“Committed Community”
It is essential to take the time to worship together
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, May 2, 2004
Text: Acts 2:1-4; 45-47
Nothing reveals more clearly our values, perspectives, reason for being and character than the way we use our time. How we use our time says more about us than the size of our bank accounts or the stature of our work or the largesse of our families or any other matter pertaining to our life. How we use our time suggests what we hold dear to our hearts, particularly because, since our lives are finite, what we do with the days we have been given determines our very being. We define who we are by how we use the days we have been given. I do not just mean minutes and hour or days and weeks, I mean all of the time we are given in this life is a precious thing, and how we use it defines who we are.
I think one of my favourite movies over the last decade or so is The Remains of the Day. This very touching and deeply moving movie is about Mr. Stevens, a butler in pre-World War Two England who is serving a master who turns out to be a Nazi collaborator. He has brought a Miss Kenton to join the staff. She works with Mr. Stevens and it becomes very evident that she has romantic feelings towards him. But he is so consumed with his duty, so blind to the anomalies of what's happening that he doesn't reciprocate her kindness. She herself is constrained in expressing her sentiments, and throughout the whole movie there is this tension because you know there is an affection between them, but it is never expressed.
When the movie is coming to an end, Miss Kenton is married and has moved elsewhere. Mr. Stevens is about to retire and has finally realized what his master had been doing and who he had been serving. You think this is going to be the moment where he finally expresses his love to her and she is going to divulge her love for him, but it doesn't happen. She gets on a bus and drives away as he stands watching. All that time together and they never expressed what was in their hearts. They never took the time to reveal their innermost secrets. They never took the time to love and to share and to care for each other. Rather, they were wrapped up in spending their time in service but not in expressing love. It seems at the end of The Remains of the Day that their time was lost.
Susan Ertz put it a little humourously about people who like to think about eternity, but never really get down to living. She said: “Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Ver often, my friends, we do not take the time that we have been given and use it in a constructive, meaningful, expressive way. Now, I realize that, philosophically, time is a difficult thing to define. Many have attempted to do it throughout the ages, but the problem is that what is past is over, and difficult to define. The future is not yet, so it is difficult to define. Even in the present, as soon as you have thought about it, it is over. To try to construct a philosophy around time is difficult. It's hard to nail it down and say that this is the time, right here, right now, and this is how we define it.
St. Augustine in his “Confessions” attempted to define time, particularly for Christians, in the light of God. He said that if we looked at time through the eyes of the eternal God we would recognize that God is the God of all time, spanning the past, present and future. When we think of the past, we think of recollection. When we think of the present, we think of responsibility. When we think of the future, we think of anticipation. But the point of reference for our whole conception of time should actually be God. Augustine argues that it is God who gives the meaning and the purpose of time and life. God is in Himself our being, and our very being, then, is defined by God. But our time is not just about our being, it's also about our becoming. Guidance about our usage of time should be sought through asking God what He wants us to do, for God is the one who spans all time.
It is God, therefore, who can look at the past and forgive us when we have not used our time properly. It is God who can point us, in the present, to be obedient to His will and purpose in the here and now. And, it is God who gives us hope for the future, insofar as we can anticipate that it is God who is going to do great things in our becoming. For Augustine then, our conception of time must be on the basis of God.
Now, I say all this as a prelude to looking at this morning's text. The apostles are gathered and they are not sure what to do with their time. Jesus has died and been resurrected and now they want to know what they are to do, what they are to become. There is a secret here, an insight into discipleship by how they responded to the situation, because what they do tells us a great deal about how we should use our time.
It is abundantly clear from the Book of Acts that the disciples spent their time together. Now, this is critical. Before Pentecost, in the upper room, Luke tells us that they were all together in one accord, and once the Holy Spirit had come upon them, we read that together they worshipped God in the synagogue, the temple, that together they shared their belongings and supported one another. In other words, there was a deep sense of commitment to a community, a deep sense of gathering together. Then the God of time was able to use them in time and to fill them, in time.
So what does this say to us today? Well, I think it speaks with power and clarity, particularly to those who are becoming members of this church today, but also to all of us, about the need to take time for God. The famous phrase carpe diem says it all: We need to “seize the day.” We need to take opportunities that we are given to be together to worship God. If you look at the ministry of Jesus, you can see that being together was a critical part of His ministry. He called, for example, 12 disciples to gather around Him. He knew that on His own He couldn't carry out the will of the Father. He knew that His own ministry required discipleship.
On another occasion, in Matthew 18:20, Jesus said: “Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” This was a radical statement, for in Jesus' time it required 10 people to make up a synagogue. It took 10 people to come together before there could be worship. Jesus is saying, “Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them. I will promise them the gift and power of worship and my presence.” But again, not just as solitary individuals. Not just me and my God, but two or more. For Jesus understood the power of the Spirit occurs in community. The power of the Spirit is given when people join together - that's how important community is.
We live in what is known as a 24-7 world. I understand that time constraints and demands on everybody's life are greater than ever before. Work and family and the commitments to good causes are tremendous, and you can't get away from that. I read a lovely story about a woman and her family who wanted to get away from the rat race, so they bought a farm in a rural community. They moved there to get away from all the stress, all the rushing. One day, one of their neighbours dropped in, being neighbourly, to spend the morning. As they were sitting together in the kitchen, the neighbour looked at the refrigerator and saw this poem and commented on it: “That's a lovely poem that you have there. What's it called?”
And the woman said: “This sums up everything about us. It really is a prayer: 'Lord help me to take more time with you...' But I'm afraid I haven't had time to read the rest of it.”
You can't run away from yourselves. You can't run away from the world. It's a 24-7 world, and it demands a lot of our time. But we need to take time to be with God. We need to take time to be with our neighbours.
In October 1993, there was a fascinating article in The Boston Globe about a woman who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts. She had many wonderful friends and neighbours. When her grass grew, they mowed her lawn, when her sprinkler pipe burst, they fixed it, when fliers were left all over her front porch and walkway, they picked them up. They were wonderful neighbours. One day, however, a metre reader realized that there had been no recorded metre reading for four years. He went in and found her skeleton in the bedroom. She had been dead for four years and her neighbours had never noticed.
One of her neighbours commented, “I don't think we are a particularly kind neighbourhood.” It's amazing - people can be rushing all over the place, even doing good but we miss something - we miss people, we miss the important things, the purpose of time. Not only do we need to take time, but we also need to take time out.
Yesterday afternoon I was watching the hockey game between the Calgary Flames and the Detroit Red Wings. It was a great game. Calgary won, praise the Lord. It was one-nothing with about a minute to go and I was sitting on the edge of my seat, when the Detroit coach took a time out and got all his players together. Knowing I was going to be preaching this sermon, so my antennae were up, I watched the eyes of Shanahan and all the other players. I have never seen a group of men more focussed on a play sheet in my whole life. As the camera zoomed in every single cell in their bodies was focussed on the next play.
Thank God Almighty the time-out didn't work. But when they got back onto the ice they tried their best. But I thought, the lesson is, you need to take a time-out when you've lost track of time, when you've forgotten what the play is, when you're not playing together, when you've lost sight of the goal and you need to find it, you take a time-out.
My friends, that's what our spiritual lives are like. We need to take time out. We need to set aside a moment in order that we can be with others so that the God of time can guide us. It is no coincidence that in the Book of Acts, Luke tells us that those early disciples, those early Christians filled with the Spirit, still went to the synagogue, they still went to the temple. They didn't turn their backs on their Jewish roots. They did what they believed they were supposed to do - worshipped God in His temple. They broke bread on their own, they celebrated the presence of Jesus, but they knew that consistent worship in the house of the Lord, even with this new experience of Pentecost, was still a necessary part of their lives. They need to take time out to be with God, to praise God and to celebrate God.
Look what happened when they did. Many were added to their numbers. It is no coincidence that God added people who took time for each other. It is no coincidence that people who gathered in the temple to worship were added to. It is no coincidence that these people shared their belongings according to one another's needs and when they did that, God added to their numbers. It is no coincidence that the Holy Spirit came upon them when they were together and empowered them to evangelise. When they were together, that's when God used them. It's no coincidence - that is the Christian life.
I firmly believe that if this congregation wants to continue to be an effective ministry in the world, if we want new members to join us, if we want to add to our numbers, if we want to be more prophetic in our engagement of social concerns and needs (and by the way, my friends, I just received a phone call this week telling us that the number of people coming to the food bank in this church has increased by something like 21 per cent in the last year, or thereabouts) if we desire to meet those needs, if we desire to support and nurture one another so we don't have any Worcester stories in our midst, we need to take time out and worship. You have done that this morning and I thank you for it. Many of our people do it and it is an essential ingredient in how we use our time. When we do it, the Lord blesses us.
The great D.L. Moody tells a story of visiting a very famous Chicago businessperson who was a big supporter of his church and ministry, but never attended worship. Sitting in front of the fire in this great mansion, the man said: “Dr. Moody, I want you to tell me if it is necessary for me to worship in church to be a Christian. Do I really need to attend worship in order to be a Christian?”
Dr. Moody paused, took an iron and grabbed a coal from the fire and placed it on the hearth. Together they watched as the coal and its embers began to die out. Finally it became cold while the rest of the fire continued to burn.
The man said to Dr. Moody, “I see.”
To have the fire of the Spirit, to have the passion of the Lord, to have the guidance of God, we need to be in the fire, and to be in the fire is to be with one another. A committed and sometimes costly community is what the Lord requires. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.