Moving Toward Wholeness in a Fragmented World

Reviving my blog for "a time such as this". The following is a sermon that touches on the division of politics. It was given to multiple churches in the Christian Church (Disciple of Christ) tradition, so there is some definite "go team" language that isn't typical of most of my messages. The truth is, the "go team" stuff can apply to all Christians who are willing to move toward wholeness!

A Movement For Wholeness in a Fragmented World- Ephesians 4:25-5:2 8/9/2015

Ephesians 4:25-5:2 (NRSV)

25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5: 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Three Hundred and sixty-five days. Three Hundred and sixty-five days.

There are Three Hundred and sixty-five days until the next presidential election. Already there are political ads that I have heard on the radio and have seen on TV. Not for any specific candidate, but instead promoting the general platform of the specific party.

365 days and already the political lines in the sand are being firmly cemented into place, with people lining up in their respective parties, ready to launch attacks and defend against accusations, ready to post, share, and tweet articles and graphs and memes meant to lift up one side at the expense of the other.

365 days and already intraparty debates are being hosted to help politicians compete for the top spot in their own parties to be nominated as the preferred candidate.

365 days of mudslinging, name calling, doom and gloom predictions, lamentations, and people just fed up with the whole process.

I was not always part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In fact I was not raised in a family that attended church at all. Not even Christmas and Easter. I did, however, attend up to three vacation bible schools a summer. Three VBS programs a summer. I could insert a joke about my parents here, but I’ll let it hang. The quick takeaway is this, VBS workers, never write off the kids that just show up for VBS and are never seen again, they could end up in a pulpit near you!

I did not regularly start attending church until high school when a friend invited me to a thing called youth group. Youth group was awesome. So here is a shout out to all the people that work with our kids and youth, you all are amazing.

That youth group was a part of the Assembly of God denomination. Like I said, I wasn’t always a Disciple! The first Christian tradition I was in was the very Pentecostal Assembly of God. It’s where I first truly committed to being a Christian and where I was baptized.

It is also where I first felt a call into ministry. It was where I first became a student leader in youth group.

But I began to feel restless in that tradition. I couldn’t name it, but it was a strong dissatisfaction and I drifted away from church for a bit.

While still in high school I decided to join another friend to try out their church and youth group. It was a United Methodist Church. I fit in there well and formed a close relationship with the youth pastor there and started leading the high school aged youth when I turned 18. It was great and I learned a lot about leading youth. I entered Malone College in Canton (which is now a University- fancy) and pursued my Bible and Theology degree. But after some time I started getting restless and that deep, dissatisfied feeling again and walked away from church for a while.

I was still pursuing my calling and had a strong community of faith at Malone, but didn’t have a church home.

One of my beloved college professors was also an Assembly of God pastor so for a while my wife Christina and I (though at the time we were just engaged) started attending his church. The pastor allowed me to preach there a few times and he presided over our wedding, and he tried hard to get me to enter into the Assembly of God denomination as a minister, but I found myself unable to check all the doctrinal belief boxes to be a member or minster in that tradition, and we left.

After about 6 months or so I found a newly formed non-denominational church searching for a volunteer youth pastor to lead the youth group. It was great and I did that for about two years. At that time the church was attempting to write and finalize its constitution and bylaws and growing tension in the church cause several of the families to leave, including all but a few of the youth who plugged into another youth group at a different church. This was good for the youth to find another home but it left me feeling like I had no real purpose in that church anymore and I, too, felt unease about the way leadership was handling the formation of the constitution and Christina and I left.

This started a restless period of feeling a burning call into ministry and having no church home to grow that call that lasted around 6 years or so. I did attend one other nondenominational church during this period.

You see, I had a theology and understanding of the Bible that was changing and growing as I found an online community of Christian writers, bloggers, and social media users who were describing a lot of the experiences I was having in my faith. And my experience is that there are a lot of churches in many different traditions that don’t want you to have a growing and changing theology at all, especially not as a minister.

The last nondenominational church I attended seemed to at first offer the room for growth I was looking for, but slowly and surely as I found my faith going in one direction, the church seemed to be firming up in another direction. I found myself again faced with doctrinal statements I couldn’t check off and a lack of opportunity to serve in a ministerial position that was in line with my calling. So we left.

And then my friend Paul Appleby, now the Reverend Paul Appleby who pastors Central Christian Church Killeen, Texas , told me to check out the Disciples of Christ.

The who?

He told me to check out their website.

I did.

I told him that I still couldn’t tell what they believed and couldn’t figure out how to find the denomination’s doctrines of belief.

“Yeah, that’s the point”, he said.

Then he told me a little bit about how the church recognizes that everybody has the ability to read the Bible and come to their own belief and how they try to work out that belief in the individual church families and how each church can look very different from the other Disciples’ churches in the area.

Long story short, my wife and I joined First Christian Church Medina, I was taken under care of the Ohio Region of the church and entered seminary at Lexington Theological Seminary. In other words, I found home, here, in this faith community.

Why did I find a home with the Disciples? Because, among other things, I found a place that recognizes that we don’t all think and believe the same and yet gives everybody a place at the table, not just a place in the pews.

365 days until the next presidential election and people are already lining up to take their places on their side of the isle and gearing up to fight. TV, radio, internet, newspapers, workplace conversations, all will be filled with partisan arguments.

All of these things work to fragment our already broken world. But, my fellow Disciples, we are in a unique position to offer the community refuge from this fragmentation if we take our scripture passage to heart.

As it is written:

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

The reason I say we are uniquely in a position to offer people refuge from this political fragmentation and all other fragmentation is because of our identity as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

For as our identity statement says:

“We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord's Table as God has welcomed us”

As a denomination we are still working out how to accomplish this well with so much diversity in our churches, but there are times and places where we have really lived out our calling to be a movement towards wholeness.

I got to go to our General Assembly this year. It is a large coming-together of Disciples from all over the US and Canada as well as some international Disciples siblings. It is often described as a big family reunion and we worship together and work through directing the business needs of the church together.

While I was there I got to meet and hear Pastor Adam Phillips’ story. He had been ordained by a medium sized denomination, not the Disciples of Christ, and worked with them for nearly two decades. He served three churches and was called by the denomination to plant a new church, Christ Church, in Portland, Oregon. At the beginning of this year, after a year of working to plant this church and get it established, he was confronted by the denomination’s leadership for having an overly public and inclusive statement of invitation on their church website. In other words, they welcomed EVERYONE to full participation in the church.

The denomination declared that Christ Church was no longer compatible with their membership and removed the church from the denomination, not only severing ties but also taking the remaining two years of financial support to get them firmly rooted.

When Christian and Amy Piatt, two Disciples ministers in Portland, heard about the story they interviewed Pastor Adam about the whole situation. You may know that Christian is an author and regular publisher on the Patheos blog and Amy pastors First Christian Church Portland. They also cohost the CultureCast podcast on the Homebrewed Christianity network. After Christian interviewed Adam for his blog he invited Adam to share his story on his podcast as well.

Through this they formed a close friendship with one another. Since Adam’s church lost its funding they also lost their worship location. So what were the good Disciples of First Christian Church Portland to do other than open their space to Christ Church? So they did. Christ Church now meets in First Christian’s building every Sunday evening. But that isn’t all. Pastor Adam himself officially joined the Disciples of Christ.

Pastor Adam’s story, while different than my own, is similar in that both of us found homes in the Disciples of Christ even when it looked like and felt like we were spiritually homeless. Both of us feel unique calls to reach toward the outer edges of society and help the outcast, the marginalized, the tired and left behind people to move toward wholeness. Both of us ended up finding a home in the Disciples of Christ because this denomination is primed to reach out to and help facilitate movement toward wholeness in a fragmented society. But we ministers cannot do it alone.

There are many more Adams and many more Ryans out there waiting to find a spiritual community that fully accepts us for who we are and challenges us to grow into the best followers of Christ we can be. There are also many people out there who have never stepped into a church that are tired and worn down by the fragmentation of the world.

The next 365 days are going to only grow in divisiveness and anger and partisanship and fragmentation. And honestly, I do not think the general population expects the church to be a refuge from this fighting and fragmentation.

So let us work to put the Apostle Paul’s words into action by being filled with grace and love and words that build up our neighbors and not tear them down, even if you are on opposite sides of an issue or in opposing political parties.

Let us set our eyes on Christ and reach out to our neighbors and share the Good News that Christ has brought salvation from this fragmentation.

You can be angry, but don’t sin.

You can disagree, but don’t tear your neighbors down.

You can advocate for what you believe but remember to love one another while you do it.

This is a season that is ripe with division, so let us go out into our communities and invite people in to find a group of Jesus followers moving toward wholeness.

Again, let us remember what the Apostle Paul wrote:

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

In the Disciples of Christ we believe that ALL believers in Christ are ministers. So let us all get out there and do some ministry. God is calling each of us into some kind of ministry. Can you hear the call?

Amen