I mention this was what I thought about focusing on so that I could tell you a string of communist puns (Please bear with me). You see I’ve been Stalin so I could say: Early church table Lenin got Marx on it at pot lucks, and that Jesus’s early follower’s cats cried “Mao” just as our’s do. If I wasn’t Russian to get to the rest of the sermon I’d also play the Engels about Castro oil and good China.

Although I really did begin this sermon looking to the communalistic nature of the early church, as often happens, I was pulled down a path I did not expect by what I like to think is the Holy Spirit (whom I want to be sure you do not blame for those really bad puns!).

The words that stood out to me and pulled me to another path are “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.”

The apostles referred to here, are the twelve disciples. The disciples are revered in the New Testament and by the church today, but, they also appear in the Gospels as folks who blunder and betray and don’t get a lot of what Jesus preaches. In other words, the disciples act human in the gospels. They follow Jesus, but, they make mistakes.

Peter, arguably the greatest disciple, is a good example of this. He does not always get Jesus’ teachings. He argues about Jesus washing his feet. He loses faith walking on water and so plunges in. Knowing Jesus’ message of love and non-violence he still cuts off the ear of an arresting officer. Peter’s warned he will deny Jesus, is adamant that he won’t, and then sure enough he does, denying Jesus three times the night of his arrest. Peter sees the empty tomb, but, does not get that Christ is resurrected until Jesus appears to him. He argues with Paul about letting Gentiles into the early church.

In the Gospel stories Peter appears to be, well, like us. He makes mistakes. The other disciples are like us too, lives blemished with mistakes, missteps and failings, but, nonetheless followers of Jesus full of heart and love.

While the apostles are certainly blemished and human we hear in today’s reading that they managed in all their humanness to literally live awesome lives. Doing wonders and signs so inspiring that the early church members essentially put in the offering all that they owned to be distributed to all and given to those in need.

“Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.”

A human being and modern disciple of Jesus, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, has been in the news a lot lately. He’s a preacher at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Trinity had eighty-seven members when Rev. Wright was hired in 1970. When he retired earlier this year the church had eight-thousand members. Trinity is located in the impoverished south side of Chicago. Under the leadership of Rev. Wright, Trinity UCC has done much to inspire awe with wonders and signs being done by Jesus’s followers in our day and age.

Listen to this list of some of the wonders and signs Trinity United Church of Christ has done and continues to do. The development of: senior citizen housing ministries, child care center ministries; AIDS/HIV ministries; hospice care ministries; rights for GLBT ministries; inmate and inmate family ministries; ministries providing food and financial support for the poor and unemployed; ministries that have provided over half a million dollars to the Negro College Fund, half a million dollars to seminaries, a million dollars in college scholarships; over one and a half million dollars in seminary scholarships.

What amazing wonders and signs!

And with all those resources being shared it sure sounds like Trinity United Church of Christ has been living about as communally as a congregation can in a big city in modern America, doing great things through Christ.

In addition to leading a church to do awesome ministries, Rev. Dr. Wright himself is a pretty amazing fellow on his own. He is a former marine. He served on a medical team that cared for President Johnson. He has four degrees, and nine honorary degrees. He has published books and articles. He has mentored hundreds of ministers and ministers-in-training.

And he has preached in excess of two-hundred thousand minutes, in about two-thousand sermons.

His preaching is in the African American tradition and laced with much liberation theology.

The African American tradition often includes sermons with fiery rhetoric.

Liberation theology tends to focus on God’s call to liberate the oppressed.

Both liberation theology and the African America church tradition also often result in prophetic sermons, sermons that criticize the status quo in an effort to move, not just the gathered, but the powers-that-be away from corporate sinfulness toward God’s way of justice and righteousness. Rev. Wright is a preacher of this vein.

And you have no doubt by now heard short snippets of his sermons. One angrily referring to America being damned, another to chickens coming home to roost in 9/11, others asserting mistreatment of minorities in America.

I have heard a number of these snippets and have found some of the fiery rhetoric in conflict with my own theology that God is love and does not side only with the oppressed, but, with all of humanity.

I note, though, that I have the same sort of disagreements with fundamentalist preachers who claim God has damned America or sent catastrophes into the world, because of liberals or homosexuals or whatever group they dislike.

You see I do not understand God to be one who damns anyone, or a loving being who otherwise would lash out or oppress any human, or group of humans– in America or anywhere else. So I have trouble with sermons that suggest God is a punishing God, and not just in sermons by fundamentalists, but, even by UCC pastors like Rev. Wright.

But the few snippets which we’ve seen of Rev. Wright’s sermons– that you and I may disagree with– make Rev. Wright at the very worse, blemished and human, like the rest of us. And they certainly do not take away the awesome wonders and signs he has led Trinity United Church of Christ to achieve and the lives and community he and they have changed in the process.

And you know what? In the United Church of Christ, congregations get to pick their pastors and pick their theology. And if eight-thousand members at Trinity United Church Christ found in Rev. Wright a leader to guide them toward experiences with God, well, in our denomination, that is their choice. It is their call, not ours, not the national United Church of Christ’s.

It’s not our call any more than it is for us to tell a more conservative UCC church that they have to be open and affirming of Gays or that they cannot understand the bible literally, or that they have to hire women preachers.

Or to bring the matter home we would not want another United Church of Christ or the national office –or for that matter the media or the American public who do not attend here– telling us what we must or must not do theologically as church. Nor would we want them telling us which qualified person we can or cannot have as a pastor!

And we certainly would not want to have snippets from our pastor’s sermons be held against us, like some in the media and many in greater America seem to want to do with Barack Obabma one of Trinity United Church Christ’s members.

Oddly I have not heard anyone trying to hang the words of other candidates’ pastors upon them. Why then Barack Obama? I suppose one could argue it’s because he’s a black man from a black church who’s motto is “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” Maybe so. But I suggest that it may have to do, at least in part, with the fact that a United Church of Christ church is at the heart of the controversy.

We may not be putting all of our possessions into the offering to share as the early church did, but, like Trinity UCC in Chicago, other churches in the UCC have been doing wonders and signs for years. And it is counterculture to do so. We stand out in how we do church.

Listen to this copy from an advertisement that the national United Church of Christ recently ran in the New York Times:

People in the prophets of old’s day, people in Jesus’s day, in Peter’s day, did not like to have their ways challenged, and it has ever been thus. And so attacks on the churches and our pastors in the history of the UCC and its predecessors are not uncommon– are not new.

How could you support abolition of slavery? They asked.

How could you ordain a black man? They asked.

How could you ordain a woman? The asked.

How could you form schools for blacks? They asked.

How could you back civil rights? They asked.

How could you ordain a gay? They asked.

We have agreed, however, to be in relation with one another. And just like that super conservative uncle or that ultra liberal aunt that you argue with at family gatherings, we don’t abandon or give up on one another or stay away from the gatherings, we get together again and again maintaining our differences and rejoicing in our diversity.

All of the UCC operates on the biblical model of covenant. We are not bound to one another by coercive authority, but rather by persuasion, as listening caring partners to a mutual covenant. We honor and respect one another even as we disagree. All the while trying to hear and respond to God’s call, being faithful to God in all that we do.

I know this will come as a surprise: pastors are not perfect. Their words are not always right. So the risk also includes that clergy will make mistakes and UCCers will take heat for it from those outside the family, especially those who find threatening the United Church of Christ’s awesome signs and wonders– those trail blazing ways for Christ.

There are times when it is appropriate for pastors to be removed from the pulpit for what they say, but, by and large that is the congregation’s call no one else’s. We don’t have to agree with Rev. Wright and he does not have to agree with us.

Jesus knew Peter was flawed, but, worked wonders through him. Jesus knew that the only tools available for God’s work on earth are human beings and that humans make mistakes. Those mistakes though do not negate blemished humans, like Peter, like Rev. Wright, like you and me, from doing wonders and signs.

And know this: Rev. Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ have done awesome wonders and signs, so has our denomination the United Church of Christ, so has Riviera United Church of Christ.

No matter what others may say, may each of us continue to do God’s great and Holy work– despite the blemishes we have.

Amen.

Scott Elliott Copyright © 2008