After their time in Exile the
people of Israel were not sure what was reasonable to hope for. They had lost their kingdom, and they knew it
had been their own fault for being unfaithful to God. They were far away from where they wanted to
be individually and as a people, spiritually as well as geographically.
They were told that God was going
to lead them home, forgive their sin, and bless them in ways that would help
them be God’s people in ways they had not been before. But they found it hard to give themselves
completely to God’s promises. They hedged
their bets. And the prophets, like the
prophet of Isaiah 55, had to call them over and over again to trust and obey.
Some time ago I received an email from someone I had met a few weeks earlier in the course of planning a funeral for their father. The email expressed thanks for the time I spent with them and thanks for the funeral, and then went on to say they thought they would like to come to worship at our church some time, and were wondering if just anyone was welcome.
I wonder how many
other people outside the church who have not had much experience of church – or
maybe who have experienced it, have the same question: is just anyone able to
come and join in? Will I be welcomed?
Against this and
alongside it I think of the second of our four identified Core Values:
grace-based love, or the kind of love that is actively welcoming, and
intentionally inclusive, especially of those in need of it.
And I think of a
couple of things that were offered at the mission statement workshop back in
September, when the Church Council and other interested members started working
on these things – two of the things offered that led us to identify grace-based
love as one of our Core Values.
One is what some
said about how they came to church at difficult times in their life. They were good people, faithful and Christian
in the way many of us are. Life had been
going okay for them – content at work, happy at home, with a few hobbies and
outside activities to keep like interesting and fun. But then a few things happened to them and in
their families. They suffered some
losses. Life was not just simply good
any more. They felt a need to get
something solid under their feet, find somewhere that would help them find the
heart of their faith again.
So they came to
Fifty, and found what they needed. No
questions asked. No test to pass. No secret password of admissions
requirement. No need to prove
themselves. Other than to let themselves
be enfolded by the love of God.
The other thing
offered at the mission statement workshop was an affirmation by a lifelong
member of this congregation, of what this church means to her. At one point in the workshop we were asked to
look at 50 or 60 different pictures tacked up on the wall -- pictures of almost
everything you can imagine under the sun, and to pick one that most deeply
spoke to us about what Fifty means to us.
The one this person picked was an aerial photograph of an incredibly
braided, inter-twined, intersecting network of highways all going in different
directions. And what this image reminded
this person of Fifty, she sais, is that it’s the kind of church that no matter
how far you go, and how long you find yourself drawn away in all kinds of
directions, you can always come back.
You can always come home, and know it’s still a welcoming home.
So, on one hand,
the question that some honestly feel: can just anyone come and join in? If I come in, will I be welcomed?
And on the other,
the kind of thing that Isaiah 55 promises:
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the
waters;
and you that have no money, come, buy
and eat!
Come in when you feel your need;
come, get what you need; it’s free and
for all.
Why spend your time and your life
on
things that don’t really satisfy?
Come in, what you need is here, and
it’s for you.
I wonder how there
can be such a difference between the way church – even our church, looks
sometimes to people on the outside, and the way it feels to people on the
inside. There are probably all kinds of
reasons for that. And I wonder if one of
them is that once you actually get inside – take the step to cross the
threshold, come in, and become part of a church’s life, you get to see and feel
something that isn’t all that common outside.
You get to learn and grow into something – something about love as it’s
practiced by God, and as we aspire to practice it in church, that changes how
everything seems. And that maybe you
don’t really get until you come in.
This week in the
Thursday reminder that goes out every week to people on our email list, I included
a note about today’s worship. In it, I
mentioned three reasons I could think we might have for loving one another, and
loving others.
One is because of who
they are – what kind of person, what they are like, and what they have to
offer. In other words, we love them
because they are easy to love and have something we admire or respect or
need. We love them because of what we
see in them, and that’s probably really the basis of a lot of what we call love
and what we are used to in the world.
Which would probably make outsiders to the church wonder: will they like
me, will I appeal to them, will they see me as someone with something to offer
them and their church?
Another reason we
might love someone is because God tells us to.
God says we are to love our neighbour, regardless of who and how they
are. And we try to take this to heart –
not let our human feelings about someone get in the way of loving them. A few years ago Japhia and I heard a sermon
preached at another church, about learning to love your teenage children no
matter how terrible, unreasonable and unlovable they are because God tells you
to. And I have to say I thought it was
one of the most terrible sermons I have ever heard. The preacher’s teenaged son was sitting right
in the congregation while his father described him as unlovable and that he
loved his son only because God told him to.
I wondered how the son felt, and it took all I had to not just get up
and leave. To love another just because God
tells us to is not always the welcoming and affirming kind of love someone might
hope for.
There is a third
reason for loving others, and showing open and inclusive love of them – a way
of loving based on what we know about ourselves as recipients of God’s love and
grace in our own lives. One way of
putting it might be as simple as this: if God can love me the way that I am,
and can accept me the way that, when I am being really honest, I know that I am,
how can I not love and accept anyone and everyone else I meet?
And this, I suggest –
this way of loving and this reason for loving others, based on an honest and
humble self-knowledge and a grateful awareness of God’s welcome of each one of
us just as we are, is a kind of loving not common in the world, not known by
everyone around us, but exactly the kind of love and the reason for love that
makes all the difference to a church, its members, and anyone who comes in
contact with it.
As the prophet says
in Isaiah 55:
my ways are not your ways, says the
Lord;
my thoughts are not your thoughts;
for as high as the heavens are above
the earth,
so much higher, so much more
grace-based and honest
is my way of loving you and loving
others
than that which most people practice
and
expect of one another.
Grace-based love is
what people have said they experience here.
That they are loved not just because they are nice, lovable people with
something to offer. And not just because
God tells us to love them, regardless of what we might think of them. But that they are loved because all of us
know, if God can love me – can love each of us, the way that we are, how can I,
how can we not also and similarly love anyone and everyone we meet?
That’s one of our
Core Values. It’s good to know it. Good, too, to know that it’s true.
Which leads to two
questions, as we think of moving ahead as a church.
One is, do we really
learn this here as much as we could? Do
we really explore and come to own our brokenness and name our sin, and how we
are – or can be, transformed by God’s gracious love of us deeply enough that it
really is at the heart of who we are, how we practice being church, how we love
one another, and love others who we meet?
And the other is, how
do we and how can we show it out loud and in public, beyond ourselves and
beyond these walls, out in the community around us? So that people like the family I did a
funeral for some time ago, when they thought they might like to come to church,
wouldn’t have to wonder if just anyone could come? So no one would ever have to wonder about
whether they would be welcome here, and would find the saving and healing kind
of love they are looking for, freely given?
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