Messy Messenger
Notes
Transcript
Sick as a Dog
Sick as a Dog
This was me this week. I think we have a picture. Just kidding, I don’t look nearly that cute when I am sick. Hopefully my voice holds up this morning.
I think the way our bodies heal is the grossest part of being sick. When you initially get sick, you barely notice. The virus is in there, it starts multiplying.
As I understand it (I’m no doctor), it is when my body starts fighting it that I start to feel terrible. I start swelling all over, and my head is hurting and my body temperature rises to try and burn the virus out, so I feel cold and chills and miserable… and then my lungs start spazzing to try and eject the mucus (aka lung butter) out of my body.
And that’s if I avoid evacuating in “other ways” at the time.
Yeah. Super gross! I agree. And it hurts.
On the one hand, super awesome that God designed our bodies to be so self-repairing, self-healing. On the other hand. Why does it have to be so gross and messy a process?
Why does it have to be so gross and messy?
I am thankful to God for healing, and that I don’t have to stay living in the sickness of Tuesday. Even if I sound terrible now, it is worlds better than where I was.
Disease in the Church
Disease in the Church
What do we do when disease is in the church? Disease among us.
Even if we see conflict in the church, no one is saying “yippee, we super disagree about stuff!” They are seeking resolution. That is why the church in Antioch sent Paul and Barnabus 300 miles south to Jerusalem. To seek a cure for the “disease”.
We saw the church entering into this conflict. And we see the result: grace wins. Grace wins in salvation: Salvation by grace alone by faith alone. Grace wins in extolling (or even requiring) the Gentiles to act in loving ways back to their Jewish brothers and sisters: ceasing sexual immorality, things sacrificed to idols, strangled food and blood.
How did they go from crisis to community? From dissension to grace and unity?
The Experiential
The Experiential
The conflict arises in the experiential.
When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them.
Telling the story of what God had done. But there is debate about the interpretation of that experience. It is subjective and questionable.
But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”
Why is it “necessary?” They are claiming they aren’t “really” saved yet. They aren’t in the club, in the Kingdom, part of the “ekklesia”, the church, the called out ones.
Peter responds with more experiential evidence, his own story of preaching to the Gentiles:
And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.
and then Paul and Barnabus go again:
And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
Remember, none of this is Scripture yet, just a story these people are telling. They can’t leaf back in the book of Acts and say “see?”
Experiential evidence is great.
We have to ask this question: What do we see God doing?
But what is the problem?
We can misunderstand and misinterpret our experiences, can’t we? We can even mis-remember. We always doubt other peoples stories...
We need something of an interpretive framework.
Theological
Theological
We understand the experiential through the frame of who we know God to be. Of how we know that He is operates.
God is unchanging in character, from first to last, age to age, He is faithful and true, always good, always holy, always love.
Peter draws on this theological frame when he says:
And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us,
We know this about God, Peter says, He judges the heart, he knows the heart. And we can trust His heart.
But where do we build our theology? Theology un-grounded is just made up ideas about who wish God to be. (There is certainly enough of that in the world).
Some of our theology is built up experientially as we see and discover who God is and how He operates. Likewise, our theology continues to shape our experience.
But we, as Christians, draw on others experience of God, witnesses to what God has done that have proven faithfully true for thousands of years.
Scriptural
Scriptural
That is what Scripture is. Trusted and trustworthy testimony to what God has said and done. It is another kind of experiential evidence… just one that has been well-verified, well-trusted, and (we believe) God-inspired.
They can’t leaf back in the book of Acts, but they can leaf back into the history of God.
There isn’t a whole lot here. I am sure the circumcision party brought up verses about the requirements for “strangers among you” to be circumcised before partaking in the Passover meal.
James brings forward a prophecy from Amos:
“ ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things
It doesn’t say “those Gentiles will not have to be circumcised...” but it does say that Gentiles can be “called by his name” which means “for his possession.” That they can be His while still being Gentiles, hence uncircumcised, and that Gentiles were always in the vision of God.
Practical
Practical
And then James brings in this peace of practicality:
but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.
Let’s bring some grace into the church since these are mixed groups of Gentiles and Jews, the Gentile brethren can show love to the Jewish brethren by abstaining from these things that offend their brother. Let’s start there.
Now, these four things aren’t magical, these aren’t systematic, these are the four pieces I have picked out of this text. I bet you can find other dimensions to the conflict.
Scholars through history have come up with analyses of the ways these interact as we seek to understand who God is and what He is doing among us. This here is the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, the most authoritative at the bottom, building up towards the top.
Of course, it is never quite as clean as that, these layers all interact with one another… just as those dimensions weren’t clearly delineated in the “church business meeting” in Jerusalem. And I think we have the cleaned up version!
Luke didn’t bother to catalogue all the arguments back and forth, the fighting, maybe the name calling, the passion, the boring guy who never got to his point, the people who were so upset they stormed out… he just says “there was much dissension and debate...”
First in Antioch. Then in Jerusalem.
It is a mess
This is an absolute mess. The church in all its glory. Wrestling with the Scripture, figuring out the theology, arguing about what they are experiencing and what it means, and even after the big guys speak, they don’t just “decide.” Here’s the messiest part.
Church Polity in the Jerusalem Church
Church Polity in the Jerusalem Church
What should the lines of authority be in a church? How should decisions be made?
Who ultimately decides to send a letter and what should be in the letter?
Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers,
If you are wondering where baptists get the crazy idea that the whole church should be involved in deciding things: here is exhibit B. (Exhibit A was back in choosing deacons). Peter speaks and he has influence. James speaks and he has influence. The apostles and the elders and the whole church hear and decide.
Aren’t these the same people causing the mess? Yup.
Aren’t they arguing and divisive and often hurtful and short-sighted and selfish and confused and wrong so very often? Yup.
And yet, out of all that mess and madness, they say this...
For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements:
Wait… who is sending the message? Who is sending the requirements?
From the Holy Spirit. Out of all of that mess?
Out of this human messy process, out of all of that arguing, dissension, they claim that what came out of that… is from the Holy Spirit.
And all the apostles said “Yup, Amen.” And all of the other churches that receive this letter say “Yup, Amen” and they are encouraged and they rejoice.
And for thousands of years people of God have said “Yup, Amen… that’s just how God works.”
Why? Because he keeps doing that.
He keeps doing miracles through our messes.
He keeps not only working despite our messes but transforming them, turning messes into messages
God turns our mess into our messages. He speaks through our mess to deliver His messages.
Was that really the best way to reveal that? The easiest? The only way we could hear that / learn that / listen to that?
I don’t know… but He keeps doing it, He keeps working that way.
To the point where we shouldn’t be surprised. In fact we should expect it.
In fact that should completely change our attitude in the midst of the mess. We should be the ones looking around at the dissension and dispute saying “I wonder what the Holy Spirit is doing here… or about to do here…”
“How is God wanting to reveal Himself through this?”
Oh, I see the mess… I’m looking for the miracle. I’m listening for the message.
Messy
Messy
I hear some of you saying “Oh, if you want messes, I got ‘em!”
You do. Some of those you are working on. Some of those we are working on. There are conversations of reconciliation and restoration happening. How beautifully encouraging that is to see.
But there’s still a whole lot of mess, and brokenness and hurt… and when you’re in the middle of all the gross it often doesn’t feel anything like God-revelation and redemption in restoration.
What gives us hope that even this mess can be redeemed? Can be rescued.
<Can I have the deacons come forward?>
Friends, this is our story. This is His story. This is the heart and soul of the gospel, the good news, the truest and best story.
That He, Jesus, took on all of our mess, all of humanity, all it entail, all of its sin and stupid, all of its shame and sadness.
He bore it to the cross and carried it to the grave.
Three days later he was resurrected from the dead… but He left all the rest of it in the grave where it belongs.
And so we remember. And so we celebrate. The God who takes and redeems all of it.
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying “Take and eat, this is my body.”
He took the cup after supper and, when He had given thanks, he gave it them saying “Drink from it all of you, This is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”