"Formed into Christ's Body" - Pastor Andrea

Pastor Andrea brought us to Acts chapter 2 which gives us a snapshot of the early church and how they operated together after Pentecost. They gathered in fellowship, studied the apostle's teaching, broke bread, prayed together, met in their homes, and took care of the needs of the community. Then it says "The Lord added to their number day by day." On Reaching In Sunday, we are reminded that part of our mission is authentic community, and that gets built, day by day, in some pretty ordinary practices. Community is an investment account: it grows as we contribute to it. And these practices, over time, is what God uses to shape us, as a community, into Christ's Body.

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Good morning, Madison Church. It's good to be with you this morning once again as we continue on in our Reaches series. Before I even go there, I want to say into the live stream, happy birthday to Dorothy Heisinga, 80 years young. Yes. We've got a lot of our OGs that are celebrating some big birthdays over the last year and in this year, some 80th birthday parties and some big anniversaries, and we're so glad to celebrate alongside of our church body. So we're coming to the third week of our series on the four reaches. This is our four-part mission here at Madison. If you're newer to Madison and you're like, what are these people all about? The four reaches help you understand what we're all about. Reaching up as we glorify God through lives of prayer and worship. Reaching in as we grow spiritually through biblical learning and caring relationships. Reaching across, reconciling in Christ for multicultural living and leading, and reaching out, going near and far to share Christ's love in action and in words. And you're not going to be able to see it while the lights are on our sanctuary design. And I'm glad for that, or you'd spend the rest of the sermon looking for it. But there is a hidden letter J painted into our sanctuary design somewhere, because Judge Smealink was the one at a council meeting as they were trying to wrestle with who is Madison and what is our identity, that he was a big part behind this idea of we're a church that always has our hands extended, which for a CRC at the time I'm sure was sort of rare, but that this idea that we're always extending, and the four reaches were sort of birthed out of some council deliberations and decisions. And Judge Smealink was a part of that. And he would have turned a hundred on August 5th, but died not too far before his 100th birthday. He was part of our Raybrok communion group and was pretty strong and vibrant till close to the end. And I'm I'm grateful for his life, but I'm also grateful that here this church keeps going with these reaches. And one of our OGs, who is now with the Lord, had a hand in that. And see, we're always in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. We're sort of building this life together as a community. And Judd Smealink was a part of that and this mission. And I wanted to mention that, and you will not be able to see that J while the lights are on, and it gets washed out. So stop looking for it. Now I actually need you to listen to the rest of this. But it's there. Our sanctuary design team wanted to give a nod to Judd, and we're grateful for his life. A week ago, I told you that reaching up and reaching in were going to sound a little bit like part one and part two of the same message. Last Sunday, God is forming us into an alternative community through worship and to worship. Why are we an alternative community? To worship God, and we're being formed into that community through worship as well. And this week, again, here we go again. See, I'm just coming off sabbatical, so it's easier to write one sermon than two sermons, but it's gonna sound in some ways similar. God is forming us into an alternative community, shaping us collectively into Christ's body. And reaching in, all the reaching in that we do here is part of how God is doing that to us through the Spirit, forming us collectively into Christ's body. We we mature together through biblical learning, through caring for one another, through praying together, by deepening authentic relationships among us until we attain to the fullness of Christ, to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, Paul says. And when that happens, and we're on the way, sometimes we realize it in part. We're on the way, but when that happens, when we together collectively mature into Christ's body, when we attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, we become, as a church, a localized working model of the new creation. That's what's happening as we're reaching in. We become a localized working model of new creation, a what I would call a contrast community. Remember, alternative community, a contrast community whose values and priorities, once again, are way different than the culture around us. Way different. Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, Paul says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so this is how these themes sort of fit together, reaching up last week and reaching in this week. Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed, be reformed, I said last week, being formed into an alternative community. And so here's what's going to happen today. I am going to preach a shortened sermon, but that's not permission to go home early. What it is, is room in our time together to go to the lobby and some spots here in the sanctuary as well to engage with leaders and volunteers who are part of reaching in ministries. There are gonna, it's a coffee Sunday, so first you get your coffee, and then you'll go and visit different tables, and it's and I'll talk a little bit about who you might see after church. So the shortened sermon is not so that you can get home and turn a game on soon or anything like that. It's actually, I want it to feel like part of the sermon, our response is now engaging and reaching in together at the end of this sermon. Um, and so hopefully that all feels like it fits within this morning. Our text this morning is from Acts chapter 2, uh, the very end of it, verses 42 through 47. So I'll ask that you would rise in body or in spirit as we read those verses. Under the heading the Fellowship of Believers. They, so after this dramatic time of Pentecost, and all these people came to faith and got baptized, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. And then I'm not projecting it, but as a secondary text, I want to read this over you from Ephesians 4. So the question of, but why live that way? Well, we find an answer to that in Ephesians chapter 4, Unity and Maturity in the Body of Christ. And so Paul is writing to people, and he says, As a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Verse 11. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is Christ. For him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. God, we thank you for this snapshot of the early church and of these believers who knew that growing in authentic community was part of their worship. And that you couldn't actually separate out all these reaches, reaching up and reaching in and reaching out and reaching across. They're not silos. All of them had to be present so that they could grow in maturity, so that they could be formed into the body of Christ. Would you form us? Would you form us? Would you mature us? Would you help this collective here to be a small working model of new creation in this place? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So we were at the end of Acts chapter two. And if you remember, Acts chapter two begins with a lot of dramatic events. Pentecost. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, tongues of fire and a mighty wind, and perhaps the most effective sermon ever preached, which somehow everyone understands in their own language, and then it brings this altar call forward. 3,000 people wanted to be baptized in this mass baptism. I mean, wow. It's amazing to read. Make it so among us. Make it so among us. But then the end of Acts chapter 2 feels a lot less dramatic than that. A little less exciting, maybe on the surface, a little less impressive than all that was going on at the beginning of Acts chapter 2. This is a picture of what happens after all that. When all these new believers who realized they were gonna, you know, in Christ had put off the old and taken on the new. It's like, well, now what? Right? There has to be a now what after the conversion. And so this is a picture of now what, of what happens after that. This, these ongoing weekly rhythms and practices and priorities of the early Christian community. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship and prayer. They spent time with one another, they broke bread together, they took care of one another's needs, opening up their homes and opening up their wallets and opening up their grip on their own possessions to be sure that no one had need among them. Acts 2 does not show us a perfect church, and you would know that if you keep reading, it isn't very long before troubles arise. So it's not a perfect church, but it does show us what follows the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, right? Not just some of the sensational gifts of the Spirit, but also the ongoing daily grind of the people of God who commit to being devoted to the apostles' teaching and to prayer and being together and fellowship and breaking bread. That too is what happened after an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, this formation of an alternative community or what I want to call a contrast community to what was around them. This is a very surprising uh person I'm about to reference, but a couple of years ago, Rain Wilson, who played Dwight Schroot on The Office, was on the Russell Moore podcast because he had just written a book that was sort of part memoir, but it was also part reflecting on spirituality in our current culture. And one of his chapters was reflecting on the radical nature of the early church, and he was talking about that on this podcast, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but Dwight Schroot, Rain Wilson, said never before in the history of humanity, he says, had a more diverse group of people gathered and been welcomed and loved and accepted. A church service might include a Phoenician sailor and a Roman gladiator and a Jewish theologian and a former slave and a former prostitute, and they would all be gathered, acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God and Lord, reading the letters of Paul together and praying, singing and worshiping together. And this was so different than most of human history, where everything was tribal. You stick to your own. And not only that, these early Christians would sacrifice their own time and energy and comfort and material wealth in service of others who weren't even in their tribe. They'd gather together and give a sick family of Samaritans food and comfort and clothing. And this was so out of the norm. This was such a contrast community that had been poured out into by the Holy Spirit that even the Romans were writing about it, asking, what is up with these people? What's up with them? What is going on out here? Why are they together? The people, of course, were being formed. They were being counterformed from what was around them by the teachings of Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit, being formed into that contrast community, an alternative society, you might say, a body that was on its way to maturing. And it's tempting, I think, to choose a church community where the people are a lot like me. Very tempting. They look like me and they share my background and my preferences, and they agree with me on my politics, and they like all the same songs I do. It is a lot less complicated that way. A lot less complicated that way. It's not as uncomfortable, but dividing along those types of lines is being conformed to the patterns of this world, which Paul says not to do. The spirit forms us differently. The spirit forms us into a community where people will look at us, like the early church, and say, What's going on here? How did these people get together? I'm just imagining our rich Wednesday night outs that have been going on here at Madison. When people drive by on Madison and they catch a glimpse of the joy and the food sharing and the fellowship and the phone party and all the things that are happening in this parking lot, I'm just imagining they're like, what's going on with them? Because they don't all look the same or act the same or have the same background. It's a contrast community. That's why our vision statement at Madison is following Christ together as diverse communities. We built our affirmation of multicultural living right into that vision statement. Our rejection, our resistance to the world's tribalism is built right into our vision statement. And of course, it is always easier to put it on paper than it is in practice. Always. That's just all there is to it. Because the culture that we live in, the water that we swim in, the air we breathe every single day, is malforming us away from authentic community with people who are different from us. Malforming us. Forming us to actually be busy and distracted and polarized from one another and exhausted and isolated by ourselves, forming us to be hyper-connected at all times with like literally everybody, but in reality less connected to people than ever. Do you feel that? Do you feel like ultra connected to so many people all at once, but actually less authentically connected to people than you've ever been? Maybe that's just me. Okay, let me find my spot. I'm guessing you have that too. Building authentic community is not easy and it's almost never comfortable. And not always immediately rewarding, actually. There's a lot of growing pains you have to go through, right? Maturing as Christ's body comes with growing pains. Ask anyone who's at a major growth spurt how that went for them. Growing comes with growing pains. And maturing as Christ's body comes with those. Authentic community means we have to be very careful to resist, not just passively, neutrally like see it happening, but no, carefully resist everything being on my terms. Resist the desire to have everything be on your terms. Or resist the desire to have everything customized to my exact preference. If you have ordered food on a restaurant app these days, every single item on a restaurant app has like another drop-down menu of endless additional customizable preferences. You could do something as simple as add lettuce, and then the selection drops down and it will say none, light lettuce, medium lettuce, heavy extra lettuce, or lettuce on the side. Some of you are wishing you selected none this summer. I think someone, someone I know well uh got the sporiasis, and she said zero out of ten, do not recommend. So the answer is none. Okay. But this have your way mentality that we have been malformed by in our culture, have it your way. Is that Burger King? I don't even know. But Burger King, have it your way. That is malforming us into consumers and not disciples. Where my preferences always rule. And it is far too easy to apply that malformation to the church, right? We're out there being formed at all times into consumers, people whose preferences are met at every turn. And then we come into the church and we can't figure out why that never works. James Bell is an ecclesiologist. That's what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be an ecclesiologist, someone who thinks about the church and church culture. And he writes one of the greatest blind spots in modern Christianity is that we often approach church with the instinct of a consumer rather than a disciple. Our main question then becomes what can the church do for me? Does it meet my needs and my appetites and my preferences? Does it check all of my boxes and then every drop-down menu that comes down out of those boxes? Consumerism wants everything sort of served up to the consumer, but discipleship understands that it must be built together. It must be built together. The church is a body to which we belong. It's not like a menu at the front of McDonald's, and you touch all the things that you want and then get a receipt and say, I'm good to go. It has to get built together, actually, what it is that we're doing here. Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, Paul says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Pentecost birthed a church in Acts 2, who, despite all their differences, were unified. In Christ, one Lord, one hope, one faith, one baptism, one spirit, one body, but now they had to grow into that body. And Acts is like the growing pains of that body. One body, and they had to mature together. It doesn't make sense for one part to become very mature, but not the rest of it. That's not going to work in a body. They had to mature together. And a lot of our even spiritualized culture, like church culture, is like it's it's sort of all your private journey. And there are, of course, personal aspects to faith formation, but it's not all private. And it's not only you. We have to mature together as a body. Ephesians 4 tells us Christ is forming for himself a body. And the goal in that chapter is not just that I become a better Christian on my own now. The New Testament is mostly written in second person plural. Right? You all. Y'all, or if you are from Prince Edward Island, yes. Yuz. Paul wants all of yes to reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God to become mature. Not just one of you or a few of you, all of us together as one body have to become mature. The whole body grows, Paul says, and builds itself up in love. How? As each part does its work. So I hate to break it to you, but if you are a part of the body and we're all gonna mature together, each part has to do its work. See, that's not consumer culture. It is forming us away from that. Reaching in is not just turning in on ourselves in sort of private devotion. It is about being formed together into this alternative community that shows people something very different than the individualism we see out there and the consumerism and the isolation that our culture has on offer. We become a contrast community to me first, me and mine, me, myself, and I, what I want, what I prefer. No, we become a contrast community to that mentality in the church where we say, You first. How can I serve you? How can I lay down my preference for you? Thinking of, I think I've told you this before that my parents in the church I grew up in, my parents spoke Dutch in the home all the time, and so did many others in that church, and the fellowship hall spoke mostly Dutch. And guess how that is for visitors? Yeah, that's thumbs down. And it was my mom who was like, I really think all of us, even though it's our preference, should stop speaking Dutch in the fellowship hall over coffee, because if someone comes into this and they can't understand a word of it, it's not gonna feel welcoming. And let me tell you, there was some growing pains around that suggestion. But it was someone saying, I gotta lay down my preference, my first language, I'd rather be speaking in Dutch to make sure that no one is left out as we mature together. As I was saying, reaching in is not just turning in on ourselves, it's being formed together into this alternative community. And we become a contrast community, not just because like we're so great, like we work harder and we do better, but because Jesus, to whom we are joined, Jesus met that deforming power, that malformation of me first with self-giving love. He didn't meet that power with more power, he actually met it with sacrifice and with self-giving love. Though he was rich, he became poor for our sake, so that by his poverty we could become rich. Right? He allowed being joined to the community to cost him. Though he was without sin, he took on sin for us, that in him we might be the righteousness of God. Though he had equality with God, he did not see that equality as something to be held on to and grasped, but he poured himself out, he gave himself up, he took on the nature of a servant. This is my body, he said, which is for you. And so as we are joined to Jesus in that way, that's who Jesus was, then we are joined to all the other people who are joined to Jesus, and then we all take on that formation of self-giving love, of laying down our preferences so that the whole body can mature, this body of Christ. Sometimes people that are a little bit newer to Madison will come to me and they will tell me, uh, we are looking for community. And I always get a little nervous when people say that to me because I kind of wonder, like, what do they mean by that? I think they mean a place where people will know their name and relationships feel deeper than just a hello on Sundays, and someone will show some care if life goes sideways for them, which it will at some point. They're looking for a place to be known. But every once in a while I can tell that they think there's some mysterious other group of people here who's gonna help create that community for them. But that group does not exist. It's you, it's you. That group does not exist. Authentic community is an investment account and it grows as you contribute to it. It's an investment account, and it grows as you contribute to it, as you gather together, as you serve alongside one another, as you show up to help each other. And I would guess there are a few of us at times, and I would include myself in this, who want the feeling of authentic community, but without the cost of authentic community. And that there's cost. It's gonna cost you something. It will always cost us something. It's gonna cost you your time. Like I wanna be uh in authentic community. Okay, can you be in a common table? No, I have no nights free. Right, so it's gonna cost you something. It's gonna what's more costly maybe sometimes than what's in our wallet is the space on our Google Calendar. That's sometimes harder to offer than what's in our wallet because we don't have any extra time. It's gonna cost us our energy, right? Going to gather with people when you just don't feel like it. I never have that with any of you, but you might feel that. You just don't feel like it. But it's care group night, or it's common table night, or it's women's Bible study time, or it's it's sanctuary prayer at 12:30 on Tuesday, and you're like, I can't, I can't. It's gonna cost you something. It's always gonna cost us something. Our comfort when people do things differently than you do them, and you wanna be like, why do you do it that way? That's part of the cost of authentic community. It will cost us our preferences, but the return on investment, remember I said it's an investment account, it builds as you contribute to it. The return on investment is a body that is maturing together. And this authentic community is not just for us to enjoy or say, look how great we are, look how deep we are, look at our authentic community. Right? It's not an issue of pride, it's actually a part of our evangelism. It is how we reach out. We become a plausible witness to the nature of God and to the self-giving work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit who empowers us to do things we don't feel like doing sometimes. We become a plausible witness to this God, and that is an evangelistic tool. To reach in well together, to have authentic community together, becomes a reaching out. It says in Acts, God was adding to their number day by day. Let's go back. What was their method? Oh, they were gathering together and eating together and praying for one another. Is there more? Wait. There must be more than that. They were living in authentic community with one another, taking care of each other's needs, learning together, growing together, maturing as a body together. And God was adding to their number day by day. Remember, it's the Lord who does that work, not us. Right? If we do something amazing and and and people are drawn to it, the Lord is the one who does that work, who adds to our number day by day. Reaching in done faithfully is a great tool for outreach. Authentic Christ-centered community will spill out of its container. I hope it's spilling out of this container the walls of the church as we mature into the body that we are meant to be. Then we, if we become mature together as Christ's body, we can say to the world, to a hurting world, to a watching world, this is Christ's body. And it's for you. It's for you. One Sunday this summer, last week, I told you a little Sunday story, and I got another one this week, because one Sunday this summer, I was at a small church somewhere here in West Michigan, and as Annika and I were walking in in the parking lot, an older white woman wearing a dress made out of an American flag, no lie, climbed down out of a very tall red pickup truck. Now it was July 5th, so it was the Sunday after 4th of July, but still the entire dress was stars and stripes. It was an American flag dress. And we sat slightly behind her in the sanctuary, and I may or may not have made a few assumptions about her, but after the service had started, a man came in and he was late for service. He was um dressed all in black, he had a large, dirty backpack that was packed full. It looked like most of what he owned was probably in his backpack. And he was not white, and he had tattoos on his neck and on his face. And this sanctuary was pretty empty this particular Sunday because it was the Sunday after 4th of July. So we were sitting there with not many people. So there are, I don't know, many, many empty pews to choose from if you just want to like not be bothered. And he slides into her row right next to her. And I was very surprised by that. And I saw her touch his arm in a greeting, and a time came in the service. We had to write some prayers on some papers and bring them up to the bowl, and they went up together and they and they put their prayer in the same bowl together. And I just I keep a snapshot of that moment in my mind of those two standing at that prayer bowl together. Because if I did not know any better, I would have asked the same questions that the Romans asked of the early church. I would have said, What is going on here? What are they doing together here? What is up with these people, right? Last week I said that people should be able to look at the church and go, they're built different. I was saying that they're built different. They're built different. What are they doing together? Well, they are growing up into Christ, who is our head. They are part of a body that is maturing together. They are living in such a way that it would not make any sense to us if God was not behind it all. The same spirit that was at work in the early church and that was at work in that church on July 5, that same spirit is at work in this church. I see it all the time. I see it in the work we're doing. I see it to the commitment to this mission. I am not up here saying, Madison, boy, do I have a finger to wag at you. I am humbled every day by the way that this church is living into its mission. But we don't want to stop maturing and we don't want to stop growing together. We want to be an authentic community that becomes a small localized working model of new creation together. They were living out authentic community, I believe, but so are we, I believe. And we want to keep growing because that same spirit that was poured out on Pentecost, that was influencing the early church, that same spirit is still blowing through this place. Still blowing through this place. And there's so many supporting ligaments. I love Paul's body language in Ephesians, right? All these ligaments that are helping us grow up into maturity. And you're gonna meet some of those ligaments at the tables here in a few minutes. You're gonna meet some of the people that have been supporting ligaments to the mission of this church for so long. And you know what happens to people that have to be the supporting ligaments for too long? They get tired. Who are the people that will come in behind them and support them and also be part of these ministries? That is what Reaching In Sunday is about, is a chance to say, I too want to make an investment in this investment account that is called Authentic Community. I know it is an account that is built up as I contribute to it. And so that is what we're gonna be doing in just a few moments. And then all of us, as we engage in this work, and not just in reaching in, in reaching up, in reaching out, next week we'll be looking at reaching across. And today, reaching all of these are not silos, they work together, they overlap so that we can attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. That is what we want to do.