“Get Up and Go”

Acts 8:26-40

May 10, 2009 + Mother’s Day

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Dr. David Brown

Once you let them in the door, you never know what will happen.

Not too long ago the New York Times ran an article about the plight of a certain group of tourists who came to New York City in search of authentic experiences. It seems that some of the Harlem churches are now on “the tour” of things people want to experience, so that they can hear authentic gospel music in its own setting. A recent letter to the editor voiced a complaint on behalf of these sightseers. It seems that some of these folks, having paid the admission and bought tickets for their particular tour, complained that it is quite an imposition on them to require that they sit through long prayers and a sermon in order to hear the gospel music they came to hear.

This is a sort of reverse of the story in Acts where Philip was sent by the Spirit to bring the word about Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch. In Harlem, a few churches are accepting money to display their worship as some sort of artifact. In the process they are discovering what it is to have the world sent to them to discourage the word about Jesus so that tourists can be carried away by a musical experience rather than a spiritual one. As a preaching professor of mine used to say, you bring a pig into a parlor and it’s not the pig that gets changed.

It’s a funny business opening church doors to the wide world. You never know who or what will come walking through them. But it is our duty, no question about that. The church is not ours, never was. It belongs to God. And God says open the doors. And by golly we better do it or whatever it is that we are may be something, but it certainly won’t be God’s church.

Whenever we have a communion service, I always say that the Lord’s Table is open to anyone who wishes to share in the sacrament. I know that in some places – even in parts of our United Church of Christ – that is too extravagant a welcome. What if someone comes who is not baptized? Or not a believing Christian? Clearly against the rules. But then I think to myself, “Am I really concerned that one day God will frown down on me and say, ‘Shame on you, Dave! In your ministry you were just too darned liberal!”

In our story this morning from the Acts of the Apostles, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading his Bible and began to believe that maybe, just maybe, the story could be about him. He knew he had two strikes against him: he was Black and he was sexually “different.” He knew he could not be included in the ordinary adherents of Judaism, but he had heard about this rather open-ended bunch called Christians. So he asked Philip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized (and joining the Church)?”

The world in its wisdom continues to inform us about what it believes will increase church membership. They tell us that churches committed to radical inclusiveness, who work hard at opening their doors to people of all colors, sexual orientations, theological perspectives – those churches are going to decline. It is the exclusive churches that are growing, the ones who draw on a narrow slice of similarly minded people that prosper – at least according to the world’s wisdom. But I am convicted by a little known verse of a well-known hymn. We just sang it: “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” (#101) The better-known verses go like this:

“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea;

There’s a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty.

There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven;

There is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given.”

The little known verse – not in our hymnal – goes this way:

“But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own;

And we magnify his strictness with a zeal he will not own.”

The hymn concludes with the verse that begins:

“For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind;

And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.”

I am convicted by that missing middle verse. We make God’s love too narrow by false limits not God’s own. We do it all the time. One way or another we say, “You do not belong here, you are too old, too young, too poor, too wealthy, whatever . . .”

Some years ago I was in St. Louis for a few days on business. Someone told me about a new restaurant in town and said I would love it. “It is called the Abbey,” they said, and off I went to have dinner there.

It was a bit of a shock to me, really. On an ancient St. Louis street there stands this restaurant. A big sign out front lets you know that it is a restaurant, posting the hours and the menu right there. But you don’t have to look long or hard to realize that it used to be something else altogether. It used to be a church. This makes for tough dining for a pastor. Our thoughts are carried away by what might have been, by things we hope we aren’t doing to bring our churches to such a pass.

The cornerstone is still there for all to see. St. Somebody-or-other’s Church, founded in 18-something. The church name and the peoples’ names on the cornerstone suggest it was perhaps established as a church catering to folks recently arrived from Eastern Europe, built to minister to the immigrants who came to that neighborhood a hundred years ago. Of course the neighborhood has changed over the years. What neighborhood hasn’t? It has probably been through several transformations.

I can almost hear the debates which must have gone on inside those walls as the population around the church shifted and decisions had to be made on ways to address a dwindling membership.

One says, “The neighborhood is changing. ‘There are more and more people who do not speak the language of the old country. Our own young people don’t come to church like they used to do. What are we to do?”

Another responds, “I think we should start having some services in other languages than the language of our parents’ homeland, you know, have one service in English to keep the young people who are not learning the old language and to bring in other new people from the neighborhood who don’t know about the old country.”

“In English?” says another, “we’ve never had services in English. Who would know what to do? It wouldn’t seem right, like we were unfaithful to the memories of our parents and grandparents.”

“I agree,” says someone else. “Bringing in people from the neighborhood just because they speak English would not show proper respect for our tradition. We should stay with tradition. Those new folks wouldn’t fit in here anyway.”

On one stone wall inside the church-turned-restaurant is a framed newspaper clipping giving a brief history of the building: early glory days, then years of inner city decline. Of course, recent years have brought a regeneration and new life with families moving into the neighborhood, but too late for this congregation. Prior to the revival of the neighborhood had come closure by the church authorities. So many of the old country members had died and their children had long-since moved away. Finally the buildings were sold to an entrepreneur.

If you go inside you can see all the left-over signs of church life in The Abbey restaurant: a balcony which used to hold the organ, a chancel now devoid of pulpit and communion table, servers calling out to the kitchen. It’s a good thing there is no church there now. These new folks would certainly not have fit in.

All this applies to our passage from Acts, the entire book of Acts for that matter. It is about a church blowing apart at the seams with the realization that when we ask the question, “Who does Christ have in mind for the church,?” we had better be ready for a bigger answer than we had anticipated. Even eunuchs from Ethiopia? But something else is true, and this time, through this great little story about Philip and the eunuch, something else caught my eye.

As we are startled time and again in Acts by the ways in which God insisted on opening the church to more and more unexpected sorts of people, we should also notice that it is not just the church that is changing but the calling of believers in the church. The key phrase for me is this: “Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go . . .” The rest is traveling instructions a spiritual first century spin on mapquest.

Get up and Go! And not just to “the usual suspects,” the people we think would easily fit in at Pilgrim. We are to invite, welcome and include the people whom God has in mind for our church. We sit in the middle of a city, of a county, that is increasingly populated by people who represent widely diverse colors and cultures, orientations and lifestyles. In twenty years, no, in ten years we will be amazed at how much Chattanooga has changed. So what are we to do? Since coming here I have heard so much concern about the future of Pilgrim Church, yet our city is exploding with growth. What are we to do? I think an angel of the Lord is tapping us on the shoulder right now, saying, “Get up and go!” Potential members of the Reign of God, potential members of Pilgrim are waiting for our invitation. What’s keeping us? Friends, we’ve got good news to share. Let’s go. Let’s get the word out. Get up and go!