Acts 4:32-37
My name is Joelle, my pronouns are she/her, and I am a moderately reformed punk rocker.
As a person who heard the call to social justice more from bands like the Dead Kennedy’s than from the church of my childhood, I have been shaking my fist at institutions for the last 40-some years of my life.
Particularly in its early days, punk rock screamed against systems that marginalize people.
Ironically, this punk rocker spent 20 years in the Air Force and now 18 years working for the United Methodist Church. So this anti-establishment person has spent the majority of her life working for the very institutions I have railed against.
In 1977, a band named Generation X put out a song called “Promises, Promises” and a young Billy Idol sang “We’ll never sell out like they did.” I’ve been singing those words all my life and maybe in some ways Billy and I have both not fully lived in to that.
I share this with you to emphasize how meaningful the next sentence I am about to say is:
I am proud to be a member of the United Methodist Church.
Particularly coming out of General Conference, I am proud to be a United Methodist.
I am proud to be a United Methodist for the things we achieved in Charlotte.
I am proud to be a part of a global church that is working at being a church for all people.
I am proud to be a part a global church that seeks to listen to diverse voices.
I am proud to be part of a church that has stated afresh our core social and theological grounding.
I am proud, not only of what we have done, but how we got here.
We achieved all the things that Deaconess Hansen by listening to diverse voices from around the world.
We achieved them through years of relationship and coalition building.
We achieved them not just in two weeks of conferencing, but in the last eight years of preparation.
We achieved them by building a more inclusive church together.
Every morning of General Conference began with worship and then the next thing after worship was a report from the General Commission on the Role and Status of Women that would report on what voices were heard in the previous day’s legislative session. How many voices were those of women, men, and non-binary people. We celebrated when many voices were heard and were challenged on days where it wasn’t equal.
We achieved these things with a new spirit of cooperation that I had not experienced at a general conference before. It doesn’t mean there weren’t debates and disagreements, but we lived in to John Wesley’s vision that if your heart is like my heart we can join hands and be in ministry together.
I am proud to be United Methodist.
I am proud of the roughly $350 million budget of the global church that passed by a 95 percent vote at General Conference.
Now, debate on the budget can be excruciating to sit through. Delegates spent hours debating tenths of a percentage point in a way that you would have to be a numbers geek like Deaconess Hansen to enjoy.
But the ministries provided by this budget are why I am proud to be United Methodist.
Budgets are not about paying overhead expenses so that we can do ministry, budgets are mission work.
Our mission as United Methodists is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
The money that we give goes to fulfill both parts of that mission statement.
As a global church we spend millions of dollars making disciples.
We invest a lot of money in education from support for seminaries and seminary students through ministerial education funds. The United Methodist Church provides direct support to 11 historically Black colleges and universities. Last week Maureen shared with you about Africa University and today we took up a noisy offering to support the education of people from 28 different countries in Africa.
As a global church we spend millions transforming the world. From the work of racial justice across the United States to missionaries and disaster relief around the world we are at work to bring the kind of transformation Jesus talked about when he said I have come to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the oppressed, to set the captives free.
I am proud of who we are as United Methodists and the fact that we are building this kind of church together.
Last week, Pastor John talked about the spiritual discipline of tithing.
As a church, we effectively tithe to the greater church so that the kindom of God can come on earth as it is in heaven.
This year we at Church for All People will contribute roughly $50K to that $350 million budget I mentioned.
That is a significant contribution that we make. It is actually more than the 10 percent that we think of as a tithe.
And not only do we fully pay our apportionments year after year, in our noisy offerings we contribute another $10K or so to additional work in the South Side, Columbus, and around the world.
We build the church together.
When the church is at its best, this is how the church has always functioned.
Today’s scripture is from Acts, Chapter 4. Here, the church is brand new. So new, the term Christian hasn’t even been coined yet. They are building it together. Building the airplane as they are learning to fly.
In Acts 1, Jesus ascends in to heaven.
In Acts 2, the Holy Spirit is poured out and the church is born on Pentecost—join us next week for Pentecost as we celebrate the birth of the church.
In Acts 3, Peter and John heal someone asking for money
And here, in Acts 4, the very early church is being built on something our mother’s taught us as toddlers, the principle of sharing. They shared well with others.
Luke writes:
The whole congregation of believers was united as one—one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, “That’s mine; you can’t have it.” They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.
And what happened when they shared?
And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person’s need.
Joseph, called by the apostles “Barnabas” (which means “Son of Comfort”), a Levite born in Cyprus, sold a field that he owned, brought the money, and made an offering of it to the apostles.
We learn from the first days of the church that when we share what we have, we all have more than enough.
Our God is a God of abundance, and yet we can be a people of fear and scarcity.
We live in the richest country in the history of the world, but we often aren’t great at sharing. We throw away more food than we have hungry people, there are more empty homes than there are people who are homeless. But we haven’t learned this basic idea of sharing.
But we, as followers of Jesus, can learn from the early church and model a different way of being for the rest of the world. When we share everything, we provide a witness to the world and grace is all around us.
When you give to Church for All People, you equip our church to make disciples of Jesus Christ here in the South Side of Columbus and to transform our world.
We too invest in making disciples.
We have Sunday school teachers who are changing the lives of our children.
Pastor Ernest teaches a very deep Bible study every Wednesday at noon on zoom and Alex leads an in person study Wednesday nights at 5pm.
We work to transform our world. We feed, clothe, and house hundreds of people every week. We advocate for justice and have become known as one of the leading faith voices in Columbus. We provide spiritual care, not only to the people who are here on Sunday morning, but to people we are in relationship with throughout the week. We are community for a world isolated in an epidemic of loneliness.
We do so much and we can do so much more.
At our last church council meeting we dreamed of building a new outreach team.
At our last Sunday school teachers meeting we dreamed of having even more kids.
As people of abundance, we know the sky is the limit of what we can do.
But we can only do it with your support.
In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
What we have done over the last 20+ years at the Church for All People is amazing, what we could do over the next 20 years is so much more.
It is all up to us. We are the ones who are building it together.
In our vows of membership we said we would build the church through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.
Let us give from the best gifts we have, let us build the front porch to the kindom of God.
Looked with Compassion 