Rage Against the Machine

Scripture Reading

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Acts 15

15 Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. 3 So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the gentiles and brought great joy to all the brothers and sisters. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5 But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”

6 The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. 7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. 8 And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, 9 and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. 10 Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11 On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

12 The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the gentiles. 13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “My brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. 15 This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,

16 ‘After this I will return,

and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;

from its ruins I will rebuild it,

and I will set it up,

17 so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—

even all the gentiles over whom my name has been called.

Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things 18 known from long ago.’

19 “Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those gentiles who are turning to God, 20 but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from whatever has been strangled and from blood. 21 For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

Kids to the Knowing Place

Intro- I’m Just Interested In Having That Done

We are on the last mark of a vital congregation!

As we keep reminding folks, being a Matthew 25 congregation has three focuses:

Vital congregations

Dismantling Structural Racism

Eliminating Systemic Poverty.

And actually today we’re going to look at all three a little bit.

But first, a story!

A while ago, I was moderating a session for a church that shall remain nameless.

This session met in their fellowship hall, which wasn’t super big.

And this session, hard as it might be to imagine, had a cranky person on it.

We’ll call her Jane.

One night, Jane was upset because there were bins of something, Christmas decorations or something, that had found their way into the bathroom of the fellowship hall, and they were in the way.

We discovered that there was storage space, about this far away from the bathroom in question.

And so I said “Let’s just move them after the meeting!”

To which Jane responded, absolutely saying the quiet part out loud, and I quote:

“I’m not interested in doing that. I’m interested in having that done.”

I have to say, I think that’s in the running for the unofficial Presbyterian Motto.

We are the frozen chosen after all.

We get locked in to systems, habits, “the way things were always done.”

And to be sure, we’re not alone in that, but we sure do have a reputation to go with it!

Which is what makes our last mark of a vital church so interesting:

Congregations with healthy systems. Our mission focuses are clear. There is fiscal responsibility and accountability. We have thoughtful decision-making structures. Our leaders and staff enjoy a sustainable balance of work/rest time.

So is our system healthy? And if not, what are we going to have to do to (gulp) change it?

Acts: Systems that Harden Are Hard to Break

The early church had a hard time with this in our story in Acts 15

Circumcision: The Old System

The old system was that as a Jewish male, in fact the way that you knew you were a Jewish male, you were circumcized.

It was a community marker, a rite of passage, and a time honored tradition.

That worked for a while!

For thousands of years, that was the system!

Other than a few rather hilarious stories in the OT, no one seemed to mind it.

But…it’s created some problems!

Now the Church, which started as a Jewish order, has expanded to include Gentiles, or non-Jews.

Those folks are obviously not circumsized as infants.

And there was a group of folks that insisted they should be.

That’s one heck of a new members class!

Don’t worry, ours won’t be so intense next weekend (still time to sign up).

The church needs a new system.

There are people who like the old system.

And there are people who insist that the old system is holding them back.

How do you resolve the conflict?

Lean on the people you trust the most

The gathering starts with Peter standing up and speaking about his experiences.

Peter has been with Jesus from the very beginning.

He’s an elder in the church.

He’s a trusted voice.

And he speaks from experience.

So often we are quick to speak our opinion, rather than listen to the trusted people in the room.

Maybe a key in that is to assume that there are other trusted people in the room other than us?

Or maybe it’s just that we should adopt the habit of listening first, and speaking second.

Stay true to the Scriptures

James is next to speak up, and he lists scripture.

Again I say, some day there is going to be a whole series on how we read the Bible and how we interpret it, but for now...

When we come to a place of conflict, when our system is out of whack, what does the Bible say about that?

This it tricky!

The group who was advocating for circumcision would also have had plenty of texts to back them up.

So you have to take the whole Bible in totality, and (for those of us who follow Christ), we place him at the highest place of importance too.

Once again, we have to choose in that moment to listen to the scripture first, even and especially if it points us in a different direction than we are willing to go.

To choose to follow the scriptures in this way actually means we might be wrong, and to allow for that.

Live in to your values.

In spite of making a change, the apostles know there are a few things that shouldn’t change.

No things polluted by idols

No sexual immorality

And a couple remaining kosher laws.

When a Church or a system doesn’t have, or forgets to lean in to their values, they can get kind of rudderless.

Like we talked about a few weeks ago, we can get so caught up in what feels like a good ministry opportunity, that we wander away from what we truly value.

We need these ideas and ideals to serve as a kind of anchor in the work that we are about.

Church Systems: Where do we need to check?

Presbyterian Mottos:

I’m not interested in doing it, I’m just interested in having it done.

Let’s have a potluck!

That’s not the way we’ve always done it!

Realities we have to face:

The systems that we have leaned on for generations absolutely worked for us.

Some of them still do!

I have and I think always will love that the Presbyterian system is structured on a democratic base.

We don’t have bishops that dictate to us what has to happen in the congregation.

Rather, you all, the congregation, have the ultimate power in our system.

You elect officers to work on your behalf.

You can make your voices heard at congregational meetings and town halls.

And you called your pastor, and you can remove him.

Have I told you how good you all look today?

I think that’s a beautiful system!

Some of them do not.

Some of our systems were built in the 1950s and 60s, and the culture is wildly different now.

Some of our systems were borrowed from the work and hustle culture of the 1980s and 90s, which has lead to historic levels of staff and volunteer burnout in the church.

Some of our systems are, we have discovered, harmful to the environment and the planet around us.

Some of our systems, either intentionally or accidentally, exclude and demonize others in a vain attempt to make ourselves feel better about our sin condition.

Some of our systems, quite ironically, continue the endless cycle of poverty and need that the Church of Jesus Christ was actually set on earth to address according to Matthew 25.

We are going to need to adjust our systems a bit.

I know that’s going to mean change, but trust me, it’s going to be a hopeful and beautiful change. And I promise we’ll go slow. Ish.

Relentless focus on the mission.

A little breaking news: Session agreed a few months ago on a new mission statement for Beulah.

A mission statement, to be clear, is why we exist.

It’s the reason that there’s a church on the hill.

And honestly, it should be a bit evergreen.

My hunch is if I could magically travel back in time and talk to Samuel Barber, the first pastor here in the 1700s, he’d look at this and say “Yeah, that’s why we’re here.”

We just put some new fancy words to it, because that’s what preachers do.

We’re going to have an official launch in the fall when fewer folks are at the beach, but let’s have a bit of a tease shall we?

“Beulah Presbyterian Church glorifies God- through our worship and by making disciples who welcome and serve others in the name of Jesus Christ.”

That’s the mission folks.

We glorify God.

We worship.

We make disciples.

We welcome and serve others.

Anything that is a part of our systems that doesn’t fit neatly in to that, like the apostles in Acts, we ought to reexamine.

In fact, our seventh mark of a vital congregation says that we should be relentlessly focused on that. I love that!

Dedication to communal discernment.

Earlier this week, I sat before my open freezer, trying to decided between cookies and cream ice cream, or mint chocolate chip.

To say I was paralyzed would be a vast understatement.

And we face countless decisions like that every day in our individual lives, don’t we?

Should we get up early and exercise, or should we do the right thing and sleep in?

Should we take the main roads or the back way?

Does our family need a house work day, or should we have a relaxing day together?

A study I read in Psychology Today suggests that we make an eye popping 35,000 decisions a day. Every day.

But then we formed a community, and the challenge got exponentially harder.

Because now we have to make decisions as a group.

We have to decide how we ought to budget and spend our money as a group.

We have to decide which mission partners are in need of our help as a group.

We have to decide what programs we’re going to offer and when as a group.

And yes, we have to decide what kind of ice cream we’re going to have at the summer camp.

Making decisions as a group is a lost art, but one that is very worthy of regaining.

It means that no one person will get their way all the time, that’s just a given.

It means that we have to consider the interests and needs of everyone, not just a few.

It means that we have to be patient, and to listen to both our neighbors and (this is vital) the voice of the Holy Spirit among us.

Again, we as Presbyterians have elected elders and deacons and pastors to help in that discernment process.

But still, we’re all in this together.

Which brings me to...

Reversing the 80/20.

There is an old saying that 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the people.

I’ve been around here enough to know…that might be generous...

Lots of times we see the same volunteers working in a host of areas in the church.

If we’re going to do what this mark of the church says and make sure that there are seasons of rest for both staff and volunteers, that means we need to push back against the 80/20.

It means that some new folks are going to need to step up and serve in some new ministry areas.

And it also means that some of those volunteers that do everything might have to take a step or two back.

We have to fix these, because the world’s systems are way worse.

This is a fitting end to the first focus of the Matthew 25 initiative, because it sets us up to deal with what comes next.

Systemic Racism

There is a kind of racism that is mean thoughts and slurs and nasty talk, which most of us don’t participate in, so we give ourselves a pass on racism.

“I’m not a racist.”

And I’ll be the first to say, that’s good!

But that’s not the kind of racism that Matthew 25 churches are concerned with.

We’re concerned with racism that has been baked into the system for years, and in lots of corners of society persists.

Practices like red lining, disproportionate incarceration rates, race based drug enforcement laws, and anything else that seeks to hold people of color down are prevalent in our society.

By the way, I’m reading a great book on the history of all this call “The Color of Compromise.” I’m sure it’ll show up in a discovery hour sometime this fall or winter, so if you want to get a head start on it, go ahead!

Systemic Poverty

There are virtuous and vicious cycles in our economy.

Those who have money, they always seem to find a way to make more money, gain more wealth, and make their way in the world.

Those who don’t have money find themselves stuck in cycles of debt, food insecurity, and housing issues, and effectively have to go through life with an ankle weight around them all the time.

And worse still, many of us have come to see that our economic system is actually designed so that the suffering of those in poverty can be big business for those who are not.

Matthew 25, both the program and the scripture that Alex read for us last week, calls us, the church, disciples of Jesus Christ to not just care about these issues, but to take an active and aggressive stance in dismantling these systems.

We are literally called to rage against the machines of injustice in our world.

We won’t be able to do a thing about those if our own house isn’t in order.

It’s hard to dismantle systemic racism when our volunteers are all burned out.

It’s hard to dismantle systemic poverty when we can’t agree in communal discernment.

It’s hard to fight the systems of the world when we’re more interested in having something done than we are in doing it ourselves.

Rage against the machine: With grace

Lean in to those we trust

Like those in Acts 15, we should probably have some folks around us who can tell us what’s going on.

There are folks among us in this church who have themselves experienced systemic racism in the world. I wonder what kind of wisdom they might share with us?

There are folks among us who have known the pain of systemic poverty. I wonder what words of challenge they might have for us?

And while we’re at it, in the coming months we’re going to gather some experts too.

Some folks who have dedicated their lives to a Matthew 25 vision of seeing the naked clothed, the hungry fed, the sick visited, and the prisoners ministered to.

In all of those conversations, it is vitally important that we listen first.

All of these issues come with some pretty substantial auto-fill.

If I say racism, you might start filling in the words of your favorite news channel.

Maybe we think that our experience with poverty is the only kind of experience there is, and start to dismiss others around us.

If we’re going to succeed in this effort, we need to listen first and speak second.

Lean in to the Scriptures

Some friends of mine had a Bible study when I was in college that was really fun.

They called it Bible Fight Club

They’d get together and debate the same 9 or 10 verses of Scripture that get all the headlines, stuff about LGBTQ folks or Abortion or Politics or whatever.

And it was a really fun Bible study!

I like debating that stuff as much as the next guy.

But at some point you realize that those 9 or 10 verses are such a minority of the Scriptures.

And there’s so much more we need to lean in to here.

You don’t have to read far to hear stories of equality over division.

You don’t have to read far to hear commandments regarding the poor and empoverished among us.

You don’t have to read far to hear about kindness.

You don’t have to read far to know that Jesus wants us to engage the corrupt systems of the culture.

Lean in to our values, the seven marks

Discipleship

Evangelism

Outward Focus

Spiritual Gifts

Worship

Caring for others

Rage against the machine