September 15, 2024
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
September 15, 2024
Capital Campaign
Making Room
“A Cultivating Place”
Acts 9: 19b-22
My brother-in-law, Dr. Steve Wilke, is a dangerous person to be around. Now, not dangerous in a threatening way, more like dangerous to your thinking. You see Steve is a guy who lives in the moment. He is very present with the people around him. Steve is fairly low key and not easily excited or overly emotional, comfortable, which plays into his danger, because Steve is a deep thinker. He thinks a lot about God and God’s ways for our world. He takes his faith very seriously.
You can be in a conversation with Steve talking about sports or children or work and the next thing you know he has you thinking about your purpose in life and what God is doing in the world. So, if you just want to have a superficial conversation Steve can be dangerous.
Many years ago, when I was an associate pastor in Charlotte, NC, Steve and his wife, Beth, came to visit. They went to church with us that Sunday. The senior pastor was a great communicator, and he preached a message about the way the Christian faith simplifies life, makes things less complex and more satisfying.
When we got home everyone was being polite and saying nice things about the service and the sermon, but Steve was quiet. Finally, he said, “I disagree. The sermon didn’t ring true to my experience of the Christian faith at all. I find my faith makes life a lot more complicated, not less. Jesus challenges my assumptions about the world. There are a lot of things for which my life would be a lot less troubled if it weren’t for my faith. I wouldn’t care about the suffering or problems of other people I don’t bump into. I wouldn’t get burdened by issues it would be easy to avoid. Christianity for me has made life a lot more complex. And that’s why I’m a Christian.”
As Bishop Will Willimon put it, “Discipleship, it would seem, is not necessarily the end of our problems but is more likely the beginning of problems which we would gladly have avoided if God had left us to our own devices” (Acts, Interpretation Series, p83)
I suppose you could say that Jesus was a dangerous person, because he doesn’t leave people to their own devices. He challenged people’s thinking. He was dangerous to…
--People who held onto racial prejudices. He told stories like the Good Samaritan that made you think about what it would be like to depend on someone you might despise.
--Jesus was dangerous to people who thought life should always be fair and just. He told stories like the workers in a vineyard who got paid the same for one hour of work as those who worked all day. It made you think about what fairness means to God.
--Jesus was dangerous to people who judged others harshly. He told stories like the Prodigal Son and a father who forgave even though he had every reason not to.
--Jesus was dangerous to people who used scripture to subjugate others. Numerous times he said in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” The Gospel of John even declared that Jesus is the Word made flesh. In other words, if you want to understand the Bible, look at the life of Jesus.
Of course, even the Bible can be dangerous. Did you know that in the 1800s a version was created known as The Slave Bible? It was promoted to slave owners to help justify their cause. If they converted their slaves to Christianity, then it made slavery okay. But the producers of this Bible worried about slaves reading all of scripture. So they removed any parts that talked about freedom and equality. Stories like the Exodus or Paul’s words about there not being slave nor free any longer. The Slave Bible is missing about 90% of the Old Testament and 50% of the New. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/09/674995075/slave-bible-from-the-1800s-omitted-key-passages-that-could-incite-rebellion
Faith can be dangerous to people who don’t want to be challenged or invited to think differently about what they believe. Just ask the Apostle Paul.
Paul had been a religious tyrant. Believing he was so right that Christianity was wrong, he was willing not only to persecute Christians but kill them if necessary. Barbara Brown Taylor who preached here in June once wrote: “As a general rule I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.” (Leaving Church, p106)
Paul thought he was protecting God, but that thinking changed one day while going to Damascus to track down Christians. He was blinded by a vision of Jesus asking why Paul was persecuting Him. This short encounter forever changed Paul. He became a Christian and apostle. He took the faith throughout Asia Minor and into Europe. But what many people don’t realize is the gap of time between Paul’s conversion and his apostleship. It is estimated that Paul went dormant for as long as 14-17 years. Why?
We get some insight in this morning’s lesson. While Paul was still in Damascus he went to the synagogue proclaiming that Jesus is the Son of God. This, of course, confused the synagogue members who said, “Isn’t this the guy who was wreaking havoc on Christians, and didn’t he come here to hunt them down?” In other words, “he’s done a total flip-flop and it makes no sense.” But as it says, “Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus proving that Jesus was the Messiah.” (Acts 9:22)
I want to draw attention to the word proving. This is what Paul did for 14-17 years. He was proving that Jesus was the Messiah. That word in Greek literally means “to knit together.” Proving doesn’t describe talking so much as it does thinking. Paul was knitting together his old religious convictions with his new revelation. This is the heart of Christian conversion. Conversion isn’t about some emotional wallowing in guilt and shame over your sins. Conversion literally means a change of direction, and specifically it means “to change your mind.”
It is a powerful thing when people make room in their hearts to love and care for others, but it is an equally powerful thing, perhaps even more powerful, to make room in our thinking and allow God to change our minds about life and what God wants for our world.
Last Sunday I explained that this series, Making Room, is a Building Campaign. We are planning significant upgrades to our facilities…Part of this work will include new education space… This is important because Christ wants to shape our minds and influence our thinking. To make room in our thinking is critical.
Calvin Coolidge, US president a century ago, once made a statement about an issue that was completely opposite of what he said a week prior. A reporter quickly went after the president on this asking how he could have such a reversal from just a week ago. The president said, “Easy. I learned something since last week.”
If we are to be effective, we must be learning. If a church is to be effective, we must make room for Christ to shape our thinking, because Jesus will always lead us toward grace.
Exodus International was for many years an organization hailed by conservative Christian groups that practiced what is known as reparative therapy, a psycho-analytic brand of counseling to convert gay people into being straight. For two decades Exodus International was led by Alan Chambers who shocked the evangelical world in 2013 when he apologized to the LGBT community for the damage caused by his organization.
Along with his experiences and encounters with people who were greatly harmed by the work of Exodus International and other similar organizations, Alan’s Christian faith, rather than holding him in a place of conviction, changed his mind. He recognized that reparative therapy is wrong especially when it comes to minors in which case he believes it is immoral. Soon after Exodus International dissolved.
In 2015 he wrote a book, My Exodus from Fear to Grace in which he chronicles his journey of change. As he says, “By embracing the idea of loving well because we want to and not because we have to, we will find hope for ourselves, for the Church, and for our world.”
When we allow our faith to make room in our thinking, we are not the only ones impacted. The impact expands to others often with ripples we don’t fully see or know. And the ripples always drift in the direction of love.
Who would have thought that a change of thinking in the mind of a man named Paul would cause the ripples it did. Who could have guessed that as Paul knit together his convictions with his experience of Christ, that a movement called the church would spread around the world and continue over 2000 years later. We very much owe our sitting in a church today to a man who made room in his thinking.
But consider what prompted this change of mind. It started with an encounter. Paul wasn’t convinced because of a good argument. He didn’t read this new information in a book. It started with an encounter. He met the risen Christ.
Often our change in thinking starts that way. Typically our convictions about things like poverty or race or immigration change, not from new information, but from new encounters that lead us to rethink. This is why the MLK Center downtown, when training new volunteers begins first with a tour. Before downloading information about their work, they want people to experience the place and people.
In the Education Connector we plan to build we will also house our Hub for Hope. This means we will be getting rid of The Modge, the modular building located behind Great Hall…I thought that might elicit an applause or something. At least from Jeff Peek who has that as a mission of his for decades! The goal is to bring many of the people we seek to help through our benevolence offerings will come inside our building. When you attend a class you will meet and get to know folks who come to St. Luke’s for the services and assistance we provide. This means we have a chance to put into action making room in our hearts like we talked about last week, extending hospitality in even wider ways. Because encounters with others who may be facing life from a different place shape our own thinking and feelings. AND, it opens us to the blessings others can bring us.
This is how Jesus begins to shape our thinking, by meeting us in the stranger. Again, Barbara Brown Taylor offers helpful words. She says, “Every time that I am pretty sure that I have some absolute truth all worked out, a human being comes along to pose an exception to my rule.” (Leave Church, p228-29)
I’m a big Clint Eastwood fan, but his faith is kind of a mixed bag. He grew up in a Christian home but later in life he embraced a more open, non-specific spirituality. Yet, its hard to miss the Christian references in many of his movies. One example is Gran Torino in which he starred, directed, and produced. Throughout the movie he works out his grief and anger with God through a testy relationship with a young priest. He also experiences his sharp prejudices beginning to crumble when he gets to know his Korean neighbors who are threatened by a local gang. The movie ends with Eastwood defending them to the point sacrificing his life for their wellbeing. When he is gunned down, his arms are outstretched and you can’t miss the image of the cross he makes.
Our minds are often changed by the people we allow into our hearts, and the way we come to understand the sacrificial love of God is when we live it.
One final thought about Paul, and I offer this as a question: what if Paul was not converted to a whole new belief about God but rather was converted from an inadequate view of God? For a long time, I thought Paul’s conversion was about coming to a new faith, as if the New Testament God, the God of Jesus, is somehow different from the Old Testament God. But what if that’s not the case? What if, instead, it is the same God and Paul just needed to be converted from his inadequate views of God? Specifically, Paul had to be converted from a faith that depended on certainty to a faith that could embrace grace.
If that is even close to true, then what it means is that making room in our thinking means allowing God to set us free from the need to be certain and right, so that we can be persons of grace. I raise this thought not just because of what I know about Paul, but what I know about modern day Christians, what I have learned from many of you.
There is someone in our church whose faith story represents an interesting arc. This person remembers as a child going to events like abortion rallies and gay pride parades, but not to support them. Instead, his father took him, would place a harness on him so he could carry a giant 12 ft. tall sign that said “You are going to hell,” and just walk around. As this person said, “My earliest experiences of being a Christian were formed around condemning others. A narrative was pounded into me that said we should look down on “the lost” and use whatever tools were necessary to convict them to turn from their wicked ways.” Certainty and conviction were big in the faith formation of this person.
Not only was this the culture of this person’s family but also their faith community. They emphasized excluding those who don’t look, sound or act like us. But all of this began to crack with an encounter. This person had a close friend who one day shared that he was gay. This challenged this individual’s whole world view and what it meant to follow Jesus. Particularly this person had to wrestle with what Jesus would do in this situation: shun and show grace? He began to reexamine what being Christian meant and how his old convictions lined up with the person of Jesus. “It was terrifying to consider that I had perhaps been working against who God actually calls us to love without exception. To include when it’s uncomfortable. To admit to oneself that you still have so much to learn. The heart of Jesus changed me. And I am forever grateful.”
Now I know today’s sermon focused on two key examples involving gay-lesbian people. That’s the issue causing so much struggle in the church today, but there are always struggles. A few years ago it was how we respond to people who get divorced. We struggled with integration and fully welcoming people of color and interracial marriage. Before that it was slavery. Before that it was Puritans banishing those who didn’t uphold their legalistic codes of behavior. And on and on you can go through history.
The point is that every generation of believers is challenged to convert from something in order to be people of grace. And a church like St. Luke’s that focuses on Christ formation in our thinking is too critical not to invest in. Yes we are building a building, but it is a building that will build minds. And with minds that make room in their thinking for Christ, this world will have the hope of being a better place.
Amen.