A Community of the Table

May 6, 2012

Acts 8:26-40

As we’re doing often these days, I want to begin with a question – another deceptively simple-sounding one: outside of Sunday-morning worship, what do we do together, as Clarendon Presbyterian, that feels like church to you?

*****

Last week we talked about the centrality of love in defining the community of the church. I bring that up here – and will do so regularly until Pentecost – to underscore that while many aspects of this thing we call “church” are negotiable and maybe even up for grabs, that one is not. We are, we must be, known for how we love one another.

That was the identity of the people of the way in Acts. They were first noticed by outsiders who said, simply, “see how they love one another.”

It’s important to remind ourselves of that, because so much else is up for grabs, and I don’t mean just at Clarendon. So much is up for grabs in the broader church, and so much is up for grabs in the culture at large. To see how everything is up for grabs you need look no further than the questions that have pressed in on our own denomination for the past several decades: the authority of scripture; Christology; ordination; marriage. Some of these same questions press in on the broader culture, and other similar ones – known collectively, and deceptively, as “social issues” – all getting at essentially the same thing: who is an insider and who is an outsider. The boundaries and borders that seemed settled and secure to our forebears are anything but in our age.

Critics of the liberal church often accuse us of accommodating the culture, of giving in to popular fads instead of standing fast and holding tight to eternal verities. Not to put too fine a spin on it, but the same charge was leveled at Jesus and his followers, and at the early church in Acts, so whether or not we’re right in the positions we’ve taken at least we’re in good company.

The strange little story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch is instructive here. Many versions of the Bible subhead this episode as “the conversion of the eunuch,” but one commentator I read last week suggested that the passage might better be called “the conversion of Phillip.”

Take that suggestion a step further, and we’re talking about the conversion of the church, itself. Like the institutional church as it struggles to relate well with those beyond its membership, Phillip no doubt encountered the eunuch with all kinds of preconceived notions about who this person was, what his status could be within the community of faith, and what rules or traditions marked out the boundaries of that community. But before the episode ends all of that will be turned on its head.

Contrary to what Phillip likely assumed, the eunuch knew scripture even if, like most of us, he didn’t fully comprehend it. If he’s reading Isaiah, as the story tells us, he’s almost undoubtedly also familiar with the Torah, the law, and, in that familiarity, he probably knows himself as an outsider. Specifically, I’m willing to bet that he knew Deuteronomy 23:1—“No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”

He knew that just like young gay and lesbian kids today know the word “abomination.” If you are marginalized or belittled you know the proof texts that are used to keep you down.

But the Spirit calls Phillip to sit with this man, this outsider, and just talk.

Have you heard of the “Out to Dinner” campaign? It’s a project started by Zach Wahls, the 20-year-old son of two moms whose testimony before the Iowa legislature was a viral sensation a while back. He’s asking people to do what the Spirit asked of Phillip: get together and talk, and do it over a shared meal.

Conversation is the beginning of conversion, and conversation over the breaking of bread is the best birthplace for such transformation. At our very best, as church, we model this. We gather around this table, we share the bread and cup, we talk with each other about the places in our lives that seem most up in the air, we love one another even when we don’t see those up-in-the-air things in the exact same way, and, in time, the Spirit works its transforming way with us.

There are a lot of communities of faith across the country and around the world right now who are turning the tables and the traditions, who are refining and redefining what it means to be church in a postmodern age. I think that in many of these places contemporary Phillips are encountering Ethiopian eunuchs of our age and a whole lot of converting and transformation and table turning and tradition tipping is going on.

None of them offer “off-the-shelf” models that we can simply employ in our context. In fact, paying particular attention to cultural context is one of the most important marks of emerging churches. In fact, that attention to context distinguishes the emerging church from the mid-20^th-century model of the Mainline Protestant church in America in which congregations were often seen as branch offices or franchise locations of the mother church.

There’s a little gathering in Brooklyn called St. Lydia’s. It’s only a couple of dozen folks most of the time, but they are experiencing transformation and expressing it with a reach that far exceeds their number. Their worship – the way they “do church” – involves gathering for a meal that they make together and share over Eucharistic prayers, songs, and conversation. That’s it. That’s church in their context, and folks are traveling to Brooklyn from all over the place just to see it.

We’ve talked about new models of ministry for years, we even named “being church for the new millennium” as a particular call of this congregation. We’ve actually been doing church in new ways – the ways you named as we began – for quite a while, but we’ve been trying to fit new wine into old wine skins, and now that skin is showing the strain.

Whatever model of ministry, of being church, we embrace in the next season of our life here, there are a couple of things that are clear, and that this story from Acts, along with the word from 1^st John remind us of: we will center our common life on this table, convinced that here we are fed, and from here we are sent out to feed others; we will understand that this table does not belong to us, it belongs to the one who welcomes us and who welcomes all, and so we will be like Phillip and embrace even those whom our own tradition has labeled outsider; and we will love one another, because love is from God and everyone – everyone – who loves is born of God and knows God.

Beloved, let us love one another. Let us come to Christ’s table in love.