“Who Ministers to Whom?”

A Sermon Based Upon Acts 6: 1-7

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin. 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

2^nd Sunday After Pentecost,  June 7^th, 2015

 

Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. (Act 6:1 NRS)
What if Jesus had made lived to be a 60 year old?  

N.T. Wright, a well-known British theologian was once asked to write a book about that very topic.   He never wrote the book, but the suggestion made him think.  What if after Jesus established the church he had stayed around to become its first pastor?  How do you think that might have turned out?

Since Jesus was considered to be the new Moses, what we learn from Moses in the Old Testament could suggest that it may not have turned out like we’d expect.   You do recall what happened to Moses don’t you?   He was a great deliverer, and he made some smashing speeches.  Who can forget the talk he made to Pharaoh with catchy little title,  “Let My People Go!” 

But not long after Israel had crossed the Red Sea, they entered into a wilderness that would not stop.  Everything that had once been so simple now got very complicated.   The people grumbled.   Moses got angry.   He lost it a few times and he struck a rock with his stick.   He also lost the original ten commandments when he threw it at the people.  As everything got more  complicated,  as Moses got too old, he didn’t get to take them where they were supposed to go.   In the end, he was still leading, but they had to hold his hands up to lead.  Finally,  Moses had to retire and be left behind.     Then they had to get a new leader to take them across the river of their dreams.

It wasn’t easy to be the people of God then, and it’s not easy now.  Nothing that is easy is worth anything much anyway.  If the people of God are going to get to where they need to go and to become who we need to be, there will be obstacles,  hurdles, difficulties to face with problems to overcome for us too.

In today’s text about the early church, we find the church facing its first big challenge.   The church was growing leaps and bounds, but growth presented new problems.   Even a church that is filled with God’s Spirit and on course will face difficultiies.   If you think there is such a thing as a perfect church, you might find out different if you join it.   A can even be filled with the power of God’s perfecting Holy Spirit, but as long we are human organizations made of real people, there will be potential for ministry that is always accompanied with possibilities for challenge, and sometimes chaos.  

PROBLEMS CAN BE OPPORTUNITIES

The first real ‘challenge that confronted the church came on the occasion of their rapid growth rate---their ‘increasing in number’as Luke informs us.   Luke says that it happened when the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews…” (6.1a). These Hellenists were the Greek speaking Jews who had become Christian who were speaking against the Aramaic speaking Jews from among the Hebrews who also had become Christian.   Nobody knows for sure, whether or not there was a real serious problem, but there doesn’t have to be a ‘real’ problem for the church trouble.   

As the church grew, and distribution of food and meals became more unmanageable, these Greek-speaking Jews felt their poor grandmothers were being neglected.   You don’t want to neglect anybody’s grandma.   This was enough for the whole church community to start talking and they brought matter straight to attention of the preacher-apostles.   “Peter, Jerusalem, they might have said, “we have a problem.”

On January 20, this year, I started my 35^th year as a Baptist pastor.   During that 35 year period, I’ve pastor 8 churches, which puts me on average of changing churches every 4.4 years.  That’s above the national average for most Baptist pastors and it puts me right there with the traditional stay of most Methodist pastors.  The good news is that pastors are staying longer these days, and statistics suggest that the longer a pastor stays, the more likely the church will experience health and numerical growth.   I hope I can keep bringing my up my average, since I’ve been at Zion now for 13 years and Flat Rock for 8.

Over these 35 years I’ve seen congregations face all kinds of challenges and problems.  In one church I pastored, they were dealing with the loss of their young people.  In another church, they were dealing family differences and judgmentalism.  In another church they had all kinds of prospects, but they had just force terminated the last pastor and the people who lived near the church were a completely different social class whom they were unable to reach.  

The list of problems and challenges goes on.  When I was a pastor in Germany,  50 years of communism could not kill that small congregation and a Southern Baptist preacher from America couldn’t put much a dent in them either .   In another Baptist church on this side of the ocean,  the congregation was divided over worship styles and wanted the pastor to take sides.  And in another congregation, a majority of the members wouldn’t accept any preacher but the one the once had who had just retired.  “After him, Jesus couldn’t pastor this church”,  one deacon told me.   Just like families, churches have challenges and problems too.

But what Luke wants us to know from the early church’s story, is that these problems, and even some times of conflict, can also be moments of great opportunity for change.   Most people will not change nor will they face the reality of what is going on around them, until they find their backs up against the wall.  I heard a church consultant put it this way, “Most people will not change, until the pain of change is less than the pain of remaining the same.”   Can I hear an amen? 
 

But before the early church could deal the challenge they encountered, the first apostles did something that was a stroke of pure genius--- spiritual genius, that is.  Before they began to tackle the issue, they needed to help the church established its priorities.   As the whole community came together, the apostles took the initiative to remind them of the church’s priority preaching, and for teaching the word of God (6.2).

No church grows or continues to grow without establishing it reason to exist and making sure that its reason to exist is also God’s reason.    Today the religious and moral confusion won’t wait on a church to get clear about who it is, what is should do or be in the world.   There is just too much muddy water out there already.  The church must verify and clarify, even if a newly stated priority and purpose does not agree with all of its members.   If the church doesn’t say clearly who it is and who it intends to be, and if it doesn’t, ‘write the message and make it plain”, as the prophet Haggai said,  it will face even bigger problems than making a few people uncomfortable.  Besides, nowhere does it say anywhere in the Bible that the church exists to make everybody happy.  The church does not exist for us, but we exist for God.

PEOPLE LIKE FAMILY

Most churches today,  even dying ones, don’t have a problem about their overall priority or reasons for existence, but they do have problems communicating or applying how the ‘teaching and preaching’ of the ‘word of God’ becomes realized in our own setting.  Putting  our basic core values and mission statements on paper is a wonderful and needful exercise, but how we implement and apply God’s truth to our own calling, situation, place and time, is where the ‘rubber hits the road’.

What we learn about ‘how’ the early church faced and confronted there problem is especially important, because it wasn’t a theological, missional, or functional problem that was coming at them, as much as it was a relational and interpersonal problem.   It wasn’t whether or not poor widows were to be fed or not fed, but it was whether or not the Hellenistic widows were cared about as much as the Hebrew widows.  Do you see where this was going?  It was like the worship conflict I encountered in one church.  The issue was not which simply about which worship style was right, but it was more like, “Preacher, which worship style do you like best?”  When I told them the style I was for, they were going to invite me away from my priority to get right into the middle of their problem.

Do you see what the church was doing,  even at the same time they were prioritizing their ministry and mission?   They were not running from the challenge, but  they were facing it head on so that they could treat each person like family, as God intends for every church to do.  How do we do that?

 For one thing,  the church has to create a climate where real, genuine needs of it’s fellowship can be expressed and addressed.   When I was a college student, it was easy for us to feel intimidate.  We were college students.  We were young.  We didn’t  yet know who we were, and we were easily embarrassed that we might not be as smart as someone else.  It was always the good, smart, caring professors that would always, even continually, put the whole class at ease.  No matter what kind of question was being asked, and no matter how stupid it might have seemed to him or to some smartie in the class, the good professor would say, “Please,  ask me your questions.  Understand that no question is a stupid question and everyone’s question is a welcomed question.  And if I can’t answer it now, I will either try to find the answer for you,  or even better than that, we will try to find the answer together.”   I loved being in a class like that.  You not only learned so much, you learned even how to be a better human being.

Isn’t this supposed to be the climate of the church of Jesus Christ?  The church is not a fellowship of know- it-alls, but we supposed to be a fellowship of people who have come to know the redeeming, graceful, forgiving, and understanding love of God through Jesus Christ.  In this kind of relationship with God, our primary goal and purpose, a purpose that even underscores why we preach the word, is that we come together to understand, appreciate, and to try to alleviate the pain and the suffering of the world.  We come together as a family because we remember that Jesus was a healer, just as much as he was a preacher.   We don’t run from each other’s problems, we attend to each other’s problems, as we bear our own burdens, we also bear each other’s and fulfill the law of love through Jesus Christ.

The second thing the church must do, in order to work through its problems so it can keep preaching the word, is to treat outsiders in the same way it treats insiders.  In this text before us, the Hebrew Christians were the insiders and the Hellenist Christians were the outsiders.   When you are an ‘insider’ it’s easy to overlook things, to take things for granted, or to assume that everyone is on the same page, but when you are an ‘outsider’ everything looks different.  

One of the great foundational differences between a church and a club is how clubs have a right to be exclusive for its own members alone, but a church has a mission to be inclusive of all people.  One of the primary aims of the church and why we preach the word, is to bring in strangers, bring in sinners, and to bring in all kinds of people off the dirty streets of life.   One of the things that made Israel a different religion among the nations was how it welcomed strangers and sometimes entertained angels unaware.  In other words, the true faith is not a faithful people  chosen only for the sake ourselves alone, but the true faithful are chosen for the Jesus’ sake and for his redemptive purpose of reaching out and bringing light and hope to the darkness and faithlessness of the world.

A great need of many churches today, is to revisit our middle-eastern underpinnings of hospitality learn how to welcome those strange to us and those estranged from us, and become more hospitable to each other, expanding our friends and our family.   Remember, Jesus didn’t call his disciple’s Christians, but he called them ‘friends’.   He also said that those who ‘do the will of God’ are his family---his mother, his father, his brothers and his sisters.   This is the why the old gospel song says,  ‘We don’t call people Mr. and Mrs., but we call people “brother and sister around here.”   The church is the only institution that primarily exists for the sake those who are not yet members.  

The final lesson we can learn about the church’s ministry from the problem the early church faced and confronted, is that the weakest person around us, must be considered the most important person among us.   Do you see who felt like they were being neglected?   It was the widows.  In the ancient world, before there was anything like social security or any other kind of safety net, the less fortunate, disadvantaged, and the disenfranchised depended solely on the good will of religion or family to keep them alive.  There was nothing else.   These widows were among the weakest, most vulnerable people in the community.  They needed the church, and even if the church didn’t yet fully realize it, it needed them too. 

Do you know why the needs to care for the most vulnerable in our society?  It all boils down to the most basic reason the church exists.   The church exists because Jesus cares for those who are sick, who are outcasts, who are neglected, and those who are at their weakest and worst.   The church has never been about figuring out who is the strongest, the greatest, the richest or the smartest.   The church has been a ministry to the weak because it is only in ‘weakness’ that any of us becomes ‘strong’  with the right kind of power and the right  kind of authority that gives life instead of brings death.   “In my weakness, I’m made strong”, is how Paul came to understand it.  That’s why the church cannot neglect those who are troubled, struggling, hurting, or helpless.  It must keep bearing their burden because it’s only when we care do have a life, a community, a faith and a church worth caring about.  The church exists for those who are down and out, because this Christ who cares, cares about us.

LEADERS ARE SERVANTS

How we with deal with our problems and how we approach each other’s needs is also how we see exactly ‘who’ we are to strive to be in Christ.  

These seven ‘men of good standing’ who were selected because they were ‘full of the Spirit and wisdom’  were not exceptional, but they were supposed to be examples of the new norm, to lead by serving, not to lead by ‘ruling’ is how the church is still supposed to ‘lead’.   As Jesus said to his disciples, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant (Mar 10:42-43 NRS).

Servant leaders are those who rise up from among us, not to be above us, but to lead us as spiritual examples of Jesus Christ, reminding us who we are all supposed to be to ‘fulfill the law of Christ’ in this world.  These spiritual leaders are ‘set apart’ with the laying on of hands, not simple because they were ‘blessed’ beyond the average person, but because they were ‘blessed’ by the average person, who saw in them, the serving and caring capacity they desired for themselves and the whole church.  They blessed them because they knew that to live and lead this way was not the rule, but it is the exception to the rule, a way that was hard, but necessary to bring salvation into the world the Spirit that has gifted and called the church to be serving christs to the world.

In a message to ministers, who were going into ministry, not alone but to serve alongside of others,  Professor Fred Craddock once said: “To give my life for Christ appears glorious. To pour myself out for others…to pay the ultimate price of martyrdom – I’ll do it. I’m ready, Lord, to go out in a blaze of glory…it would be easy to go out in a flash of glory; but it’s harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long haul.”

The Craddock told the story about a wealthy man who handed his pastor a check for fifty thousand dollars. The pastor looked at it and then handed it back to the man and said: “Go cash it in for quarters or dollars and spend fifty cents or a dollar at a time doing the Lord’s work.” The man was flustered and said, “But that will take the rest of my life!” “Precisely,” replied the pastor. “That’s the point.” Incidentally, now that I’ve made the point, if you have a check for $50,000 we’d gladly accept it to help pay off the new building!

Being church is not about what we do here only on Sunday, but it’s about how we deal with life’s problems and challenges, as much as it is whether we solve them or not.  It’s also about how we meet each other’s needs, whether they are just ‘felt needs’ or real ‘needs’—they are our needs, and we must be caring to each other.  Finally, being church every day in everyday life means that we must find a way not just to say we care, but to serve, to give-back, and to sacrifice our own time, talents and treasures for the sake of the glory of God and the good of humanity.  And in order to do that good, we have to let go of serving only ourselves.

This reminds me of one other story, Fred Craddock once told, that reminded me of myself.  His wife was out of town. He decided if he’d have a meal, he have to fix the only meal he knew how to fix.   He stopped by the supermarket to get a jar of peanut butter. He didn’t know where the peanut butter was, so he wandered around to find a woman pushing a cart who looked like she knew what she was doing.  He said to her: “Pardon

me, ma’am. Could you tell me where the peanut butter is?” She whirled around at me and snapped, “Are you trying to hit on me, old man?” I said, “Lady, I just want some peanut butter!” Fortunately, a stock boy happened by and mumbled in passing, “Peanut butter ... Aisle 5 ... halfway down on the left.” So Craddock says he went to Aisle 5 and looked halfway down on the left, and there it was, right where he said.

He got his jar of peanut butter, and made his way to the cash register where he saw the woman with the shopping cart.   She looked at him and at  what was in his basket and finally she said,  “You really were looking for the peanut butter.”

“That’s what I told you,” he said.

She shrugged and said, “Well, nowadays you can't be too careful nowadays.”

Craddock just looked at her and replied, “Oh, yes, you can, lady. Yes, you can.”

He’s right.   We can’t be who we need to be and do what we need to do to save this world and even to save ourselves or our loved ones, if we are ‘too careful’.   Being careful is not the same as being full of concern and care, just like coming to church doesn’t make you a servant of Jesus Christ.   When you are a servant of Jesus, it doesn’t matter who is serving whom, as long as we are all serving Christ as we serve each other in some way, shape or form.   This is the kind of ‘care-full’ that enables us not just to say the right words, but to be the word we say is the right.  Amen.