PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Acts 4:32-35                                                                                     LIFE  TOGETHER

Sermon April 19, 2009:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

When I was in grade school I didn't like the taste of a hot dog.  The girl four houses down the street, Pam Stanton, was having a birthday party, and I was invited; but it was going to feature yard games and a cook-out—hot dogs.  I wanted to go to the party—all the kids in the neighborhood would be there; so what was I going to do?  The party was just getting started when I arrived, carrying a birthday present and an additional paper bag.  Of course the paper bag attracted everybody's attention, so after some hesitation and a little embarrassment I opened the bag and showed that I had brought a peanut butter sandwich to the hot dog cook-out.  Everybody had a good laugh, and then we all ran off to play a game of dodge-ball.  The kids I grew up with on Thomas Drive were a great bunch of people, and they were willing to accept each one for who he or she was.  Bricky was a couple of years older and you had to watch out for tricks he might play on you.  Carol was moody and sometimes didn't get along with anybody.  Pam's little brother, Don, ran with us too; but he got punched a lot—mostly by Pam.  And here I was with my peanut butter sandwich, and that was just fine with everybody.  We were all accepted. 

            Now I know that "acceptance" is an idea, a word drawn from modern psychology, and we all know that the gospel is bigger and other than psychology; but this little word "acceptance" does a pretty good job of describing the way the very earliest Christians treated each other.  Remember, this group included people from metropolitan Jerusalem and people from the small towns around Lake Galilee.  It included people from distant colonies who had some wealth who had come to Jerusalem for the religious feast, and also widows and orphans and some beggars, and maybe a couple of Pharisees.  There was Lazarus and his two sisters Mary and Martha, and a very young man named John-Mark whose mother owned the house where the upper room was.  There were three thousand of them, and no jobs; but they stuck around after the feast so they could be taught by the apostles—the men who had been with Jesus. How would they eat?  Barnabas sold some property he owned, and gave the money to the apostles so there would be some food and drink for this mob.  If he was paid the equivalent in modern American money, let's say $250,000, that won't go very far when you're feeding three thousand.  Others kicked in, too, as they were able.  And the writer of the Book of Acts, Luke, gives us an idyllic description of the fellowship—what the nineteenth century German theologian Ernst Troeltsch called a "communism of love."  Twenty years later the Jerusalem Christians were fewer—everybody had gone home; but they had exhausted their resources; so Paul took up benevolence collections in all the Gentile churches he started and took the money back "for the poor saints in Jerusalem," he said.  But while it lasted it was a wonderful experience—this absolute acceptance of each other without any concern for age, sex, language, region, education, marital status:  acceptance.  What they discovered is what every good church that has ever been has discovered:  a Christian community where people are supportive and accepting of each other,    helps each one there to live as a faithful Christian.  Acceptance gives us power for living.

 

            In 1933 Adolf Hitler became Reichs chancellor of Germany and Nazism started pushing all of Europe down a very steep slope.  The national church of Germany was the Evangelical Church (which back then meant "Lutheran"):  a wave of excitement moved through the Evangelical Church in response to Hitler's early courting, and they began calling themselves "German Christians"—as if "Christians" was no longer bigger than their own politics.  But many Christians in Germany resisted the Nazification of the church.  On May 29-31, 1934, there was a gathering of Christians in Barmen, a suburb of Bonn.  They were there because they were deeply concerned that the Lutheran Church in Germany had exchanged God for Adolf Hitler.  They didn't withdraw from the German Evangelical Church, they began to identify themselves as "The Confessional Synod," and what they confessed was that God is God, and Hitler is not.  They published a document, the Barmen Declaration, which ever since that day has continued to warn Christians against identifying nation and race with God.  But after the meeting was over and everybody went home, they had to figure out how to live up to what they had written.  They started an underground seminary to train pastors, and one of their teachers was a brilliant, upper-class Berlin theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  During the years of the underground seminary he compiled a little book about how a community of faith, whether it's under pressure or not, sustains itself and every person in it.  The book's English title is Life Together, and many people recognize it as a masterpiece of spiritual teaching.  He wrote:[1]

 

 

and

 

and

Let the one who is not in community beware of being alone.

 

Sustained by his "confessing" faith shared with all these brothers and sisters, Bonhoeffer was given the strength to join the German underground working to end Nazism.  His last writings were collected by his friend Eberhard Bethge and titled in English Letters and Papers from Prison—even after his arrest the fellowship of acceptance in Christ sustained him.  Payne Best was with him the day before his execution, and wrote:[2]

 

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is now considered a Christian martyr.  But you can see how powerful the acceptance of the "little flock" is, even in the life of a martyr.  How much more in my life and yours. 

 

            What does it mean to know that someone your know is praying for you by name?  Maybe it's your husband, your wife, your parent, a grand-parent, or a friend.  Even in all those messes you make of your decisions, even on those dark days—or especially so—to be so accepted that the very presence of Christ himself is mediated to you by another human being.  That is sustaining.  And so, also, we need to pay attention to prayer by doing our own praying for others—becoming Christ to them.  Such a faith community would be a welcome home right here in this world.  You are accepted for who you are, and surrounded by the saints. 

            This may be the most important thing there is to say about the approaching centennial of The People's Church.  There's a lot going on here, and there are a lot of memories (as well as a lot of things that have been forgotten that ought not be forgotten).  You have affirmed this building and maintained it with love so that it's still the most beautiful church in town.  You have good memories of pastors in your childhood and youth, the pastor who married you, who baptized your baby.  And people are constantly telling me about their Sunday School teachers—naming names as if they were praying the names of the angels, which, I think, they are.  This church has had many saints, and not a few sinners; and most of the time they were the same people, but the same people accepted and who accepted you in the name of Jesus Christ.  You have been prayed over real good. 

            So I'm convinced that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyr and theologian, had nothing on you.  Ross Snyder has written about celebration:[3]

 

 

"A circle … who believe in one another and something together."  If that's not The People's Church of Dover, I must be dreaming.  People in our time are starving for a church like this one. 

 

A Christian community where people are supportive and accepting of each other    helps each one there to live as a faithful Christian.  Accep-tance gives us power for living.  I'm not just spinning a theory here:  I've seen it.  I've lived in such fellowships.  And you may be the best one of all!

AMEN