Sermons
August 25, 2024 (Proper 16)
Show Me the Way
Philemon
Our country’s cultural mythology tells us that “rugged individualism” was the way White people settled the American west. We are at least 90% wrong about that: sure, there was the occasional person who lived alone in the mountains, hunting for their own food and rarely even seeing another person; but the vast majority of people who migrated, for instance, along the Oregon Trail went in groups.
The Oregon Trail, and all the other routes folks took as they migrated from the eastern part of the continent to the western part, were no place for individuals—or even for individual families—traveling on their own. Those migrants would be traveling through geography very different from what they were familiar with. They were going to run into people very different from themselves, who didn’t necessarily speak their language, and who in some cases weren’t all that happy to see White settlers. They would face problems they couldn’t deal with by themselves.
They couldn’t go it alone, or they wouldn’t get very far. So they went in groups, in which they all could help one another—if one family’s wagon broke, there might be someone who could fix it, or barring that, they might be able to join with someone else whose wagon was in good repair. And a lot of the time these groups were led by guides who had been down the trail before, knew the terrain, knew what water was safe to drink and what plants were poisonous, knew the indigenous people in the areas they were traveling through, which ones were friendly and which ones needed to be given a wide berth.
Once these settlers got to their destinations, one of the first things they did was to organize churches, schools, and towns.
The American frontier was not settled by rugged individualists. It was settled by families and groups of people and families, led across the land by experienced guides; and those settlers did not go to Oregon or wherever to live alone and fend for themselves.
We do live in a very individualistic society, which is why the myth of “rugged individualism” has such staying power. We want to have the freedom to make our own choices, and not to be told what we have to do with our time, our money, or anything else.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it only goes so far. In matters of faith, individualism isn’t necessarily the ideal way to operate.
Years ago the church I belonged to included some special elements in worship the day we received our Week of Compassion offering. One of those was someone reading little snippets of information about places where WOC worked, including the reality that the vast majority of people in the world live on less than a dollar a day.[1]
Afterward a well-to-do member of the congregation went to the pastor at the sanctuary door, steaming mad. He objected to being told how he should spend his money, he said. He came to church, he said, to be affirmed, not to go away feeling guilty that he could afford to live in luxury while others suffer in poverty.
This man may have been the only one who spoke up, but I doubt he was the only person who had similar feelings. We live in a society in which we are told that the best way to live is to stand on our own two feet and take care of ourselves. We want to be the captains of our own ships, to make our own decisions about how we live and how we spend our money. And to at least some degree, we object to the idea that anybody has the right to tell us otherwise.
The problem is, every person has some time in their life in which they can’t take care of themselves or stand on their own two feet. And every person finds themselves in a situation at one time or another that they have no idea how to deal with. When those times arise, rugged individualism just isn’t going to cut it.
We need each other. We need folks who can help us out—and others may need us to help them out. We search for someone who’s been through what we’re going through, who can help us understand and guide us toward solutions.
Years ago I did a sermon series based on questions from folks in the congregation. One of the first questions I addressed was, “Can you be a Christian without going to church?” We Disciples teach that the only thing you have to do in order to become a Christian is to believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and accept him as our Lord and Savior. And that’s a good starting point. But it’s only a starting point.
We may not have to do anything more than that to become Christian, but there’s a whole lot that comes after that, a whole lot more to living as a Christian. And that’s one reason why, although we don’t have to go to church to be Christians, it’s a lot harder if we don’t.
Last week we talked about worship, about how a regular time set apart to focus on God is essential for keeping everything in our lives in proper perspective. But there’s more to church than just worship.
The week before last we talked about confession, being honest about our shortcomings and our struggles, and the value of sharing these with one another and praying together for forgiveness and a chance to move forward. We considered the possibility that churches could be much healthier if we’d all take off our “I’m fine, everything is fine” masks and support one another when things are not fine.
And this week we have before us another corporate spiritual discipline: guidance. This discipline is another very important reason why it’s much more difficult to be Christian if we don’t go to church.
There is a saying that goes, “None of us is as smart as all of us.” What that means is that any one person has only their own experience, their own skills, their own perspective; but when we all come together, someone else’s experience, and skill, and perspective can help fill in the gaps in our own. If we assume that we just need to go it alone and rely on our own resources, we may well find that we’re stuck. If we ask for help, for guidance, someone else may offer an idea we never would have thought of, and that just might get us moving again.
Some of the time that guidance comes not from another person’s inborn wisdom, but from their having been through the same thing.
There’s a story that I think originally came from AA, in which a person is walking down the street, maybe looking at their phone or an interesting cloud formation, or just lost in his own thoughts, and he falls into a hole. The hole is too deep for him to climb out of. He can see the feet of people walking by, and he calls for help.
The first person to stop is a doctor, and he takes out a pad and writes a prescription for the man to fill when he gets out of the hole.
The second person who stops is a lawyer; she tosses a business card into the hole and tells the man to call her when he’s out and she’ll help him sue whoever left that hole there uncovered for him to fall into.
Then a third person passes by, and the man in the hole calls out again. This third person stops and jumps right down into the hole!
And the man says, “Why did you do that? Now we’re both stuck here!”
The third person replies, “No, we’re not. I have been here before, and I know the way out.”
Sometimes that’s the kind of guidance we need, the kind of guidance available to us from others in a church who’ve dealt with situations similar to what we’re going through at a given time.
But there are other kinds of guidance that are available to us at church.
A large part of our New Testament is made up of letters like the one Chuck just read us—although most of them are longer. Paul, and others, wrote these letters to offer guidance to churches they’ve started.
Paul, especially, doesn’t necessarily address a specific issue by wading in and imposing a solution. Instead, he points the way to a bigger picture—if two women are fighting over who paints the fellowship hall, Paul says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”[2] If a church is coming to the Lord’s Table in ways that are actually doing harm, he says, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread…”[3]
In Philemon Paul does address a specific issue: what should be done with the runaway slave Onesimus. But still he wants Philemon to look at the matter through the lens of his, and Onesimus’, Christian faith. He would have had every right to command Philemon to set Onesimus free and send him back to Paul, but he didn’t. Instead he wrote to guide Philemon to make his own choice. And he addressed the letter not just to that one man but to other people in Philemon’s community that he knew, and to the whole congregation that met at Philemon’s home. I suspect that Paul intended, not just to offer his own guidance but to invite the whole church to continue to guide Philemon—and each other—as they considered the matter of how to deal with brothers and sisters in faith who were their slaves.
We might think of the letters of Paul and the others in the New Testament as unique, something that the church doesn’t really do nowadays. But pastoral letters as a means of guidance are still very much a thing.
Our General Ministers write letters from time to time about pressing issues in our country and our world, and send them to all Disciples and all Disciples churches. They aren’t telling us that we must believe or respond in a certain way, but they are offering a perspective we might not have.
Pastors also write letters like this to their congregations. Once, when the county where we lived was preparing to vote on whether to allow a casino to be built on a lake in the county, I wrote such a letter. I told the congregation that, while I could not and would not tell them how they should vote, I did have some thoughts they might want to consider. The letter went out in the mail and copies were available at the church. At least one member said my letter helped him think through the question and make up his mind.
Another kind of guidance that can be part of church life is a process of discernment.
If a congregation has a major decision before them, one that could potentially split the church if it’s handled through the usual “Robert’s Rules of Order” process that helps us keep church meetings on track, they might find this more useful. Instead of just voting “yea” or “nay” and letting the majority rule, the congregation sits down and listens to one another, prays together, and lets the Holy Spirit guide them. There might not be just two points of view, and this process just might help them identify another one that makes sense to everyone.
This appears to be what happened at the very first church-wide council meeting, as it’s described in Acts 15. The question before the whole church was whether and how Gentiles could become part of the Christian community. On the one side were Peter and Paul, arguing that even though the first Christians were also Jews, new believers who had never been Jews should not have to convert to Judaism in order to join the church. On the other side were people who believed equally passionately that Christianity was not separate from the Jewish faith, and thus Gentiles could not truly be considered Christians if they didn’t first become Jews.
If they had simply had the question before them, got a motion and a second one way or the other, then voted and made the opinion of the majority the official position, it might have caused a split in the church. Maybe there would end up being two churches, one Jewish and one Gentile, who looked suspiciously at one another and maybe occasionally fought with each other.
But this isn’t what the church did at that council meeting. Instead they heard from Paul, and they heard from Peter, and they heard from the people who disagreed with Paul and Peter on the matter. Then they all shut up and prayed together. In their prayer time they didn’t just talk—and they didn’t have people praying prayers out loud that were really sermons in which they insisted God agreed with their position. They may have prayed out loud, but they didn’t do that.
And in addition to talking, they also listened. They let the Holy Spirit guide them toward the best decision. And that decision wasn’t a black-and-white “yea” or “nay” on the matter. Instead, it navigated a middle ground: No, Gentiles don’t have to become Jews before they can be Christian; but there are some non-negotiables that we need to ask Gentile believers to agree to.
There wasn’t a vote taken that made some people “winners” and some “losers.” Instead they reached a consensus, and everybody went away satisfied that the decision they reached was the one most in keeping with God’s will.[4]
In church we guide each other; pastors guide the congregation, and the congregation has a role in guiding the pastor. (Pastors who don’t have anyone in their congregations with the authority to tell them “no” get into trouble.) People who have experience with a particular kind of situation can help guide folks who are currently facing that situation. People who have strayed a bit from the way of Christ can be guided back by friends who want the best for them.
The Christian faith is not an individual endeavor; it’s a group project. We’re all traveling the same path, all seeking to grow more like Christ, figuring out the best way to love God and love our neighbors. And none of us on our own has all the answers, all the skills, all the ideas that are needed to travel that path. Each of us has something to contribute for the good of the body. So we go to church, and we guide each other.
[1] This was many years ago, so I don’t know what the numbers would be today, or whether inflation has meant we’re talking about two dollars a day now. The point has little to do with the exact number, though.
[2] Philippians 2:5
[3] 1 Corinthians 11:23
[4] Paul, in Galatians, hints that Acts’ account of this meeting and decision may be a bit idealistic, and may not fully portray any disagreements that remained afterward. Nevertheless, Acts 15 offers us a useful model for mutual guidance and discernment of God’s will.