Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from April 17, 2005

“Contagious Community”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Psalm 23

Acts 2:42-47

I am going to give you a little warning, right off the bat.  I am still in the spirit of Easter.  I am still singing “Alleluia” and so, praise be to God, is the choir.  I am still looking around and seeing the signs of new life everywhere in our congregation and outside.  Gladys Reynard has come to me several times since Easter morning and sort of checked in with me and told me, “Yes, you still have that joy in your face and I can still hear it in your voice.” 

It’s true.  This season, and it is still the season of Easter, I am going for the ride.  It’s not just me, of course.  I feel the buzz of new life in the whole congregation.  Just yesterday, we had another potluck dinner after Saturday worship.  This one celebrates the continuation and renewal of our relationship with Dongbu-Sunlin congregation in Korea—a potluck with my favorite Korean dish (which is glass noodles that Shinny made). 

The memory of the Parish Hall being closed off for renovation is reason enough that each coffee hour, each potluck, and each event are a true celebration of the new life in our family of faith.  There’s a Youth Space above.  Last weekend, we hosted some 30 youth and their leaders from the whole region for a day-long event with workshops, music, playtime, and time for conversations—all leading up to a Saturday worship that included drums and kazoos, drama and clowns.  Was it cool, EB?  Yes, it was.  The space that was but a wooden skeleton a few months ago has come to life.

Some aspects of new life forms are subtle, yet they are very powerful.  As a congregation, we communicate more.  We communicate about how we can communicate more effectively.  That’s a good thing.  Each workshop (we’ve called them Size-Transition Workshops; we may find a different name to make them a little more interesting), each panel discussion, each sermon talk-back of late has created an appetite for more, an urge to spread the word, and to get input from yet more members of the congregation.  I invite you all to take the opportunity.  When the next workshop comes around, make a point of going.  For you gardeners out there, the conversations of this interim time are the seeds and the water and the soil and the fertilizer and the sunshine of new life that is shooting up.  For you boaters, it’s a set of new sails and twenty knots of wind.

Now, in this season, between the encounter with the Risen Christ at Easter and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, we are reading verses from Acts about the first Christian community, about the church before there was a church.  Liturgically, that text is a little ahead of us because it takes place right after Pentecost whereas we are still waiting for Pentecost to come.  But it works out because we invoke the spirit and presence of God for our life as a congregation before the day of Pentecost and after.  We already know that we are the church through the Holy Spirit.

We are building community in the presence and in the spirit of God.  That is what the Scripture is all about and that is what Mystic Congregational Church is all about.  We all building community in God’s presence and in the spirit of God.

Let’s look back to the early church and how they did it.  These six verses in Acts are one of the few passages where we get an insight in how the first Christians lived.  It’s a little bit like looking at a photo album and reminiscing about how it all began, not unlike when we look at some pictures of earlier days of the Korean Partnership last night and were reminiscing.  Looking back at those early Christians, we might say, “Remember, this was early on before we had our first house.  This is how we sat together and talked into the night because there was no precedent to what we were doing, no history, no ‘this is always how we’ve done it’.  This is before we had figured out who was in charge.”  We congregationalists, of course, never did figure out who was in charge.

How did it all begin?  It began with the essential practices that, today, some 2,000 years later, still make up the mission of the church—the teaching and proclamation of the word of God and what it means to each and everyone of us; the breaking of bread with a wide range of meanings; whether it’s the sacrament or a potluck; the sharing of our resources with those in need, what we call mission; and, finally, fellowship. 

But that’s not all.  Practices and the things we do are not all that there is to the church.  Acts does not talk about a bunch of individuals who get together on a regular basis to do these things.  Acts talks about believers that form a community, that build community in the spirit and presence of God.  We often quote, “Where two or three are gathered, there I am among them”.  What we don’t always add is the implication that comes with that that the two or three will never be the same:  they’re changed; they’re transformed.

Now, here again, that description of community in Acts:  “All who believed were together and had all things in common.  They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need.  Day by day as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

Maybe you’re saying, it sounds a little romantic.  It sounds a little idealistic, doesn’t it?  Maybe you’re saying, “Looking at a photo album and reminiscing is one thing, but between then and now, life happened and things got real.”  You, today, are willing to come here for committee meetings but you’re not willing to sell your house and move right in.  You actually like and appreciate having a place of your own to come home to; although, I must say, ever since we got the sofa in the Youth Space—the sofa with a love seat and a sleeper and lazy-boy—some of us have seriously considered moving in.  Thank you, Bruce and Amy.

What makes us a community in the spirit of God?  How do we have all things in common?  It starts with us coming here to worship and work together with all of who we are: not just with our happy souls; not just with our socially-acceptable amount of friendliness and cheer.  We come here with all of who we are.  If we are worried about a loved one, that worry has a place in the faith community; whether it’s on a prayer card and worship, or in a more personal conversation, or while you hold hands in prayer in a small group.  If we are job-hunting and not knowing for sure when the next paycheck will come and where it will come from, that belongs in the faith community because there’s someone to tell about our progress or the lack thereof.  When we are dealing with depression, it belongs in the community, this community, to the extent that we can allow others to hold us in prayer.  We can have faith on behalf of each other.   If we have a day when we just curl up in solitude and shut the world out, this is a place where we don’t have to pretend otherwise.

In Youth Ministry, we do trust-building exercises.  One of them is that one person stands high up and stretches out his arms.  All the others stand around him a little lower.  This person then falls back and allows himself/herself to fall back into all the arms that hold him/her up.  It’s a tremendous experience.  That is community.

Another aspect that Acts is talking about is sharing our resources of time and money.  Now, we might not do it quite to the extent that they did in the early church.  But then look at the Capital Campaign.  Look at the building.  Look at the renovation and the time that some of you have invested into that.  Look at the slate of new committee members set to be voted into their new commitments next month at the Annual Meeting.  Look at the broader sense of how we all do ministry together.  It says so in your bulletin.  Instead of just delegating some committees to do the work of the church, I think we share a good deal of time and money. 

There comes a point, I think (and for many of you it has come long before Pat or I ever got here), when you ceased to look at membership in the church as something you practice or participate in.  Rather, it becomes a part of who you are.  You’re not just a Christian for what you believe alone, but you are a part of a community.  You have a sense of belonging that touches deeply on your identity.  That’s where it becomes a two-way street.  Not only do you bring all of who you are in the church, but then when you go from the church to the world, you bring your faith; you bring your sense of the presence of God in your life. 

The church and the world are not separate realms.  Now, do you always give explicit testimony to your faith?  Maybe not.  But if belonging to the community of faith has become a part of who you are, then you give testimony by the way you act, by what you value, and by how you live.

Sometimes we could be a little bit bolder about claiming our faith, proclaiming our faith, confessing our faith.  But it is the attitude that matters even more—the attitude of gratitude that we have in common with those first disciples.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God.  Hey, they had Soup-to-Nuts, too, breaking their bread at home! 

Why did they do it with glad and generous hearts?  Because God had called them into this community where they had thought themselves devastated and doomed to death.  God called them to life.  They praised God because God brought them from the valley of the shadow of death into the light of new life.  They were transformed.

I believe that God calls us into the church, into this human organization that claims and proclaims a Divine Spirit and that becomes a community in the process.  We are here to build community as people that know God’s presence in our lives.  We want to do this whether it is through mundane tasks or moments of great celebrations because it has become a part of who we are, because we are more fully alive, and we are more richly blessed.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.