May 17, 2026 – Ascension
Amos 9.11-15
Acts 15.5-14,19-21
We Have to Start Meeting Like This
Ascension
I received a phone call a couple weeks ago from the Moderator of our Middlesex Association, The Rev Jeanette Cooper-Hicks of our Westbrook Church, asking me if I was willing to serve as the Parliamentarian of the Association. It is an informal office – there is actually no Parliamentarian provided for in the Association Bylaws. But somehow word got out that I know my way around Robert’s Rules of Order, tomorrow night is the Association’s Annual Meeting, and the selling of Silver Lake Conference Center is a part of the agenda, so the Board decided having a referee might not be a bad idea. Here at the United Church, we have not had many contentious Congregational meetings in recent years, though those with longer institutional memory than mine can probably tell us a few stories. Some of my colleagues have observed that the Annual meeting can be one of the scariest moments of the church year, and I have had my share of them, but in my experience with all of you we have been respectful, thoughtful and borderline reverent in our conversations. (I hope I didn’t just jinx today’s meeting!)
Today you and I are in the season of Ascension, that ten-day period that observes Jesus’ ascension into heaven forty days after the resurrection – since Easter is always on a Sunday, Ascension Day is always on a Thursday, and we celebrate the season for the ten days between that and next Sunday’s celebration of Pentecost. The entire story of Jesus’ ascension is told in three brief verses in the first chapter of the book of Acts:
“When Jesus was done speaking, as the disciples were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “People of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
Now, I’m going to ask a question not many people can answer, most of my colleagues included: what did the disciples do immediately after Jesus ascended into heaven? They held a meeting. You might call it the church’s very first meeting, although technically speaking, the church did not come into being until Pentecost ten days later. They held a meeting. Peter directed the agenda, which consisted of a single item: the selection of a new disciple. Judas was gone, and twelve was a sacred number, so the disciples returned to Jerusalem and met to decide who the new twelfth disciple would be. Here are the minutes from the meeting:
“So the disciples proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”
What strikes me about this moment, from a parliamentary procedure point of view, is the way it combined two methods of decision-making. The most obvious one, the one you and I are most familiar with, was the majority vote: they cast lots, and Matthias was chosen. The majority ruled. In good congregational fashion, the majority ruled. But something else happened as well – they prayed, or in today’s vernacular, they took time for discernment. The writer of Acts – who, by the way, was likely also the writer of the Luke’s gospel – the writer does not tell us how many votes Matthias received vs Justus, or if it was a simple majority or a two-thirds vote, or if there was any caucusing among the disciples, we simply get the results. The disciples prayed, they voted, and a new disciple was chosen.
At a UCC conference meeting many years ago, the keynote speaker made a persuasive argument about why the church should abandon parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order and replace them with the kind of consensus-building and discernment we see described in the book of Acts. As someone who cut his teeth more than fifty years ago on Robert’s Rules – when I was selected to be the student representative to my college’s board of trustees, I decided it would be a good idea to learn the language of meetings – I listened to that speaker with great interest. There is a lot to be said for consensus-building and spiritual discernment in the decision-making process, especially, it should go without saying, in the church of Jesus Christ. And in an ideal world, this is the kind of process that would serve us best. But as I thought more about it, having procedural rules is a way of providing guard rails that ensure the assembled body engages in authentic and honest decision-making. Yes, even the church. Here is a story:
Before my former church voted on becoming an Open and Affirming congregation, we needed to wrestle with the question of whether or not the church would welcome same-gender couples to be married in our church. I’ve told you a part of this story before, but not this part. As the day of the congregational meeting approached when we would make that decision, a small group of congregants who opposed the idea – it was a minority of the congregation – decided to canvas folks who were confined either to their homes or in care facilities – that is, folks who could not make it to the church for a vote – in order to politic them, to collect their absentee ballots and present them at the Congregational meeting. They didn’t tell anyone what they were doing, and they only visited the folks they knew would vote No. The morning of the vote they presented the absentee ballots to buttress their effort to sink the proposal. It was an underhanded power play. Fortunately, their minister helped clarify the moment, because unless an organization’s bylaws expressly make provisions for absentee voting, it is not permitted. It is a fundamental principle of parliamentary law that decisions in the name of a deliberative assembly must be made only by the members present in a properly called meeting at which a quorum is present. The church’s bylaws, which made no provision for absentee voting, state “All meetings… must be conducted in compliance with parliamentary procedure as specified in Robert’s Rules of Order.” The absentee ballots were not permitted.
In this case, the guardrails worked in that they prevented the kind of clandestine chicanery that could have nullified the will of the majority of the congregation.
This morning’s story from the 15th chapter of the book of Acts presents a strikingly similar scenario. In the story I just told, the ploy was intended to deny the rites and sacraments of the church to gay and lesbian couples. In Acts, the question was also about who gets to enjoy the benefit of congregational membership. But in Acts, the question was about Gentile believers – could they be admitted into the fellowship of the faithful? Up until that moment, the requirement was that prospective church members must first convert to Judaism, and Gentile men were to be circumcised, before they would be welcomed into the church. The Pharisees among them insisted upon this: “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.” So Peter led them in a process of discernment. First Paul and Barnabas spoke of their experience among the gentiles; then James related Simeon’s experience; the passage Deb read from Amos this morning was consulted, which established the principal that both the people Israel, and the gentile peoples, or in the Hebrew vernacular, “the nations,” are welcome in the vineyards of the Lord. And at the end of the meeting, Peter declared that both Jew and Gentile are welcome among the community of the faithful without any preconditions other than faith and service. Everyone had a chance to speak, God’s word was a pivotal part of the process, and the nascent church was enlarged and enriched.
Which is to say, when people of faith gather to meet and undertake the business of the church, it is not all that different, nor should it be, from what we do in worship. In fact, I would insist that our meetings – our Congregational meetings, our Deacons and Trustees meetings, every time we gather to further the ministry of the church of Jesus Christ, these are simply another expression of our worship, that the spirit of reverence and respect and widening the welcome are as much a part of what we do at 11:00 as they are of what we do at 10:00. I will always remember the words of a moderator who once opened a potentially contentious Congregational meeting with the prayer, “Dear God, please be present in this room for our meeting, and please don’t leave until we’re done.” In other words, don’t forget, as we speak about the necessary nuts and bolts of church life, that God is in our words and discussions as surely as God is in our hearts and spirits.
Now – may I have a motion to adjourn the sermon?