Sermon at Grace Episcopal on by Lynette on 3-8-09

This week we'll be taking 37 members of Grace Church to the Hawaiian Islands Ministries HONOLULU 2009 this week. The theme is "Many Yet One" and my breakout is titled "If God made each of us unique, why isn't diversity all it's cracked up to be?" I'm giving you the kernel of that message so those of you planning to go to the conference can make other choices during that time…

Who knows what people are talking about when they speak about an Acts 2 church? Let's see, please read with me to

Acts 2:42-47 "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

Who wants to be a part of an Acts 2 church? I just read an article about how quickly you can tell a healthy church today. Two things immediately jump out at visitors who have been to many different churches. The first is exuberant singing. It doesn't matter what you sing, just that you pour your heart into it. The second is the obvious affection between the pastor and the people. When the people of the church of Jesus Christ sing with their entire being and love each other, their joy is evident and it's contagious.

An Acts 2 church is a growing church. A growing church is an exciting church! It doesn't matter if you have special music, drama, hymns or hula. It doesn't matter if you stand up or sit down when you sing. It doesn't matter if you raise your hands or use them to hold a book when you pray. When Jesus is in the house, the church rocks. People get saved and touched by the Holy Spirit and you can feel the presence of God busting out!

But as the early church grew, a few chapters later, this happened…

Acts 6:1-5 "In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." This proposal pleased the whole group."

As you can see grumbling started. The Greeks felt that the Hebrews were getting preferential treatment in the food department.

Now, if you remember, everyone in the early church had sold all their possessions and put the money into a common fund to be shared by all. So the Greek Christians had just as much right to be at the front of the buffet line as the Hebrew Christians. Imagine if the church had responded this way… "O boy! It's those crybaby Greeks! Why can't they just be satisfied with what God has given them and be quiet? They're lucky anyway. Before Jesus, they would have just been fuel for hell's fire. They aren't real Jews like us. If they had been fortunate enough to been born a Hebrew, well God would have taken care of them. Besides, Greeks don't like kosher food that much anyway."

Do you think the church would be different if that was the response of the Hebrew Christians?

Remember Greeks and Jews didn't mix things up socially in those days. But these men and women had something deeper in common than their bloodlines. They had all been given a new heart and a new life through their relationship with Jesus. So these were Greek Jewish Christians who were at odds with Hebrew Jewish Christians. This was in fighting within the family of God. This infighting threatened to destroy the Acts 2 church…

We can never truly be an Acts 2 church until we have worked through our Acts 6 challenges. No matter how big the church grows, or how many lives are changed, we can never be the Family of Christ that He meant us to be until we are one in Him - across racial, ethnic, economic and cultural lines. Galatians 3:28 tells us that in Christ there is no male or female, no Greek or Jew, no slave or free. We focus on our differences, on being "better" than someone else. We "shop" for churches where people are just like us, where they worship like us, where we have the same political views. The only place the Hawaiian Church, the Black Church, the Haole Church, and the African Church exist is in our minds. The Lord doesn't look down and say, "Hey now I really like that Hawaiian church better than that Korean church. And the way that African church prays is really better than the white church on the corner."

There is one church with one Head. His name is Jesus. And our Head walked the earth as a Hebrew but has put His touch on every culture, and every language.

Why do you think God created us in His image, but not the same? He loves variety and He loves us so much that He wants to use that variety to change us.

I know in my marriage God couldn't have brought two more different beings together than He did. Scotty and I were polar opposites. But in our 30 plus years our differences have stretched us and somehow we have truly become one flesh. Our imagined preferences, our comfort zones, our being proud of being who we were just as we were, have all faded as we each submitted to Jesus and to one another. I believe with all my heart that that's why God made us so distinct… so we would rub up against one another, meet resistance and turn to Him, humbling ourselves. When we only hang with people we like, and with folks who think and act the same way we do, the world sees uniformity not unity. And they may see our warts before they see the Lord in or through us.
There are two reasons that we can never be an Acts 2 church with the excitement of lives changed if we don't deal with our cultural and racial challenges. The first reason is found in
1 John 2: 8-11 "Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him."
Now you may be saying that I don't really hate anyone. There are a few people that I don't like, but I don't really hate anybody. That may be true.

Anyone who has been a part of a local church has either hurt someone or been hurt. Think about that for a minute. I'm talking about people in a church. Have you ever hurt or been hurt by a brother or sister in the Lord? We can carry those hurts around with us like a preschooler carries a lunchbox in their backpack. They go with us everywhere.

Often times we don't even realize that we have hurt each other or that we are carrying hurts. We all come from such different backgrounds, and we are not completely like Jesus yet. We can easily rub each other the wrong way. Or be rubbed the wrong way. But if we carry those hurts around with us, it is like dark places in our hearts and lives.

When we lived in Ho'olehua, there was something that grew in every dark closet and place in our house. It was mold. Mildew. We would take out the baseball glove, which had been in the back corner of the closet since last season and find it an interesting shade of green. Scotty had bowling shoes that could have bowled themselves. Even behind our furniture, where it was always dark, the walls grew mildew. My point is that the things that grow in dark places are not pretty and they are not healthy. It's the same with an unforgiving heart. It's the same for an insensitive heart that does not seek to redress wrongs. If we want to be an Acts 2 church, we have to let the love of Christ bring light to the dark places.

If we stand in the same place too long, darkness can grow. We need to bow down. Humble ourselves and then let the light of Christ lift us up. Another way to put it is that if we don't deal with the things that trouble us in a Godly way, with Jesus as our center and guide, then those things will be at the center and push the Lord out as a guide. We work through our troubles or else they will truly trouble us.

The second reason that we must work through our Acts 6 divisions caused by our different upbringing, cultures and lifestyles, is also important but comes from a completely different angle.

The church will not be able to have an effective witness to the world unless we show true unity and love.

It is Jesus' last night with His disciples. One of them has decided to let his troubles get the best of him and had gone out to sell out the boss. Some of them had been trying to manipulate things they would be in the front row when Jesus came into His power. The others were upset that these guys were trying to take short cuts and grab the best places. Jesus had settled them down by stripping to His underwear and washing their feet. Then He prayed with them for the last time before He was dragged off to be killed. Let's listen to a small part of that prayer from

John 17:20-21 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

Jesus prayed for us that night. He prayed for all those who would ever hear about His love through these imperfect men. He prayed for those who would learn about the gentleness of God's touch because a follower of Jesus would gently touch them. He prayed for the ones who had been trapped by other things and had never experienced genuine love until a follower of Jesus genuinely loved them. He prayed for people who had felt ashamed and guilty and had never known the touch of mercy until a follower of His shared the message of how God loved them so much that His Son died to forgive even their darkest and ugliest sins. And that night Jesus prayed for the people that you and I will touch in His Name, with His grace and with His love.

And it has 3 simple parts. Part one is Jesus being one with the Father. Part 2 is us being one in Him. Starts with what? Jesus being one with His Father. And part 3 is us being one with… each other. When we are one with each other, the world can see our love goes all the way back to God. Our unity beams God's love and God's truth.

Being one in Christ is not like being a robot. It is not like being a zombie painted with a gray brush. God made us each one of us different. We are black and white and brown, and yellow and a few hues of sunburned pink because of Father loves diversity. No galaxy, no planet, no snowflake, and no 2 people are exactly alike. But unity means that we don't let race, or culture or diet, or language separate us. Instead when we bring all our differences to God, He blends them together in a sound of worship and praise that floats through the heavens.

Kahu Abraham Akaka often used the illustration of an ukulele being tuned to the Lord to illustrate this point. He said the uke has 4 different and individual strings, each with a different sound, tuned to different notes. Together they can be blended into music. He said that we need to tune ourselves to the Lord in 4 ways like the 4 strings of a uke. We need to tune our heart, our mind, our soul, and our body to Jesus to play His music to the lost. I wanted to use a similar picture but add the 6 strings of the guitar. Let's tune our cultures, our languages, our lifestyles, our feelings, our thoughts and our memories to the love of Jesus Christ. It's time to look deeply and put any racial or cultural stereotyping away. Let's go out of our way to listen, to share and to give. Let us never be slow to apologize and let our hearts ring with the forgiveness that we have received. Let's never stop loving. Let's always keep giving.

check out the audio for a new version of How Great Is Our God!

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