Potluck Church

Acts 4:32-35

John 20:19-31

What does the word church make you think of?

Church.  What do we mean by church?

Is church the building we are in?

Is it the community we are sitting among?

Is it an event we come to for an hour once a week?

What do we mean by church?

We use the word in a lot of different ways.

Church has been a part of my life since before I can remember.

For some others here church is a very new thing.

For others still church was something they had once been a part of –

something they became unable to continue with

but something they have found again in the twists and turns of life.

Church has been a place of liberation for some.

Church has been a place of oppression for others.

Church is potluck suppers and the smell of old books.

Church is paper bulletins and grape juice in tiny plastic cups.

Church is a place of being with friends and neighbors – church is community.

Church is a place of fellowship – but also arguments and strong opinions.

Church is a life-line in difficult times.

Church reminds of loved ones lost. 
Church reminds of belonging found.

Church is a place of grace – where prayers and songs uplift and scripture inspires.

Church is a place one cannot return to – it contains memories of burnout, embarrassment, judgment.

Church is a word with so many different associations.

Church is an experience with so many different memories depending on the individual.

Memories that bring emotions of joy and sorrow – of discouragement but also of hope.

One of the great things about the gospels is that they give us a glimpse into the origins of this thing that we have come to call church.

The word church is used as the English translation in the New Testament of the Greek word ekklesia which was a gathering together, an assembly of people for a common purpose.

It was sort of ad hoc at first.

We see this in the story of the disciples gathered in the room

Where the risen Christ came among them.

They were together.  They were praying. Christ showed up.

What began ad hoc became the basic service order for the earliest gatherings.

And there was always food.  Breaking bread became essential.

I was reminded through reading the Slow Church book that it’s probable that when Jesus at the last supper said “do this” in remembrance of me,

That what he meant by “this” was eating together.

He wasn’t imagining the Lord’s Supper in the way that we have it now.

But rather that his disciples would eat together, share this basic event of life together in his memory.

Ad hoc gatherings around food.  And prayer.

In 1 Corinthians 14:26 we hear Paul describing the early Christian gatherings:

“When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.”

Let all things be done for building up.  The purpose of gathering was not just worshipping God, remembering Jesus, but building up one another.

A similar passage we find in Colossians:

“…Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” Colossians 3:12-16

The purpose of coming together as we now do for church is building up – is learning the way of community founded in grace.

And there’s something very “potluck” to this picture of church.

I was inspired by these descriptions of Christian community when I was living in Columbia, South Carolina and I planted a church.

I didn’t think about it like this at the time.

It’s only in retrospect that I realize what I was doing – I was trying to form a small house church.

It was because I had been without Christian community for a number of months on account of a weekend night shift I had taken on to help pay my student loans and my recently acquired moped lease.

I have no doubt that summers in Acworth were in my mind when I invited people to a “potluck”

It was to be a literal potluck – people were invited to bring food.

But it was more importantly to be a potluck in a spiritual sense.

Each person bringing a story, a song, an insight, a passage – something to share.  And no one would have to.

But that was the general idea.  For the building up of all.

I don’t remember all the reasons, but it fizzled out after three or four months.

But it was a profound experience of church in the sense of gathering together, life together.

People came and brought their guitars and songs.

People came and silently listened, giving of their presence.

People asked questions and gave challenging thoughts from their experiences.

People shared their burdens and others gathered around to pray for them.

All this from an invitation to a potluck.

We read in Acts this morning that people shared what they had – held their possessions in common and there were no needy among them --  

And this is connected with the testimony of the resurrection.

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”

A great grace follows from the resurrection – from seeing the rabbit beyond the duck (to use an image from last Sunday)

We reimagine the world, we reimagine ourselves, we reimagine our resources in light of God’s life.

For if we exist in God’s life, nothing not even death itself can separate us from God.

And that has profound implications for how we understand our possessions.

So much of property is owned as a hedge against poverty and death –

We curve in upon ourselves and carry our possessions with us in that posture of defense.

It is out of this defensive posture that hunger arises.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his classic, Life Together,

“Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.”

But this is not the way of Christ.

This is not the Easter faith.

What we see in the early Christian community is not only a sharing of themselves – a potluck of talents and insights and songs and encouraging words and deeds.

But we see a sharing of their goods.  An opening of their hearts and of their hands.

Defying the well-ingrained tendency of humans to horde and hold on for the sake of self preservation.

A great grace was upon them all.

And they shared what they had.  And no one wanted for anything.

This is a troubling vision for a world so bent on private accumulation.

If we are safe in God’s love.

If we are ultimately children of God, able to trust in God’s provision.

We can open our hands, even as God has opened his hands to all living things.

And we can gather in potluck fashion.

Sharing ourselves. Sharing our goods.

And I believe that as we live into that vision

We give testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,

and a great grace is upon us all. 

Seeing the Whole Picture

Isaiah 25:6-9

Mark 16:1-8

Have you ever found an old bottle or coin or looked at an old handwritten document from a previous century and squinted in order to better interpret what it says?

Or traveled in another country with some but very limited knowledge of the language and culture – and you find that a big part of your experience is trying to interpret what’s going on, what it means that people are saying this and doing that?

We are interpreters of our world.  Interpreters of our experiences.

And this has been the way of human beings since the beginning.

We base our decisions about the future on our experiences of the past.

And each new present moment gets filtered through our accumulated beliefs and fears and desires.

We bring a lot to each new moment.

But there are occasions when something happens to us that completely changes our interpretative framework.  A new insight into life emerges.

Perhaps it comes in the form of a book you read – one that draws you in so deeply that during the last two hours as you are finishing it while on vacation with your in-laws you are oblivious to everything that’s going on around you.

This may or may not have happened to me.

Hosanna

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Mark 11:1-11

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;

    triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey,

    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zech 9:9)

These are words from the prophet Zechariah who lived in the late 6^th century BC.

Zechariah is one of a few prophets recorded in the Bible who lived in Israel during the years of restoration. 

He observed as the people who returned from exile worked together with the people who had never been forced to leave in order to rebuild the place that was their home.

And it’s a time of hope for the community.  Returning, rebuilding, restoring.

But one important difference remains.

They could rebuild their temple. But King Cyrus of Persia would be their king.

They could live in the land, but only in exchange for their loyalty to the Persian Empire – the most recent in a line of conquering powers in the land.

And so here in Zechariah we see the vision of the prophet who speaks to the longing of a people under occupation.  Grateful for return, but longing for full restoration.

And no one knows who this passage referred to, if it referred to anyone that was living when Zechariah wrote it during that time in the late 500s BC

when the longing for independence and a good and peaceful leader was on the minds of everyone helping to lay the new foundations of restored Jerusalem.

But one thing that is really significant is that in this vision, the imagined king would not come in a caravan of armed chariots. 

The king would not be trotting in, high up on a war horse with the glory of conquest.

The king that the prophet Zechariah sees and draws his listeners and readers in to behold.

Is one who comes to the people triumphant, victorious. Yes.

But humble.  And riding on a donkey.

Signs of peace and peaceful intention.

This is one of the many visions of Messiah, a Hebrew word that literally means “Anointed One.”

The one who is set apart for the purpose of God – to restore, renew, heal, bring together – make real and visible the steadfast love of God for the people.

And so it’s not completely coincidental that when Jesus comes to Jerusalem he comes in this way.  He asks his disciples to get a young donkey. (polos – colt, but any young animal)

He’s thinking of Zechariah.

This is symbolic action.

In a way, Jesus is saying to any who would watch or listen or join in,

Remember that this is the way of God – it is a way that must come on a donkey and not a war-horse.

This is what gets him in trouble ultimately.

His preference for the donkey over the war-horse.

Jesus believed that the way that God would rule was through mercy and not manipulation.

And so in Matthew we read him saying “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” 

Jesus knew that he was going to make a stir by riding a donkey to the city.

But he believed this was a stir that needed to be made.

This was light that needed to be shone on the darkness of the real-politik of occupying Rome and the Jerusalem elite.

He was aligning himself with the vision of Zechariah as he gently rode to Jerusalem down the Mount of Olives –

The Mount of Olives.

The mountain directly east of the city.  Which like Gates Mtn where you can see the villages of Acworth and South Acworth, you could look from the Mount of Olives and see the city of Jerusalem – see inside the temple walls.

The Mount of Olives.

East of the city – the same path that was walked in the other direction by the defeated all those centuries before when Jerusalem was destroyed and so many were exiled–

But also the same path that the returning exiles would have taken when they, like Jesus now, were returning to Zion.

And so there’s a lot here in Jesus’s choice to ride to the city from this mountain, on this donkey.

And the people sing Hosanna.

And I’m not sure if you’ve ever asked or found out what this word that we only use in church means.

It’s what the Hebrew sounds like in the part of the Psalm we read this morning where we heard: Save us, Lord, save us! It’s actually two Hebrew words: Hos-anna

Two words that were used as part of that Psalm in the liturgy for the holiday Sukkot,

And so it came to mean more than just “Save us” – it came to be a festive phrase –

An expression of praise and of hope in God’s promise to make things right, to bring healing to the people and to the land.

Hosanna.

And when the Bible is translated into Greek, these two Hebrew words get glued together and made into one Greek word.  And when English translators come to this Greek word, they leave it as is.

Hosanna.

In this word is all of the hope and trust of a people that long for the kind of world where kings ride donkeys and not war-horses, where gentleness and peacemaking are the values most highly cherished – where love changes hearts of every person, from the stable-boy to the CEO.

And we still sing Hosanna.  And it’s not just because we hope for things to get better but also because we’ve seen how in Jesus things have already been made better.

Grace has changed us.  Love has restored us and we are able to love God and to love one another because of the love that we have seen in this Jesus of Nazareth.

Hosanna.

Singing Hosanna is like singing Amazing Grace!

It’s a confidence in what God has done that leads to praise for what God is doing and longing for what God will do in our lives and in our world.

Can you sing Hosanna this morning?

Are you feeling the dual feelings of longing and gratitude?

Thankful for the blessings of God for you and those you love,

For the gifts of life and new life.

For new beginnings and forgiveness.  For being rescued from danger.

For the joy of community and worship, of fellowship and friendship,

Of the smell of steam in the sugarhouse, the taste of sugar on snow.

Are you feeling the gratitude in Hosanna?

But also – are you feeling the longing in Hosanna?

that longing which comes as cry from the heart – save us. 

Make something new in me. In us.

A longing borne of experiencing that part of ourselves that is out of joint.

An anger that clouds our minds and scorches relationships.

A sadness which depletes our energy and confidence and makes us just want to crawl back into bed.

An emptiness which just can’t seem to see hope within the maddening maze of things,

the grief of lost loved ones, or lost job, or divorce.  The struggles of life.

A confusion that makes us restless and unable to focus.

A longing born of the gap we experience between what is and what ought to be.

Can God heal these?  Can grace make a difference?

We long to be made whole.

Hosanna.

And the longing for our community and state and nation and international community – longing for donkeys over war-horses.  For plowshears over swords.  For cooperation over conflict and competition.

And so.

Hosanna.

We are grateful for this and now and we.

But Hosanna.

O God make us new, give us a new lease on life,

heal our wounds as individuals and as a society. 

Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Riding on a donkey.

Amen.