house/church – Salvaged Faith

The Real Housewives

Posted on September 27, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Romans 16:1-16

Last week we explored the nuts and bolts of what a house church was, how it functioned, and who was part of it.

One of the things I lifted up is that while occasionally they would have had traveling preachers and apostles come visit, for the most part, these communities spent time reading and listening to scripture together.
They read from what we now consider the Old Testament.
And they received and read aloud letters from those who had known and experienced the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Book of Romans is one such letter.
Before Paul ever has the opportunity to travel there, he sends along his instruction and his teaching.
He wanted to share God’s good news with them and help them navigate some of the struggles they were experiencing.
And so for Christians in Rome, the very first time they would have heard these words, would have been gathered together in their homes.
It would not have been something they sat down to read.
It would have been something they heard.

My colleague Carol Ferguson writes about what it must have been like:

Can you imagine you are alive in 56AD, in the greatest city in the world, the heart of the empire, a place teeming with people, a place teeming with religious faiths and shrines of every description, a place where the spoils of nations are paraded through the streets, where a few coins will buy you a spot to watch gladiators kill each other for fun, where emperors are worshipped as gods?
Can you imagine that you are gathered together with a motley crew of compatriots, some wealthy and some poor, soldiers and serving girls and socialites, some with Jewish roots and some Gentile, because you’ve heard a letter from Paul—the Paul, the one whose letters are prized across the empire—is on its way?

Close your eyes and picture yourself there…
Crowded together others in a home, some standing, some reclining, children running around…
You can smell the food cooking from the nearby kitchen and the sweat of the day’s work…
And then you hear a voice reading aloud the words of Paul…

A quick question… as you place yourself here… whose voice did you hear?
Was it a man’s voice?
It’s Paul’s letter of course, so maybe that feels natural.
But when we turn to the words of Romans chapter 16, what we find is the introduction of Phoebe.
Paul takes time here at the end to lift her up and introduce her, giving her authority and credibility.
He asks them to welcome her and take care of her.
This was a common practice, so that the community receiving the letter would know that this person has the authority to not only speak, but also interpret what was within.
Jann Aldredge-Clanton describes Phoebe as a coworker of Paul’s “and as a minister of the church in Cenchareae… [she] led the community and presided over worship. And independent woman of some wealth, Phoebe was also a benefactor of Paul and many others.” (The CEB Women’s Bible, p. 1432)
And so after she carried that letter from Paul onto the streets of Rome, she would have been welcomed likely by Prisca and Aquila and the “church that meets in their house.” (16:5 CEB).
They would have gathered to sing and pray.
And break bread.
And then Phoebe would have stood in their midst and spoken.

Lest we think this was some kind of fluke and Phoebe was just one woman with a particular exceptional gift, the introductions at the end of Romans continue.
Paul gives his greetings to the leaders of the house/churches throughout this region, to other ministers of Christ who have been traveling, to friends he has met along the way and those who are family.
There are twenty-nine names listed here…
And ten of them are women.
Phoebe… the minister who brought the letter
Prisca… who is mentioned before her husband as the leader of the house/church… someone who was known to help mentor visiting teachers like Apollos.
Mary, the twins Tryphaena and Tryphosis, Persis… all women who have labored in Christian ministry for God.
Junia, who along with her husband, was not one of the 12 apostles, but possibly part of the 72 sent two by two by Jesus in Luke 10.
Rufus’s mother, possibly the widow of Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Christ.
Julia, who likely hosted one of the house/churches in Rome with her spouse.
Nereus’s sister, who probably played the same role.

I think we have typically thought back to this time and considered the place of women to be subjugated to men.
We have imagined them as housewives who cared for the family and took care of the home.
We couldn’t picture women active in ministry and if we did, they were always eclipsed by the work of those famous male apostles.
It feels relatively new for us to consider female as clergy.
In the United Methodist tradition, while John Wesley licensed women to preach, and women were ordained in the 1800s, they were only granted full clergy rights in 1956.
In other traditions, leadership by women is still rejected.

But scripture, history, and archeology paint a really different picture.
We find women leading ministry not only in the early church, but also in Jewish and Roman cultic traditions as well. Gravestones identify women as leaders of synagogues, elders, priests, and more.
In addition, many women ran their own household’s without mention of a husband, like Lydia an independent businesswoman who hosted Paul in Philippi, or Nympha who led the house church in Laodicea.
The stories of these women and others throughout scripture, show that women were essential ministers of the gospel.
They not only established house/churches, but also carried the good news from place to place.
It wasn’t some egalitarian dream world – but there was a place for the leadership of women.

Yet, Carol Ferguson notes:

As Christianity became more structured, more institutionalized, rules forbidding women from preaching or teaching—which itself suggests that it was happening—begin to appear. And in time the church was able to forget, and argue that women couldn’t lead because women had never led—a circular argument that short-circuited thousands of years of gifted, called leaders from leaving their mark on the church.
Sometimes you can still see the eraser marks in our scripture.

Ferguson lifts up a few examples.
First, there is Phoebe, herself.
In the original Greek, she is called a diakonos. It is used in talking about commissioned ministers of the Gospel, ministers with significant status, and deacons who had official duties within the church. It can also mean someone who serves another.
I looked this passage up in my favorite bible this week and the CEB translations reads:
I’m introducing our sister Phoebe to you, who is a servant of the church in Cenchreae.
It feels more like someone who cares for the church, instead of leading it.
With that one choice of how to translate a word, Phoebe becomes a servant rather than an official minister of the gospel, even though the context reminds us that as a wealthy benefactor, Phoebe herself would have had many servants in the traditional sense.

Someone else who gets erased from this passage is Junia.
Paul tells us that she came to Christ before him.
She was imprisoned with him for the crime of being a Christian.
She, alongside her partner Andronicus are called not just apostles, but prominent among the apostles – those who are sent by Christ to share the good news.
But for centuries, the name Junia was translated as Junias.
Theologians argued it had to be a man’s name, because women couldn’t be apostles.
We imposed our understanding of the place of a woman upon the text, rather than let the text change how we thought about the ministry of women.

I recently have been studying the sisters, Mary and Martha, from Luke’s gospel.
There, too, we have an image of women who are busy doing housework, serving the male disciples… or at least Martha is doing the serving.
Mary is described as slacking off, listening to Jesus instead.

But the word used in this passage to talk about the work Martha is doing is diakanos.

Mary Stromer Hanson lifts up a compelling argument based on this text.
Earlier in this chapter, Jesus sent out thirty-six pairs of disciples in ministry, likely including women, maybe even Junia and Andronicus.
They are to go out into towns and spread the good news and to establish themselves in a home… the very first iterations of this house/church model.
Jesus then himself enters a village and is welcomed and received into a home by Martha.

Now… here is where Hanson’s argument gets really interesting…
While modern translations say that Martha had a sister, Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
Grammatically, this could instead be translated:
Martha had a sister, Mary, who also sat at the foot of the Lord.
Meaning, they both were disciples of Jesus who listened to and followed his teaching.
Martha, it goes on to say, is distracted….
Distracted by what?
My bible says “getting things ready for their meal.”
The Message says, “by all the things she had to do in the kitchen.”
The King James Version reads, “Martha was cumbered about by much serving.”

But do you know what the word used here is?
Diakanos.
What if, Hanson argues, Martha, who has opened her home, is not preoccupied by the cleaning and the cooking… but by the ministry she is supporting in her own house/church.
In the community that she has been called to establish to spread the good news of Jesus.
Martha is suddenly transformed from a frantic housewife into a dedicated minister of the Lord.

We imagine Mary sitting there besides Jesus, refusing to help, but Hanson argues that grammatically, it doesn’t actually appear that Mary is there at all.
She has left.
Possibly, Mary was one of the seventy-two, sent out by Jesus in this act of ministry, while Martha supported that ministry from her own home.
Martha isn’t worried about Mary not drying dishes.
She claims to be overwhelmed by her work of ministry in the community, but Jesus sees past that concern to offer a word of comfort:
You are troubled about your sister being away. You are worried about what might happen to her out there in this risky ministry of evangelism. You want her to come home and serve in this way instead.
But she has chosen a good thing.

This long list of leaders at the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans are filled with servants of the Lord, ministers of the Gospel, leaders of the church.
Today, looking back, we might find the inclusion of so many women surprising.
But they simply were doing their part to bring folks together around the good news of Jesus.
Whether that meant traveling or opening their homes or preaching or leading.

And that’s what we all have done in these past six months.
We have opened our homes to God and led the people we love in the faith.
I love the way my colleague, Rev. Carole Ferguson describes this transition.
Whether or not we thought of our selves as leaders, we’ve all be worshipping in house/churches.
And you have made it happen.
You set up Zoom or Facebook so it would stream to your TV.
You brought your spouse a cup of coffee to sip during worship.
You yelled at your kids to come and watch.
You typed out prayer requests for friends and loved ones in the chat.
You lit a candle on your desk.
You sang along to the hymns.

Paul wrote a letter to the community of believers in Rome, but it was each of those twenty nine names listed at the close of this letter that did the hard work. They were the ministers.
They stepped up to lead and worship and support the ministry.
I can stand here and write and deliver a sermon, but you are the leaders of this church.
So, say hello to Karen.
Say hello to Dawn and Scott.
Say hello to Herb and his mother.
Say hello to the children in the Wright home who lead us in worship.
Say hello to Shirley and her sister-in-law, Sandy and Bob.
Say hello to the church that meets at the home of the Lockins and Osthus and Gordon families.
We have 255 households in our congregation, so this could take a very long while, so I will just say this:
Hello and greetings and love to all of you, faithful ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Keep up the good work.

Sermon adapted from: https://carolhferguson.com/2020/07/12/ladies-of-the-house-church/

Nuts and Bolts

Posted on September 20, 2020Leave a comment

Text: 1 Corinthians 16:15-21

The first thing I want to say is a thank you to Maggie who read our scripture this morning. She had a really boring passage of scripture with a lot of hard names that we almost NEVER read.
And she did an awesome job.

You know, we almost never read the last chapter of 1st Corinthians.
The rest of the letter helps to encourage and teach and equip the community, but this is just like the p.s. at the end.
Paul shares his travel plans and tells them who else is along for the journey and gives greetings from other house church communities.
As my colleague, Carol Ferguson notes, he never explains what a house church is, because he doesn’t need to.
Worshipping together at home like we are now isn’t new… it was exactly how those early communities gathered to worship God and grow and live out their faith.

Last week, we were first introduced to this idea in the book of Acts, chapter two.
Those very first Pentecost Christians were devoted to a day by day faith.
They met in the temple and learned from the apostles.
They shared meals in homes.
They prayed.
And they shared their resources with one another.

As the story of this community continues in Acts, we see that these Jewish followers of Jesus initially saw being in the temple and gathering in homes as equally important.
But before too long, those shared meals where they broke bread in homes began to change them.
As Ferguson writes:

…they developed an identity too distinct from that of their Jewish neighbors. Eventually, worshipping in the temple didn’t make sense anymore – whether they came to that conclusion naturally or gradually, or whether they were forced out for their new ideas.

These house/churches were exemplified by three qualities that allowed them to thrive.

First, they embodied a spirit of hospitality.
You had leaders and teachers like Paul and Timothy and Apollos who were focused on sharing the good news of Jesus with the world.
But they didn’t have the time to build a sanctuary and leadership in every new place. They would have spread themselves far too thin.
Instead, early converts and wealthier Christians found ways to support the movement by providing spaces for these traveling evangelists.
When someone like Timothy would come into town, that house/church would be the home base for the movement. And when the apostles left, the leader of that household would maintain the community and help it to grow.
The devotion and sharing spirit of the house/church made sure that all in the community were cared for and their needs were met and they had a place to gather and break bread.
In some ways, this is kind of how our circuit ministry in the Methodist church of America operated. The traveling preacher went from location to location, but the local community kept the church alive between visits.
Today, I think about how it isn’t physically possible for me to come and be with all of you where you are. There aren’t enough hours in the day.
But because we are able to bring worship to you in your homes, we have created the ability for the good news of God to be shared in far more places than we would have thought possible.
And some of you have shown that hospitality and opened your homes to a friend to come and worship with you.
Or you have shared our service with others, creating space for their needs to be met in the midst of this difficult time.

Second, they were safe places for people to practice their faith.
We read about persecution in many of these communities throughout the book of Acts… including from by would-be apostle, Paul.
While he was still Saul, Acts 8 tells us about how he began to destroy the church, breathing murderous threats and dragging off people to prison.
One of the strategies was to go underground and hide your community. If you were worshipping at home, how can they tell what was a communion table and what was a dining room table?
So house/churches provided a way for the early community to gather in safety with other like-minded people.
Today, our reasons for seeking safety in our homes might be different, but it is still an important quality of our faith life right now.
We stay home so that the most vulnerable among us might be protected.
Our kitchen tables have become our communion tables.
Our couches have become our pews.
And together, we make sure that we can reduce the harm to our neighbors and keep one another safe.

Finally, house/churches allowed people to claim their faith.
As has been true of people of faith from the beginning, we have always been asked to declare our allegiance to God.
I’m reminded of that line from the book of Joshua.
When he was about to lead the people of Israel into the promised land he put before them a choice.
They could hang on to their traditions of the past and the other gods their ancestors worshipped…
Or, they could cling to the God who brought them up out of Egypt… the one who rescued them and protected them.
“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” he tells them. “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24: 15)
In the same way, these house churches were one way that early Christians declared they were putting their time, their name, and their property in service of the teaching of Christ. And sometimes, even their lives.
That choice is as much before us today as it was in the days of Paul and Joshua.
As my colleague, Rev. Ferguson reminds us:

Being a worshipping Christian in the last four months has required incredible perseverance, innovation, and energy. Our routines and sanctuaries have been stripped from us by COVID-19, and we have had to dedicate ourselves to intentional worship in a way we rarely have had to before. I know it has not been easy. But I am so proud that, standing firm in the tradition of our ancestors in faith, we marked out holy space in our homes and through our technology to say that we are still Christians. Even when it is hard, we follow the teachings of Christ.

So we’ve talked a little bit about why these house/churches were important and how they embodied hospitality, safety, and faith.

But what were they like?
Well, let’s explore the nuts and bolts of how they worked.

The first thing to note is these house/churches were as different as our houses are now.
Whether you were wealthy or poor, the region you lived in and materials available all had an impact. Rural areas might have hand built mud huts, while Rome would have had structures more like apartments. And like today, the wealthy might have had larger, grander buildings.
Most of the house/churches that we have record of were hosted by households with at least modest means and included space for a number of people to gather, share a meal, and worship.
One such house is in Capernaum and is thought to be the household of Peter… you remember, the place where Jesus heals his mother in law?
This particular house had stone walls with a mud and straw roof and had a square room at the center for gathering.
We have a record of this location, because after Christianity was legalized in the fourth century and had power and financial support, this location was converted from a home to a church.
Later expansions eventually covered the original house, and eventually the basilica itself was destroyed.
More recently, the Catholic Church has preserved this site with a glass floor that allows you to see down into the ruins of the house church below.

Another example we have is from a more wealthy home in Dura Europas, or what is modern-day Syria. While in many ways it was a standard home of the time, it also had a large hall where Christians would have gathered to worship and a baptistery.
The walls are covered with frescoes the depict Jesus as the good shepherd, the Woman at the Well, the empty tomb and more.

We also have evidence of a house church started by Romans in southern Britain.
In what is now known as Lullingstone Roman Villa, you can see how owners plastered over a small household shrine to Roman gods with the Chi-Ro symbol.

Who was part of a house/church?
One thing that is very different from today is who was part of a household.
While we typically think about a home with room for a nuclear family, an ancient household was much larger.
Several generations would be included in a household, including married and unmarried children. Also included would have been any servants or slaves of the owner.
And unlike today, where faith is a more individual decision, households would convert all together. If the head of the household came to know and want to follow Jesus… everyone in the household became Christian.
Our scripture this morning tells us about how the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia. Once their house/church was established, Stephanas and others from the household traveled to Corinth to help encourage and strengthen the community there.
But a house/church included more than just one household of faith.
Anyone was welcome as part of a house/church once they were established in a community. Men and women, poor and rich, slaves and masters all gathered together.

What did they do?
Well, we know that communion and baptism were important rituals that were shared within these homes.
In fact, it was one of the markers that began to separate the Jews who followed Jesus from those who did not.
They also gathered to read scripture, both readings from what we now know as the Old Testament, but also letters from the early Christian apostles.
In this day, those letters, like the one we read today from 1 Corinthians would not have been considered scripture, per se, but they did provide instruction to these believers about how to practice their faith.
The letters were incredibly practical and show us some of the concerns that these communities had about what to eat, which Jewish practices to continue following, and who was welcome at their tables.
Sometimes, these house/churches would host visitors like Paul and Apollos.
They prayed.
They sang.
They had a weekly collection that they would take up to support the ministry of the apostles and those in need.
They argued about what they should do.
They were real churches.
They just met in people’s homes.

And today, we are a real church that is meeting in people’s homes.
Carol Ferguson shared with me the story of a pastor who was chatting with a child in her church on Zoom one Sunday.

The pastor noticed her dress, and said “I think I’ve seen you wear that dress to church.” The girl, maybe four years old, looked confused for a minute. Finally she said “I am wearing it to church. But sometimes I wear it to the other church, too. When we go in the car.”
I love that that little girl will grow up knowing that church isn’t just a place you go, but something you experience. That she will never doubt whether or not God is with her as she eats and plays and studies. That she knows worship matters to her family not just as part of a routine, but as something worth pursuing always—even if it means making a church out of her home.

Thanks be to God that we continue to be a real church, embodying hospitality, safety, and faith, whenever and wherever we gather.

Sermon adapted from: https://carolhferguson.com/2020/07/05/house-church/#more-1534

Day by Day

Posted on September 13, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Acts 2:42-47

Friday night is game night at my house.

For years it has been an event where friends and family gather, surrounded by food and laughter and love.

Everyone brings something to the table… even if it is just a story or a giggle or themselves.

One of the things that usually happens, however, is that before we are all ready to sit down and eat, one of the kiddos gets a little too eager and sneaks a bite from the food that is laid out.

That has probably NEVER happened at your house.

You know, the table is one of my favorite images of the Kingdom of God.

That huge table where all are welcome, and all are loved.

And the amazing thing about the Christian community born out of the ministry of Jesus is that we are like those kiddos at the dinner table.

We get to sneak a bite…

We get to catch a foretaste of the glorious banquet.

We get a preview of what awaits us.

That is what the early Christian community was doing in the book of Acts.

You know, if after worship today, you sat down and spent some time reading just straight through Acts, you’d find it reads a lot like a journal.

Luke felt called to write down what happens to the disciples after Jesus leaves them.

He carefully documents those early days of ministry, the birth of the church, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

It is his personal witness to the Kingdom of God that was taking root in the world… a Kingdom that wasn’t totally and completely and fully there yet.

But all around there were these glimpses.

These bites.

These foretastes of everything that God desired for God’s people.

As Luke begins writing in Acts, he reminds us that he has already written about the ministry of Jesus… but in case we forgot, he gives us a quick recap.

Jesus suffered for us… and died for us… and then by God’s power he showed up again!

For forty days he hung out with the apostles and taught them about the Kingdom.

It was a Kingdom they had experienced when the hungry were fed and the blind healed and the oppressed set free.

The kingdom was wherever Jesus went.

Forty days pass after the resurrection and Jesus takes them out of the city.

They all start to think – this is the moment. This is it.

Down with Rome.

Down with oppression and disease and death.

Down with anything that would destroy life.

One of them cries out – Master, is this time? Are you going to restore the kingdom now?

They are like those eager kids crowding around the dinner table…

Is it ready?

Is it now?

His answer?

Not yet.

You’ll know it when it comes.

And to drive home his point, Christ is lifted up and taken out of their sight.

He leaves us with promises.

The promise that Christ will always be with us.

The promise of the Holy Spirit.

And the promise that just as Jesus came to be with us once, in the new creation, God will come and be with us again.

As the church, we are sandwiched in between these realities.

We know the truth of Christ’s life and teaching and death and resurrection.

But at the same time, we wait for the fullness of the Kingdom.

In the meantime, we get these glimpses.

And we long for the time when everything will finally be ready.

When God will make a home among us.

When God will dwell with us.

When the heavenly banquet is set and everyone will have a place at the table.

But how do we live and wait and worship and act during these in-between times?

What are you supposed to do right now as a person of faith?

What is your day by day responsibility?

Some of us thought we knew six months ago.

We had our day to day pattern figured out with worship here at the church on Sunday mornings and Wednesday night supper and various small groups meeting throughout the week.

Every other part of our life was crammed with work and school and kids and grandkids and sports. But for a whole lot of you, church was important too.

But then, all of that was thrown out the window.

Every pattern in our lives was disrupted.

And everything we are doing today is being compared to what we did six months ago.

Including how we practice our faith during these “in-between” times.

But if we look back through history, we will find that people of faith have answered that question in many different ways.

And so maybe in these unique circumstances, instead of comparing ourselves to what was familiar, maybe we should look for other examples and figure out how to be the church in a way that is faithful to this moment.

I keep finding myself going back to those early disciples.

Back to those first Christian communities and how they lived their faith day by day.

We find their experience all throughout the book of Acts and the New Testament epistles.

And what we discover is that church wasn’t a place they went on Sundays.

Rather, being the church was how they lived their lives every day.

And most of it centered not on going to a place of worship, but creating space in their homes and in their relationships for God to dwell with them.

They clung to those promises of the Kingdom of God…

They took seriously that line of the Lord’s prayer and made room for God’s Kingdom to come on earth as it was in heaven.

And they decided to live every single day as if they were already gathered at the heavenly banquet.

Faith for that very first community centered around the table.

Not the altar in the temple, but the kitchen table, the dining room table…

That place where their family and their friends and their neighbors gathered.

Luke describes their fellowship in Acts 2:42-47.

Twice in this passage, they talk about the common meal.

About breaking bread.

About sharing food with gladness and simplicity.

Church happened every day in their homes.

And it wasn’t just those first three thousand converts.

This is the primary way that the early Christian communities survived and expanded and grew for the first decades of our tradition.

Everything is happening in our homes right now.

If you are in one of our many senior-living communities, you aren’t allowed to leave home!

You are working from home.

Many of our kiddos are going to school from home, at least part time.

We are eating at home.

And I have seen all of the photos being shared of how you have created space for these things.

You are utilizing technology to connect with people outside or chatting through windows and open doorways.

The desk area set up so you can get work done.

The nook you created for your child to focus and learn.

The way the dining room table was cleared off because you finally have people at home at the same time to eat once again.

Why not create space in our homes for church as well?

In that place that we live and breathe and work and learn and play and love and laugh…

Why shouldn’t that also be a place where we make room for God to dwell?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a more in-depth look at these very first house/churches of the Christian tradition.

We’ll explore how they worked and what it meant for the people who hosted them.

Throughout it all, we’ll try to discover some lessons for how our faith can not just survive covid-times, but thrive.

And each morning, we are going to send out and post a devotion with a very simple activity that will help you and your family create space in your home for the Kingdom of God to be made real.

You know, faith was not complicated for these folks.

In fact it was very simple.

They had experienced the Kingdom of God and they committed themselves to live in that reality until it was fully present.

And to do so, that first community of three thousand people devoted themselves every day to four things. We read about it in Acts 2:42-47:

The teaching of the apostles
Sharing life together
Breaking bread around the table
and prayer.

You know…

If you put those in a slightly different order, it kind of sounds like the four parts of our discipleship pathway here at Immanuel.

We, too, believe that we should pray and praise and worship God… and we’ve been creating ways for you to make prayer a daily part of your life with our daily devotions.

We, too, believe that we should gather together to connect and break bread and laugh… and the caring connections groups that were sent out and our virtual coffee time on Zoom all help us to do so.

We, too, believe that we should grow in our faith by learning and studying the scripture… and you can join in one of our weekly online bible studies or small groups that are starting up.

We, too, believe that we should pool together our resources, going out in the world to serve and share what we have with those in need… and from the masks you create or the sandwiches you put together at home for CFUM or the time you spend with Joppa… these are all ways that we are pulling together to serve others.

Our church is not just surviving this pandemic… we are thriving in the midst of it.

But I also know that some of us as individuals are struggling with it all.

The Barna Institute has discovered that one in three practicing Christians – 32% – have stopped attending church virtually during the pandemic.

The novelty of virtual worship and life has worn off.

Some of the other demands on our time have picked back up.

It maybe has felt easier to check out.

I think that is why looking back on these early Christian communities is so important.

Over these next few weeks we are going to remember that it has always been easier to check out.

There have always been other demands on our lives.

But if we have the ability to taste and touch and experience the Kingdom of God right here and right now, shouldn’t we make every effort to do so?

Shouldn’t we work to create space in our day by day lives for the presence of God to be known?

Shouldn’t we tap into the joy and the life and the blessings that we discover when we join with other people of faith to break bread and to learn and to share and to pray?

In spite of the threat of persecution, these early Christians devoted themselves, every day, to grabbing a hold of that foretaste of the Kingdom.

And in these times of division and conflict and stress and fear… I think that might be exactly what we need to keep going….

We need to pull up a seat at the table…

And taste and see and know that the promises of God are real…

And they are here…

Right where you are… wherever you are.

Thanks be to God. Amen.