Sermon for Palm Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran and at St. John Lutheran, New Freedom on March 20, 2016
Scripture readings: Acts 15:4-14, Mark 7:1-8

We’ve come to the end of our Lenten series on the book of Acts. As Jesus makes his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, we conclude our look at the church of the 1st century. We’ve seen how the first apostles did it, turned this movement led by a small handful into the juggernaut it’s become in the 21st century.

Having read all these stories over the past six weeks, we might be inclined to believe that the apostles always kept their focus on what matters most. They were given a job by Christ at his Ascension, to go and be witnesses to the kingdom of God, to make other disciples and to spread the good word of what God has done. And they did that, all without letting petty things like culture, race, and personal opinion get in the way of their mission.

Except that’s not quite how it happened.

The Church is made up of human beings and there’s no escaping that we humans make mistakes. We are creatures of both impulse and thoughtfulness, of both virtue and vice, of both ego and selflessness. We get it right sometimes and sometimes we get it wrong.

The early church was no different and so I think it helpful for us to not merely look at what they did right, but also some of the traps they fell into. We’ve already seen hints of some of this in our previous discussions. Peter went to Cornelius only after a vision from God convinced him that a Roman could be a true disciple, and even after that he had at least a few occasions of treating Gentile Christians as second-class. His failings however hint at the biggest controversy, the biggest distraction, of the early Church, which is going to be our focus today.

The Church began on Pentecost and while that famous story highlights how far and wide the first Christians came from around the world with its often-hard-to-pronounce list of nations (I've lost count of the number of times I've heard about the people of the nation of "Cappuccino.") But it also makes clear that those first recipients were all Diaspora Jews. Gentile Christians would only come later with the missionary work of Philip, Peter, and, most prolifically, Paul. But all of that raised a question in the minds of early Christians. Must one become Jewish before becoming Christian?

This debate is at the heart of the Acts text for today. Paul and Barnabas are standing up for the Gentiles, arguing that there is no need for such extra burdens, but it’s Peter who makes the most powerful argument for them. His words are some that we should heed today. “why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

Saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus. Peter drives home the point that there is only one thing that truly matters. Jesus lived, died, and rose again for the sake of the whole world and all of its people. We cannot lose sight of that for the sake of distractions that we humans keep throwing up as of first importance.

That is, of course, what Jesus is complaining about in our Gospel lesson. The tendency of the Pharisees to embrace "human tradition" over what got wants. They love their distractions. As do we. All over the place and all the time. We love distraction. It is easily the greatest idolatry of the Church today.

We really like our institutional distractions. These are rapidly moving to the forefront as we face the present crisis in the American church. My denomination is struggling with money. My congregation doesn’t have enough members to sustain itself. My church might close. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s not “your” church. It’s not “mine.” It’s God’s church and there was never a guarantee that these things would last forever. The church in which Peter, Paul, James, and the others are having their debate in Acts; do you think it still exists? Is that building still standing? No to both questions. It’s long gone, but the True Church remains and always will.

The church is not a building. It is not an institution. It is the Bride of Christ, the collected whole of all believers together. That will last forever. Its local manifestations will change with the tides of history. We cannot let sentimentality blind us to this reality.

I’ve spoken at some length already in this preaching series about our moral distractions, so I’m not going to beat this dead horse much more. But our insistence that others match our often arbitrary and random moral standards is a huge barrier for many of those we might otherwise reach for Christ. We cannot let our self-righteousness blind us to the truth that God loves everyone for who they are and not who they are supposed to be.

Our third distraction is a theological one, or to put it more simply, it’s our addiction to being right. I’ve spoken about this somewhat too, believing that our manifestation of the church is just somehow better than any other (and certainly better than whatever those lousy heathens and atheists believe.) But none of us really know for certain the whole of this God stuff. Just as God comes to us where we are, we come to God as we are, each of us in a different place, with different experiences, and different understandings. How can we say our personal experience is more real or more legit than someone else’s?

And yet we do it. We do it because we want to feel better about what we believe. And yet rightness is not what saves us. Listen again to the words of Peter. It is grace that saves us. We cannot let our own fragile egos blind us to this truth.

Our human proclivities can lead us and the church into so many traps. And the course of history over the last 2000 years shows us how often we failed to avoid them. Thousands, if not millions, have died for these failures and so many more are alienated from us, making our mission all the harder. But therein lies the rub. It’s why we like our distractions. They’re easy. To stand in judgment or arrogance or to cling to nostalgia and memory is easy. To go forth in honesty and humility to change the world one person at a time, to give of ourselves, to sacrifice our safety and resources to serve our God and his people, that’s hard.

Christianity is not for the weak or the timid. We are here to change the world and that is no small task. But I’ve said it before and it is no exaggeration, the world needs us. We look around and we see a broken reality. People hurting, dying, starving, betrayed, exploited. Who will go to them and who go for them? God calls each of us to do as his son did, to give all for the sake of those he loves. As God’s son did for us, we are to do for others. And let not your fears, your ego, or anything else distract you from that mission. Amen.