Inheritors of Hope

Psalm 33:18-22; 1 Peter 1:3-9

Reformation Sunday, October 27, 2013

            Do you love a good quote?  One in which the words fit together creatively and allow you to not only comprehend a vast topic better, but to somehow also step right into its worldview?    I was delighted to recently read such a gem.   It wasn’t surprising to me that it came from the renown preacher Charles Spurgeon, who pastored the New Park Street Chapel in London for 38 years back in the 19^th century.    If you’ve been to London, you may have heard about or seen this church by its later name of Metropolitan Tabernacle.    Pulling the big biblical concepts of faith, hope and love succinctly together, Spurgeon artfully poured out these image-evoking words –

            "Faith goes up the stairs that love has made and looks out of the windows which hope has opened."

            This instantly reminded me to regard faith as a verb.    It’s not just some thing we should clutch while sitting on some bottom step of our belief in Jesus Christ.   Faith instead prompts us see and step trustfully forward as we follow the steps of our loving Savior.   This alone leads us up and out of the stifling view of the sin saturating our lives and this world.    Taking this action lifts our spirits so we can see the amazing, wide open views of God’s redeeming grace.    These steps lead to holy hope!

            All of us have had and will continue to experience times when it’s hard to take that first step with the Gospel.    As just one example, I admit this past week’s back to back national news stories about yet more murder in public schools caused me to feel more than a bit paralyzed in my walk of faith.  But rather than getting stuck at the bottom of the stairs of total despondency, as sin always invites us to do, I again chose to go up the stairs that God’s love has made so I could look out an open window to the living hope I have in the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.  I’m able to do so because I respect the examples of all who have gone before me with biblical faith.   Like a priceless inheritance, they have all passed down their hope.   I believe it greatly strengthens us personally and communally when we take time to receive what they have bestowed upon our generations.

            Travel up the steps with me to the window where our most ancient biblical ancestors stood.   We find Noah there, marveling at the freshly plucked olive leaf in a dove’s beak.  His great hope came true in that moment, knowing that the sin devastating waters had receded.  Seven days later, he looked out again and saw all the dry land.   Then God propped the window open forever, offering a covenant promise with the words, “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” (Genesis 1:21).

            Travel up the steps with me to the window where the people of Israel stood.   God’s promises to Abraham first opened this window.   It was opened again and again by his offspring Isaac and Jacob.   Their hope was in the holy bequest of a physical, Promised Land.   But we recall that at the end of the Book of Genesis, it was hard to see the House of Israel let alone the stairs given their view of great suffering from within the land of Egypt.   So when God called upon Moses next, we proclaim hallelujah to how he repeatedly went up the stairs built on God’s compassionate love and saw a great sea of hope open before him!

            Travel up the steps with me to the window where the first disciples of Jesus stood.   After all their amazing adventures, not to mention all of their stumbling on the steps drunk with fear and betrayal, what is it they were blessed to see beyond that upper room?    An empty cross near an empty tomb!   The great hope of total forgiveness of sin for all God’s children came fully and miraculously in view.  So too the great worldview of the darkness and death dispersing light of their Lord!

            Travel with me to Wittenburg, Germany, on October 31, 1517.   Let’s run up the steps to the window where Martin Luther looked out.  He began on the bottom step of deep grievances against the corruptions of the church he was a clergy member of.   He then ascended into hope of a great reformation to the glory of God alone, focused on the hope of faith alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone.     This hope energized his walk to the door of the appropriately named All Saints Church where he posted his expression of it in ninety-five ways.    Windows then opened all over the world!    And so also stood the likes of John Calvin and John Knox.  The powerful view of the Protestant Reformers eventually reached America and, by God’s grace, Fairmount Presbyterian Church is in its 266^th year of existence.

            Travel again with me to Germany, this time in the mid-1940’s.   There existed ministers at that time declaring such implausible things as “Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ.”[i]   But, hallelujah, there were many pastors and theologians who fully refuted and plotted against such decrees.   Together, they identified themselves as the Confessing Church movement, and one of our PC (USA) constitutional documents, the Barmen Declaration, was authored by them.   One outstanding leader of this movement, the Rev. Dietrich Boenhoffer, spent two years in prison before being martyred on April 9, 1945.  Tragically, this was just one month before Germany surrendered.    In his book Papers and Letters from Prison, he wrote about the need to offer forgiveness from the bottom of our hearts.  And he also talked about his stair-climbing in the house that Christ’s love built and his holy view from the upstairs window in this way --  “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.”

            For today, let’s visit just one more historic window of hope.  The stairs were in Syracuse, NY.  Climbing them was a woman whose first career was that of a medical photography for the Mayo Clinic.   This is not what led to her photo and story being in the “Close-Up” feature of the November 12, 1956 edition of LIFE Magazine.    Following this first career, she studied at Syracuse University and then discerned a holy calling to be a Christian Educator at an East Genesee, NY church.   From there she earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in NY, where, not incidentally, Dietrich Bonhoeffer once taught.    This led to her flourishing as the Christian Education director of First Presbyterian Church in Allentown, PA.     

            With the encouragement of the pastor of her home church and many others, she then climbed the stairs to look out the window and see herself in a pioneering new light.   This is what led to the captions, quotes and photos in LIFE magazine.   In a borrowed clergy robe, on October 24, 1956, the Rev. Margaret Towner became the first woman to be ordained as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in our Presbyterian denomination.    Discrimination by males continued, she says, in ways “polite but heavy.”   With faith, love and hope, however, she regarded all of these as “stepping stones” and preached words in reply like this – “It is my vision that someday we will realize full equality as human beings called by God to the ministry of Word and Sacrament based upon our talent and ability, regardless of what gender one happens to be.   It is my vision that the day soon will come when we will not be debating ordination of women, nor rejecting the use of inclusive language. Let us get on with being the Whole People of God.”

            You and I, together, have inherited the holy hope viewed from all these windows and so very many more.  Having received this priceless gift, we are not content to let any circumstances cause us or others to get stuck at the bottom of the stairs of despondency.   We are instead inspired to live into hope by going forward as good stewards, opening all kinds of doors to God’s great house … especially the ones here at FPC.   We do so trusting that people we know and people we’ve yet to know will have the experience of faith going up the stairs that love has made and looking out of the windows which hope has opened.   

            How’s your climbing going?  What hope are you seeing?  How are you actively helping others to inherit the view?   In Jesus’ name, I invite you to prayerfully reflect upon and answer these questions with faith, love and hope and to God’s glory alone.    Amen.

           

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[i] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/martyrs/bonhoeffer.html

Hold Onto Your Heart!

Hold Onto Your Heart!

Proverbs 4:1-23; Luke 18:1-8

October 20, 2013

Rev. Rich Gelson, Fairmount Presbyterian Church

           

            If you had access to the Oval Office of the White House every single day, what words would you find yourself saying while there? 

            As I kept up to date on the grievous unfolding story of our sixteen day government shutdown, I was quite grateful to also read about Emma Daniel Gray.   She was born in Edgefield, South Carolina in 1914, and she died at the age of ninety-five back on June 8^th of 2009.    Emma was raised by her grandfather, who had in his lifetime been a slave.   He’d been known around their hometown as “Uncle Ten” because of his great love of the Ten Commandments.   This respect for God’s good and just fundamental rules had a lasting impact on Emma.   It was very much in her heart, along with her faith in God’s promises of hope, peace and justice through Jesus Christ when she arrived in Washington, D.C. and joined the Holy Trinity Worship Center International.  This was her church home during all the days she commuted by public transportation to her work as a professional housekeeper.    Here I need to mention that in 1943 she began night-shift work as household staff in the executive offices of the White House.  Her excellent work ethic and character helped her stay employed there through six presidencies.   

            What is celebrated most about her life are the words she spoke each night she worked in the Oval Office.  With cleaning supplies in hand, she would pause at each President’s chair and offers words of prayer, asking for God’s blessings of wisdom and safety to be upon him.  At the time of her funeral, her pastor spoke about her prayerful persistence in doing this by saying she always saw life through the eyes of holy promise.   She kept hope in view.   “She learned early on that you set the tone for your environment,” he said, “That’s why church was so important to her … she preached her own eulogy by the life that she lived.”[i]

            I’m inspired by her example as someone who held onto her heart.   She persistently and prayerfully stayed centered upon, placed her hope in, and gave witness to the highest, truly reliable, positively just power in this world -- God’s saving grace and justice for all in Jesus Christ.    And she managed to do so while working in the heart of a human governing institution that for decades now has for various reasons caused great cynicism to take root among so many Americans.    

            I have to wonder what Emma Daniel Gray would have to say about the public research that reveals how for many decades there has also been growing cynicism towards the institution of the Church.   Cynicism is “an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others.”[ii]    I find this often factors into conversations I have about our long denominational decline, especially as it relates to the absence of young adults in worship and overall congregational involvement. 

            In 2011, The Barna Group, a private and non-partisan organization that researches spiritual development, released the results of a five year study related to this.    It concluded that such issues as the Church being overprotective of itself and debates about science and sexuality, has let not only to skepticism (which can be actually be part of healthy faith development) but also to the more debilitating condition of cynicism.   And as another observer of this sad trend has remarked, “Cynicism is a spiritually dangerous thing because it is a buffer against personal commitment … becoming so cynical that we don’t believe any change is possible allows [people] to step back, protect [themselves], grab for more security and avoid taking any risks.”[iii]     

            How might God be calling us to actively confront this pervasive plight of cynicism?   How can we guard ourselves from losing heart too?  Today’s parable from the Gospel According to Luke inspires and invites us to an answer.   

            There are two central characters to this allegorical lesson taught by Jesus.  One is a woman that a fellow preacher has helpfully called the “Won’t Quit Widow.”[iv]    We need to remind ourselves that widows in the time of Jesus were extremely vulnerable to injustices.   They were often left without property, in great poverty, and subject to the whims of their closest male relative.    Rather than lose heart about this, Jesus tells us of a widow who made persistent appeals for justice to be done in her favor.  

            All such matters in those days were handled by a single judge.   In the parable, Jesus described this power figure as having no respect for God or for other people.  This was certainly not someone a widow could hope in for help.  I see this judge as representing the worst consequence of cynicism – having a heart grown scornful and jaded toward caring about the injustices happening to society’s most vulnerable people as well as toward God’s willingness to help them.  

            Jesus tells us this widow never accepted having her unjust plight rejected.   She instead persistently presented herself to the unjust judge day after day after day.    Eventually, we are told, the judge found himself terribly bothered and worn out by this.   The original language Jesus spoke also suggests that her persistent presence threatened his reputation – the phrase “worn out” is more precisely translated as being given “a black eye.”  

            Let’s recall that Jesus prefaced this parable for his disciples by saying that it is about the need to “pray always and not to lose heart.”  So we are to be as prayerfully persistent as the “Won’t Quite Widow” in pleading for and trusting that moral justice will be done.  

            But we must be careful not find ourselves acquainting God with the unjust judge.   That would entirely miss the even bigger point of the parable.   Jesus told his disciples to pay attention to the unjust judge’s words to hammer home the holy truth that God acts in the exact opposite way.  God always compassionately responds to every persistent cry of the oppressed.   We, who all suffer the injustices of sin in this world, have no reason to ever be cynical about the faithfulness and love of God.    We need only to persistently and prayerfully pay attention to our own faithfulness, to holding onto our hearts, to our deep and active trust in God’s saving grace and justice for all in Jesus Christ.   

             Another contemporary, inspiring example of what this looks like also comes out of Washington, D.C.    This one’s more recent than Emma Daniel Gray pausing at the President’s chair for prayer …

             Mark Batterson moved from Minnesota to D.C. in 1994 to direct an inner-city ministry.  I trust this presented lots of opportunities to hold onto his heart as he faithfully responded to multiple situations of social injustice.   One blessed result of this was his becoming the lead pastor of the interdenominational National Community Church in 1996.   At that time it was a community with a core group of just nineteen people.   Since then, it has grown under his leadership into one church with ten worship services at six different locations.    Where might these be?  This contemporary church meets in theaters all over the metro area.   This sure is one way to reach young adults and lots of other folks who aren’t attending traditional church!

               I spent some time reading and agreeing with what Pastor Mark has written concerning today’s parable.  He affirms that the widow is the “gold standard” for praying with tenacity.   And then he reflects on our struggle to find the right words for prayer, especially as we try to confront cynicism.  The following reminder of his about how we are never alone when holding onto our hearts in prayer is what I’ll end with for today --

            “The viability of our prayers is not contingent upon scrabbling the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet into the right combinations like abracadabera.  God already knows the last punctuation mark before we pronounce the first syllable.   The viability of our prayers has more to do with intensity than vocabulary.  That is modeled by the Holy Spirit, who has been intensely and unceasingly interceding for you your entire life … God isn’t just for you in some passive sense.  God is for you in the most active sense imaginable.   The Holy Spirit is praying hard for you.  And supernatural synchronicities begin to happen when we tag-team with God and do the same.”    Amen!

           

  

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[i] http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2009/Jun/28/1c28gray222156-emma-daniel-gray/2/?#article-copy

[ii] I appreciate the good interpretation of cynicism offered by the rabbit who preached http://www.congregationsinai.com/rabbi-cohens-sermons/165-from-cynicism-to-hope-

[iii] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/the-post-cynical-christia_b_3474122.html

[iv] https://bible.org/seriespage/piety-persistence-penitence-and-prayer-luke-181-14

The Crood Awakening

Psalm 27:1-6; John 8:12-19

 

 

Our family really loves making the time to bond and relax by watching family movies together.  Most all of these are computer animated.   Usually we wait until the ones that interest us are available to watch at home, though some really have been worth the big dollar outing to the big screen theater.   The Disney-Pixar Animation Studio has produced many of our favorites, but so too has Dreamworks Studios, whose principal partner is the always imaginative storyteller Stephen Spielberg.   They’re the folks behind such big hits as Shrek, Madagascar, and How to Train Your Dragon.

            Earlier this year, Dreamworks released a movie called “The Croods.”   I confess I wasn’t all that interested in this one.   The title had much to do with this as it naturally led me to suspect the movie would offer up some crude or rude humor.   I’ve been disappointed plenty of times when modern day “family” flicks feature lots of comedically timed bodily noises, moderately colorful language that embarrasses kids into laughter and inappropriate innuendo that’s aimed at keeping adults engaged.   I’m delighted to say that despite my first impressions about the title, this animated gem didn’t depend on that sort of stuff at all.   

            I discovered this when I finally watched it with Stef and the kids at home last week (they’d all seen it and loved it when it was in the theaters).   And overall, I find this creative, compelling and very funny adventure story is worth noting from the pulpit this morning.   It inspirationally illustrates the power of family truly living in the light of hope instead of just surviving the darkness in our world.     

            If you are unfamiliar with it, the movie is set in prehistoric times, somewhere closer than today to when God commanded light into existence and called it “good.”  The writers and animators used some science and lots of creative imagination for each scene, every creature, and for the way they paired it all with modern day dialogue.  “Crood” is the surname for a Neanderthal family of six.  The baby’s name is Sandy and her teenaged sister, the main protagonist of the story, is called Eep.  They have a brother named Thunk.  Dad’s name is Grug, mom’s name is Ugga, and her mom’s name is Gran.   This family’s ultimately touching and heroic story evolves through the storylines use of lots of symbolic darkness and light.

            The kind but super-protective dad clearly communicates what darkness means.   Near the beginning of the movie, we see the sun starting to set.    That’s when he shouts “Darkness brings death, we know this” before commanding everyone to get to safety inside their family cave.   Once inside, he rolls a giant stone in place to keep predators out.  He then literally throws each loved on into a pile for an extra measure of security.   Grug knows fully well the dangerous realities of darkness.  He deals with this anxiety through a set daily routine and by isolating his family from discovering anything new.   Faithfulness to this cave mentality has kept his people safe.

            This dad has some trouble, however, getting his teen daughter Eep to obey his family safety protocols.  She hates the physical and mental confinement of the cave.   She refuses to just be thrown into the family pile.   She is instead very much her own person -- curious and adventurous and above all a lover of the daylight.  When the sun sets, she delays obeying dad by climbing as high as possible to keep the light in sight.  We see her eyes and outstretched hand highlighted, which to me symbolize her desire to live with greater vision and to have a firmer grasp of her future.   She also speaks to the light in a pleading voice, expressing her strong hope that it will comes back again the next day. 

            One night, a predator manages to move dad’s big protective stone away just a crack.   It happens to be the night that a more highly evolved human being is moving about nearby the Crood cave.  Eep doesn’t see this stranger through the tiny opening, but does see the movement of his torch light.   Compelled by curiosity and utterly drawn to the new, compelling light, she finds a way to escape from the cave undetected. 

            That’s when the great adventure out of confining darkness really begins.   She catches up to the stranger, a fellow human who is simply called “Guy.”  And wouldn’t you know it?  He happens to be a teen boy who fascinates her – but not just because she finds him cute.  He too loves living with and by the light.   Being more highly evolved, he freely shares his knowledge of how to fully live beyond the security of the cave.  He teaches her how to make fire for illumination and protection.   He introduces her too all sorts of new, highly adaptive ideas.  He tells her stories about overcoming darkness, stories that fill her with hope.   In general, Guy helps enlighten Eep.    She begins to see the world in ways far beyond that of her dad’s safe but restrictive interpretations.  She’s seeks bright new horizons and experiences abundant life in the beauty and diversity of the creation around her.  

            There is a whole lot more, of course, to this story of the Crood awakening.   The good news is that through family adventures in the light, the extremely anxious and overprotective dad eventually does come to trust the vibrant newness and opportunity of life beyond his cave dwelling instincts.  Living becomes about more than just surviving from one period of darkness to the next and relying on his strict adherence to tradition.  And best of all, he finds true security through strengthened, loving family bonds.

            Now, The Croods is not a Christian movie.  Yet as I reflected on its powerfully symbolic and emotionally moving contrasts between living in the dark and living in the light as individuals and as family, I sure did think about how Jesus invites us to live.   Hear again the words of our Lord -- “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”   

            One key to understanding what it means to live by “the light of life” that is Jesus Christ is to realize that John 8:12 is located within a specific conversation, following a specific real life event.   Jesus had been in conversation with a group of religious authorities, the Pharisees.  This group closely guarded their way of life, finding security through strict observance of the Jewish rituals and the written Law of their tradition.   As such, they had a rather overprotective, isolating way of dealing with sin and the darkness in the world it causes.    This didn’t make them bad people, but it did tend to make them more than a bit blind when the divine Light of salvation they had been waiting for fully entered the world.   Most all weren’t able to accept that Jesus was declaring Himself to be this Light.  They sealed themselves off and felt threatened by his teaching with greater authority concerning all that it means to really be alive, fully engaged and truly secure in this big wide world. 

            I don’t wish to draw the symbolic parallel too sharply, but Jesus consistently called the Pharisees out of their time-honored cave mentality.  He challenged them to step out and see brighter, broader horizons of holy hope … to find faith and freedom in new ways of caring for one another and all of creation through radically inclusive, selfless love and forgiveness.  Right before our reading this morning, John’s Gospel gives the perfect example of this as the Pharisees attempted to condemn a woman to death by stoning for breaking their spiritual safety protocols.        

            “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”  

            This means living faithfully by letting our Lord guide us through and invite us to further engagement with any darkness that makes us feel fearful and anxious in this world.  

            It means instead of allowing ourselves to have a close-minded, self-righteous mind, we welcome new revelations and offer new hope to all God’s people.  

            It means having even more honest, mutual relationships with our loved ones as well as letting others enlighten us.  

            It means keeping our minds illuminated and guided by the Word, the Light of the World, as we strive to care for one another and all creation.  

            It means when we experience the onset of any darkness, we faithfully ascend to be closer to the Light of life through prayer and worship and fellowship and service.

            It means deeply trusting that the Light of Christ comes to us with the dawn of each new day.

            And, I do believe it means not being afraid to have a Crood awakening every now and again.   Amen.

The Promise Passed On

Psalm 119:57-64; 2 Timothy 1:1-14
World Communion Sunday 2013

 

            As I sat down Thursday morning to begin putting thoughts together for my offering of the Good News this morning, I noticed a letter sized white envelope sticking out of one of several paper piles on my office desk.    I immediately knew what it was, and that it’d been there about two weeks waiting for me to follow up in reply with a letter of my own.   There wasn’t an email option or even a phone number, so part of my delay was trying to remember how snail mail works!   I believe the Spirit called my attention to it in that moment … not just as an overdue “to do” item, but because I find the content of that properly formatted letter to be related to the message of 2 Timothy.

            It was sent to my attention by a gentleman out in California.   He’d been researching his family genealogy project for many months.   This led him to our churchyard, in search of several members of the Beam family.   Specifically,  John Beam, who died in December 1833 at the age of 33.  His resting place is just a little bit in from our front stone wall to the left of the gate.   I’m curious … anyone here have Beam family ties?    This gentleman living on the west coast reached out to me with the hope of further establishing, in his words, a “factual, credible, documented family tree” for his children and grandchildren.    I was glad I could support this endeavor a little bit, with the help of our excellent cemetery map.   And glad I recalled how to format a letter in this age of emailing!           

            This experience was a good reminder that family names help deeply root and interpret our identity.   Not all of us have spent a lot of time researching our family history – but I know we all have intergenerational family stories that name various relatives who have influenced us in various ways.   We first learn about the essentials and complexities of life and about core values from the folks who share our family names.    There’s a beautiful lyric affirming this family bond by my favorite folk-rock group, The Avett Brothers.   The song is a conversation between the singer who is worried about dying and his loved ones.   He sings that should this happen, they are to “Always remember there was nothing worth sharing like the love that lets us share our name.”[i]            

            Today being World Communion Sunday, I also spent some time this week faithfully reflecting on the significance of family names in other cultures.   This is how I came upon the following African expression – Umuntu, nagamuntu, nagabantu.   It means, “A person is a person because of other persons.”    I found this in a very inspiring article written by Yale Divinity School professor, Dr. Lamin Sanneh, who was born and raised in Gambia.   He shared it to emphasize the obvious fact that we are born, grow, live and die in family relationship.   In the context of African community, it’s not “I Think, Therefore I Am” … it’s “I Am Related, Therefore I Am.”  

            As a professor of World Christianity, he then affirmed that family names significantly help spread our faith wherever we are in the world and in the Church.   “As long as our names exist,” he wrote, “the Church has hope of continuing community.”    As I thought about this, it became wonderfully true to me as I started prayerfully naming names that have helped and continue to help sustain and grow FPC.  Can you also think of a couple of these names right now?  Oh, and did you feel your ears ringing as I was deep in thought?

            In this morning’s text from 2 Timothy, there is a powerful affirmation about the influence of family names upon faith community.    Did you notice it?   

            This part of the Bible is a letter.   It was written to Timothy, whom the Apostle Paul regarded and groomed as his heir in ministry.   Timothy is reminded about what it means to be a true apostle in the world -- that is, to be a divinely commissioned delegate for “the sake of the promise of life that is in Jesus Christ.”    He’s reminded that it requires three things in particular -- worshipping God with a clear conscience, trusting that the holy plan of salvation in Christ has existed since “before the ages began,” and that it means relying on the Holy Spirit to give the power of love and self-discipline during times of suffering.    Paul supremely exemplifies apostleship.  

             But this letter is about more than what it’s like to pass the promise of Good News along in the powerful way of Paul.    It’s about foundations.  It’s about family.  It’s about naming the forebears who gifted faith.    It’s about Timothy’s divine commissioning being deeply rooted in his identity as a child of his faith-gifting mother Eunice and his faith-gifting grandmother Lois.          Have you ever stopped to wonder whether or not we are born with faith?   By faith, I mean having a clear conviction about the truth of God?   Since we are created in God’s image, I say we are certainly born with the capacity for this, but otherwise I whole-heartedly agree with theologian William Willimon.    Inspired by 2 Timothy 1:14, he states that “You can’t be born with faith; faith must be given. You can’t discover Christianity through long walks alone in the woods, rummaging around in your ego, or thinking deep thoughts in the library. You must receive this faith; you must be given faith in Christ by someone else. Faith is gift all the way down.  Faith is a divine treasure handed down from one generation to the next.”  To punctuate this, he further proclaims that “If you have faith in Christ, then it’s because somebody loved you and Christ enough to tell you the stories, live the faith before you, and show you the way.”[ii]  

            To state something obvious, there is enormous diversity in this world among all of the people professing faith in Jesus Christ.    Faith gets handed down through generations speaking many different languages in a myriad of cultures.   And across the history of Christianity, it’s a tragic fact that there has always been a great deal of sinful disagreement and division within this great diversity.   It goes all the way back to the bickering of the first disciples over who among them had the greatest faith.   But all the history of this does not blot out the Bible’s authoritative teaching that unity should always be our goal.   The name above all names that roots us all as one family is Jesus Christ. 

            Ephesians 4:1-6 is a constant clarion call for unity in Christ’s name while also celebrating our divinely gifted diversity.  It charges us individually and collectively to  “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

            Truth is, every Sunday is a celebration of world communion in Christ’s name.   Yet how good it is to have this special day (which originated within the Presbyterians in 1936) set apart as a specific reminder.    It’s a day inviting all generations in all places to celebrate the Sacrament the Lord’s Supper as our central act of faith.   In solidarity with our faith family members who must walk great distances in order to share in this spiritual feast, you are invited this morning to come forward before the table and the Cross to receive the elements.   As you do so with humble gratitude and genuine joy for “the sake of the promise of life that is in Jesus Christ,” I especially encourage you to prayerfully recall the names of all the people who have gifted you with faith in this great hope.   I encourage you to also reaffirm your commitment to keep passing on this promise, to be faith-bearers in this time and place and apostles to the world we experience every single day.   And may we all be mindful of what former PC(USA) Moderator Bruce Reyes-Chow has written in answer to the question of why he takes communion – “I take communion because it reminds me that the Body of Christ goes far beyond those who circle the table in our little church; rather it is extended to those whom we will most likely never meet, which in turn compels us to live in the world as if every person is a brother and sister in Christ.”[iii]    Amen.

           

 

 

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[i] “Murder In the City”

[ii] http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/featured/indebted-faith/

[iii] http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Why-I-Take-Communion.html