Psalm 100

 I want you to imagine that you’ve just met someone new. Maybe its a student who was told that for a class they needed to interview someone like you. But first, they ask if they can follow you around for the day. You quickly agree. When it comes time at the end of the day for the interview, what questions do you think the student would ask? What do you think they would have noticed about you? And who or what would they say that you worship?

Because the unspoken truth is that all of us worship someone or something. In fact, worship is an action and attitude towards someone or something that we lift up. And what or who we worship says a whole lot about us, my friends. It can show folks what really in our hearts. What we value. What we desire. What we care about. It says what or who we think is worthy of praise.

Psalms were ancient poems set to music that were sung as part of a worship gathering. Think of them as an ancient hymn, where every word matters. I once had someone tell me that we need to sing every verse of hymns because it tells us some truth about God. And that person is right. We need to examine all of the words, together, to understand what the psalmist is trying to say.

Sometimes we find important words about the Psalms before we even get into the text of the Psalm itself.  Take today’s Psalm for example. What is written between “Psalm 100” and “Shout for joy to the Lord” - A psalm. For giving grateful praise.

The Psalmist wants us to know that this is a psalm about lifting up high God’s name. And then he goes on to put a really fine point on what worship is about. Worship is about shouting for joy. Coming to God in gladness. Knowing that the Lord is God. Thanking God and praising his name. Telling of God’s faithfulness.

But just as important as what worship isn’t about. Song writer and musician Chris Tomlin writes in one of his songs that “You and I are made to worship” but that doesn’t mean that worship is about us. It’s not about hearing our favorite song. Or seeing our friends. Or even to get something out of the sermon. We come together as the people of God to praise God alone. 

And the Psalmist says, we don’t just do that out of obligation. That can suck the joy and passion right out of our experience together. Worship is where we come together, and echo the words of psalm 100: “We shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth! Worship the Lord with gladness; come before the Lord with song.” When we come together there is a method to how we do things, called liturgy, and each part of the liturgy from the prelude to the benediction has a purpose. But when we get so set is how we do things, instead of why we do them, we’ve missed the point.

John Wesley was known for preaching in a variety of places, most notably outdoors. But John was raised to be an Anglican priest. He knew the liturgy and wanted people to be part of the Anglican church. He started the Methodists as a revival movement for the church, not its own entity. But along the way he had to adapt to doing things differently, to meeting the needs of the people, even if it wasn’t his choice, so that people who did not yet know Christ could connect with him deeply.

Friends, does that mean that worship doesn’t transform us? By no means! But what God offers us in worship is not the primary reason we come together to praise God in the first place. Bishop Schanse writes in a book about the five practices of a vital congregation that , “God uses worship to transform lives, heal wounded souls, renew hope, shape decisions, provoke change, inspire compassion, and bind people to one another.” But we do not come to worship demanding that from out. Another way to say this is that we do not give our praise to God in a conditional way - saying God, I’ll sing your praises, but only if you do this for me first. No. We come praise God because we are devoted to God.

In fact, it is because we praise God out of this place of devotion, that we can tell of God’s goodness and faithfulness, even when things aren’t going well. How on earth can we praise God when life hurts? Because God is still God. When we praise God for his steadfast love - that isn’t love that’s just present in the moments of joy and ease. God is holding on to us just as tightly when life feels like a mess. God is always worthy of honor and praise.

The problem, friends, is that we live a world where we now worship and praise everything. I’ve shared with you before that I struggle with the word “love” in the English language because we say that we love God and love ice cream in the same breath. It’s like that with our praise as well. We sing the praises of a team or a TV show, just as much as we sing the praises of our holy God. 

Praise should be reserved for God and it should change us. It reorients our hearts towards God in a way that makes us want to serve him and him alone. If praise of God realigns our hearts with the heart of God, it should leave nothing about us untouched. It will impact how we work at our job and how we treat our spouse. How we talk to our friends and how we talk to strangers in the grocery store. 

Now does that means we always get it right? Nope. We are humans. Our hearts stray. We do slip into praising other people and things. In fact, Augustine, who was a Bishop in the early church, famously said we love the things we ought to use and use the things we ought to love. We could just as easily say that we praise that which is meant to be used and use the God we are to be praising. 

Ouch.

But that’s why we need Psalms like this one. Psalms that have been passed down through the ages. Psalms that our Lord and Savior would have sung at the synagogue. They call us to truly remember what it means to praise our God. 

I want to go back to my odd example from the beginning of the sermon, but instead of interviewing you, the student simply observed you for a day and then had to make a list of what or who they thought you worshipped. Where do you think God would be on that list? 

Let that sink in for a moment.

Because it is really easy to say that of course we praise and worship God alone, but do our lives really show that? Has praising God so deeply changed us that people notice? Because here’s the second part of the truth that we all worship someone or something - what or who we worship says a lot about us as the worship. 

So my friends, where would God be on your list? What do we praise above God? What would other says is the focus of our time, our attention and our worship? Let us pray that God helps us always praise him and him alone. Amen. 

“Pentecost” Acts 2:1- 4; Galatians 4:1-7

 Happy Birthday! Have you ever been a restaurant when the waiters come out bearing some sort of tasty desert, and start to sing a rendition of “Happy Birthday!” It seems like all heads in the restaurant snap towards the table where the action is taking place. We know what the song Happy Birthday means - that there is someone who is celebrating!

Today is our day of such celebration in the local church. We are celebrating the day, over 2,00 years ago, when the church was born. We tell anew the story of rushing winds and tongues of fire. We tell the story of how the Good News went far and wide all for the sake of this new things that God was doing. Or rather this ancient thing, redeeming the people of God, in a new way. 

Over the past year I have heard folks bemoan the fact that we could not gather in person to worship together. And I get it. It is good when the people of God gather together. But what I didn’t agree with as much was that it would kill the church. Friends, the pandemic may hinder local churches - making them examine if they are raising up faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. It may have made them examine their own giving practices and what God’s Words says about tithing. It may have even led to some local churches to close their doors, but hear me - part of what we celebrate on the day of Pentecost is that the church will not die. The church of God continues on with the same mission as the day that it was formed - to proclaim Jesus Christ crucified and to see hearts and lives being changed. That is unstoppable. The Holy Spirit is unstoppable. The real question is if we are willing to follow.

Which is part of the trouble with the day of Pentecost is it not? We want the cake to celebrate the birthday of the church - to sing the songs, but we don’t remember the story of the church’s birth. At least not in entirety.

For where were the disciples on this day? Hiding out behind locked doors. They were afraid. Afraid because of what had happened not all that long ago when they watched Jesus be arrested and ultimately crucified. Afraid because their were rumors going around that one of them had stolen Jesus’s body to make it appear like he had risen. And probably a little afraid because they had watched Jesus ascend back into heaven, leaving them alone again. 

But out of this crucible of fear, when they were all gathered together in one place, the Spirit of God came upon them and proclaimed that this is the day when I am doing a new thing. We try to make this like a gentle wind, but friends that is not what God’s word says. It says that the Holy Spirit came upon them like a violent wind that filled the whole house. You couldn’t miss it. Just like you can’t miss the pains and cries that accompany a child being born into this world. It was unmistakable. And it was unstoppable.

Just when the disciples are probably looking around trying to figure out who left the window open and what storm was coming upon the land that would cause such wind, tongues of fire appear over their head. Now, I grew up with Sunday school papers up until 3rd grade. And there are some where I can still remember the covers of them - this is one of those. People had little bits of fire over their head and they were smiling. 

Friends, I doubt that the disciples were serenely smiling when they saw these tongues of fire. No, they were probably even more afraid. Then they started to speak in different languages. Languages that were not their native tongue, but which equipped them to go and tell other people, some far away ads one right outside of their door, about the power of Jesus Christ.

What broke loose that day of Pentecost was a holy moment, a moment where God created of the chaos. Where God took the fear that cause folks to hide and declared that I’m sending you out to do new a thing. If only you would follow me.

So what does that story have to do with Paul and his letter to the Galatians? Everything, my friends. Paul did not have the Gospels written down for him to carry from place to place as he was preaching the Good News. He certainly didn’t have the book of Acts, the companion to the Gospel of Luke, because he was living it. 

This day of Pentecost and God’s declaring a new thing made it possible for Paul to be covered and for his to be sent by God to the Gentiles with the Good News that this message and mission of Jesus Christ was for them, too. That God took the old way of the law and said that this - this was only a boundary that you could not even live into. But now, I have sent at just the right time, my very Son, to give his life up for the Jews and for you. In fact, he has given his life up for whoever may believe. And through this new thing - redemption has come. Grace is real. And grace came in the flesh in Jesus. 

Because of Pentecost, Paul was sent out to these people who thought they needed to be part of a religion before in order to be a child of God. And it is to these particular folks that Paul says, no God’s grace knows no bounds. We are now living into the reality of the fullness of the redemption of God.

Now was everyone on board with the new thing? No. We’ve heard over the last few weeks how well meaning Jews tried to tell the Gentiles that Paul was wrong and how Paul was’t having any of that - because all it did was sell short the grace and redemption of the Savior. 

The day of Pentecost came, and with the brith of the Church and all that follow, we were able to say that our primary identify was begin a follower of the Savior. 

So, friends, I do not believe that the church will ever die. I believe that we are part of the plan of God for the salvation of the world. Now, the day may come when there are fewer of us, just a rementant, but I will say it again - God will never let the church die. For we are the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood, with a purpose to tell of the grace of God.

The uncontainable grace of God.

The unstoppable grace of God.

The grace of God that has worked throughout thousands of years. 

The grace of God that isn’t stopped by church doors being shuttered or by a pandemic.

The grace of God that once again said, I am doing a new thing, and people came to know Jesus because we were outside of our buildings, living into what it means to be a follower of Christ.

So this day of Pentecost, is not just a day to sing “Happy Birthday” to the church. It is a day to proclaim the faithfulness of God, who did a  new thing so that we can be here today. I wonder what new thing God will continue to do to make people aware of the gift of grace and call them to respond? And are we willing to do whatever it takes to be part of the movement of the Holy Spirit? Amen. 

“One in Christ" Galatians 3:1-9, 23-29

 “Who are you?” It’s a question we get asked a lot. And there are as many ways to answer as there are time we have been asked this question. We can say our name. Our occupation. Our relationship to other people in our family. We can say how old we are. Where we are from and where we live now. We can talk about our politics. We can talk about our hobbies. But all of those are only pieces of who we are and they pale in comparison to our true identity - our identity in Christ.

But all of those other identities - they are really hard to shake, friends. 

Sometimes its because we don’t want to shake them. Many of them are good pieces of who we are. But when they become more important to us than who we are in Christ - that can quickly become a problem.

But we are not alone in that struggle. The Galatians are right there with us! AND they heard about Jesus directly from Paul. But then other people started to tell them that Paul wasn’t right. Or at least not fully. And now the Galatians are starting to doubt who they are.

So Paul’s harsh words are trying to catch their attention. To remind them who they are. To remind them who they belong to. To remind them that their identity in Jesus isn’t something to be shed or set aside, but instead is the entirety of who they are.

In many ways its hard for us to understand exactly what is going on here, because the idea of Gentile or Jew is not something we talk about very much today. But back in Paul’s day in was the defining moral divider amongst people. Are you a person of the Abrahamic covenant or not? 

Or for the people in Galatia - Does a Gentile need to become a Jew or like a Jew in order to be Christian? This was the question of all questions for people in the early church. All other moral issues were secondary to them. Because if you couldn’t answer this question, then you may not know exactly who you are anymore.

And when you have these questions that bear so much weight, people were become testy and forming sides. On one side, you had folks who said of course anyone who is Gentile needs to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. Jesus was a Jew, so therefore his followers should be as well. 

Folks on this side of the argument recall how Abraham was blessed by God with this covenant - an eternal covenant - for all of his descendants. So if we move away from the law that was an expression of this covenant then we would be saying that God breaks promises. Which is not true. Therefore, people need to be Jewish in order to be part of the covenant - they cannot be Gentile and belong to God. 

On the other side, you had some folks who tried to reconcile this breaking promise debacle by saying okay, you don’t need to be fully Jewish, but you also can’t be fully Gentile. We are going to pick out what we believe to be the most important parts of the law and bind you to those as well. They are trying to play the part of the middle, and as a result no one was happy.

Then you had Paul. Paul who said if you hold folks to any part of the law of old you’ve missed the whole point about Jesus’s coming. Yes, there was a reason for the law, but Christ has formed a new covenant that is not dependent upon us or how well we can uphold the law in our humanness. It’s about Christ’s faithfulness. And when you start to make it about the law, even a little bit, it undermines the Gospel. 

Tied up in this moral question of the time was also theology - what does it say about God and what do we believe? Do we truly believe that Christ changed everything? Do we believe that the Gospel is Good News to all people? Do we believe that God can extended and expand promises? 

Paul is saying, yes the law once existed to remind people of the covenant and to reveal God to folks, but now we have seen the very Son of God - Emmanuel - God with us in the flesh in Jesus. And that was so radical that it changed the course of history and the covenant in a way that broke it open to all who would believe. 

So the question is wrong. It’s no longer a question about if you need to be Jewish to be Christian or if you are tied to theAbrahamic covenant. The question now is - are you clothed in Christ. 

Friends, no other part of our identity matter as much as being a follower of Jesus. And just like there were folks long ago who confused the people in Galatia around this fact, there are good, well-meaning people today who want you to tie your identity with them more than Christ. Because we are getting the question wrong. So I ask you the question today that Paul posed to the Galatians - have you been clothed in Christ and does your identity lie in him?

When we answer that question “yes”, then everything else changes as well. We aren’t left to be a lone-ranger of the faith, trying to figure it out on our own. No, we become part of the body of Christ, the Church, something that is bigger than ourselves. We become grafted into this movement of sharing the Good News of the Kingdom of God that has went far and wide thought the ages. We become new in our identity and new in our mission as the people of God.

Which leads to another, perhaps even harder question, do we live this way? Do we live as if we are one together in body of Christ? Do we live as if we are bound together? Or are we still trying to separate people into categories - making it “us” vs. “them”.

Because of Paul that just isn’t going to fly in the body of Christ. It means we don’t understand what it means to have our faith in Jesus be the central part of who we are. And it means that we don’t understand what it means to be a new creation in Christ.

So I ask you this morning, children of God, who are you? What is your primary identity? What flows out of your heart and life? If people around you knew who you were about what you talked about most, what would they say? 

And if your answer isn’t “a follower of Christ” then perhaps today is your day. Your opportunity to become new in and through Christ Jesus. Or your opportunity to lie down those other identities and be clothed in Christ alone. 

So I ask you one more time - who are you? Amen. 

“Living by Faith” Galatians 1:13-17; 2:11-21

 Different place. Same Paul. We spent a chunk of time in 2020 exploring together some of Paul’s writings, chiefly his letter to the church in Corinth. We talked about how the church was deeply struggling to figure out what it means to be the body of Christ and Paul was getting upset by how they were treating one another.

Now we are traveling with Paul to another community - Galatia - and he is upset again, but this time its not with the people in that particular community, its with Peter.

Paul thought that he and Peter and the other leaders in Jerusalem had an understanding. New gentile coverts did not need to become Jewish in order to be a believer in Christ. We just talked about this a few weeks ago. But apparently Peter had started to feel quite a bit of pressure from other people about what exactly gentiles did have to do in order to be like them, a follower of Jesus, and he started to cave. And now Paul is fuming.

So Paul pens this letter to the Galatians hoping to clear up any confusion they may be experiencing. And in order to get them to understand what Paul is going to say, he has to remind them of who he is. He was someone who was working his way through the religious hierarchy. He was advancing, but God interrupted all of that with a different plan. One that God had in mind since Paul’s birth - even if he had no idea - to take the Good News to the gentiles, like those in Galatia and beyond. Jesus showed up, struck him blind, and did a mighty work in his life to make this call known, and now there is no going back.

Which seems to be Paul’s big gripe with Peter - he’s going back. Back to what he knows. Back to claiming that the law is good and a necessary part of salvation. And Paul is having none of it.

Paul is saying there can be no buts or ands when it comes to the salvation of Jesus Christ. You can’t say that you are saved by grace and the law. Or that God’s good news is for all but you need to become Jewish in order to truly accept it. No, Paul is saying that we are not converted or changed or called by the law - but by Christ alone. So we need to figure out what that actually means. 

When I lead pre-martial counseling, one of the things that I tell couples is that if you are entering into this marriage thinking that you are going to change your finance when they become your spouse, you need to stop and take time to examine that thought. Because we cannot change other people. Yet, that seems to be how Paul is portraying Peter’s process - if people come to know Jesus then we can change them into good Jews.

But for Paul, the only person who can change anyone is Jesus Christ, and he isn’t looking for people to become good Jewish people. Honestly, Jesus isn’t even looking for us to become good Christina people - because Christ wasn’t looking to form a religion. Instead, he is looking for people to be changed in heart and soul and mind, so that they can follow him and be part of proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God. 

And friends, we still struggle with all of this today.

It’s how we arrived at the belief that people need to be good before they can enter a church. And that they need to enter a church before they come to know Christ. 

How many of you have ever had someone say to you that they can’t come to worship because the church would come tumbling down?  While folks are trying to brush it off in a funny way, they are really saying that I don’t have it all together to be a part of you. Because somehow we have conveyed the fact that as followers of Christ we have it all together, when really we are broken people who have been set free by Christ’s gift. 

And because we have been set free, Paul says that we live by faith. 

And we get confused by this as well. 

After you have been part of a church community for a while, we just start throwing around these words, some of which Paul lifts up in today’s scripture passage, but in reality, we may not even fully understand what they mean. But we don’t stop and ask or unpack them, because we assume that everyone else already knows or are on the same page. As a result, we have this weighty words that have lost their meaning because we have never claimed their power.

Case in point - faith. Paul isn’t super clear here about what he means by faith. But he is clear why we can have faith - because we have been liberated by the love of Christ. Faith is what replaces sin as that which propels us forward everyday. 

For Paul, faith is the priority because it points us to the Good News of Jesus. And he’s upset with Peter because it seems like he is replacing faith is customs and codes - a list of dos and don’ts, instead of talking about the life changing nature of grace.

I once had a teacher who asked us what it means to be a follower of Jesus. A few folks started by talking about doctrine - beliefs about Christ. And the teacher stopped them and said, that’s what you believe, I’m asking who you are. Then some other folks started in with the dos and don’ts of Christian behavior. And once again she stopped them and said that’s how you act, I’m asking who you are in Christ.

It went on like this for a while until we got down to the fact that it’s about Jesus. Never Jesus and something else. In terms of today’s scripture lesson, Paul would say, like my teacher to Peter, it can’t be Jesus and the law. It’s just Jesus.

If we haven’t figured this out in our own lives as followers of Jesus is it any wonder that other folks think its more about belief or actions than Christ. Because often we talk a lot more about the do’s and don’ts then the fact that Christ died for us. Period.

Paul is trying to say to Peter, and the Galatians by extension, please stop confusing folks. You can’t have it both ways. And I’m always going to choose grace. I’m going to choose pointing the Gospel of grace and why it is good news. I’m going to point to the fact that my life bears witness to the fact that I’ve been set free in order to follow this call Jesus put on my life. How about you? What do you choose Peter? What are you standing upon?

In many ways that is the same question for us today, is it not? What do we choose? What do we stand upon? Is it our behavior? Or our beliefs? Or is it Jesus? And what are we communicating with other people? Because, as Paul reminds us, this Jesus movement - isn’t about us. It’s about him. But by his grace he is calling us to be a part of it. Are we willing to be set free to be a follower of Christ alone. Amen. 

“Council at Jerusalem” Acts 15:1-18

 If I asked you what the most important beliefs are for Christians, I bet you could rattle a whole list off. And I asked you how a Christian should or shouldn’t act, I bet you could make a whole list of those things as well. But I have a secret to tell you, I bet if we all compared our lists, they wouldn’t be identical. 

There’s a saying that most preachers have a handful of topics that they preach on one way or another again and again and again. Friends, fair warning, this is one of those topics for me. We can all be faithful, passionate believers and not agree about absolutely everything about the faith. 

Case in point - the early church. 

Often people herald the Book of Acts as being the eptiome of what the church today should be. They lift up all of the folks being saved and new churches being planted and say “we should go back to Acts again.” Except in doing so, there tends to be a very selective reading of the Book of Acts that cuts out all of the hard parts. 

I shared with you a few weeks ago one of those hard parts - the believers from different regions arguing about whose widows were being treated better. Now today, it is the leaders of the church who are having a pretty significant disagreement - this time about circumcision. 

Paul had previously been sent out with the blessings of the church of Jerusalem to go and take the Good News to the gentiles. It was Paul’s call upon his life that he received from the resurrected Christ along the road to Demascus. At that time, the church in Jerusalem, was sort of like the central hub, with James being the most influential leader, even if we hear about Peter a bit more.

So Paul has went and done what he was commissioned to do. Spread the Good News. Form communities of faith. Teach and preach about Jesus. And he had wide success. While he didn’t limit his sharing of the Gospel to just gentiles, going to synagogues to teach to the Jews as well, by this point he has helped several new faith communities be birthed into being that are chiefly composed of gentiles - or non-Jewish people.

Now he is back in Jerusalem and there is a snag. A disagreement. People were going to the folks Paul had taught about the faith and saying that they weren’t really believers unless they are circumcised. 

A few months back, while working our way through the book of Genesis, I started to read circumsion in a different way. We may have heard before that it was a sign of the covenant, this outward action that confirmed God’s promise through Abraham, but all I could find myself thinking was what trust! Sure, Abraham had to trust God to have circumsion performed on his body, but everyone else must have deeply trusted Abraham. His countless male servants who were all circumsied by Abraham’s hand. His son, Ishmael, who by no means was a little boy at this point. And Sarah. Could you image that conversation when Abraham got back from this holy and profound experience with God? So God told me to cut off the foreskin of every male as a sign of God’s promise. Yet, it would seem that everyone was willing to follow Abraham’s lead, because they knew him and trusted him.

Now here are these folks essentially going and stirring up discontent with these new believers. Folks that the new Christians don’t have a relationship with, that is ultimately confusing them and has the potential to harm their relationship with Paul.

So now Paul got into a “sharp disagreement” along with Barnabas with these folks who are teaching these new things and confusing the new believers. Then they packed their bags and headed to Jerusalem to have it out with e the church there, this central hub of teaching about the faith. 

In some ways it would be really easy to try to make this disagreement too simple. On one hand, you have these folks who are about tradition. And what tradition is that? There tradition - the tradition of Moses. Up until this point, Christianity wasn’t really a different religion so much as a different part or teaching or sect of Judaism. So the traditionalists are saying of course you need to be circumsised. You can’t be Jewish if you aren’t circumsized and if you aren’t Jewish you can’t be a follower of Jesus.

On the other side of this simplistic understanding would be the people who are trying to take the Good News to a new group of people, to raise up disciples of Jesus in an inovative way. This would be where Paul and Barnabas would fall.

But here’s the thing - if we just look at the simplistic understanding we miss the fact that the early church already had this disagreement. Back in Acts, chapter 11, with one of their own. Peter had this vision from God about what was clean versus unclean that led to him going into the house of a Gentile and baptizing him. When Peter was called to account some of these same folks ended up saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

So the argument isn’t really about the thing it seems to be about. It isn’t about who is traditional vs. innovative. It isn’t about who follows what laws and who doesn’t. It about something bigger under the surface. The thing beyond the thing.

You know what I mean, don’t you? Have you ever found yourself in an argument with someone about one thing, only to find that it is really about this complete other thing. Sometimes we can name that thing, and other times we can’t, but it is the true thing we are disagreeing about.

And for Paul and the church in Jerusalem, that thing, is who belongs. Who gets to be part of this Jesus movement that has now exploded beyond the first disciples. Who is welcome in the family of God?

And friends, we are still here 2,000 years later having different versions of that same argument. Who belongs in the family of God. Who are the folks who we break bread with, and not just any bread, but the bread around the communion table. Who are the people who bear the same name as us, Christian, even if we don’t agree with them on everything? 

The folks at that discussion that day were able to break it down to what was the most important thing - the grace of the Lord Jesus that saves us. The most essential thing. 

There is this quote that is often mis-attributed to John Wesley, but is still wise, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” In other words, what is the most essential thing? The grace of Jesus Christ. The life-saving, life-changing grace of Jesus Christ. 

And what do we do with all the rest? Well the early church said, we don’t need to put the burden of some of these other things on the gentile believers, they don’t have to be Jewish, they don’t have to be like us in order to be a believer. So circumcision isn’t one of those most important things. But here is a list of what is. A really short list. 

Friends, we don’t need to go back to the book of Acts in order to be the church, but we can learn what it means to be the church, even when we disagree, from the people in the book of Acts. What might God be speaking to us today, in and through them? Amen.