Congregational Meetings Sermon by Jeff Carlson Sept. 6, 2015

Congregational Meetings Sermon by Jeff Carlson Sept. 6, 2015 Text: Acts 4:32 5:11. Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means son of encouragement ). He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles feet. But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles feet. Ananias, Peter asked, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God! Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him. After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter said to her, Tell me whether you and your husband sold the land for such and such a price. And she said, Yes, that was the price. Then Peter said to her, How is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out. Immediately she fell down at his feet and died. When the young men came in they found her dead, so they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things. I missed being with you last week at our special congregational meeting dealing with boilers and finances because of a commitment I had made months ago to preach at a summer camp up at Lake Geneva. I was sorry to not be with you, but was glad to learn that no one dropped dead in the middle of the meeting. What a strange and macabre story we re hearing on this holiday weekend a husband and wife lie about their pledge to the church, their lies are exposed and they both drop dead right in the middle of a congregational meeting. This is the last of the woo woo stories from scripture that we ll be looking at this summer. Woo woo being a non- technical term for the strange and inscrutable found within the pages of the Good Book. This fall, we re going back to the lectionary. For those who don t know, the lectionary is the list of scriptures that are assigned for each Sunday of the year by an ecumenical committee of wise church leaders, gathered from across denominational lines. I think the lectionary can be a good thing. If you follow it, you ll hear most of the Bible over the course of three years. You will not, however, hear the story of Ananias and Sapphira. 1

That committee of wise, ecumenical church leaders voted it out of the lectionary. Apparently they found this story too offensive and not useful for our edification. I have found that this story is often met with giggles. Which I suppose says something about one s sense of humor. I have an idea for a future sermon series: Bible stories that didn t make it into the lectionary. This story comes from the book of Acts. Acts is Part 2 of the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the writer who gave us the beloved stories of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Lost Sheep. Acts tells the story of the first Christians after Easter, and how they became the church. As unsavory and shocking as this story of Ananais and Sapphira is, I m willing to give Luke the benefit of the doubt and figure that there s something here that he thought the church needs to hear. Perhaps what s so offensive to us about this story is how minor the sin of this couple is. They lied about some money. What s the big deal? Who hasn t? We lie about money probably more than anything else. They neglected to declare a portion of their income. They kept back a little nest egg. I really needed this new car. It was on sale. I lie to myself about money all the time. If Ananias and Sapphira are the low point for ethical living, there would be folks dropping dead in church left and right. I certainly would have met my Maker long ago. And Peter, of course, has some nerve, calling them out for lying. It s not that long ago on a certain fateful Friday that Peter himself had his pants on fire. Lying is such a familiar part of life. I recently had to renew my driver s license and thought to myself, Is this question asking about my actual weight or the weight I aspire to? We lie to make ourselves look better, to protect ourselves and make relationships run more smoothly. And the last thing we want is to have our lies exposed. There are a lot of men right now, and many of them ministers, who wish they had never heard the name Ashley Madison. Why did I choose this woo woo story about Ananias and Sapphira? For the same reason I preached on Jonah. I can see myself in them. Right before this episode with the unhappy couple, Luke gives us an idyllic portrait of the First United Church of Jerusalem. The church is young and fresh and they re forming nothing less than a counter- cultural community. It looks nothing at all like the way our world works. It s a church of vast socio- economic difference, people with means and people who are very poor. And yet they find a common kinship, a koinonia, a fellowship. In our world, wealth and money separate us from each other, but in this story money connects. No one counted anything as their own. They held all things in common. There was not a needy person among them. People were selling off pieces of property, laying the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, and it was distributed to each as any had need. 2

You want to trust people that you re going to open up your wallet for. You want to trust that someone is truthful before you re going to hand over your hard- earned cash. We re naturally suspicious of a community where members freely lay their money at their leaders feet. We figure that this must be some sort of early Christian cult. We re suspicious because we re used to seeing leaders collect multiple pensions, give lucrative contracts to their cronies, and waste money on boondoggles bought through contributions from wealthy donors. A community that freely shares its money has got to be a community of trust, because we live in a world that teaches us to deceive ourselves, especially about money. No doubt Ananias and Sapphira were well- intentioned people. They were, perhaps, hoping that the new Sunday School wing might be named after them. But Peter confronts them because he knew that without trust, the fledgling church would fall apart. Unlike Peter, I have never said to a parishioner, Why has Satan filled your heart? And I doubt I ever will. As Methodist bishop Will Willimon writes, I am a more sensitive, caring pastor than Peter. But, Willimon also notes, Peter knew that being a truthful community was more important than patting two wealthy donors on the back. Growing up a preacher s kid, I ve been going to congregational meetings all of my life. I can t recall one where somebody dropped dead, but I do remember a meeting where somebody came close. I was in high school. My dad had recently become the solo pastor of a church in a logging town in southern Oregon. The previous pastor had left the position in order to become a chaplain in the local hospital. He also stayed on as a member of the church. That should have raised a red flag, but Dad didn t make an issue of it. But sure enough, it didn t take long before the former pastor was behaving as if he were the current pastor to a clique in the congregation. They became a coordinated thorn in Dad s flesh. They said they didn t trust him, although there was not an untrustworthy bone in the man s body. They opposed any proposal he made. When it came time to vote on some new initiative, even something innocuous, you could always count on hearing from their corner a loud, unison, No! Things finally came to a head when he wanted to hire a youth pastor for the growing number of young people in the church. This was at the height of the energy crisis. The sawmills in town were barely running. Jimmy Carter was President. Anxiety about money ran high. All that the opposition could see was scarcity and they did not want to spend the money for any additional staff. At the congregational meeting to vote on the new budget, I was sitting next to my mother, and things quickly heated up. Members of the former pastor s clique began standing up and attacking my dad s judgment, character and leadership. He s untrustworthy! Others, who supported him, rose to his defense. There was shouting back and forth. Ad hominen missiles were flying through the air. 3

It was really quite dramatic. Dad was a quiet man, so he said very little other than trying to explain the need for the new staff if the congregation were to continue to grow and to reach the young people in the community. As tensions increased, I noticed that my mother began breathing very heavily. Doris hated open conflict. She was a Minnesota Swede. She was taught the fine art of passive aggression, not the direct confrontation of those Oregonians. Finally, she grabbed the seat in front of her, stood up gasping for air, pulled her way down the pew to the aisle, let out something between a shriek and a gasp and then collapsed, right there in the middle of the center aisle of the church. It was quite spectacular. It also brought the congregational meeting to a halt. She was quickly attended to and taken to rest in another room. An awkward and shamed silence fell over the congregation. The church chairman said, Before we resume this meeting, I think we need to pray. Pray for Doris and pray for each other. And that s what they did. And then they voted and approve the new budget. There were still some no votes, but they sounded much more humble. After that meeting, things began to improve in that church, as the congregation worked intentionally at building trust. It also helped that the former pastor moved out of town. You might call what happened at that meeting the result of an anxiety attack; or, you might call it the work of the Holy Spirit. Whatever it was, it made the congregation stop and realize that when they met together there was much more at stake than their personal agendas. There was more at stake than being right, than getting their own way. There was a woman who loved her husband dearly; and there was a church that was angrily divided, full of mistrust, and that had forgotten how to love one another. The fear of the Lord came upon them. Perhaps you noticed; that s what happens at the end of the story of Ananias and Sapphira. Great fear seized the whole church. Fear. That s not a word we like to associate with church. We want church to be comforting. But that s because our understanding of fear is too narrow. The word for fear in the Greek New Testament is phobos, the word we get all of our phobias from. But the fear of God is not a phobia. It s not paranoia, and it s not a finger wagging in your face saying, God s going to get you. The fear of God is an awareness that there is more going on around us than we can explain rationally. It s an awareness that there is a power at work among us that cannot be manipulated, or exploited or lied to. It s an awareness that everything we do is done before an audience of One. It s the awesome, and sometimes uncomfortable, flip side to the words of our statement of faith: we are not alone. In other words, the fear of God is living with an awareness that we are living right in the midst of a woo woo place, inhabited by the Spirit of the Living God. 4

The church is called to be a community of truth and trust because Jesus is at the heart of our life together. There s a verse in the Gospel of John that I ve heard Liberal Protestants take offense to. It sounds too exclusive when we hear Jesus say, I am the way, the truth and the life. What that means is that truth is a not an idea. Truth is a person. Truth has a face. And truth is a church full of people that are being shaped by the life of the resurrected Christ who is in our midst. It s easy to forget that the church is not first of all about us getting our needs met, finding meaning for our lives, getting our spiritual, and musical, itches scratched. Those are good things, but the church is a community that is first turned toward God, centered around the life of Jesus, who then turns us in love toward each other. It was the life of the resurrected Christ that created a new, alternative community 2000 years ago, and it is still his life that creates and renews our church today. In case you weren t here last spring to hear about it, someone at St. Pauls donated $50,000, which was divided up among 100 of our households to do good with, however we chose. $500. No strings attached. And it was given anonymously. No room was named in the donor s honor, no one s name was in the bulletin. Just glory to God. Joe and I were randomly chosen to get one of those checks. When we had the congregational meeting to share about how we d all used the money, we didn t speak, because there were so many exciting stories people had to share. It was the best congregational meeting I ve ever been to. Well, the money we received came just at the right time. Some of you will remember my friend Boon. I met him 7 years ago when I was on sabbatical in Northern Thailand. A poor man himself, Boon worked for the Mekong Minority Foundation, teaching sustainable agriculture among the marginalized, minority tribes of the Chiang Rai region. Boon became ill with acute leukemia last fall, and soon after we got the check, Boon died. He left behind a wife named La who has severe lupus and their teenaged daughter named Ming. We knew exactly what to do. We sent that $500 to La and Ming because they need it. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. You are a generous congregation. People here give sacrificially, whether with $500 or $5. I ve mentioned that $50,000 donation simply to say this: whoever made it trusted us, trusted you and me, that we would be a faithful church full of truthful people who would use their money for good. That says a lot about that donor, but it also says a lot about you. It s by looking at us, by looking at you, the community that Jesus forms, that the world sees Jesus. Our world needs a church of faithful, truthful, generous people, especially as we go into another election year. You will not learn the joy of humble, anonymous giving from someone whose name is three stories high on the side of a 5

skyscraper. You will not learn to tell the truth by watching political ads. You will not learn to love and bless your enemies through a steady diet of Fox News or MSNBC. That s why we worship the Living God together, week after week. It s so that we will be shaped into an alternative community - the joyful, welcoming, generous, loving and truthful people of God, the God who promises to meet us, whenever we gather, in the woo woo place at the communion table right down there. 6