The story is told that in 1930, King George V was getting ready to address the opening session of the Naval Conference in London. Radio was in its infancy, but through this medium, the king’s message was to be carried around the world. Just before the king was to go on the air, Harold Vivian, a young engineer of the Columbia Broadcasting Company, discovered a broken wire in the transmitter. This was a disaster! There was no time for repairs, and the world was waiting to hear the message of the king. When most of us think about the pandemic, we often think like Walter—disaster! And for some people, the pandemic really was a disaster—people lost love ones to COVID, couples had to cancel or change their wedding plans, childcare and school required a whole different skill set for everyone involved. But the pandemic also served to refine us—to help us focus on what really matters, as Jesus says, “the things that make for peace.” Our passages for today highlight some of those issues that we started wrestling with during COVID in a whole new way.
First, the question of who belongs to God is God’s choice—not yours or mine or anybody else’s. When I was growing up, my Aunt Ellen was married several times, but each time they seemed to get worse! Somewhere around husband four or five—I think I was probably 9 or 10—one of her husbands came up to me after worship at the church where my father was pastor, and asked, “Are you saved?” I just blinked at him. He must have wondered if I was alright in the head, because he asked me again, “Are you saved?” “What do you mean?” I asked. I thought maybe this was a trick question, and wondered if I had missed part of the conversation, the part that would help me know what the heck he meant. “Do you know Jesus Christ?” Whew! I’m a pastor’s son. Jesus is the answer to every children’s sermon! “Oh. Yeah, I know Jesus.” And I escaped to the playground. The problem is not the people who ask the question, “Are you saved?”, but rather the people who think there is only one answer. As the Council in Jerusalem proves, the Christians who believed in only one answer were wrong. God had a plan—that everyone could come to Christ and find forgiveness and new life. Who gets to come to God is God’s choice. What that looks like in a church is arms wide open in welcome—to everyone—a welcome as warm and accepting as God’s own embrace.
Second, we still have to find a way to live together. The second question in our passage is a question of practice, asked by some of the members in the Jerusalem Church. When I was serving North Shore Congregational Church in Milwaukee, I said to the Moderator how much I admired the top of the stained-glass window that had two different pictures, that changed with the seasons of the church. He told me the story of how there was supposed to be only one, but when the stained-glass artist did the proposed designs, one of the deacons liked one, and another deacon liked the other. For weeks they argued, and it was stirring up the whole congregation. Finally, their disagreement exploded into a shouting match in the sanctuary over which stained glass window should be used. Fortunately, the Moderator had been there and together they came up with a scheme for using them both, sliding one into place for part of the year, and the other could be there for the rest. They left arm-in-arm, and the church’s worship was richer for the compromise. Sometimes we argue about silly things in the church. Does God really think one stained glass window is better than another? I love that James finds a compromise that allows everyone to keep living and loving Jesus Christ together.
Third, it’s all about grace anyway. True story. Two pastors were on their way to Atlanta, Georgia for a large Christian men’s gathering. One of them had never been in the south before. After staying in a motel overnight, they stopped at a nearby restaurant for breakfast. When their meal was delivered, the pastor who had never been south before saw this white, mushy looking stuff on his plate. When the waitress came by again he asked her what it was. “Grits”, she replied. “Ma’am I didn’t order it and I’m not paying for it.” “Sir, down here you don’t order it and you don’t pay for it, you just get it.”[1] That’s grace! We didn’t ask Jesus to die for us. We can’t ever truly repay Jesus for dying for us. We can “just get it.” In today’s passage, I see lots of grace, the undeserved blessing of God. I see grace in all the joy people have at other people’s lives changing. I see grace in choosing to come together to make decisions that work best. I see grace in recognizing that when God changes a life, who are we to say it didn’t happen? I see grace in those who are learning a new way of being and find that the church is loving them into it. All of that is grace! And it’s what we are meant to be about in this church, in every church. It’s the hallmark of what it means to know Jesus Christ, to experience the power of God’s forgiving love, and to show it to the world.
In the wake of the pandemic, we in the church have had a tendency to just want things to go back to the way they were. But as Thom Rainer suggests in his book, The Post-Quarantine Church, the pandemic made it clear that the building is another tool for us—the church—to use so God can reach and serve the community. Before the pandemic, some people thought that the only way to deliver the message of God’s love was worship and Sunday School on Sunday morning. Thom Rainer points out that technology and people’s lives are shifting the center of worship away from Sunday morning, to whenever someone has the time or the need. Instead of churches building larger and larger buildings, they are creating many and more smaller places and times of worship and study. Oh, we are not giving up on Sunday morning! It’s still a vital, heart-stirring way our fellowship comes together. But in the wake of the pandemic, perhaps welcoming people and showing grace may look differently. And lastly, Rainer reminds us that what we—the members—think about our fellowship may not impact our community for God nearly as much as what people in the community think about our fellowship. How are we using our resources to help the community know and appreciate what God does for the community through us?
When King George was about to go on the air in 1930, Harold Vivian discovered a broken wire in the transmitter. He didn’t have time to fix things, so how could he make sure that people could hear the message of the king? Inspired, the young engineer knew exactly what to do: He took a piece of broken wire in one hand, and a piece of broken wire in the other hand, and for fifteen minutes Harold Vivian took two hundred and fifty volts of electricity through his body so that the king’s message could go through. Amazing! He knew what was most important, and he became the conduit, the channel the king could share his message. Now King George’s message was delivered on the opening of the Naval Conference in London—a completely forgettable moment and message. But the message the King of the Universe wants to send out is immensely more important, more relevant and more enduring. The need for real and lasting peace in people’s hearts, and lives and communities is so huge right now—and we are often clueless about how to find that peace ourselves. Yet the world is waiting to hear the message of our King, and the one way for that message to go through is to be carried to a needy world through us who profess to be His disciples.[2] Is your life—is my life—centered on how much God loves us? Has the power of Jesus’ death on a cross, cleansed each of us through and through, and allowed us to let go of silly arguments in order to grasp the lasting truth? Then let each of us—and all of us—become the connection that lets grace and power of Jesus Christ flow through us to the world around us.
[1]Ray Raycroft. From a sermon by Timothy Dolan, Lives of Worship, 5/22/2012. www.sermoncentral.com
[2]Willie W. White, 52 Soul-Winning Sermon Outlines and 52 Windows to Lighten Them, p. 19. www.sermoncentral.com. The events of January 21, 1930 appeared in the NY Times on January 22, 1930.