Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!
—”The Church’s One Foundation”, Samuel J. Stone/Samuel S. Wesley

This past week has been one that has brought back to me a lament we’ve had too often before: when, oh when, will I be able to be part of an organization—sacred or secular—that I can actually be proud of? Even allowing for the reality that every group, organization, company has its problems, how is it that we seem to continually find ourselves attached to real stinkers?
So, as I entered church this morning feeling sorry for myself, distressed, maybe even a bit despondent, I discovered that the service was organized around messages of hope, perhaps, for people such as I.

The First Reading was Acts 17:1-15, the story of Paul and Silas in Thessalonica and Beroea. The reading presents two distinct congregations and their response to Paul’s message. Paul’s opening argument is more about what the Christ will have to do rather than who might or might not be him. He spends **three weeks** “explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead.” Once that point is made, he then, of course, makes the claim that always seems to get folks in trouble: “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” Well, there you’ve gone and done it. There is a small portion who believe, but another portion “were jealous, and taking some wicked fellows of the rabble, they gathered a crowd, set the city in an uproar, and attacked.” They then go to the city officials—”they” being the folks who gathered the rabble and rioted—and blame Jason, Paul, and company with causing trouble. The gall.

After getting released on bail, our trusty apostles high-tail it out of town and head off to Beroea. There, they meet folks in the synagogue who “were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” In other words, rather than being jealous that someone else might have a word from God that they didn’t get directly, the people listen to Paul and Silas and dive into the Scriptures to see if what these blokes say is correct.

Obviously, the writer of Acts is suggesting that the second group is a good model for us. But I find myself thinking about the believers in Thessalonica, the small number of Jews who “were persuaded” as well as the “great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.” How must these people have felt after their leaders acted so ignobly? The Thessalonican leaders weren’t just disagreeing with Paul; my reading of the Beroean Jews is that part of the reason they were “examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so” is that they didn’t just up and accept Paul’s message instantaneously; they had questions and wanted to be sure. No, the Thessalonican sin wasn’t that they didn’t believe right away; they got jealous, and that jealousy led to violence and the bearing of false witness against another. Not a far cry for what happens all to often in churches and businesses today.

So, after the first reading, my thoughts trend towards depressed. See, we’ve been having the same problems for two thousand years. What hope is there that things are ever going to change? Then we get to the gospel with its good news. John 14:1 “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me.” The verses that follow are the famous “I’m going to prepare a place for you” verses. What struck me this morning, however, is the number of times Jesus tells the disciples to believe in him. Don’t worry. Believe in me. But Lord, how do we know where to go? “I (Jesus) am the way.” “Believe me that I am in the Father…or else believe me for the sake of the works…he who believes in me will also do the works I do.” The answer to almost every question the disciples have in Jesus’ last days with them is “Believe in me.” Focus on Jesus.

Why? What security do we have that focusing on Jesus, on God, will be enough? Well, you might think about the 66th Psalm.

“Come now and see the works of God, how wonderful he is in his doing toward all people./ He turned the sea into dry land, so that they went through the water on foot, and there we rejoiced in him./…Bless our God, you peoples; make the voice of his praise to be heard;/Who holds our souls in life, and will not allow our feet to slip.”

We can believe in Jesus, in the God the Father, not just because of the works that Jesus did on earth but also because of the faithfulness of God to his people from the beginning. It is God who “holds our souls”, not the organizations operating in his name. It is God who “will not allow our feet to slip”, not the companies in which we do good work. The thought occurs to me that perhaps the corollaries of these thoughts are worth mentioning: The companies in which we do good work WILL allow our feet to slip; the organizations operating in God’s name DO NOT hold our souls. My fleshly mind finds these corollaries difficult to live out despite my affirmation of the words.

I have difficulty remembering the vanity of earthly associations because I crave the validation of them. When someone asks, “What do you DO?” it’s soothing to my pride to be able to say “I teach at X University” or “I work at Y company”. It’s soothing partially because those are terms that make sense to most folks. They associate me with a recognizable entity. But what happens when that entity is not one you want to associate with because of their lack of integrity or commitment to excellence? What happens when you identify as an “independent higher education worker”? Or worse, what happens when you say “I’m a house husband”? What happens when you have no connection to any earthly group that matters to those around you? And you’re not even sure that you want to be?

Peter’s first letter offers an idea. Turn your eyes to heaven. “Once you were no people but now you are God’s people” (2.10). “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” Peter suggests that we are sojourners and exiles. We don’t belong here. Part of not belonging is that we don’t fit with the community in which we find ourselves. We don’t organize our thinking in ways that make sense to those around us. It means that those around us aren’t likely to make sense to us. Why were the Thessalonican’s jealous? What had they to be jealous of? The degree to which we understand their mindset is a degree to which we are not yet aliens. They were afraid of losing power derived from their position on earth. But what is that power compared to the power to turn the sea into dry land? The flesh is not weak as the addage says; it is damned powerful. It averts our eyes from Jesus, it grasps at our souls, it places banana peels under our feet, and focuses our attention on the criteria of earthly validation.

The Gospel is that “whatever you ask in [Jesus] name, [he] will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Right now, I ask to be reminded of that.

’Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
We wait the consummation
Of peace forevermore;

My parents once made a chart with days and chores on it. Each day I did my chores, I earned a star on the board. At the end of the month, if I earned enough stars, they promised to buy me a skateboard. It was our covenant. What made me enter into this covenant? How did I know that my parents would hold up their end of the deal? I knew because my parents had a history of keeping their word. Likewise, how can we trust Jesus when he says “whoever keeps my word will never see death” (John 8:51)? We can trust Him because God has a long, long tradition of keeping His word. At the age of 75 God told Abram that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). 24 years later God reiterated his promise that Abraham would be “the ancestor of a multitude of nations (Gen. 17:4). Hundreds of years later, the Psalmist sings of the Lord’s faithfulness to his chosen: “He is mindful of his covenant forever…the covenant that he made with Abraham” (Psalm 104:8-9). Centuries later, Jesus appears, and Abraham “saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).