Who Are We? Part 2

This is my sermon from May 1, 2016. It continues the theme of the week before. That sermon is just below.

Who Are We? Part 2

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

May 1, 2016

Scripture: Acts 16:9-15

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In my sermon last Sunday I raised some questions about just who we are as the First Congregational Church of Maltby. I said that I see a certain parallel between the context of the earliest Christians who struggled with the question of whether the Gospel of Jesus Christ is also for the Gentiles and our context in which Christianity is becoming a minority voice in a largely atheistic or agnostic society. This morning I’m going to look at that issue again and raise some more questions about it. Please bear with me. This is important stuff.

Now, I know as well as anyone how different the world of the New Testament was from our world. Still, when I read our passage from Acts for this morning I was struck again by what may be an important parallel from the world that story of Lydia discloses and our world. This morning I want to work with that parallel to see what issues it might raise for us.

In that story a wealthy woman named Lydia hears Paul preaching. She accepts his word about Jesus Christ and has herself and everyone in her household baptized. The text says that she was “a worshipper of God.” Now, I think that our text means that she was what is more commonly called a “God-fearer.” In the first century CE in the Roman Empire God-fearers were Gentiles, that is, non-Jews, who were attracted to Judaism but who hadn’t converted to that faith. There were communities of these folks around the synagogues in all of the major cities of the Roman Empire. Philippi, where Lydia lived, was such a city. God-fearers were people who were attracted to Judaism’s monotheism and its ethical teachings but who couldn’t accept all of the Torah law which Judaism taught and to which it adhered. They participated in the life of the synagogue and of the Jewish community but never became Jews themselves. These are the people among whom the new Christian movement spread most quickly. It seems that most of Paul’s converts were from these God-fearers. It makes sense to me that Lydia was one of them.

As I read this story last week something occurred to me. The Jewish communities of the Roman Empire were surrounded by people who were, I think we can say, spiritual but not Jewish. Today our Christian churches are surrounded by people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. They are for the most part spiritual but not Christian. I wondered whether the way the Jews of the synagogues and Paul and the other Christian missionaries of the time related to the God-fearers could teach us anything about how we Christians and our churches might relate to the large number of spiritual but not religious people all around us.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really have an answer to that question; but as is so often the case with me, that question raises a lot of other questions that I think we would do well to spend some time with. In particular, the Jewish communities of the Roman Empire were not willing to give up the law of Moses in order to make the God-fearers full members of their communities. The God-fearers couldn’t accept Judaism’s kosher dietary laws. Even more importantly, the men among the God-fearers could not accept Judaism’s law of circumcision. So a barrier remained between the Jews and the God-fearers. They got along together. They lived and probably even worshipped together, but they never fully overcame that barrier. Paul came along and said you can get everything you love about Judaism without obeying the Torah law by becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. A great many God-fearers did.

Judaism had a lot to offer the God-fearers. It offered one God instead of the multitude of gods and goddesses of Greco-Roman religion. It offered a God who cared how God’s people live and who instructed the people in how to live, which the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses never did. It offered a God who wished only blessing for God’s people. Yet the barrier of the Torah law remained. For the Jews it was nonnegotiable.

It seems to me that Christianity has a great deal to offer our spiritual but not religious countrymen sort of in the same way Judaism had a lot to offer the God-fearers. We offer the one true God. We offer a God of love, compassion, and forgiveness. We offer a tradition rich in spiritual practices through which we find and live our connection with that God. We offer community, something most Americans sorely lack these days. We offer an ancient and proven spiritual path that connects people with God and God with people.

Yet some barrier remains between us and the spiritual but not religious folk around us. I’m not sure just what constitutes that barrier. I suppose it may vary some among the people who have rejected Christianity without ceasing to consider themselves to be spiritual. I can suggest what some of those things may be. The insistence of most Christians that one be able to recite one of the ancient creeds without mental reservation in order to be Christian. A rigid biblical literalism that most people today with knowledge of science, the techniques of critical study, and inquiring minds can’t accept. Rigid notions of sexual morality that most Americans today can’t accept. An insistence on using obscure language about the Incarnation and the Trinity that doesn’t make much sense to many people today. There are many things about American Christianity today that a great many people who believe in God and seek a relationship with God just can’t accept.

Which raises a very important question for me. The Torah law was, and is, Judaism’s nonnegotiable. What are our nonnegotiables? What are we willing to give up or compromise in order to make our faith more accessible to spiritual but nonreligious people today? What can we give up? What can we not give up? What can we give up and still be Christian? What would cause us to cease to be Christians if we gave it up?

Folks, those are major questions before the Christian faith today. The world is changing. The world has changed. The church is changing. The church has changed. Some people say those changes are a major shift in culture that isn’t going to go away, the kind of shift that only happens every 500 years or so, the greatest change in the church’s context since the Reformation. They say that the Christian faith must deal with that change if Christianity is to survive, and I suspect that they are right. I’m not sure I can answer my questions even for myself, and I’m sure I can’t answer them for you. They are, however, really important questions. They are questions we cannot avoid wrestling with. Throughout our history the Christian faith has adapted itself to very different and changing cultural contexts. We’re being called on to do it again. Sometimes that reality makes me say “I’m glad I’m not young anymore.” Still, the reality remains. I pray that in our time together we may do some wrestling with those questions. The whole Christian church must wrestle with those questions if it is to survive in the postmodern world. I’m ready to do it. Are you? I hope so. Amen.