CONNECTING WITH THE PEOPLE OF GOD
John 15:9-17
May 17, 2009 - Rev.Janet Duggins
Something we always enjoy when we travel is eating at different local restaurants in places we visit, and this was particularly fun when Jerry and I were in the Santa Fe area this spring – Santa Fe is a place with many good and interesting places to eat. Probably the most memorable was a little place called Café Pasquale. Although the food was terrific, that’s not what really sticks in my mind about it. When we went in to ask “do you have a table for two?” the hostess said, “No, but we have seating at our community table.” We were taken aback at first, but thought, “oh well, why not? “ It turned out to be very different from the typical American dining-out experience. We ended up eating with a couple from California (the guy plays in a band with Ted Nugent and told us he’d done many concerts at Wings Stadium in Kalamazoo), an older businessman from Atlanta, a college administrator and her very beautiful 20-something daughter … who we learned was a firefighter just back from a stint battling a wildfire. People all very different in background, experience, and viewpoint… but alike in an openness to connecting with others and sharing the goodwill that comes from sitting down at table together.
The whole idea of a community table in a restaurant speaks volumes about the increasing awareness of need for connection in our world.
For Christians it’s not a radically new concept. We may have occasionally forgotten (especially
in
We’ve always known – if we stop and remember – that in Christian community we gather as people very different in background, experience, viewpoint – and much else – but at the table together we can still find connection, goodwill, and an openness to one another.
I’m not suggesting it’s easy. It doesn’t happen automatically, without effort. It isn’t about being how nice we are, or how friendly. It’s not about being in complete agreement.
It is about remembering that Jesus loved us, and with that love in common, we are connected.
Last week, I talked about the need people have for a sense of connectedness with God – a motivation for many to find a faith tradition to ground themselves in. Today the focus is a little different, on the need for connection with a community of people. Some would say that these are two distinctly different needs that religion meets. I see them - and I believe the Christian tradition seem them, too - as very closely aligned needs… I see them converging – and being met - in Jesus whose very life was reaching out and connecting us with God, who then said, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
I always remember what a former pastor of mine told a bunch of us as we were preparing to lead a summer program for inner city kids from the projects. He said, “The kids may not remember things you taught them or stories you told them about Jesus, but they will remember that an adult who loved Jesus Christ also loved them.”
Isn’t that just as true with anybody we might work with,
talk to, help or encourage? They might
not remember our words or advice, the details of a sermon, the meal we brought,
or how we finally decided to run the
What really matters is that connection which happens because the love of Christ is at work in us.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote: “We love people not because we like them,
nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark. We love them because God loves them.”
It’s that simple. And that difficult.
One of Martin Luther King’s books of sermons is entitled “Strength to Love.” It’s got some wonderful sermons in it but I think that what I like best about it is the title. Sometimes we think of love in a very sentimental way. “Love” in our minds is something soft and vague, and everyone can agree it’s a good thing, right? Well, in truth, love is sometimes quite hard. Sometimes it means doing something you don’t want to do, or letting go of what you want for somebody else. Sometimes the people you try the hardest to love don’t love you back. Sometimes we don’t know just exactly how to love another person – what they need, what would say “love” to them.
Sometimes, when you do the loving thing, it makes other people mad. Hard as it is to accept, there are people for whom “love” is not a motivator, not desirable, not a goal. I like that Martin Luther King’s book holds up the need for strength in the pursuit of love…. It reminds me that love is a choice, a radical choice, and that to continue to choose love, day after day, week after week, year after year… even when it’s hard because that’s when it really counts, isn’t it? … well, that takes a lot of strength.
Jesus knew, and wanted his friends to know, too, that love was not a sentimental or easy path. “Love one another” might sound a little sappy, but to “love as Jesus loved” ought to give us pause. We know where love led Jesus – to the laying down of his life. What does love that “lays down its life” look like in our lives? What would it be like if we really loved each other in the way Jesus loved us? These are the questions we never quite get done answering… but they are at the heart of who we’re supposed to be as the people of God, so they have to be our questions.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been obvious to the population at large that those are the church’s burning, determining questions.
Often over the last year as our task force on inclusion has invited us to consider if we could be a church more intentionally welcoming to lesbian and gay folks, I’ve heard people say that they are afraid some others will leave, or people won’t come, if we become more openly welcoming. I’ve also heard that others may consider leaving if we can’t find it in us to say we would welcome their gay children, or siblings, or friends. I’ll tell you the truth; I have some concerns about both of those possibilities, myself. Which path is more likely to prompt somebody to leave, or to stay away, I really don’t know.
What I do believe is that the concern is most likely overblown, and maybe something of a red herring besides. Issues like this pale in comparison to the bigger reason that people leave churches, or visit but don’t come back, or stay away entirely: they don’t find that the church offers them a way to get that sense of connection so many people today long for, and lack. They don’t always find in the church a community that is striving to live by Jesus’ words, “love one another.” How can that be, among Jesus’ people? Doesn’t it make you wonder if perhaps we have departed far from the kind of community Jesus intended to establish? THIS is the issue we ought to be up in arms about in the church.
I’d like to suggest that there are a couple of things to think about that might help us become more like Jesus’ vision for us, more like what Martin Luther King called “the beloved community.”
One is to attend to our own need for connection. It’s not the same for all of us – we aren’t all equally outgoing, equally drawn to Bible study or to getting involved in service projects, equally at ease discussing issues or conversing about spiritual matters. But so much of our life, so much of our world is superficiality. Why settle for that at church? If you come in, sit through the worship service, say a polite “hello” to a few people, leave, and have no further connection with your fellow worshippers until next Sunday (or the next, or the next)… you’re missing out on experiencing all that a community of faith can offer you.
The other thing to explore and develop is our willingness and openness to make meaningful connections with new people: to invite them into real friendship, conversation about faith and life, service that accomplishes something worthwhile. I know sometimes we feel like our circle of connections is already pretty full. I know we aren’t always sure what we might have to offer to a stranger who comes through our door. But you know we were all strangers once. And there are lots of people who feel like strangers in the world, who would love to walk through a door and find a place where they are invited to sit down to a meal, and just make a connection with other people. There are people who are trying to figure out where to find the strength for love. There are people who need the same blessings we cherish as part of a faith community.
“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus said. It’s as hard as it ever was, and as important. Every one of us needs to take it to heart. Every one of us needs to make it our business to reach out and forge those connections of love, and interest, and concern that move us beyond superficial niceness to the loving community Jesus envisions for his people. EVERY one of us. We need those connections… other people need them, too,… and the life and vitality and faithfulness of the church depends on them. Amen.