4.23.22 - A Church In Need Of Connection (Kenny Camacho)
SCRIPTURE: Revelation 2:2-5 & Ephesians 4:11-16
***AUDIO UNAVAILABLE; TRANSCRIPT OF THIS WEEK’S MESSAGE BELOW****
Good evening, everybody. It’s good to be with you again. Tonight, we are continuing in the second week of our series on reconnection. Last week, we started things off by talking about what it means to reconnect with God. If you weren’t able to join us, we said that reconnection with God has two basic components. The first is that God has come to find us where we are. This, I argued, is really what the cross of Jesus is most about: it’s the moment when God chooses to pursue us all the way into the darkest, loneliest, and most horrible places we could ever find ourselves in order to be able to say to us, truly and empathetically, that “even here, I am with you.” Because of the cross, we are never and will never be alone in our experiences of loneliness, or suffering, or injustice. In fact, when we experience those things, we can most intimately discover that our God loves us and is with us. So, that was component #1: God connects to us. The second component was about what we do in response to that connection, and the answer we found in Jesus’s parable of the vine and the branches is that we remain. We abide. Which is to say, we accept that connection and the abundance of life God offers to us. In our most desperate moments, he is near…and real hope is offered.
If we think about all this in the contexts of our own individual lives, what we talked about last week probably felt a lot like your personal “come to Jesus moment.” Many of us have stories about this: at some point in our lives, we were confronted with deep brokenness, and when we faced it, we made a choice to stop depending only on ourselves and to instead try our best to depend on the story and person of Jesus. At this moment, we became Jesus-followers; this is when we were “grafted,” as separate branches, into the “true Vine” which Jesus represents.
But, for many of us, it didn’t take long after we experienced this amazing moment of connection to discover that there are problems on this side of things, too. Why? Because there are other branches over here, too…and a lot of those branches have brought their own brokenness into this tree with them. This new story turns out to look a lot like our old story did: we became part of this entity of Christians called “the Church,” and we’ve seen that Church also make mistakes and end up in places of deep brokenness. So, how do we live with a broken Church? Does the same plan for company and hope exist for us collectively that existed for us as individuals? If the cross is where Jesus goes to find us in our separate lonely and broken places so that we might find community in him…what’s the plan for rescuing that community when it, too, seems to lose its way?
These are our questions for this week: how do we reconnect to the Church…and should we? What difference does it make if we don't?
To talk about those questions, I want us to look specifically at the first-century Christian community which formed in the city of Ephesus. The book of Acts tells us that the Ephesian church was planted by the apostle Paul and two local women named Prisicilla and Aquila. We know that Paul spent more than two years living in Ephesus to help the congregation find its footing in the city. We also know that the church flourished for several decades. But we also know that, during his exile on the island of Patmos near the end of the first century, the apostle John receives an apocalyptic vision about the return of Jesus Christ and the doom awaiting the Roman empire which we now call the book of Revelation, and in that vision, the church at Ephesus specifically shows up…and this time things aren’t all compliments and flattery. Apparently, something has changed in that church community over the decades, and not for the better. John writes,
Revelation 2:2-5
To [...] the church in Ephesus:
I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.
So, what has happened? What was the “love” the Ephesians “had at first?” Why did they lose it?
Our best hope for finding out requires that we go back a few decades to a letter we have from Paul to this church he once planted. In that letter, we hear much of the same stuff John says: the Ephesians are hard workers; they have been critical of false teachers and have held true to their core beliefs and convictions. Furthermore, they have become one of the best examples in the early church of a truly “blended” congregation, in that they consist of both Jew and Gentile Christians who have avoided many of the rivalries and arguments between these two camps which dog other churches in the first century.
But there is a thread in Paul’s letter which John’s brief note suggests did not go the way Paul hoped it would go when the Ephesians read it. Paul writes in his letter that the reason God instituted the Church is specifically in order
Ephesians 1:10
to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
He writes that, because of what Jesus has done,
Ephesians 2:19-22
you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Later, he says
Ephesians 4:1-6
As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
The thread Paul is weaving is a reminder to the Ephesians that they are part of a body called the Church. As a single congregation, they have much to be proud of, and they have thinkers and philosophers and theologians among them who are doing great work keeping their beliefs about doctrine and about God on track! But they seem to be tempted to believe that they can “go it alone” as a church community, and Paul is trying to keep them humble, open, and generous.
What is the “love they had at first” which Paul fears will be (and John confirms has been) forsaken? Although we cannot know for sure, an argument has been made that the love was brotherly love for Christ’s Church. And why might the Ephesians have forsaken this love? Well, look around at their neighbors: churches in Galatia, who we know quarreled endlessly about the divisions between Jews and Gentiles; churches in Corinth, who were prone to all sorts of inner conflicts. Ephesus had internal unity, as one part of the body…but Ephesus struggled to see the need for bodily unity in the Church as a whole. And so it seems they withdrew.
I bring their story up tonight because I think it can help us tell our own story. We, too, have known tribulations in recent years. We, too, have seen the faults of “the Church” as a whole all over the place, from Christians’ fanatical and often un-Christlike support for cruelty and prejudice and violence over the last few decades to the moves by many churches to “circle the wagons” during the last two years of the pandemic in ways that seem to have more to do with keeping their businesses afloat than loving their neighbors. And that’s just in the community of non-denominational churches! In the Catholic church, we’ve seen stories of rampant sex abuse and institutional cover-ups. In megachurches, we’ve seen pastor after pastor fall in scandal after scandal. Churches have “bought in” to the hope offered by politicians. Churches have been “bought off” by businesses and corporations and start-up culture.
In the wake of spending more than a year gathering online (where nobody can really check our attendance!), we have seen huge numbers of Christians–including many here at Revolution–who have drifted away from the Church in order to pursue and practice their faith more-or-less alone. And if we’re honest, it’s hard to blame them! You might be one of them: maybe you’re here tonight by a thread, too. If so, I want to say that I get it; I really do. To go back to where we started tonight, becoming a Christian was supposed to be an answer to our failures and disappointments. What are we supposed to say to someone who says, “I love Jesus, but I just don’t see enough of him in you guys.” I say this in all sincerity: this city is filling up with people in exactly this position. So, what can we do?
The first temptation is to do what it seems Ephesus did: we can set ourselves up as something different than all the other guys. Tired of politics in church? We won’t say anything! Tired of churches fostering discrimination? Not over here! Tired of the light show? We got rid of ours years ago! We can make ourselves a little island of something different when it comes to our faith…and we would feel good doing it.
So, why don’t we? Well, because I’m convinced the problem with going it alone as a church is the same as the problem with going it alone as an individual, and I hate to say it, but it’s this: when we set out alone, we don’t usually get very far. We tend to find a comfortable spot and settle into it. And that doesn’t do us any good…and it doesn’t do the Church as a whole any good, either.
In that letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes this:
Ephesians 4:11-16
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
There are two things I think we have to note here. The first is that the goal of this whole project God is up to in the world with us–the work that truly began when Jesus came to us in our despair on the cross, and then took its first enormous step towards the end goal when Jesus rose from the dead–is the maturity and fullness of the entire body of Christ. This gets a little metaphysical, so bear with me a moment:
The idea we see here, and throughout the letters collected in the New Testament, is that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead can be understood as a kind of rebirth. It turns out that Jesus goes first when it comes to being “born again”...and this time, he’s brought along with him not just a physical body, but a Spiritual body which we read over and over again is composed of us, the people of his Church. We are Christ’s new body, which is–yes–a kind-of symbol which helps us understand that we are his “arms and feet” in the world, or the means by which his love is meant to be felt by other people. But it is also a way of understanding how important we are to him…as well as how important our growth and unity are.
That passage above said, Christ gave all these gifts to us to
“equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
The point of our equipping as Christians (and our calling as friends and neighbors) is not just to do good stuff or to learn to behave ourselves. The point is “so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity…and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” So long as we aren’t staying unified and maturing, Christ isn’t maturing either: the whole thing God is doing in the world through the resurrection of Jesus is stunted. When we detach ourselves from the body of the church, we may think we’re choosing Jesus over people who are supposed to look and act like him but don’t. But we’re also choosing to stunt their growth into Christlikeness by stepping away.
As you all know, I grew up in rural South Carolina. I went to small schools that literally set their calendar around the assumption that kids would have to help their parents get the harvest in. I was always a good student–and not much of a farmer!–and so I grew up thinking a lot about how to get out of there. But, for both better and worse, my mom would have none of that: she always told me, “if everybody who’s different leaves, what’s going to change?”
Now, I want to be careful: I’m not calling you to become martyrs, or to stay in unhealthy situations. But I am saying that pulling back from the mess of the American church and saying, “here at Revolution, we’re doing things different!” may make us feel good…but it doesn’t do anything to help the whole. If we have been blessed by God with something different and unique, we need to put it to work in the body, so the body can grow to maturity. And this is important because the Church isn’t separate from Christ! He’s our “head”...and the maturity of the plan God is working out in the world through him depends on the Church’s growth.
The second thing we can learn from the Ephesians is more personal. That passage said that only by growing together will we
“no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.”
This isn’t easy to say or to hear, but it’s the truth: if you’re disconnecting because you want to do all of this on your own, you won’t. When we go it alone, we end up unfed and needy. I wish this weren’t the case, but it is. And this isn’t an accident, nor is it some cosmic injustice: it’s the way we are made. From our first moments in this life, it is abundantly clear that we need each other, that we are made for dependence and not independence. When the people in our lives betray our trust–when they act in ways that are harmful to us, and to the name of Christ they dress themselves with–that brokenness isn’t just a poor witness, it’s so much worse than that! It’s a cancer in Jesus’s own body. But when cancer develops in an organ, the other organs do nothing for the body by shutting themselves down or running for the exit…even if that cancer is a direct threat to them. Rather, the only solution is radical healing.
Last week, we said that God connects to us, and then He pours life into us as we abide in him. This week, I want to say that God’s plan for the Church flows out from the healing that willingness to remain brings: if we want to see our world experience connection with God, we have to care enough about one another to do the hard work in our relationships that will actually reveal something greater is working within us.
If we want to see the American Church transform, we have to begin here. We have to begin with our own devotion, first, to the depth and sincerity of our faith, and second, to reaching out to the organs and limbs around us. As the pastor, I can do some of this: I can teach the Bible on Saturdays; I can work with Andy to launch new small groups for discipleship; I can work with Liz on finding service opportunities, and Maggie on creating fun moments for us to build our own community. I can even spend my work weeks investing in other pastors to build better partnerships with them. But those efforts won’t get us very far if we don’t show up together. As we feel more deeply connected here, we have the responsibility to let that life overflow from us and spread into the places around us. If you love our church, visit another one. If you have received more than you know what to do with, give your time as well as your money to a charity here in town. If you have deep friendships here, look around the room and find somebody you don’t know well and take them out to dinner a half hour from now. And if you know everybody here, come back tomorrow morning and find someone from Heritage you can take to lunch. The body will only reach maturity when we let what God is so freely giving us pour into the places where healing and hope are desperately needed. And sometimes, that’s inside the church as much as it’s outside the church.
The Ephesians traded their love for the church for love for their church. For many of us, our temptation is to trade our love for the church for a disconnected love for Jesus alone. But it’s precisely Jesus who refuses to leave us alone, or to let us stay that way. The truth this week is the same as the truth last week: we are already connected! The question is: are we willing to let ourselves feel and experience that connection? It makes sense, in the case of our relationship to the Church as a whole, to be a bit afraid of opening that door. But God’s very plan for the redemption and restoration of this world waits for us to face that fear, so that Jesus’s Church can find wholeness. I want to be a part of that work. I hope we all do.
I’m going to pray for us tonight, but I’m going to do it in a different way than I usually do. Most Saturdays, I would close the sermon with a “prayer of recognition”: I would thank God for who He is, and what His Words challenge us to do. But tonight, I’m going to close with what’s called a “prayer of intercession,” which is a prayer asking God to provoke change in us; to “intercede” in the trajectories of our lives, and the trajectory of our world. The prayer tonight is brief, and it was written anonymously. Afterwards, we will sing one more song before we close our service by receiving Communion together. Please pray with me:
Lord, my Rock and Redeemer, thank you that you know me and you love me. Your word says that your people are to love one another, serve one another, honor one another, teach one another, rebuke one another and build one another up. Would you bless your church that we can fulfill these commands with one another and help each other grow in our faith. May the Lord make us increase and abound in love for each other. May you establish our hearts as blameless in holiness before you. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.
REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
If you regularly attend church services, why do you do it?
We speculated a bit about what it means for Jesus to reveal to John that the Ephesians had “forsaken their first love,” arguing that this likely meant their sense of camaraderie and connection to other churches. Do you also struggle with this? If so, why?
Why is your connection to a local church important?
Why is our connection as a church to other local churches important?
Read Ephesians 4:11-16 together. What do you see here?
Do you think it is a problem to “go it alone” when it comes to your faith? Why or why not?
What are some ways you might “reconnect” with the Church as a whole? With Revolution in particular?