NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766

Sunday, January 9, 2005

Sermon: “DYI vs. Mainline Churches”

Scripture: Acts 10: 34-43

Reverend Larry Gerber

From home-improvement projects to print-your-own photos, almost everything is moving toward do-it-yourself. Even religion. There’s a problem, however, with self-service salvation.

DIYers.

They’re the ones streaming out of a crowded Home Depot or Lowe’s store on Saturday afternoon, pushing a cartload of stuff — perhaps a new tubular skylight, power drill, caulking gun, joint tape, trowels, pans, hammers, miter saw and the like. They’re facing a project — however grimly— and they’re going to do it themselves.

But this DIY movement is not just about home improvement. The impulse is seen also when we print our own photos, make our own movies, or publish our own book without the services of professionals.

It’s only a matter of time until the same I-can-do-it-myself attitude pops up in the church.

And it has. In many places across America today, small clusters of people are creating their own worship services and special-interest prayer cells, without benefit of clergy or denominational guidance.

There are noteworthy differences in these groups, including their motivations for coming together and in how they worship. While many are gatherings of Christians, the DIY phenomenon is occurring among disaffected Jews and Muslims as well. What these groups all have in common is that they are the creations of religious amateurs — laypeople, who are not happy with organized religion, in fact, they are downright frustrated with it.

One Catholic laywoman, for example, tried five parishes after she relocated to Austin, Texas, looking for a priest she could relate to and a church that offered significant participation to women. Finding neither, she started her own group.

Other DIY gatherings are assemblies of people aggravated by the attempts of established churches and synagogues to make religion more “culturally relevant.”

Still other groups started because they found mega-churches too impersonal or because the individuals disagreed with positions their churches held.

The scandals that have rocked some established churches haven’t helped either, and some of the disappointed have chosen to worship separately with like-minded folk.

Actually, DIY religion isn’t that new. During the apartheid era in South Africa, some 4,000 black African faith communities sprang up, largely because the mainline church was built on a colonial model that didn’t connect for the black community. In the United States, ad hoc Christian fellowships dubbed “house churches” and DIY Jewish gatherings called “friendship groups” were a phenomenon of the 1960s.

The trend, however, has spiked recently, and while the majority of today’s groups are laity driven, some clergy as well have become disenchanted with the way organized religion functions and have unhitched their wagon from the established church horse. They haven’t left Christ, but many view institutional religion as aimed toward a cultural milieu that no longer exists, and so they are looking for how the church should emerge in and interact with the culture as it actually is. Some of these clergy have created new faith communities that don’t much resemble the historic church, and others have opened virtual communities on the Internet.

Whatever you think of these developments, they are part of the faith discussion of our times, and we suspect the DIY-religion trend will grow rather than flame out.

It’s worth noting that the first-century culture in which the church emerged considered it a DIY affair, going against 3,000 years of tradition. The religious leaders of that tradition found the unorthodoxy of Jesus threatening enough that they arranged for his crucifixion, but even after the resurrection, Jesus’ followers had a hard time conceiving of Christianity apart from the structures of Judaism.

In the case of Peter, it takes very directive action on God’s part — sending a vision that could hardly be misinterpreted — to get him to realize that, according to our today’s text, “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34).

Talk about paradigm shift! When Peter makes his declaration about God’s impartiality to the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius’ house, he must be feeling as if the earth is shaking beneath his sandals.

That Peter is suddenly brain-dead is seen in his inability to come up with any Scripture to quote in his sermon to support his expanded vision of the gospel’s reach. In fact, Peter still nods toward the terrain he has just left by reminding Cornelius’ gathering that God’s message was “sent to the people of Israel” and spread through the prime Jewish regions of “Galilee” and “Judea and Jerusalem.”

But then, embracing his new understanding, Peter adds that “Jesus Christ ... is Lord of all.” That affirmation, rather than any statement from the Jewish Scriptures, is Peter’s text.

Will Willimon, commenting on Peter’s speech in this setting, observes, “This is the way it sometimes is in the church. If Jesus Christ is Lord, then the church has the adventurous task of penetrating new areas of his Lordship, expecting surprises and new implications of the gospel which cannot be explained on any basis other than our Lord has shown us something we could not have seen on our own, even if we were looking only at Scripture.”

So Peter now perceives that God’s chosen people includes everybody. In the church today, that is mostly a foregone conclusion, but usually with substantial qualifiers attached.

“Well, yes,” we say, “of course Jesus is Lord of all, but people have to believe thus and so before he will actually be their Lord, and a part of this church.”

Or, “He’s your Lord if you are willing to be baptized by immersion.”

Or, “If he’s really your Lord, you’ll be tolerant and open-minded.”

Or, “Jesus is Lord doesn’t apply to fanatics. We qualify the “Jesus is Lord concept” according to our own likings. We decide within our own churches whether certain people can be a part of us. Without scriptural references, or misguided interpretations of the same, we decide whether homosexuals / lazy people / reactionaries / liberals / the deluded / the bigoted , to name a few, qualify for membership. We label certain people as Pharisees unless they recognize their weaknesses and change their ways to that of the Saducees, the law abiding, upright people in our church.” We have fences to maintain, after all. We have litmus tests to administer.

While Peter’s new understanding of the gospel includes no hint of universal salvation automatically granted to all, he nonetheless grasps that the gospel can and should be rightly offered to all. Peter’s deep prejudice is shunted aside and, armed with his new understanding, he immediately becomes a DIYer preaching this new thing.

That God shows no partiality means that nobody has the edge, that all people are equal before God and none are “more equal” than others; nor is there any hint of a “separate but equal” doctrine, rather, the only litmus test that counts is whatever Jesus administers in the human heart. Or, as Peter preaches it that day, “the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead” (10:42).

DIY religion at its best means that we take what God has revealed to us and immediately put it into practice. While there is no DIY salvation, a lot of what happens thereafter is a DIY project. Guided by Christ, it is up to us to put our faith into practice.

If God shows us that we have behaved unjustly, then we need to start behaving justly. If God shows us that we have been racist, then we need to shine the light on our racism and give it the boot.

If God shows us that we are shutting out some that he includes in, then we need to move to where God is. In each case, we need to act ourselves on what God has shown us. In this sense, religion is always a DIY kind of thing.

Using Peter as a model, we who follow Jesus today do well to remain open to the idea that God does new things, and that we may be called to be agents of change. And sometimes, to our surprise and chagrin, it is the agent who needs to change.

God provides the tools and the inspiration.

Christ provides the example.

But the hands-on work is up to us.

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Sources:

Bernstein, Elizabeth. “Do-it-yourself religion.” The Wall Street Journal,June 11, 2004, W1, W5.

O’Keefe, John. “The ‘rule of Pinky.’” TheOoze, July 24, 2004, Theooze.com.

Willimon, Will. Acts. Interpretation Commentary Series. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988, 98-99.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766