God is on the loose and calling us to follow!

A couple of years ago I signed up for a Twitter account. Twitter, if you’re unsure, is one of the many social media networks that is, bit by bit, changing the way we receive and react to information in our world. In 140 character messages users, who range from your neighbors to world leaders, send out information to their friends, their acquaintances, their fans, and the world about what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, where they are, and in too many situations what they ate for lunch that’s now giving them indigestion. Personally, I bounce on and off of Twitter. I can only take so much information for so long, so I go through waves of using it and not.

The whole system works by encouraging people to “follow” one another. If you’re familiar with Facebook this is sort of like “friending” someone. Each user of Twitter can customize what tweets they see by choosing whose messages they want to appear in their feed. You can follow your friends and make plans for coffee, talk about your afternoon, or react to that bad call the ref just made at the football game. You can follow acquaintances you have bumped into because of shared interests in politics, sports, or career paths. Do you want to know what life is like after Star Trek? Follow TheRealNimoy. Do you crave a sound byte of wisdom to get you through the day? Follow the DalaiLama. Do you want to know what the soup of the day is? Follow Keys Café.

You can even follow Jesus - - - or at least one of a myriad of funny and not-so-funny jokesters pretending to be Jesus who tweet on his behalf every day. Like one of my favorites “JesusofNaz316” who tweets things from the absurd, like “Blessed are they that have highly unusual names, for they shall likely land jobs at NPR.” To the wise like “Be ye thankful for nurses and nurses aides.” To the occasional thought-provoking and faith challenging like “Grace is not a thing to acquire. Grace is an action to perform.”

Yes I follow Jesus - - - on Twitter. Do you think that’s what he meant?
Apparently this cartoonist didn’t think so….


But sometimes I’m not sure our more conventional and accepted means of following are that much better.

My week from last Saturday Jan 14 until the end of the day on Wednesday Jan 18 consisted of no less than 5 meetings thick in Presbyterianism. In those days I was a part of conversations, meetings, and church business sessions on just about every level of our church organization. There was a presbytery meeting one day, a congregational Nominating Committee another, two straight days of synod business (the organization of the church that covers the upper Midwest), and our session met on Tuesday night. At the same time this week my eyes and attention were turned toward a meeting of some Presbyterians from all over the nation taking place in Orlando. Every level of our denominational structure was before my eyes and thoughts and prayers as some point this week, and if you saw me and you thought I was looking dazed and confused that was probably why.

There is a lot going on in Christ’s church at every single one of these levels. There is a lot that is going on that seems good for Christ’s mission, but at the same time there is also some anxiety about the next step in the life of the church, the future of the church in the 21st century, that is causing some stress in the system. As I was involved in some of these discussions, as I “followed” others on Twitter, I kept coming back to our Scripture passage for today and heard myself asking, “Is this what following is all about?” Put another way, is the institution of the church trying to follow Jesus in best sense of the word, in the way the disciples followed him or is the institution more worried about saving itself?

Don’t misunderstand me here. I am not suggesting that we throw our structure out the window and go it alone. I could ordinarily be accused of being sinfully proud of being Presbyterian. We are in no way perfect, but I believe whole-heartedly that the Holy Spirit is working in and through us. I believe whole-heartedly that most of what we try to do in our life together is in the name and manner of Jesus our Lord. I believe our structure, however complicated and convoluted it may seem sometimes, is a good a faithful way to support disciples of Jesus. However, at some point in each of my gatherings or conversations this last week, I found myself asking “Is this what following is all about? Is this making fishers of people?”

My question led me to look further at what it means to be disciples even just by looking at how the first disciples were called and how they followed. The first thing I noticed right off that bat is that Jesus didn’t call the disciples to build a church. He didn’t call Simon and Andrew, James and John and tell them to go build a building, write a constitution, and organize committees. He didn’t pull them away from their nets and their boats, their families and their co-workers for the purpose of creating an institution. He called them to follow him, and he promised that they would gather people.

That’s it. He didn’t tell the how to ordain, who to ordain, or even TO ordain people at all. He didn’t tell them the kind of building to make or who would own it. He didn’t tell them what committees they would be on or even that there would be committees. He invited them to follow him, to go where he went, to do what he did, and to bring other people along. And he did all of this without even mentioning the church. In fact, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples spend precious little time in any sort of house of worship, be it a local synagogue or the temple in Jerusalem. They visit occasionally, but it is not the scene of most of their action. Most of their ministry takes place not among people who are already on board, who already believe in the promises of Jesus, but among those who have yet to hear and experience the good news of God’s love.

This isn’t to say the local church and even our regional, national, and international partnerships are bad. Jesus certainly does NOT deny the importance and the gift of the community. When disciples are sent out in his name to heal and teach and forgive sins, they are sent out in pairs, presumably to support each other, to work together, to hold each other accountable. Jesus pulls his disciples aside as a group in order to spend time with them and build their community, again for mutual support and teaching about the kingdom of God. He entrusts to them the work of building up that kingdom and sets them out to work on that task together, but he doesn’t give exact directions of how their life in community will be and doesn’t make the maintenance of that community the center of everything he teaches.

I think the church can be a very very good and effective tool for supporting ministry, but ultimately the church has got to be about enabling the people of God to be disciples of Jesus, his followers called and sent. Everything we do in the church, locally in our Property, Education, and Membership Committees, regionally as a presbytery supporting pastors and congregations or as a synod building larger partnership, nationally and internationally in denominational structures, everything we do in the institution of the church has got to ultimately be about equipping people to follow Jesus and display his grace in the world.

The church can’t exist simply to maintain itself. We have not been called into being just to add numbers to our rolls and gather together once a week. We are called to follow, not like Twitter by keeping our ears open for the next little thing he says, noting it and then walking away. We are called to follow with our very footsteps, our lives actions and activities, God who is on the loose, moving in this world, healing those who are broken, forgiving those who have fallen short, loving those who are unlovable, touching those who are untouchable, welcoming those who have been excluded, ignored, and shunned by the world and society in which we exist, the world and society which we are tempted to replicate even in our churches. We are called to invite people to join us, not boost our egos by adding to our numbers and get magic credit in the sky or even to ensure our institution lasts forever. But we are called to share what we have experienced in Christ’s grace and include more in our community to learn from each other, to support one another better as we take seriously the call to be disciples, learners, witnesses, and servants of Jesus our Lord, Jesus our God.

Last week we heard the account in John’s gospel of Jesus calling some of his first disciples. In that story, Jesus got his first disciples the way many people find new people to follow on Twitter, they were recommended to him by a friend. John the Baptizer recognized Jesus as the Lamb of God and two of his disciples then became disciples of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel this week the first disciples come to Jesus when he calls to them while they are hard at work, casting a net into the sea. They are fishermen. Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee when he saw Simon and his brother Andrew, apparently standing on the shoreline. With little else to convince them of his importance or divine nature, he simply says to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

It makes a great children’s song, but I often wonder why they bothered to follow. Fishing for people may sound interesting, but it doesn’t put food on the table. Simon and Andrew first and then the brothers James and John after them, walked away from their livelihoods to go be with Jesus. James and John left their father in the boat with the hired men to follow some guy who just called to them on the beach. They risked everything they had - - their source of daily food and income as well as their inheritance down the road. In one moment and with one decision they left stability behind and walked away instead with someone who promised them people over food.

It’s a strong and daunting model of discipleship. Following Jesus is anything BUT just clicking on his name and reading what he has to say every day. It isn’t anywhere as easy as scrolling through his thoughts, retweeting them in our feed if we think they are particularly good on any given day, but virtually forgetting them when the phone is turned off a few minutes later. When Jesus calls disciples to follow him, when Jesus calls US to follow him he expects us to drop everything we’re doing, get out of the lives we might otherwise live, and follow him.

Jesus’ “follow” is a completely different “follow” than we have come to know - - whether we’re talking about following on Twitter or following a news story or following a conversation or a line of thinking. Jesus’ “follow” is about much more than just keeping track of where something is going. Jesus’ “follow” is active. It’s sacrificial and it demands our commitment to Jesus’ mission of wholeness for all people, grace in the face of opposition, and a reversal of the powers of this world. This is what it means to be a disciple. It’s not about building an institution that occupies a building; it’s about participating in the kingdom of God. It’s about following Jesus into the world where he is working and inviting us along. It’s about displaying his presence in the world so boldly that the nets of his love will be full.

In Every Way

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

It would have been easy for Paul to just walk away. His joyful and celebratory opening to this letter to the church at Corinth doesn‟t tell the whole story. The church in the Greek city of Corinth was one of his “babies.” He had spent 18 months there, preaching, teaching, and evangelizing to build up this new community, and he did it all while facing extreme pressure and persecution from the establishment. And things didn't get much better after he left.

In addition to opposition from outsiders, things started going wrong on the inside of the church. Divisions arose, along with a corruption of practice and preaching. Factions argued about who was more spiritual. Immorality was running rampant. Brothers and sisters in Christ turned on one another with lawsuits. Worship was a mess. The church was arguing and bickering and drawing arbitrary lines in the sand about who was in and who was out.

Few people would have blamed Paul if he had ignored the pleas of those who apparently begged him to stay involved, to guide them back to effective ministry, but in the opening of his letter back to the Corinthians he tells them exactly why he didn't ignore them, why he wouldn't end their relationship. He tells them exactly why he believes they shouldn't turn away from one another, but find a way forward in the name of Christ. It all comes down to one word for Paul, a word he uses four times in this opening greeting.

Paul, called to be an apostle. The church, called to be saints. Together with all those who call on Jesus. By God called into fellowship. For Paul, it seems, it all comes down to call. He couldn't ignore the Corinthians because God called him and sent him to that place and those people. He couldn't and wouldn't shut the relationship completely down, because the relationship wasn‟t something he had formed from his own desire, on a whim. He was in relationship with the Corinthians, even if he was no longer living among them, because God had called him to them. God had joined them together in the Spirit.

Likewise the church at Corinth wasn't meant to be just a gathering of like-minded people who thought it would be fun to get together every once in a while. The church wasn't and isn't a social club created by its members for their own enjoyment, for the support of their own positions, or even to help out the community every once in a while. The church wasn't and isn't, at least as Paul understands it, some random voluntary organization that people join because the mission statement sounds nice, they seem to do a lot of good around town, and it looks good to the neighbors.

The church is the church OF God. The church is assembled by a very special invitation, an invitation that comes from God. The bounds of the church are not set by human minds nor human rules, but are instead set far and wide by God, the Father and Mother of us all who calls us children together into one body. Who are we, the ones who are called, not the ones doing the calling, to decide who is in and who is out? Who are we to even exclude ourselves from the body of Christ when it is God who calls us together, when it is God who calls us imperfect creatures together?

There have been and will be times in many of our lives when we will face a temptation to take ourselves out of the body of Christ, maybe a particular congregation, maybe the universal gathering of the people of faith all together. There are many and varied situations that might lead someone down this road of discernment, and I do believe that there are legitimate and Spirit-filled reasons to come to the decision that it is time to leave a congregation. I do believe that God can call us from one gathering of God's church to another. However, it is never a light decision and it should never be because we believe the new body is any more perfect than the last.

Paul says that the church called together is sanctified, made holy, but he never says it is perfect. Actually, I think the word sanctified really points to how imperfect we are. We have to be called together ansd made holy by God and God alone because we could never do it on our own. We could never be called the saints Paul says we are by our own power and practice of living. It would be easy to hear mistakenly in that word “perfect, above reproach, right.” It would be easy to hear in that word that we are better than others, holier than the rest, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to fall to that temptation. Being sanctified means first that the church has NEEDED God's blessing.

God takes imperfect, unholy, even sinful people, and calls us together into one body, setting us aside for God's purposes. Again, who are we to judge God's call?
There was a time in the history of this church, like many or most churches, when its members were faced with that decision. There was a time when people were deciding if God was calling them into other communities of faith or if God was calling them to remain in relationship here. As I can only imagine and as I understand from your telling, it was a painful and difficult time. It was a time that pointed to the humanity of the people of God, to our imperfections, our brokenness, and ultimately our dependence upon God. It was a time like Paul faced when people probably wouldn't have blamed you from just walking away.

But it also turns out that it was a time when God's call was made clear, because some people stayed. Some people stayed to work together and work things out. This is not to say that those who left were any less faithful. No, I do believe there are times that God calls us to new churches and new relationships in the family of faith. But what we celebrate today is that some people realized that this gathering of the saints of God was not a haphazard gathering. This church was called into being by God, and covered in the grace and the Spirit of God they committed themselves to the hard work of learning what it means to be called by God to be here together with all their different gifts, with all their different blessings to bring to the table.

Key to accepting the call to be together for this or any church is remembering that God is at the center, remembering that we are the church OF God. It is not by our own choice, but by the Spirit's leading that we are called to this or any church. It is God who calls us here; it is God who desires our diversity of gifts and expressions of faith. It is God who ensures that we who are gathered are enriched with every spiritual gift that is needed to carry out the call before us, the call to lift our voices and our actions in praise of our Lord Jesus Christ. The result is a community that is not monolithic, a purposely mixed and varied family of faith.

It is purposeful, but that doesn't make it easy. The challenge as Christians in the midst of diverse community is to stay in relationship for the sake of Christ. The challenge is to understand that as strongly as one holds an opinion about the music, the walls, the children's education, the adult education, the role of the session, the direction of our mission, there is someone else who holds another opinion just as tightly. The challenge from Paul and from this history of our church, the challenge that this 5 year old building testifies to is the challenge to respond to God's call with a resounding yes. Yes, I will stay in relationship with your people. Yes, I will stay in relationship with you. Yes, I will sacrifice my comfort some of the time for the benefit of others, because I trust that yes, they will do the same for me later.

Five years ago, the First Presbyterian Church family in Christ was called to move into this new building and begin worshiping, and learning, and growing here. Many who were here then speak of it as time when our call out of division toward unity in Christ was fully embodies. In moving to a new space with a new commitment to be together enriched in every way by our diversity, we were called and rededicated to a holy way of life, with God at the center, blessing each and every member with gifts to contribute to the gospel ministry. Intentionally or unintentionally it was a fresh start. It was a unique chance to bring the best of what the church was and leave the rest behind. It was a chance to reassemble under the grace and peace of God.

Even today, this new building challenges us to be the church that Paul describes; it challenges us to see ourselves and others as apostles of Jesus, called and sent to make the gospel, the good news of God's re-creation, known in the world. It challenges us to live in holy community with another, not perfect, but sanctified. Forgiven and forgiving when mistakes are made, loving when personalities clash. It challenges us to remember that the building is not an end in itself, the building is the means by which we live out our calling to be followers of Jesus.

In the final report of the Building Workgroup to the congregation five years ago, it was said, “One thing we need to be cautious about is looking at the new building with an attitude of „what can it do for me?‟ On the contrary, we should be wondering 'how can we use thisbuilding to better carry out our mission in the community?' As proud as we might be of it, it is not 'our building.' It is just 'ours to use.' Hopefully, it will be used a lot and for many different purposes all of which are in accordance with God's will. Knowing this congregation as I do, I am optimistic about us doing just that and I know we can do it if we all participate.”

The building is where we gather to worship God together in community regularly, but it's not the only place we ever have to worship. The building is where our educational ministries are anchored, but we can learn in a variety of settings in the world. The building is where we meet to organize and plan our ministry in the community and hopefully around the world, but the building is not the end all be all of who we are in this church. We celebrate five years in this beautiful, beautiful, inclusive space, but we dare not hide in our new building. We dare not point to the day this congregation moved into this building and say, “There we finished what God wanted us to do.” That was just the new beginning. And from that new beginning we
are called to serve Jesus in many different ways, in every way that we have been blessed.

One Body

Colossians 3:12-17
1 Corinthians 12:14-27


I once worked with a pastor who couldn’t stand that little finger play up there on the screens. Join with me if you know it -- “Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people.” It’s cute, right? I’m pretty sure I knew that game before I knew any Bible verses, maybe even any Bible stories. So what’s the big deal? What did this pastor have against a nice little kids’ rhyme?

Well, it was the church part. This colleague was pretty particular about the way the word “church” is used. “The church is NOT a building,” he would say. It’s not our sanctuary or our Sunday School rooms, our offices or our Fellowship Hall. The church is not bricks and mortar.

The problem with that finger play for my colleague is that for him it’s all backwards. “Here is the sanctuary,” he might say. “Here is the steeple.” (That part doesn’t change.) “Open the door and see...the church!” OK, so it doesn’t rhyme. It loses a lot as a kids’ game without the rhyme, but the theology is so much better.

The church, my colleague was getting at, is the people. The church isn’t a place; it’s a community. It’s the people of God created, redeemed, and blessed for ministry. It’s the gathering of believers called together, but also sent out to be active in God’s work in the world. The church, Paul described in his letter to the Corinthians is a living, breathing, active, creative, responsive, body, Christ’s body, to be sure.

I think this is a vital part of our faith. As Christians we claim to be more than just followers of a Jesus, more than just worshipers of God, more than just recipients of the Spirit. We understand ourselves to be collectively, the representation of Christ himself on earth. The church, the holy community, at its very best, is called to the best expression of Christ’s body on earth. This is what we claim to be - - together - - when we’re living and working the way God calls us to.

There are a couple of key points to that idea. One is that it only works when we do it TOGETHER. No one person among the faithful can be the body of Christ alone. No one person expresses Christ-likeness well enough alone to claim that role for himself or herself. It’s why we Presbyterians LOVE our committees. When God’s people work together, we claim, the Spirit of unity makes us the body of Christ. We aren’t the body of Christ on our own; we are individually members of it, but we are not it. Like Paul said, an eye is not the body alone, and an eye cannot function alone. The eye needs the ear and the mouth and the nose and the hands and the feet and the torso and everything other part of the body to make it work to its fullest potential. Each part does not a body make, but together we can be the body of Christ, the church.

The second point is that little caveat “at its best.” The church, we all know, is made up of human beings. We run the same risk as ever other human institution to fall into the way of sin. I remember an old bumper sticker I saw ages ago that said it best, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” I’m not saying that others aren’t forgiven, too; that’s another sermon for another day, but I love the admission and realization in that statement that following Christ does not mean we are perfect people. And imperfect people make an imperfect church.

We make mistakes large and small. As denominations and faith traditions within the larger body of Christ we have covered up abuse out of fear of scandals. We have persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ and people of other faiths or no faith at all. We have ignored the poor, the hungry, the naked, the less-educated, the mentally ill. We have bullied people based on theology, race, and sexual orientation.

Within this congregation and in others we have failed to honor one another as we should. We have reacted rashly out of anger and hurt. We have talked behind each other’s backs or left hard feelings unresolved altogether. We have put our own desires first and disregarded the likes of others. We have been slow to forgive and seek reconciliation with one another. We are an imperfect gathering of imperfect people, and it is difficult, no, impossible for us to be “at our best” by our own efforts.

On our own, even in the church we resort to the ways of the world. We are a broken body. We forget that we are called to a different kind of community than the kind we experience away from the body of Christ. We forget that we aren’t a corporation or a business or a city council or any other earthly institution. We forget that we are the body of Christ, God’s chosen ones, who by a heavenly voice are called to live with one another a different way.

We are called to drape ourselves with compassion, the act of suffering along with those who suffer, humility, where we honor others more than we honor ourselves, patience, where we wait for one another without grumbling. Most of all, I believe, we are called to be a loving, forgiving people, recognizing the imperfections we see so clearly in others are also very present in our own lives. We are called to offer grace when we are hurt, not revenge, not vindication. When we are wronged and we have a complaint against any other, our response should not be a distancing through negative speech and giving up on relationships.

Our response should be to seek one another out that we may find peace and offer forgiveness as we are forgiven by the Lord. Our response in the body of Christ should be different than the response that might come from within a secular gathering. Our calling is to demonstrate the way of Jesus to the world, and the way we treat each other is an important part of doing just that.

But just as we are broken, so was Jesus broken. And just as he is resurrected, we are resurrected. By his grace, we are redeemed and raised to new life. By his overcoming of death, we can overcome the pockets of life-killing imperfection in our life as the body of Christ. Through his forgiveness we can find the strength and courage and grace to forgive one another.

When Jesus calls us together, he calls us to new life, and he unites us with the gift of sacraments, the gift of the holy community, the gift of his Spirit, that together we can be the best expression of his body on earth. Together our hands can be his hands that heal the sick, give food to the hungry, and comfort those who sorrow. Our mouths can be his mouth, praying for the lonely, speaking to the shunned, advocating for the forgotten. Our feet can be his feet, taking the long way to include the excluded, stepping into public places to make his presence known, walking along side those who are seeking the presence of God in their lives. Together we can be his one body.