Confessing Our Decline Before Our Growth
Acts 6:1-7
A Communion meditation by Thomas J. Boone, Ph.D.
Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile, AL, January 13, 2008

Mobile made national headlines last week. I wish that it were simply on account of Mardi Gras or even the record setting GMAC Bowl between Tulsa University and Bowling Green. Instead, Mobile was peppered across national headlines on account of Lam Luong. I don’t have to tell you all what apparently happened, especially now that the bodies of his four children have begun to surface from the Bay. What is already a sick and demented act of evil became even more egregious for me when I read Jennifer Dale’s report that during a phone call on Friday he told his family he wanted to be more famous than the hijackers of 9/11.

I don’t understand why Luong did what he did. I don’t know what was going through his head as he did what to me is an unimaginable breech of humanity. I do know it makes me wonder what kind of world we live in where a man can do something so evil as to throw his four children over the Dauphin Island Bridge in some sort of play for notoriety. I’m not going to blame Satan, even though I do take Scripture seriously in saying that evil has a personality behind it. Just before the outbreak of World War I Joseph Conrad wrote, “men alone are quite capable of every wickedness,” (Under Western Eyes, 1911). We live among people and in a world that has strayed so far from God that we can’t simply blame Satan for our evil.

We belong to a race that has authored horrific atrocities against strangers, family, children, the earth, and its not just the Hitlers, Napoleons, Stalins, and Pol Pots of the world who’ve done these. In Matthew 5, Jesus makes it clear that even the evil thoughts we have about each other are sinful. To those who thought they were righteous because they hadn’t actually killed anyone Jesus said, “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder.” When we harbor anger against someone else, and let it fester, that anger will only harm. When we’ve allowed anger to grab hold of us destruction follows. It may not be that millions suffer, or that children die, but there are many forms of destruction.

So Jesus followed up his indictment with a command. “Don’t lose a minute,” he said, “make the first move; make all things right.” Make all things right. Think about those words for a moment. I wonder how many lives would have been saved had love, rather than anger, grabbed a hold of Hitler’s heart. I wonder how many families would’ve been redeemed. I wonder how many children would still be laughing and alive. I wonder if Maria Lauterbach and her 8 month old child would still be alive. I wonder if Ryan Phan, Hannah, Lindsey, and Danny Luong would’ve been spared. There’s no telling, I suppose. But, what is certain is that Jesus knew that the path to destruction is a broad one and it begins with our decision not to release the anger we harbor for whatever reason.

We may focus on the tragedy around us and say how awful it is, but Jesus focused on the seed of all that tragedy and it lies within each of our hearts if we don’t try to make things right between each other. There’s plenty to get us into a disgruntled state with each other. Maybe our parents get on our nerves once too many times. Maybe someone drinks just one too many drinks. Maybe our spouse’s spending habits push us over the edge just one too many times. There are a lot of maybes, and each of them boil down to the simple fact that someone at sometime allowed sin to reign in his or her heart.

Remember when God spotted the sin that filled Cain’s heart over his rejected offering? God said to Cain, “sin desires to have you, but you must master it.” Mastering the sin that threatens to undo us. The jealous anger in Cain’s heart undid him, and Cain allowed it to happen. Satan wasn’t controlling Cain in the murder of his brother, but sin sure was. We may think we have every reason under the sun to hold onto anger about another person, but the fact of the matter is that we’ve got to master it or else it will destroy us.

When the early church was growing like wildfire something happened that could’ve undone all the good that the Spirit was doing. If you read between the lines of Acts 6:1-7 you’ll spot it, but let me describe it. Here’s a young church without a Book of Order, Book of Confessions, traditions, Bible, or really any sense of how to operate other than what they knew as faithful Jews in the synagogue. They met to hear God’s word from the Old Testament, receive apostolic teaching, sing praises, and share what God was doing in their lives with other Christians. It wasn’t altogether complicated at first.

However, once the church started to grow what once was simple became more complex. It was natural for people to turn to the apostles who were leading the church and take their needs to them. They were preaching a gospel not only of words, but of action and just like Jesus the apostles had people coming at them from every direction. Jesus had the capacity to effectively minister to the needs of thousands, but even he became exhausted and needed a break. Now if this was true of the Son of God, how much more so for the apostles. There were twelve of them and they were overwhelmed, by the time we come to Acts 6.

One day, the apostles, overwhelmed and overrun with numbers—wouldn’t it be great to have such problems—are confronted by a group of Greeks who had converted to Judaism and then to Christianity. Evidently, there was some favoritism going on and they were getting the raw end of the deal. Hebrew Christians were getting attention whereas Greek Jewish Christians were being overlooked. Have you ever been on the wrong end of racism? oppression? or favoritism? Have you ever been part of the unpopular crowd? Have you ever heard a message of love and justice from a church only to find out that hypocrites rule the roost? It’s not fun and it can lead us to harbor those seeds of anger God was telling Cain he had to master and Jesus was telling others they had to relinquish.

Now, here’s how the early Christians handled it. They made it right. C.S. Lewis wrote that if we focus on the first things we will be able to do the second things; but if we focus on the second things we won’t be able to do either the first or second things. The apostles knew they had to focus on the getting of Christ’s words out to people, but they also knew it wasn’t right to neglect anyone’s needs. So, they let the people decide who among them was being called by the Spirit to do the tasks that needed to be done. They refused to let the complaints fester into frustration, the frustration to settle into anger, and the anger blossom into a disunity that would have destroyed the budding church. They sought out God’s direction and followed the Spirit without grumbling. And the result? As verse 7 reads, the word of God spread to more people, the church flourished all the more, and more people came closer to the Lord.

The church is supposed to model what the world needs because it has strayed so far from God. Whereas the world will focus on the anger we must focus on reconciliation. Whereas sin seduces us into believing evil’s destructive path, the Spirit encourages us to master that sin. Christ promises us that with Him on our side we can do anything. “I can do ALL things through Christ who gives me strength,” even master the sin of harbored anger. And that’s why if we’ve allowed anger to fester in our hearts, for whatever cause, we must confess it if we’re going to experience the joys and promises of God to their fullest.

Unless we’re actively moving toward reconciliation then we’re walking down the path that leads to destruction. And that’s why we must confess honestly before God if we’ve harbored anger in this church or participated in the course of disunity that crops its growth. It’s easy to look at deaths and tragedy on the news or in our larger community and feel sick about it. But, the reality is that we harbor that same seed and we must master it lest it destroy us.

As we take communion this morning, then, first let’s confess our participation in destruction by harboring grudges and anger; second, let’s turn to the Spirit who helps us master that sin in our heart; and third, let’s commit ourselves as a church to a new chapter of unity that begins with reconciliation. For, it was to bring reconciliation that Christ gave his body and blood. And it is to the ministry of reconciliation that He has called His church as a beacon of hope against the destruction by sin so prevalent in our world. Hallelujah. Amen.