing the Macarena down their hallowed hallways was theologically on their minds. And they did what even many modern religious leaders want to do—quash excess enthusiasm and maintain control and decorum. Upon questioning Peter and John, Peter spoke up boldly (a real surprise here…) and gave an impressive sermon that included blaming the High Priests for their role in killing Jesus. It did not go over well.

 

This would be the first of many episodes of those early Christ followers getting in trouble “in church” for doing God’s work as part of the actual beginnings OF the church! As a religious leader myself, I can empathize with these priests, to some extent, as it IS partly our role to maintain order and keep the church from erupting into ecstatic anarchy during an “outbreak” of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we do our job too well, even as did these chief priests. I’m surprised the Holy Spirit isn’t pictured in historic art as wearing a rain slicker, given the cold water “religious leaders” have doused upon her over the centuries. On the other hand, we all want to avoid the kind of “trouble” in church that will fester into even MORE trouble—or at least troubled Church Council meetings—down the road. Still, a text like this should remind us of several important things:

 

1.Ultimately, it is GOD’S WORK that will get done God’s way, and we would be wise to facilitate it, rather than try always to “tame” it.

 

2.Applying penalties and banishing prophets is not a good way to keep order; open conversations and prayerful guidance with the “newly moved” by the Holy Spirit is more compassionate and faith-building than dismissing them outright because we are “uncomfortable” with their enthusiasm.

 

3.Our people come to church hoping to experience the presence of God, not to get our “good theology” or just to be generous when they give the offering. Practicing the presence of God means being open to what the Holy Spirit may be trying to SAY to or DO in the church, and in the lives of our people. Being open to the Holy Spirit requires giving up at least some of our custodial “control,” and learning to live with being a bit uncomfortable with not knowing exactly what is up next.

 

Historically, “allowing” the Holy Spirit to act in the church—especially when this action was a wave of liberation—has always made some uncomfortable. While the Methodist/United Methodist Church has been fully ordaining women for decades, “women pastors” still are often rejected by men AND women parishioners who can’t get beyond their stereotypes and “traditions” that pastors should be men only. Likewise, ethnic minority pastors struggle for acceptance in a Conference like Western PA that is predominantly OLD and predominantly WHITE. One hears every excuse in the book as to why many of our backward churches reject women and ethnic minority clergy, most of which is, at best, bigotry dressed up in verbal “costume jewelry.” Even the best of these cutting edge, diverse pastors find themselves being “in trouble” in church, just because of who they ARE, and because their novel presence in the midst of a sea of aged whiteness brings “discomfort” to some of the ruling faithful. Again, as this text from Acts reminds us, in this regard, there is “nothing new under the sun.”

 

How about the movement to liberate and include the LGBTQ community in Methodism? How is that going? BOY, has THIS caused trouble in church. Why? Again, it’s more about discomfort with those who are different and a desire to be spared it. Oh, it, too masquerades in words like “Well, the BIBLE says…” and with people “speaking for God” in suggesting that “these people” don’t belong in church unless they change their sexual orientation, something that even Jesus never made people do. (And please don’t use his occasional unction to “go and sin no more” as an excuse to play the judge in this regard, for one’s sexual orientation is not “sin,” it is just who they are. Jesus NEVER excluded someone for who they were. Never.) Not only has the movement of the Holy Spirit to liberate LGBTQ persons in the life of the church brought “discomfort”—indeed, we have had a whole church SPLIT over it. Trouble in church, indeed. 

 

You probably got a chuckle out of my earlier stories about my mischief in the church, when I was a kid, but the bigotry, deception, and political power plays that has led to over a quarter of United Methodist church to disaffiliate should bring you to tears. Believe me, when we all stand before God someday, God will not pass out any trophies or “crowns” for “keeping those people out” of the church. There may be some judgement coming, but it will not go the way some think it will. Jesus taught us to do everything we possibly could do to welcome people into the family of God, including accept those who for millennia had been rejected—adulterers, lepers, Gentiles, and women, who up until Jesus’ time, had been treated merely as possessions. Members of the LGBTQ community are some of the latest to be queued up for inclusion by the Holy Spirit, and I’m very sorry for those who continue to reject them. 

 

Peter and John healed a lame man, whose excited gratitude and display of praise brought down the hammer of judgment by those who thought they had a corner on scripture. Rather than join the dance of the healed man, they held a hearing and according to Peter, “rejected the cornerstone.” It’s still going on in our midst. In believing they “speak for Jesus,” those who have divided the church have rejected the “cornerstone” (Jesus, himself) and his salvation for all humankind. 

 

Where is the Good News here? It is this: God continues to heal the hurting, those “made lame” by the judgment of some in the name of “orthodoxy” and “scriptural purity.” God is healing members of the LGBTQ community! Let’s hope that after the 2020 General Conference ends in a couple of weeks, there will be some serious “walking, and leaping, and praising God” going on, and less trouble in church! Amen.