Major on the majors.

What brings us together?

Story: Puma and Adidas, Aldi, Trader Joes

Adolf and Rudolf Dassler

Herzogenaurach

he first Aldi grocery store, Albrecht Diskont, opened in Germany in the early 1900s. The owner’s two sons took over after World War II and ultimately expanded the business into one of the largest grocery chains in Europe, with hundreds of locations in Germany and beyond. In 1960, the two brothers argued and decided to split the company into two separate entities, Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd. Aldi Nord took the Aldi locations in northern Germany and much of Europe, while Aldi Süd took those in southern Germany and the remainder of the European region.

Cain and Abel, Abraham and Lot, Joseph and His Brothers, Solomons sons,

The Tower of Babel.....humans are great at saying…this isn’t working anymore…you go to the left and I’ll go to the right. Wouldn’t it be easier if we just did our own thing separately so that we don’t have to have conflict?

I do this with my kids.

But this brings us to the real question:

Sometimes do you ever look around at an organization, a group of friends, a church and wonder....what are we all doing together in this place? What makes us a community? Who decides who is in? Who decides who is out?

Sometimes it can feel so arbitrary. There are something like 35000 independent churches and denominations for our 300,000 congregations in America. Instead of the top down hierarchy of Catholicism, we have hundreds of thousands of people, acting like their own little pope, with complete control over the beliefs and values of their organizations. We have worked so hard to be independent that we have achieved basically complete autonomy from outside authority. Churches disagree, they split and create something new to justify their existence in comparison to those around them.

We see this today with lots of church plants marketing materials:

-you don’t want to be like those other congregations.

-you wan’t real community with real people

-Not stuffy religion

-there aren’t any churches out there that teach the gospel anymore

-There aren’t any Bible-believing churches in that area of the city.

-They need a church like ours there, since they don’t have one.

THese all betray fundamental beliefs that are not in alignment with the way of Jesus:

-We are the solution

-We have the answers

-We finally got this Jesus thing right

-We have restored the church to its proper place

Do you see a pattern? All of those are arrogant beliefs that we are the only ones that get it, that do it right.

we are not immune to this thinking.

in many ways we are so different from other churches in our approach, in our values, in our ministries, in our teaching, in our language.....what makes us think that we are doing it right in the face of decades of history?

I don’t know if you spent some time paying attention to the world this week…but alot of people seem to think that their approach to the supreme court decisions are the only way to approach questions of justice and policy.

A lot of heat, and not much light.

Here is a little sample of the real language I saw.

-Unfriend me now if you....

-F*** you if you.....

-I’m ecstatic that the Supreme Court finally.....

We use arrogance as a protective tool to not engage with ideas and people who challenge us. If we treat the other side like humans we have to deal with their ideas and problems and questions. If they aren’t important enough to engage with, then I can treat them like idiots and trash them and their ideas/values, choices.

We are not the first generation to deal with this. From the very beginning the church had to figure out....who is in and who is out.

I have some bad news....this is not a question that we have great answers for.

If you are looking for an exclusive club of people who look like you and value the same things....this is going to hurt.

Jesus’ final Prayer; that we would be one as he and the father are one.

John 17:20–23 NLT

“I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.

He didn’t pray for them to be arrogant, know it all jerks

He didn’t pray for them to be smug sons of guns

He didn’t pray for them to split so they have ideological purity

He didn’t pray for them to split so that the church was free of heresy

He did’t pray for them to split so that they had only ‘true’ christians in their midst.

He prayed for unity of being.

How do we do that?

First: Unity WIth God

Unity in Christ is through our union with Christ (Ephesians)

Unity in the Spirit: same spirit

-Bounded vs centered set

-unity derived from mutual family/friendship

-unity from mission-direction, not alignment in method

-Unity from values rather than practice

-Unity From Grace Rather than Obedience

-Unity From Humility Rather than authority

Second: Unity With Historical Church

-If all Jesus followers in all time would disagree with our new interpretation, we’re probably wrong

-If no one else recognizes your authority, if you can’t get along with anyone else for them to ordain you, and send you, you’re a cult.

-We can disagree on interpretation but not authority (Scripture and Jesus, not position)

Third:

-historical ecumenical Creeds

-history 2nd century, hyppolytus

-Baptism and confirmation

-very small changes to clarify questions.

THE APOSTLES’ CREED

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again;

he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.

This is the bare minimum. If you can affirm these Biblical ideas, without reservation, you know the things you need to be a follower of Jesus…but saying these things does not make you a follower of Jesus.

-Lordship

-Discipleship

-Community

Wheat and Tares.

We won’t know who is in and out til the end.

That should be terrifying and freeing in different ways.

We do not have enemies....we have lost family

We might be lost ourselves

So what do we do? How do we foster unity?

-Stop thinking in soundbites

-Stop communicating in memes

-Start praying for those we disagree with

-praying for their blessing

-praying for their families

-praying that we understand what drives their decisions

-Be ok with things looking different, when we have no part in their community. Be responsible for you, your monkey, your zoo

-Stop feeling ashamed for others, and start feeling shame for your own sin.

-Be clear about things that are clear. Have grace for secondary issues.

-If its not really clear, obviously clear have grace.

-racism: clear

-justice for weak and vulnerable clear

-Christian personal sexual ethic clear

-nature of God, Jesus, resurrection, salvation, clear.

-Politics and public policy: Almost Always unclear, levels of abstraction and distance, not ever one persons decision (competing goods)

-Community values, norms, mores: Derived from Bible, but open to change and clarification

-Practices: contextualized to situation

-Language: always a moving target

-Close knit family relationships: we can disagree on alot…don’t make mountains out of molehills. Have conversations rather than ultimatums. Humbly ask questions rather than call down judgment.

We all want safe cozy space with people who disagree with us. Who look like us, who don’t demand anything of us. It is this primal need that drives so much of our social lives.

We lash out when someone transgresses our assumptions about what they should believe.

Church is a great example....we agree on Jesus and the Bible, therefore we ought to raise our kids the same way. We ought to think the same about politics, we ought to have the same screen time policies in our homes.

We are a weird extended spiritual family, with crazy uncles and kooky aunts and weird kids and surprising spouses. Embrace our variety and try to learn/engage, rather than demand uniformity, celebrate and have conversation rather than running away from each other.

Don’t look at other Christians with suspicion but rather with curiosity (Why?)

Celebrate that God isn’t confined to you.

Let’s pray together…and gather at the table with 20 centuries of Jesus followers who said the Apostles Creed with us.

THE APOSTLES’ CREED

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again;

he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen.