A Wideness to God’s Mercy

This whole week I’ve had two competing but complementary sermons in my mind. One is based off a church sign that I pass whenever I take my kids to school that currently reads “The new year offers 52 appointments to meet with God.” It’s a pretty safe sermon. A lot of thoughts about the limitations of that kind of thinking. About how God offers us way more than 52 times to meet with him in a year. About the different ways that we can experience God outside of this one hour a week on Sunday. About how spiritual growth happens when we are in constant connection with God through the Holy Spirit. And then finally about how we cannot place God in the box of church—that I as a pastor or churches as individual congregations or denominational institutions do not control access to the God of all the Universe about whom the Psalmist says the heavens declare their glory and the skies proclaim the work of their hands.

And that is where the second sermon began to take over. About how God is bigger than our methods of worship, our houses of prayer, our denominational structures, and our doctrinal thinking. It is a sermon about a God who is bigger, more gracious, more inclusive, and more loving than we often want him to be. And that is a more dangerous sermon. It is a call to something more radical and more uncomfortable. It is a call to understand the cry of Solomon, who engineered the building of the Temple:

“The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27)

So do you want to hear the safe sermon or the more dangerous one? It’s a good thing, because I only wrote the one. In packing away all my books to prepare for moving to Australia this week, I came across a book called How to Preach a Dangerous Sermon. And I thought, ah, well, God’s offering a pretty clear answer here. The author, Frank Thomas, writes early on the book:

“What I know is that if I do not preach from moral imagination, something vital in the nation and in my person is lost. If at least some of my sermons are not dangerous, I lose a piece of my integrity.”

So here we go.

The comedian Emo Phillips used to tell a story that went like this:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What denomination?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

“Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him off the bridge.

Sometimes—maybe all the times—we have a tendency to make God too small. We take our own experience of God, our own preference in the way we worship God, our own interpretations of Scripture, and we make that the only valid way of worship. We’re right and everybody else is wrong. And not only they’re wrong but that their wrongness justifies some sort of hatred, persecution, or violence, or discontinuation of fellowship against them.

That’s not just our own modern times. That’s the story of history. Many early American colonists fled Europe because of religious persecution by others who also called themselves Christian. And when they arrived here, they fought amongst themselves because of their religious and denominational differences.

The history of this church and this denomination are also wrapped up in this debate. The Christian Church/Church of Christ was founded out of the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. Pastors from a variety of mainline denominations got tired of the squabbling and became convinced that there was a need to return to the simplicity of New Testament Christianity. The Restoration Movement was born and not too long after this church followed. And yet from that Restoration Movement came three major denominations. The Christian Church, the Church of Christ, and the Disciples of Christ. Because as things progressed, differences could not be overcome, and there continued to be this narrowing of the Gospel.

Meredith Riedel, a professor of the history of Christianity at Duke University has said that a primary thing she has learned in her studies is that:

“God doesn’t just fit within the narrow confines of your denominational origins. Studying history, particularly the history of the church, ought to lead us to greater humility so that we don’t think ‘My way is the best way, the only way, the true way, the only way that’s ever been true or has ever been faithful.’”

It’s kind of like this comic. It shows a Church membership class and there’s this chart of Christian movements throughout history and the teacher is pointing to a circled line down at the end and says “So this is where our movement came along and finally got the Bible right.”

I hope you can see the humor and the hubris in that. To think that we’ve got it right. Or to think that our way of doing things is the only way of doing things. Or that differences of opinion mean a distancing of fellowship.

This problem of different cultural beliefs and backgrounds, different ways of worship, different approaches to God—this problem goes all the way back to the earliest days of the church. In Acts chapter 15, the early church—led by the Jewish disciples of Jesus—are confronted with the problem of Gentile Christians.

Up to this point, the believers in Jesus as Messiah had come from Jewish backgrounds, Jewish religion, Jewish culture. They had a shared history, a shared culture, a shared form of worship and practice. But there is a wideness to God’s mercy. Jesus, when he is driving the moneychangers out of the Temple—out of what was called the Court of Gentiles—he quotes Isaiah and says:

“Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’” (Mk 11:17)

And this wideness of God’s mercy, his inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God and what that is to look like is a core conflict for the early church. Nobody is saying that the Gentiles can’t become a part of the church, but the problem is whether or not the way they worship God must be the way the Jewish people worship God. One contingent, the more conservative contingent, wants to be very strict: You obey the Law of Moses.

Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.”

That’s quite a barrier to entry when you think about it. You follow the dietary restrictions. You adhere to the feast days. You become culturally Jewish. Their view of following Jesus as Messiah is very narrow. Paul and Barnabas, who have been out evangelizing the Gentiles, push back against this. And ultimately, after debate, it’s the apostle Peter who says this:

“Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9 He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.”

Peter is saying “Look, they have the Holy Spirit. We saw that when I preached at Pentecost”—that’s Acts chapter 2—“If God gave them the Spirit before they adhered to all of these cultural things that we do as part of our religion, then it must not be necessary.” He then concludes:

“We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”

Peter reminds the believers that while there might be a narrowness and specificness to how we feel comfortable worshipping God, in what we think is best, how we get closest to the creator, those restrictions are things we create ourselves. But there is a wideness to God’s mercy that encompasses these differences and brings them together as part of God’s diverse family.

Paul, writing to the Ephesians, explains this by saying:

You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.

Today in the church, the big C church, we have a lot of preferential and doctrinal differences. And that’s ok. Where we begin to go wrong is when we begin to think that our specific way of doing things, our specific beliefs, are the only valid way of doing and thinking.

Sometimes it’s just matters of preference. I call these third-level beliefs. Let’s picture the Christian faith as a house. Third-level beliefs are the decorations within the house. There is no inherent right or wrong—it is a matter of style, preference, culture, and so on. Some churches should have a full-on modern concert style worship—guitars, drums, bass, the works. Because that’s how some people worship. Other churches should have more traditional music and sing hymns. Because that’s how some people worship.

Third-level beliefs are important for unity without uniformity. They provide the church with distinct flavors and provide for every individual a place within the Christian community where they can thrive and be challenged and grow. And yet I see churches cling to these practices that are specific to their individual church or their denomination and say that those who do not practice those things are not truly or fully Christian.

And then we have second-level beliefs. These are the beliefs that create denominations. Second-order beliefs are like the elements of a house that aren’t exactly essential, but you’d notice if they were different than yours. When I lived in England, there were three things about my house that confused me at first as an American. First, no air conditioning. Second, no screens on your windows. Third, and this may be more specific to just my house, but we had one toilet where the bowl wasn’t oval, it was square. And I never did figure out a comfortable way to sit on that thing. But that’s too much information…

These second-level beliefs are important. They create the context for our belief and worship. What do we believe about the practice of communion? The Christian church says every Sunday. The Anglican church I was part of in England did twice a month. The church I was part of in Tulsa did once a month.

What do we believe about baptism? Following John the Baptist and what we read of baptism in the New Testament, we immerse believers under a body of water. But some denominations will sprinkle water—evoking the Old Testament sprinkling of blood over the altar of sacrifice. Others will pour water over a person, evoking the imagery of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

What do we believe about creation or the end times or church government? These are all issues with which we are free to disagree and debate that do not affect our salvation. A lot of the culture war issues can be placed here. When we make salvation about anything other than the mercy and grace of Jesus, we do a disservice to the Gospel. When we make faith about being on the right side of the culture war or voting for the right political candidates or having the right denominational tradition, we do a disservice to the wideness of God’s mercy who, in Christ, Paul says in Colossians is reconciling all people to himself.

We live in the house of God—a big big house with lots and lots of room, to quote Audio Adrenaline—and too often we shut ourselves up in our one tiny room and convince ourselves that our limited perspective of God, our flawed interpretations of God, our ways of worshiping God aren’t just the best for us—or even the best objectively—but the only valid way of seeing God. And let me tell you, other people might be wrong. We might have it right. But God saves people even if they fail a theology test. God saves people even if—and actually because—they are sinners.

The early church worked through their disagreements. They are a story of bringing together disparate groups and creating a unity amid places of tension. They came together on first-level doctrine—on things like the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—then they compromised, they found middle ground, they left space for differences among the rest. We have to do the same today. Otherwise we will find ourselves missing the wideness of God’s mercy.

But God is bigger than our frameworks. At the heart of the Gospel story is the claim of a God bigger than those who worship him, more gracious, more generous, more hospitable. And it ought to be good news—an opportunity for growth and challenge and renewal—that God is bigger than we are.

I want to close with this hymn by the English pastor Frederick William Faber, writing in the early 1800s:

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.

2 There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good.
There is mercy with the Savior,
there is healing in his blood.

3 But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.

4 For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

5 If our love were but more simple,
we should rest upon God’s word,
and our lives would be illumined
by the presence of our Lord.

Father God, God of the universe, we ask and pray that you expand our horizons. That you knock down the walls that we have erected. That you show us where we have made you look small and magnify your name in all the earth. Show us your presence, God, unfiltered by the things we place between us and you. Draw us closer to one another and to your presence. Amen.