A Missional Church
Acts 2:1-21
We are a church that is intentional about wanting to follow Jesus. We don’t spend much time worrying about doctrine or creeds or who is right about the historic Christian faith, so we spend our time asking God to lead us in the footsteps of the one who showed us God in the first place. And yet, it has become clear to me that the Jesus we lift up, the Jesus that most of us picture, the Jesus that we say we want to be our shepherd is very different from the one found in our Bible.
To be sure, we have images of who Jesus was- glimpses from books and movies and stained glass and Sunday School stories, glimpses from scripture. We have windows into who he was from what he preached and who he loved and how he spent his time. And for most of us, this Jesus, is a person of comfort, a gentle shepherd and a patient teacher- this Jesus cared more about what people believed than how they lived, this Jesus was a good person who made all the right decisions on behalf of God.
But now that you can’t really fire me, I can tell you something that you would eventually discover on your own, but it is something that the Church hasn’t wanted to hear, not just this church, but any church. The Jesus that most of us “know”, this Jesus that we picture when we say his name, this Jesus that we have come to see as sweet and obedient, is not the Jesus that God sent to us. Probably because of our fears about what God might actually ask of us, maybe because of our need to feel safe, or maybe just because we are sinful by nature, the Christian Church has turned Jesus into “a white a white middle-class pillar of American respectability. ” We have distorted Jesus by claiming that his life was about being good or successful probably because the Gospel that he preached would be too hard to hear. We have distorted him by cleaning him and lightening his skin and taming his hair. We have distorted him and forgotten that he was a radical Jewish mystic. Instead of letting Jesus turn us to be more like him, we have spent our time turning him to be more like us.
We have domesticated Jesus and this has created a domesticated Church. And domesticated churches everywhere spend their time worrying about whether everyone believes the right things, domesticated churches spend their time making sure that everyone is following the by-laws, domesticated churches spend their time sending money to organizations that are doing good things in the world, but rarely step foot outside the walls to ask where Jesus might really be found. Domesticated churches sing only the hymns that they deem appropriate for this gentle, blue-eyed Jesus and wonder why his spirit seems to be missing. Domesticated churches rarely do anything big for fear that it will fail. But the thing about domesticated churches, churches that are hell bent on turning Jesus to be more like us, instead of letting Jesus turn us to be more like him, is that they are dying.
The world does not need domesticated churches, Jesus didn’t die for that, the world needs missional churches, churches are that are on fire for God, churches that want to follow the real Jesus, the Jesus that God sent to us, yes to comfort us, but also to open us to the world, the Jesus that wants to send us out to be his hands, the Jesus that asks us to look for him beyond these walls. And friends, in case you have missed it, I need to tell you something else, this church is becoming undomesticated. That might even be a great evangelism tool. “Would you like to come to my church, we are undomesticating ourselves?” By the grace of God, we are growing into Jesus’ call to become a missional church, a church that is intentional about wanting to follow Jesus, but not the Jesus that we have made in our image, the Jesus that invites us to be made in his.
Today is a very special day in the life of the Church. Today, we join Christians around the world for the festival of Pentecost, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus and so we celebrate this day as the birthday of the Christian Church. Our birthday story is bizarre. I have heard some wild birthday stories, but ours is more than odd and even a bit frightening. The book of Acts tells us that the wind that came was violent and that peoples’ tongues were on fire. We are told that this rush of wind is actually the Holy Spirit, but I am not sure that makes us feel any better. And this Spirit goes on to stir up trouble, which has the whole group speaking in different languages. The scene is so unusual that some of them accuse the group of being drunk. But Peter, the one that Jesus especially asked to be the one to build the church said, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. 21Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Peter stops them and says, “Hold on a minute, something special is happening here. It looks odd, it is not what we expected, but this is the mark of the Spirit.” “From now on everything will be different, we can never be the same again. Now we can no longer be where we were before. Now we must see visions and dream dreams…” Now we must be who Jesus asked us to be, we must be the Church.
So today as we celebrate our birth, I wonder where God is calling us? I wonder if God is calling us to see visions and dream dreams. I wonder if God is inviting us to continue in our path of leaving the more palatable Jesus in the dust and welcoming in our midst the wild and God-loving man who asks us to be a missional church.
Right now, we are committed to the Miracle Kitchen, with the Salvation Army, we have committed to supporting the mission and vision of Mashpee Village, we have committed to supporting the Cotuit Nursery School who provides a safe and affordable place for our children, we have committed to opening our hearts since we answered God’s call to serve in New Orleans, we have committed to creating food baskets over the holidays, we have committed our hearts and hands and prayers, but where is God calling us next?
From where I sit, there is no turning back, we are undomesticating ourselves, by the grace of God, but if God is calling us to become a missional church, then each person, each member of this Body of Christ must carry a piece of this vision. Our Mission and Outreach Team is coming to you today to invite you to join with them as we discern together where God is leading us all. In this time, I invite you to take a few minutes to write on the piece of paper that you will find in your bulletin. Where is God calling you? What would it look like for us to become more focused on reaching out to God’s world? I invite you to enter into a few moments of prayer and ask God how your gifts can join this effort…
Beloved of God, in the words of William Sloane Coffin, “in spite of its best efforts to domesticate Jesus, the Church knows and frequently fears that his message will be rediscovered. The Church cannot help but keep the name in circulation, and where the name is remembered there is hope.” There is hope because once we have had an encounter with Jesus, the real Jesus, we remember what he told us from the beginning, we are called to be the Church, a church that is intentional about wanting to follow Jesus, but not the Jesus that we have made in our image, the Jesus that invites us to be made in his. Let us claim who we are and who we are becoming with God, let us call ourselves a missional church. May it be so. Amen.