A Sermon on Acts 2: 37-47

St. James UMC Danville 8/23/26

J. Michael Smith, preacher

Every church has two facets:  the church as community and the church as institution.   The  institutional side of the church deals with buildings, finances, legalities, staff, including pastors, committees, programs, meetings, policies, its data and computers, its power struggles, its rules, gate keepers, calendars, official membership rolls, year-end reports.  The institutional side of the church finds ways to cash in on its denominational advantages and mitigate its denominational baggage.   Even small churches cannot escape the institutional necessities.  

Without its institutional dimension, a church would have no skeleton, no system, no reliability—no order—but only chaos.  The whole purpose of the institutional side of the church is to serve the other side of the church:  the communal side, the church as community.  But let’s face it, sometimes the church as institution can be all-consuming and exhausting and totally non-sensical.  Whenever we worry and fret and quarrel in the church, it is always over institutional issues.

What then is the communal side of the church, the church as community?  The communal church is on vivid display in the stories of Jesus interacting with both his disciples and the public.  Eating together, traveling together, praying together, singing together, mixing it up with the public and serving the public—together.  The communal church is seen in our scripture reading this morning.  We all have experienced the communal church—as well as the institutional church—whenever we experience small groups, growth in our thinking and skills, moments when scripture comes alive among us.  The church as community happens whenever we weep with those who weep—and the tears are real.  The church as community is when we sincerely rejoice with those who rejoice.  The communal church is when we outdo one another in showing respect and honor.  The church as community has energy, synergy.

The two aspects of the church—institution and community —both necessary.  The trouble is that the communal side of the church is always at risk of being short changed and diminished by institutional issues:  institutional hubris, institutional power struggles, institutional ineptitude.   

When I was in seminary, studying to be a pastor, we were assigned textbooks pointing out that the three biblical models for a modern day pastor were prophet, priest, and king—and that we should learn all three roles if we wanted to be effective and successful pastors. 

I understood the prophet role, but it was a bit tricky for me, because when you are a prophet, you can’t just give people a piece of your mind—you have to confine yourself to sharing the mind of God with people—never tainting God’s messages with one’s own opinions.  The priest role seemed simple enough:  to take people’s concerns to God in prayer and then point out God’s presence among people in things, places, and people both holy and ordinary.  The king was the most luring of the three biblical models, for the king had power, and people praised the king.  Kings controlled institutional matters.  To be in seminary was to be a king or queen in waiting—for the congregations out there, the institutions hoping we would make them great again.  

There’s only one hitch.  And that’s a Bible story found in First Samuel.  Back in the days of old, when the people of ancient Israel had no king, for they were the Kingdom of God, and God alone was their king—back before they had no human king—they wanted one.  Everyone else had a king—they wanted one too.  They wanted the same kind of institution that the people up the road had.  (That church up the road?  That’s a good looking institution.  We’d like to look like that.)

At that time, Samuel was the Lord’s prophet.  And Samuel told the people that kings can get carried away—that if you’re not careful.  Institutions can quickly get to the point that they can do more harm than good.  Samuel explained:  A king will draft your sons and march them off to war and they won’t come back again.  A king will take your daughters and put them in his harem and make them his concubines.  A king will take your sheep and your goats and your cattle and name it taxation.  A king will confiscate your property and leave you powerless.  Institutions can get out of hand and overpower and subdue the sense of community that we cherish so much.  

But still, almost every church leader I’ve ever worked with, including myself, either secretly or openly developes an appetite for making the institutional side of the church look good.  And people judge the worth of a pastor by how well that person drives the church to the head of the competition. Back when so and so was here—we were really on top. 

I came out of seminary trained to be a prince of the church, knowing that if I did well, I would receive bigger and bigger churches.  I graduated from seminary and got sent down to Carmi, Illinois, to be the associate pastor of a large church.  I was hungry to make it larger. 

I’d only been at the church a few months when there was a house fire in town—an old couple had lost their home and everything they owned.  They weren’t members of our church—or as far as I knew, of any church.  And I thought to myself—this is an opportunity.  This is an opportunity for our institution.  If I can show them how nice I am—and I used to be pretty nice before I got old and cranky—if I can show them how nice I am—I could get my foot in the door.  If I played my cards right, maybe they would start coming to our church and tell other people, and our church would get bigger.  

So, I found out that the old couple was staying with their daughter, called ahead of time, showed up, introduced myself, and they invited me in, not very enthusiastically, but they invited me in, and offered me a cup of coffee.  I sat down at the kitchen table with them and like any polite young man, offered them my condolences.  I let them know that our church had lots of resources and asked if there was anything I could do for them. And, well…no, they couldn’t think of anything.  They seemed sad and almost catatonic.  And they weren’t at all gushing with the appreciation that I had expected from them.  They seemed depressed.  Now, I had learned counseling skills while I was in seminary.  So, I let them know that if they needed someone to talk to, that I was available.  I saw them look at each other, and then look at their daughter, and being a sharp young man, I realized that I was not connecting with them. The visit wasn’t going as I had expected it to.  I was starting to get stressed.  I knew I had to end the visit, but in one last desperate plea, I said, “Is there anything I can do for you?”  The woman took a sip of her coffee, and she said, “Well, we weren’t home at the time of the fire, but our cat was.  If you insist on doing something, you can get your shovel, go find the cat, and bury it.” 

Now, the seminary had not trained me to bury cats.  When you are a prince of the church, that’s for lesser people to do.  Back in the church, I had diplomas and degrees hung on the wall of my office.  I had a license to preach and ordination certificates.  I had hundreds of books, robes and stoles.  But I did not have a shovel.  When you become a pastor, they give you Bibles and titles to put before your name, but nobody gives you a shovel. 

So I borrowed a shovel from the church custodian, sifted through the ashes where the old couple had once lived, found the cat, dug a hole, covered up the carcass, and said a prayer—that no one but God could hear.    

Looking back through all these years, seeing myself standing there in that burned down home, with a shovel and a partially cremated cat—looking back, my mind was going in two opposite directions.  On one hand, I had become really addicted to my ambitions for the church as institution.  But on the other hand, I was disoriented with disillusionment.  The disillusionment had begun years before I had stepped into the ashes of that house.  My disillusionment with the institutional church had begun when I was in high school.  Back in high school I could see the hypocrisy of the institutional church, its questionable values, the ways the institutional church contradicted the teachings of Jesus.  And yet, I could see the need for the institution if the community I loved so much was to flourish—the need for the institution to be on its best, most efficient behavior.    

The communal church: people loving one another, enjoying one another, taking time to be together, always on the lookout to find one more person to invite into the circle.  Yearning to see the institution serve the community.  Disillusioned with the institution, with myself, with the people around me.    

When I was four years old, and my dad was the preacher up front and my mom had to take care of my two younger brothers—because the little church in Symerton had no nursery—an old farm couple had me sit between them during church.  And to keep me from talking while my dad was trying to preach, they would keep stuffing candy in my mouth.  And many Sundays they would invite our family to join them in their dining room for a huge Sunday dinner.  That experience was not the result of a children’s program, or a committee decision, or a policy, or anything the institution had arranged.  It was just the fruit of people not in a hurry, people taking the time to be their best and most gracious selves.

When I was ten, two churches later, I started going with my dad to the Wednesday night prayer meeting in the Dalton City church. Only a dozen people—all my grandparents age.  And they would always start out by singing some songs—the same songs, the same piano player hitting the same wrong note every week when we sang “Sweet Hour of Prayer.”  And they would pray—about half of them, taking turns.  And then they opened their Bibles and argue over what a word or a phrase might mean as they slowly worked their way through the gospel of John.  Very slowly.  When they argued, I could tell that they loved each other.  They were trying to help each other see the light.  Not like so many ugly church arguments I would hear later in churches.  This was not the institutional church.  This was the communal church—at its richest.  

I love the communal church.  I love the spiritual feel of a sanctuary.  I love mission trips, and potlucks.  I love the fellowship groups in the church, for all ages.  I love talking about the Bible together.  I love the way the church is there for people while life is happening—and how we show our love when someone is born, or when a couple is married, or when an individual is in distress, or when someone dies. Personally, I need the communal church.  I think you need the communal church.  I think our neighbors here in Danville need it. 

Community has fallen on hard times in our churches. In trying to protect each other through Covid, we suspended many of the things that make us a community.  And about half the people never came back—and we never restarted many of the communal aspects of being a church.  Political and lifestyle disagreements turned into fractious quarrels.  Technology and culture are creating glitter and opportunities all around us, and people are wandering away from our institution. And there is no time to slow down anymore so we can soak up community.  Even Sunday mornings—THE most special time for us to be community—is now a time for us to get in, get it done, and get out.  

But the fact that church as community has fallen on hard times shouldn’t scare us or discourage us.  Just as God’s Holy Spirit was being poured into those Christians on the Day of Pentecost, gathering them into community and breathing life into community, so God is still calling us, still gathering us this very moment, in this place—gathering us to community, breathing breath into the communal aspect of our church, opening up to us possibilities we have stopped imagining.

Just as the sun and the earth will never in our lifetimes stop working together to bring us a new day—day after day—so God’s Holy Spirit will never stop breathing on us, working in us and among us to recreate community among us—day by day.  

I don’t know what the next institutional church looks like.  I don’t know what institutional particularities lie ahead for St. James Church.  All I know is that the communal side of St. James is rising up, and we will make sure that we do all we can to rework the institutional side of this church—so it doesn’t get in the way of our communal resurrection.  So that the institutional side of our church becomes as simple, and strong, and supportive of the church as community as we can possibly make it.  

Community:  meals, enjoyment of music and the arts, friendships, sharing with the needy, pilgrimages, gathering together and letting scripture come alive in our midst, eliminating our grievances with grace, slowing down to be together, discovering gifts we have that can fill holes in each other’s lives, relieve burdens from our neighbor’s shoulders, restore vitality to our spirits.

In today’s scripture, people didn’t just unwittingly get swept into the communal experience that day.  Peter challenged the people in the sermon that came right before they gathered in this great communal moment.  Peter challenged people to start making changes in their lives.  He challenged them to start thinking more seriously about Jesus.  He challenged them to make a commitment to step off the treadmill they were on—and to slow down and put their hearts and their energy and their commitment into the communal church that was emerging. 

God is working among us.  We are already seeing it—whether we’ve been paying attention or not. The Holy Spirit is stirring among us.  We are about to see what we have been too timid and jaded to imagine—God breathing life into community.  As this happens, will you join me, work with me, spend time together?  Will you open your heart, your mind to the living Christ?  Will you join hands and hearts to be the church together?