Ryan Carrell 6/30/24 Ryan Carrell 6/30/24

I Like Jesus. I’m Not Sure About Church - Week 2

Ryan Scott Carrell - June 30, 2024

The following is not a transcript. Ryan preaches from a manuscript but adds a lot each week that is not necessarily from the manuscript. We’re providing this manuscript, and the ability to comment and participate in discussion about the sermon topic, as an additional way to interact with the sermon and with others. As you add your voice to the conversation, you help add additional depth.

Acts 2:42-47

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 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, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

This passage describes the earliest moment of the church, the gathering of Jesus followers that came together following the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They came together to experience, and live out, the teaching and way of Jesus. And the only word that could describe what everyone experienced, and what people continued to experience as they were drawn into this new community, was the word saved.

Now, it should give us a long pause that some of the experiences that people have had with church have caused people to want to be saved from it instead of saved in it. However, this is the reality for a lot of people in our world today. This tension can be summed up in our series title: I Like Jesus. I’m Not Sure About Church. The reality is that due to scandals, politics, and blatant hypocrisy, the idea of church, for many people at this moment in time, is not something they’d even consider. Many people, maybe some of us, feel an agreement with these words attributed to Mahatma Ghandi: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

We want the tension in our lives resolved. As a result of this, many are seeking Jesus outside of the community of faith that is supposed be leading us toward Jesus.

The picture of the church that I read to open this sermon, the text that is at the heart of our series, seems to give us a picture at odds with so much of the modern church. But if we step back and allow that goodness, beauty, and simplicity to guide us, I think we find a guide to help us to continue to be a place redefining the word church. But to understand how, we have to back up and see how the story of the early church began.

Acts 2:38-40

Peter [said], “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

These words, from what we call the day of Pentecost, a story we looked at a few weeks ago, tells us how people from all over the known world miraculously heard the message of Jesus, were invited by Peter to change the direction of their lives, and how about three thousand of them were baptized as a sign that they were moving into a new reality of living.

Now, the result of this moment seem like a successful day. But the thing is if the story ended here, the way of Jesus would have ended with them. See, those three thousand people could have easily stamped their tickets to heaven, grabbed their t-shirts at the door, and become an exclusive, inward-focused, fan club for Jesus. But that’s not what the church is meant to be, and it also isn’t what happened next. Instead, these people, the THEY in our passage, merged their faith and lives in such a powerful way that it gave us the most beautiful picture of what it means to be people following the way of Jesus.

Acts 2:42-47

We’re going to continue to walk through this over these weeks but listen to what happened here. It tells us that they devoted themselves to this new community. They leaned all the way in with intention to experience authentic life-giving and life-sharing community with one another. And again, how that experience was defined as they were drawn into this new community, was the word saved. The final word we read in this passage in Acts 2:47.

Acts 2:47

…and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Now, this might sound familiar. Last week, as we started this series, I focused on this word: saved. I mentioned how for many of us, we might have grown up with, or heard from well-meaning people, that being saved is only about what happens to your soul after you die. The idea of Christianity in that mentality becomes about believing and doing the right things to simply avoid eternal judgment. But this verse flips the script on what those people told us and we might have thought being saved was about.

Rather than it being about a hell to be avoided, this passage shows us that it was about an experience of salvation that had everything to do with what they did in this life and the community of grace, peace, and love to which they belonged. Being saved isn’t an isolated experience you have outside of the community, but one you have as you participate in it.

Now, this is such a significant shift that I want us to continue to look at it deeper this week. It is so significant for our own understandings about faith, but also an understanding we should have about what is being taught to us through this passage. In addition, this idea of salvation in the here and now was what Jesus taught. This isn’t a separate idea that came as the result of the church, but was the intention from the very beginning. We see this in the words of Jesus, particularly as he taught his followers how to pray.

Matthew 6:9-13

9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’

This doesn’t sound like a prayer you’d teach to people if you want them to only focus on what happens to them after they die. This sounds like a people praying for their lives to be changed right here and right now. Our world is defined by words like selfishness, greed, and unforgiveness. This sounds like a prayer to be defined by a new way of living—full of trust, peace, and love. And don’t miss how this is framed as God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. This is about praying for God’s kingdom to come and for the goodness of heaven to be experienced today. Jesus taught this in another place in Luke 17:20-21.

Luke 17:20-21

20 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

N.T. Wright, a pastor and theologian, reflected on these words, and other places Jesus talked about this, and had this to say in his book Surprised By Hope: God’s kingdom in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming “on earth as it is in heaven.” The roots of the misunderstanding go very deep, not least into the residual Platonism that has infected whole swaths of Christian thinking and has misled people into supposing that Christians are meant to devalue this present world…”

When I read about the early church in Acts 2, I don’t read about a people who devalued their present world at all. It seems pretty obvious they took seriously the value of their lives and the lives of their neighbors and, as a result, they loved each other through radical, eternity-based, now-focused, living centered on the way of Jesus.

Let’s close this with a statement we used to open this conversation: It should give us a long pause that some of the experiences that people have had with church have caused them to want to be saved from it instead of saved in it.

And if that stings, we should take a long look at our disappointment about that and ask what we’re doing to tell a very different story and paint a very different picture. And, friends, we don’t have to look hard for our muse. The early church shows us the beauty and wonder of real authentic life-sharing community we all desire. And how they got there wasn’t mysterious. They prayed Jesus’s prayer for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

They didn’t pray to go to heaven, they prayed for heaven to come to them and through them. They didn’t look at the world with contempt or judgment, but lived in it with a fullness the world had never seen. And they didn’t look at suffering as God’s absence or judgment, but as an invitation to be the hands of a loving God to a hurting world. What would happen in the church if we dared pray the same dangerous prayer. Let’s find out.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from the evil one.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Ryan Carrell 6/24/24 Ryan Carrell 6/24/24

I Like Jesus. I’m Not Sure About Church - Week 1

Ryan Scott Carrell - June 23, 2024

Many people say church is boring, irrelevant, hypocritical, and judgmental. The Southeast Project is striving to create a different kind of church; one people will call exciting, authentic, life-changing, and impactful. Come join us on Sundays…as we [begin] redefining church.

Those words are from a postcard we sent out almost twelve years ago when our family joined up with some friends to start a new church here. Our goal wasn't to start just another church. There were then, and are now, already a lot of churches. What we felt compelled to do was redefine the word church which had become defined by words like irrelevance, hypocrisy, and judgment. That goal, and church redefined by words like love, family, and community, remain what drives our mission as a family and as a church. Now, as we’ve grown and developed as a church for the past decade we’ve discovered new language that has helped us live this mission out. We say things around here like if it’s not good news for everyone, it’s not good news for anyone. We articulate our mission by focusing on loving God, loving others, and bringing life to our community. And we’ve made it a point that everyone is at a different place in their journey, everyone has something big going on, and it’s more than okay to ask hard questions and not seek easy answers. We’ve become a church known for leaning into the tension and taking scholarship seriously, as we seek to reconcile an ancient faith in a modern world. I don’t say all that to brag about what we’ve done but to say thank you for being a people and place where a vision of creating a different kind of church has been able to flourish. Thank you for being a place where people who didn’t know they could belong, do belong. Thank you for giving our kids, our students, and our young adults, a picture of what the church can be. I don’t ever consider pastoring another church community because I’m home right here and there isn’t another group of people anywhere in the world with whom I’d rather explore the way of Jesus. Yet my experience, and maybe your experience by being a part of this place, is not the experience of many of our neighbors when it comes to church.

In the past decade, due to scandals, appalling political allegiances, and egregious hypocrisy, the idea of church, for many people, is not something they’d even consider. So, on my summer sabbatical, I processed this reality, along with the over decade-plus of ministry I’ve had here. And the conclusion I kept coming back to is that our mission and our vision are more relevant today, right now than the day we started. We have to strive to be a different kind of church. But to keep our eyes focused forward on that we have to look back.

Acts 2:42-47

A temptation I have as a leader, and for us as a church, is to look back at the last decade and ask how we got here. But we’d miss the point. I’ve made more mistakes than I’d probably like to admit. It’s okay because you can’t succeed if you don’t try. But the times we have done the right things, the things that showed us how beautiful church can be, had nothing to do with great ideas we’ve had. It’s the times our actions lined up with the words we find in this passage. It’s the times the church acted like the church.

We’re going to walk slowly through them over the next few weeks because I want us to be very purposeful about the ancient context and modern implications. I think what we will discover along the way is a way of being that helps us to live out the mission and vision we have that is so relevant today. But I want us to focus today on the final verse of this passage.

Acts 2:47

47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Now, if you’ve been around church for very long, or had any positive or negative experience with Christianity, you’ve heard the word saved. And, for some people maybe it’s obvious enough to just skip over and move on, but I can’t help but pause here because it’s how my brain works. I’m wired to be curious and ask questions. If we’re all honest, we’re all a little like that in our own way. Sometimes, we’re too embarrassed to ask because we think we’re supposed to know something that seems like everyone else is clear about. So, let me be the one to break the ice. Let me be the one to ask the question implied in this verse.

What does it mean to be saved?

The author of the book of Acts tells us that every day, people became a part of this new community of followers of the way of Jesus. But the author doesn’t say that they became members like some kind of Jesus fan club. Instead, they used a word here, the Greek word σῴζω, that means rescued, or saved. And it’s okay to ask the obvious questions. Who saved them and what/where are they saved from?

These questions are important because we can make all kinds of theological assumptions based on this idea of being saved. And how we understand being saved impacts the way we experience and share the good news. And why this matters is because if we’re not careful, what we can end up sharing with the world isn’t good news at all.

The anti-good news, a twisted theological story, is turn or burn. If you don’t have exactly the right beliefs the eternal torment of hell awaits. The problem with this theology is that the Bible doesn’t line up with this idea at all. When Jesus talked about hell he referred to an actual place, a valley that people thought of as cursed, where even the presence of God couldn’t be found. And, that’s possible.

We all have the ability for our lives to look like a place of suffering—void of the grace, mercy, and love of God. And we’ve all seen this when our lives go down the selfish path of greed, hate, and any -ism you can think of. But there was a better way to live.

Acts 2:42-46

Those beautiful words that describe the early church should inspire all of us to the reality of what’s possible—a way of living that captivated the onlookers in the first century.

Acts 2:47

47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

The early church didn’t run around telling everyone they were going to hell because they were too busy showing the world a glimpse of heaven. They didn’t need to exclude anyone, because they were too busy including everyone. And, they didn’t need to condemn people to judgment, because they were too busy inviting them into grace. And this came from a belief they had about Jesus.

John 3:16-17

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

This passage also speaks about an actual place—your life in the here and now. The way of Jesus leads us away from the lonely valley of Gehenna and into the loving arms of God, lived out in community, where we discover a life of mercy, grace, and love. That’s the kind of church I want to belong to and the kind of church we continue to strive to be.