April 13, 2008
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; John 10:1-10

NOTE: In Stevens Point, this was Trivia weekend, when Stevens Point holds the world’s largest trivia contest. We got into the spirit of the weekend by starting the service with trivia questions, and continuing into the sermon. Here, in italics, are the questions that preceded the sermon:

Question 1, Hour 1: This year, Trivia is as old as the publicly-claimed age of comedian Jack Benny. How old is that?

Answer to question 1, hour 1: 39

Question 2, hour 1: The building that houses Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church was begun in the same year as the Steinway piano that is currently on loan to our congregation from Michael Keller was built. What year was that?

Answer to question 2, hour 1: 1892

Question 3, hour 1: Frame used to have a manse. It was built in 1885, and remained in use as the church manse for about 60 years. What was the address of the manse?

Answer to question 3, hour 1: 1549 Church Street

Question 4, hour 1: The current oldest member of Frame lives in the same block as the former manse, who is that?

Answer to question 4, hour 1: Rae Riley

Question 5, hour 1: The fourth Sunday in the season of Easter is known every year by what informal name?
Answer to question 5, hour 1: Good Shepherd Sunday

Question 6, hour 1: The king of Israel who is remembered as Israel’s greatest king was the youngest of 8 brothers. What was their father’s name??

Answer to question 6, hour 1: Jesse

Question 7, hour 1: Jesse’s grandmother was born in the country of Moab. What was her name?

Answer to question 7, hour 1: Ruth

Question 8, hour 1: Jesse’s youngest boy is also said to have written many of the prayers in the Bible – these prayers are known under what name?

Answer to question 8, hour 1: the Psalms

Question 9, hour 1: During political campaigns, many people have yard signs supporting a candidate. This weekend, the south side of the Belt’s sign supports who for President?

Answer to question 9, hour 1: Oz

Question 10, hour 1: There are many days in the year when more than 2 Frame members share a birthday. What date in the year do the most Frame members have a birthday?

A birthday is a special day – today’s texts are about ordinary life. There were three texts – one from Acts, one from John’s Gospel, and of course, woven through the service, Psalm 23. It’s a little funny to have these readings at this point in the Easter season, because Easter is, after all, the ultimate, the peak of the Christian calendar. And the first three weeks of Easter are full of pop and sizzle – the resurrected Jesus showing up in locked rooms, disappearing in the middle of a meal, showing his wounds. Today’s readings are about ordinary life: pastures, sharing meals, clear water, praying together, sheep following shepherds…almost trivial.

Oh, speaking of trivia: the answer to question 10, hour 1 is today, seven members have a birthday on April 13: Lance Broecker, Jean Cecil, Mary Grossnickle, Peter Henry, James Lueptow, Agnes Ofori-Amoah and David Shorr all have a birthday today. There are 5 days when four members have a birthday, and January 24 is shared by 5 members.

Question 11, hour 1: The book of Acts tells the story of the early church. This book was written by one of the 4 gospel writers. Which one?

In the passage from Acts, we see the normal life of the early church described. Often, the way of life described in this passage is dismissed as socialism or communism, and therefore either unworkable, undesirable or both. But that’s nonsense. Socialism and communism are governmentally-mandated programs, imposed on whole countries. The participants may or may not be committed to the underlying philosophy. What is being described here is something entirely different, and I think, not so easily dismissed.

The answer to question 11 is Luke. The book of Acts is written by Luke.

Question 12, hour 1: The season of Easter starts on Easter day and concludes with Pentecost. How many days are in this season?

Back to the sermon. Luke is telling us of the transformed way of life that the early church experienced in the post-Pentecost days, when their living is truly Spirit-guided. This is a way of life that is freely chosen, not mandated, and it is chosen with great intentionality and study. We are told that “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” They study, they share, they eat together, and they pray. This is what life inside the early church is about. This does not mean that they are entirely inner-directed, quite the contrary. Acts tells the story of a community that was constantly reaching outside itself. But the point of this short passage is to describe what their shared life was like.

And it was very ordinary in many ways: sharing, eating, studying, praying – but clearly the ordinary had become extraordinary in the way that they lived it. And part of the reason was that it was their whole way of life.

Yesterday, at her father’s funeral, Marilyn Schneider Welch told the story of Louis Armstrong walking through a city, and noticing some street musicians playing jazz – it turned out that they were playing a piece he had written. He approached them and said, “You’re playing this too quickly – it should be slower.” They answered, “Who do you think you are, telling us how to play?” And he told them – he was Louis Armstrong. So the next day, when Armstrong was out walking, he decided to go by the combo again and see how they sounded. When he drew near, he noticed that they had a sign on the sidewalk that hadn’t been there the day before – and so he went to read the sign, and found that it read: taught by Louis Armstrong.

In our modern world, many of us in the church have been similarly taught by Jesus – we’ve heard his stuff, we’ve taken in a teaching along the way – but are we the same as we always were?

The answer to question 12, hour 1 is 50. The Easter season is sometimes called the Great 50 days. And during the Easter season, the lectionary substitutes readings from Acts, about the early church, for the Old Testament readings.

Question 13, hour 1: the Presbyterian Church has two sacraments. The Catholic Church has how many? And what are they? One of the Presbyterian sacraments is baptism, and much of the liturgy around baptism signifies that the community of the baptized involves change – we should be different when we choose to be baptized. It is an outward representation of the transformation that we are voluntarily undertaking. And that transformation takes commitment. Most of us are committed to some things – perhaps we are committed to our workout, or political news, or our work. The thing is that what we are committed to shapes our lives – and the way we are, or aren’t, committed to the life of faith shapes both our life, and our community.

Kenda Creasy Dean, who teaches youth ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary tells the story of Eugene Rivers in a recent book. Eugene Rivers was a pastor in Boston who organized “the Boston miracle,” a ministry where a handful of clergy sought to reclaim a Boston neighborhood that had become overrun with drug dealers. A defining moment for Rivers was when a drug dealer offered to take him and some of his colleagues into a crack house to see for themselves the drug dealers and guns they were up against. At one point during the tour, one young heroin dealer turned to Rivers and said, “I’m going to explain to you Christians, who are such good preachers, why you are losing an entire generation. Listen, this is really about being there.” Rivers responded, “What do you mean?” The dealer replied, “When Johnny goes to school in the morning, I’m there, you’re not. When Johnny comes home from school in the afternoon, I’m there, you’re not. When Johnny goes out for a loaf of bread for grandma for dinner, I’m there, you’re not. I win, you lose.” The dealer had a commitment that we in the church often lack.

We find it very difficult to maintain that kind of commitment to our faith, and to the people who share it. We are busy people, and the busyness of our lives makes it hard to connect with each other in the way Luke describes.

An article in the New York Times a few years ago showed how much time pressures are chipping away at church life. The pressures of time are so great, in fact, that a growing number of Roman Catholic clergy are reporting that they outsource many of the prayer concerns they are given to Catholic clergy in India. In the United States, priests are often given $5 to offer a memorial or thanksgiving prayer. That payment is then passed on to priests in India who welcome the extra work, where there monthly pay is usually as little as $45 a month.

The answer to question 13, hour 1: there are 7 sacraments in the Catholic Church: baptism and communion (which are the two sacraments that the Presbyterian Church has) and Confirmation, Confession (now called the Sacrament of Reconciliation), Marriage, Last rites (also known as the Rite of healing/Anointing), and Ordination.

Question 14, hour 1: in recent weeks, the presidential candidates have been working hard to connect with ordinary citizens. Over the past two weeks, which candidates have been televised bowling?

In 2001, political scientist Robert Putnam published his now-famous book Bowling Alone. He described some of the anomalies of modern American life: although more and more people are bowling, fewer people belong to bowling leagues. We are wary of commitment. And yet, Putnam describes the growing “social-capital deficit” that leaves people in our culture longing for a “more collectively caring community” – the sort of community that Luke describes in Acts.

Over the last year, most of the Session has been meeting before our meetings for an optional potluck meal. We’re getting to know one another. Nonetheless, at a recent meeting when one elder needed to leave after a phone call from home, another elder was astonished to learn that the first elder was married – we were all a little more aware that despite our monthly meals, we still don’t know each another very well.

Presbyterian minister Daniel Clendenin writes “A Christian style of living that prizes intellectual vibrancy, economic generosity, and communal caring does not happen casually or automatically. It requires intentionality, effort, and choice….” What choices are we making? A retreat I used to attend urged us to examine our priorities, and asked the questions, “What do you think about? How do you spend your time? How do you spend your money?” A look inside our checkbooks and our datebooks says a lot about our priorities.

The answer Question 14, hour 1 is: both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been televised bowling. Obama bowled 37 over 7 frames, and so Clinton poked fun at him. Ellen DeGeneres then gave Clinton the opportunity to show her stuff, and it turns out that she and Obama are more alike than different in the bowling alley. Given the complexity of the challenges facing our nation, I’m actually kind of glad that bowling isn’t a big priority for either of them.

Question 15, hour 1: What are the names of the people sitting on either side of you right now? You can get up to two points for this question. And you can get two more points if you know the name of someone in the row ahead of you and someone in the row behind you. Yes, that’s right, this question sort of punishes the people who sit in the last row. So mark yourself down for 0-4 points on that question.

In your bulletin today, there is a time and talent sheet – in our New Member classes, Session members usually point out that you get out of church what you put into it. The easiest way to build community is to spend time together. People on committees get to know one another while sharing in the work of the church.

Question 16, hour 1: when is the next congregational meal? Sharing meals together is something that should be part of the church’s life together. The passage in Act 2 describes activities that were part of the life of Jesus: studying , sharing our lives, sharing meals, praying. In the gospel reading, Jesus says he is the good Shepherd, and that his sheep know his voice. How can we know his voice if we don’t spend time with him? And how do we know each other if we don’t spend time together? Yes, we all are short on time. I remember the debates that were frequently in magazine articles when my kids were small – the issue was quality time, and the argument was that it wasn’t how much time parents spent with children, it was the quality of the time. The argument is half right – yes, the quality of time is important. But quantities of time are important too. The way we build relationships is by spending time together. This is why the Men’s Group is so important to those who participate in it – they are reading together, yes, but they are also sharing a meal together each week.

I would happily spend time with women each week if there are women interested in a weekly reading group. It wouldn’t have to be over lunch, it could be over dinner, or breakfast… And last spring, several of us – some couples, some individuals – met in the Simple Suppers group for about 6 weeks. If there is any interest in a similar 6-8 week group this spring, we could do it again. There will be sign-ups near the office for either of these, or you can mark down your interest on the attendance pad. We all are short of time, but the way we spend our time is the way we build our lives. What choices are we making? The answer to question 16 is: the next congregational meal is a baked potato bar next Sunday right after worship as part of the Green Team’s Earth Day celebration. Christian Ed is planning a meal for May 18; Worship is planning an event for June, Mission is planning a meal in October, and of course, we will get together at Church in the Park in August. All you needed for this question was next Sunday’s baked potato lunch.

Question 17, hour 1 is where is the altar in the Presbyterian Church?

Jesus said that he came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly. Yet the life that is described in today’s readings is abundant, but ordinary: meals shared, praying, learning about God, and recognizing that God cares for us in the ordinary rhythms of the day – like in the green pastures and clear waters that nourish a sheep. The abundant life is the ordinary life made extraordinary through deep relationships, with one another and with God.

The answer to question 17: there is no altar, there’s a communion table – we don’t offer sacrifices, we share a meal. Meals, study, prayer – these are ordinary matters, perhaps, but not trivial. Being a Christian is a significant commitment. Being part of a dynamic faith community is a significant commitment. In recent years, I have been becoming aware that we often try to make it out to be less than it is. If you want a changed life, if you want to experience the kind of abundant living that Jesus embodied and Luke described, that takes a commitment. But it’s not a sacrifice. Our lives aren’t taken away, they are given to us. As we choose to spend time together, to share together, to learn and serve together, and we build the relationships for which we all yearn. This is not trivial, it’s the path to the abundant life. Amen.