“Our Joy”

Acts 2:42-47

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

April 27, 2008

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

 

 

            It’s friend Sunday.  That’s kind of an odd thing to say, isn’t it?  As if the other Sundays are acquaintance Sundays or perhaps enemy Sundays. 

            On of the TV shows I have enjoyed recently is Boston Legal.  Each episode has absurd cases and fine courtroom speeches.  But at the end of each episode the characters played by William Shatner and James Spader sit on a balcony overlooking the Boston nighttime sky.  They smoke cigars, drink scotch and reminisce about the day’s events.  They disagree politically, socially and ethically.  But they are devoted to each other and each episode ends with them speaking about how they value their friendship with each other.  It gives them hope, perspective and contentment even when the rest of life is chaos.  This was the appeal of Friends and Sex in the City, too.  We all need good friends.

            Our friends bring us joy.  Our friends stick with us through the thick and thin.  Our friends know the truth about us and like us anyway.  There is a saying at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.  When they pass the peace, they say specifically to each other, “I love you.  And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

            We invite people to come to church so that they can share our joy.  At church, people are encouraged to be all that they can be and more than they imagined.  Inspired by the power of the gospel, we change our lives and become peacemakers and justice seekers.  We share the good news with a people that need it.

            But it’s not just about making people content.  It’s about seeing to the people’s needs.  That’s what singled out the early church.  They held things in common.  Goods in particular, but I imagine they also held in common confidences.  They held in common life experiences. They held in common hopes and dreams.  When one was without hope, they shared from the common ground of the wellspring of hope that they found and it passed on hope.  That’s why Baptists have traditionally been so good at giving testimonies.  It helped the hopeless feel a bit of hope. Vicariously living in hope through another when they could not do so in themselves.

            This year, in our desire to explore whose faith it is anyway, we have looked at Whose Gospel is it anyway, whose celebration, whose empire, whose terror and whose joy is it anyway.  In a few weeks we will shift gears and ask whose voice is it anyway?  We’ll hear the voices of each other as we tell the stories of hope and testify to the way God has been revealed to us.

            There is a school of thought out there that the church is like five concentric circles.  The outer circle is the entire world.  We’re all a part of the world.  We all experience global warming, even if it doesn’t feel like it this weekend.  War exists and it pervades our entire world. 

The next circle is the nation or the city.  We pay our taxes, we look forward to receiving rebate checks.  We are beholden to the parking meters.  We proudly wear our maroon and gold.  

Then there is the circle of those who are part of this particular church community.  Yes, many of us identify with this bunch of rabble rousers on the corner of 13^th and University.  Even if we are only here once in a while, it still feels like home and you are always welcome.

The next circle are those that are active members of this church.  Active membership means that we see a good bit of each other, at least once a year but often several times a month.  We give of our time, our talent, our treasure to keep this local manifestation of the movement of God on its course. 

The final circle is the leadership of the church.  You know as well as I do that the leadership are not always the Pastor or the officers or the heads of the committees.  There are leaders in the church who hold no office, but who are the glue of the church.  Tai Shigaki is like one of those.  Even though she is not here in person as often as she used to be, she still draws us together. 

            And if we are true to our evangelistic mantra, we are constantly trying to bring people into the inner circle.   We do this not because bringing people in will make us more successful or more wealthy or more acceptable in the competitive market.  We do it because we want to share our joy.  We want to share what brings us joy, what makes us thrive, what is such good news in our lives.  We love our friends enough to share our joy with them.

            What drives us as a congregation is our delight in the audacity of the Gospel and the enjoyment we have of one another.  This is not to say that the church is primarily a social club.  Not at all.  The church exists to proclaim the Gospel, but who says that can’t be fun?  It ought to be. 

            The early church enjoyed that kind of intimacy in their fellowship.  Since following Jesus did not equate to a homogeneous, comfortable and secure existence, the fellowship, the community was vital.  It was THE PLACE where the people could let their hair down, laugh at the inside jokes about the Romans and know in the flesh that they were not alone as they struggled to live the gospel message.

            As we move from the casual observers to the closer insiders, we develop what people call their church within the church.  This is the smaller group with which we bond.  It could be in the Bible Study or on a certain board or committee.  It could be in a book club or our magnificent bell or vocal choirs.  It is with these people that we develop the closer friendships.

            Next week, I’ll be participating in a pulpit exchange with our Rochester Genesee Region churches.  If you don’t know what that means, ask someone who’s been here for a few years and they’ll tell you the saga of leaving our Midwest region and joining with an American Baptist Region based in New York State.  Anyhow, in order to foster better relationships with these folks, our bell choir went to visit many of them last summer on their Baptist Heritage Tour.  Next week, The Rev. Arlen Vernava from Rochester’s Baptist Temple church will preach here.  I will be preaching at the First Baptist Church of Granville, Ohio while their fine pastor will be preacher at another Rochester Region church. 

            They say it was the luck of the draw, but the Spirit might have had a bit of a hand in it.  I attended FBC Granville when I was in college 25+ years ago.  It was a dark night of the soul time for me as I was trying to find my place in the world.  The church in Granville was my saving grace.  You see, I worked at the college after I graduated.  I thought I was going to be a counselor or a social worker.  I worked for three years in a job that was only supposed to last 10 months.  I trained Head Residents and Resident Advisors.  I was the housing director.  The last year, I was the Greek Advisor, which made me really seek after God.  I enjoyed working with students, but there was this social justice bee in my bonnet that would not let me go.  As I got deeper into a more mature study of Jesus, I saw that he and the early church couldn’t let it go either.  Maybe there was something of a calling from God emerging in me.  I don’t think I could have made it through that year as Greek Advisor if it were not for that church community.

            I developed very close friendships within that church.  I had my church within the church in the choir, in the ethical issues Sunday school class, in the peace vigils that we held every Wednesday morning in the center of town, in solidarity with the peaceful witness outside the Nicaraguan embassy in Managua.   I took my first five visits to Nicaragua while I was part of FBC Granville, and I got introduced to and enthralled by liberation theology.  When I went through the ordination process, they stood by me—at all three ordination councils.  We have watched each others career from afar and I get to reconnect with many of them at the Summer Conference of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.  They showed me the possibility of what church could be.  They opened up my mind and showed me that a life of faith could be more than simply restrictive rules.  It could and should be about asking relevant and life and death questions.  And they did it all with joy.  The bell choir got to see a bit of that joy when they were there this past summer.  And when I saw many of them at last summer’s Peace Conference, they just gushed over the Bell choir.

            While that was an important time in my life, this community is the one that brings me the most joy now.  When I speak about UBC to my friends and colleagues, they see the joy on my face and realize what a good match this is for me.  This UBC community is the one that shares so much of itself. 

This community at UBC provides such great music.  Wait until you hear the postlude.  It’ll knock your socks off. 

This is the community that asks the hard questions. 

This is the community that raises thousands of dollars through its cabarets to make missions happen. 

This is the community that is taking environmental stewardship seriously.  We have changed our light bulbs to compact fluorescents.  We have taken the Minnesota Energy Challenge.  We just received a grant from the Alliance for Sustainability which will go toward purchasing reusable cloth grocery bags that say on them “Renegade Recycler, University Baptist Church www.ubcmn.org”

This is the community that stands as a witness to and amongst the university community as a place of welcome and affirmation to all seekers.

This is the community that stands up for the rights of all people to marry regardless of who they love.

This is the community that stands alongside other people of faith and lobbies at the Capital for housing and health care and education and comprehensive sex education and equality and immigrants rights and peace laced with justice.

This is the community that established a sister church relationship with Second Baptist Church in Leon Nicaragua 15 years ago and this September will welcome six members of that congregation to Minnesota as they make their first visit here.

This is the community that helped found the Interfaith Hospitality Network which would become known as Families Moving Forward, making safe space for homeless families in our church building.

This is the community that has housed Second Foundation School in our building for the past 35 years, offering a nontraditional approach to education for those not wired into the normal ways of education.

This is the community that stands by its people when they are hurting, knitting prayer shawls, preemie beanies, resettling refugees, providing food and shelter and strong backs and listening ears to those that need it.

This is the community that lives the questions and celebrates looking deeper into the scriptures than I have seen any other church community do.

This is the community that uses theater to push us deeper.  We have had liturgical plays that have looked at the illegitimacy of Jesus, the Resurrection of Mary Magdalene and even the Gospel According to Kermit the Frog.

This is the community that welcomes us all to this place and encourages us to be brought ever closer to the inner circle.  And when we get closer and closer, we find joy.

            Sisters and brothers, the early church defined themselves by the way they held things in common with one another.  They defined themselves by the way they loved and cared for one another. 

            As we live in this world, may we be strengthened by this circle that we share here today and the joy that is among us.  May it strengthen us to better live as God would have us live, ever widening the circle and sharing our joy with one another. 

            Whether or not all of your friends are here, find some time this week to let them know the joy they bring to your life.

Friends, the church is not a social club.  It is a place where we learn how to save lives.  We grant hope, we grant companionship, we pass on the vision of God to one another, and we try (sometimes messily) to be countercultural purveyors of generosity, hope, mercy, compassion, justice and peace in a world that needs it so much.  This is our joy which we hope we share today.

            This is what gives us hope to face the world.  This joy reminds us that not only is God not done with us, but our joy is something that begs to be shared.  May we all share the joy that has been given to us by God and manifested in our church community.  For our joy is God’s joy lived out in and for our church.