What made you decide to come to this church? To the Episcopal Church? What made you come to St. Michael’s? Was it as simple as it was the closest church to where you live? Was it because it was the church your family went to? Was it because you knew something about the Episcopal Church and wanted to check out how Episcopalians practiced Christianity?
When I became an Episcopalian, I was looking for community. I was clear across the country from where I grew up; where I grew up, people went to the Catholic parish that was in their part of the neighborhood; for other denominations, there was usually only one parish for a large geographic area. When I had more freedom to decide where I wanted to go to Church, I decided to check out the Episcopal church because it had much of what I was used to and loved about the church of my childhood, with some different expressions of how they lived that out… imperfectly, yes… but I longed for a community that put into practice what it believed to be the gospel of Christ. I wanted to be part of something that was bigger than itself; somewhere that my own gifts to the community would be discerned and utilized for the good of others. I wanted to be loved and accepted; I didn’t want to live my life in isolation, where I had to depend on my own strengths to get me through; I wanted to be held accountable to a group of people who were in turn accountable to the community for what we did when we were together as well as when we were apart; mostly, I wanted to learn about Jesus and deepen my relationship with him.
Community matters. When we go to a church, believe there is a difference between going and truly belonging. The Episcopal church has all sorts of letters and things that formally acknowledge one’s membership, but it’s not the same as belonging. Belonging, means we have a vested interest in what happens within the community…. It means that we care about other members… it means that I will be vulnerable enough with you to allow you to have an effect on me…
There is a lot in our readings today that speaks about how communities are to behave. Paul spent much of his life and ministry traveling from one community to another, helping them to grow in faith in Jesus…
The church in Corinth seems to be all about status rather than about the gospel, and Paul in no uncertain terms is done. He lovingly but firmly tells them that it doesn’t matter who baptized them; that there is no personal status in a community where Jesus is at the center; they are there, no matter who they are, to do the work of the Kingdom; each of them are servants, equal to each other, working together for a common mission and purpose. The concerns of the Kingdom of God are what should be driving them; not their personal ideas of fame or status.
Jesus has his own things to say about community as well, and they are hard words to hear. I have come to be grateful for Jesus’ sometimes harsh way of putting things… I can be more than a bit stubborn and don’t always hear things that are subtle… Jesus is not subtle here at all; we all know things like murder and adultery are against the commandments and destroy communities and families; but Jesus makes an even harsher claim, that even our angry or lust filled thoughts can destroy a community just as much as blatant actions… and if we think about that, we know there is truth in it; we know when we are angry with another that it has an affect on how we act; it throws the whole working of the community off; others can begin to tell that something is “off”… even subtle behaviors can become overblown, sides are taken, and suddenly a community of loving support and hard kingdom work becomes stuck in it’s own frail humanity, and it’s ability to be the church is severely compromised….
Let’s face it; the church is about people… buildings are nice… they are often necessary… but really, what makes us church is the relationships that we have with each other; those relationships are one of the ways that we get to know God… and the church, on it’s best days should be different than what we encounter in the world. What we see playing out in so many other aspects of our lives, is that it is the individual that matters the most… that we can do all that we need for ourselves… that individual pride and accomplishment is to be valued above all else.
As followers of Jesus, we know a different reality. One of the things that we learn when we hear about Jesus’ dealings with people is that no one person is above another… community, the church, is made up of imperfect people, all of whom are trying to love their God as best as they can, and we all know that we don’t always get it right… but in a community that is trying to live by Jesus’ commandments to love God and to love our neighbor, sometimes we get to experience grace… sometimes, we get to help others, and sometimes, it’s me or it’s you that is vulnerable and needs the community to pray and act on our behalf… no one is above the other… no one is forgotten….
Church is… and should be, a corrective and a haven against what we are experiencing in other parts of our lives. When I found the church… I found a place where people loved each other despite themselves some days; I found a place where the things that separated us in the workplace didn’t have a chance to gain a foothold … I found a place where I met Jesus in the faces of others… and where I learned how to work for the kingdom rather than the empire…
Beloved, there is so much in the world that would have us be pulled in directions that do not build up the church of Jesus…. And simply being polite to one another doesn’t cut it; some of the most polite people are the worst community killers there are out there… you and I have been called to something different, something more enduring. We have been called to live in radical truthfulness where we know that all of us are equal in God’s sight… and we are all equally fragile and broken too, all of us sinners… but even though we are relatively small church, we are mighty… we are mighty when we act together as a community that is held together by remembering it is Jesus who is the center and reason for all that we do. It’s not about us; it’s about him… what we do and what we say matters; it has consequences on the health of the church… and it’s good for us to take stock of that every now and then to make sure we are acting in ways that are healthy and loving, rather than self serving…
What made you come here? Are those reasons still true today? My prayer for us is that together we can be the reason for someone else to come, and the reason why we all stay.