Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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As I reviewed Dee’s email for the meeting after church today, I found myself reflecting on how far we have come with the fellowship hall. I never had the chance to see it when it was falling in on itself, so I have to use my imagination for that part, but to see it now and to see how close we are to achieving a dream is uplifting to me. I hope it is to you, too. You’re the ones who have labored long and hard to make the dream come true. You’re the ones who have put in long hours to do as much as possible so we didn’t have to pay someone else to do the work.
When I made my first visit to the church nearly five years ago, one of the most pressing questions on my mind was a rather obvious one: if there are so few of them and the needs are so great, why do they keep on working so hard to keep the church alive? Why do they do this? I’m sure that each one of you has an answer to that question, even if you can’t put it into words that make sense to anyone else, or else you wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t be working so hard to achieve what often seems to be a humanly impossible dream. While it might not be comfortable for some of you to talk about your answer with others, I want you to bring it into as much mental focus as you can, because the answer we settle upon as a group, as a community of faith, is going to shape the course of our church’s future.
I’ve spent enough time with you to know that your answers are very different from each other, just as each of you brings your own unique set of gifts and your matchless personalities to this endeavor of doing church together. Those talents, characteristics, and dreams have sometimes clashed over the issues involved in renovating an old building, but when they come together in common consensus, extraordinary things have happened.
To be on the verge of a major fund-raising campaign so that we will have enough money to finish the work; to be at the place where we can pay off the architect and focus on the remaining tasks; to be in a spot where we can finalize the electrical plans and be wired for activities; to be ready to pick out the kitchen appliances and have them all installed and working in time for the Strawberry Festival: those are all extraordinary accomplishments when an organization has to do everything by committee. When we make those kinds of decisions about our own homes, there aren’t as many people to consult; when we have to take the views and passions of several others into consideration, it gets a lot more complicated and sensitive, doesn’t it?
When the apostle Paul was working hard to solidify the church plant in Ephesus and encourage its members to continue working toward the transforming power of a common consensus, he used the image of a holy temple to illustrate his point. As he shared his vision with a group of hard-working folks who were sometimes passionately at odds with each other, he asked them to think of their enterprise as something that was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” We seldom build with cornerstones anymore, so Paul’s deeper meaning can easily be lost in translation, but the cornerstone determined the placement of everything else that went into the construction process.
The height, width, and length of the stone would set the dimensions for every other rock laid alongside the cornerstone. It would require that everything else be fit according to its precise depth and heights. And most importantly, it would determine the direction the entire building project would face. In those days, facing in a particular direction meant more than it does to most of us moderns. Just as a devout Muslim turns toward Mecca to pray five times during the day, the devout Jew of Paul’s time would stop to turn toward Jerusalem for daily prayers. Just as devout Muslims are positioned to face Mecca as they prepare to leave this world, most cemeteries are laid out to have the occupants facing the sunrise in preparation for the resurrection.
Looking at these words from this perspective, Paul’s meaning becomes clearer: everything that a church aspires to should be guided by the church’s devotion to the resurrected Christ. All of her efforts should be shaped by the depths and heights of Christ’s call on our lives. Whatever common consensus we forge should be determined by the direction that points us and future generations toward the living God who is our common destiny. As wonderful and lofty as these words sound, we have some sensitive and complicated work ahead of us still.
Each of us brings a passionate vision for the future of the church into our discussions, and those differing viewpoints have led to some spirited (and sometimes dispiriting) debates on how to configure or reconfigure the space we have in the hall. Even before we hired an architect to guide us through the process, I can remember drawn out discussions about the placement of various rooms and the larger functions we want the hall to serve. Now that we’re poised to complete the work, we’re wrestling with something that seems very simple at face value: what are we going to call our renovated hall?
While it seems simple, the name of our hall is something of a symbolic cornerstone for the church. The various viewpoints that I have heard are deeply rooted in your various answers to my initial question about why we’re working so hard to keep the church alive. Each of your passionate opinions is valuable in this discussion, because each of you is valuable to God and to this church. My role as your pastor, as I understand it from this morning’s reading in the book of Ephesus, is to encourage you to continue working toward the transforming power of a common consensus.
More specifically, I want you to think about your enterprise in the framework of the larger issues that were posed and implied by the apostle Paul in his metaphor of the church becoming a living, holy temple in the Lord. At one level, our work should be defined and inspired by our devotion to our understanding of the presence of God in our midst as a fellowship of seekers and believers. At another level, we have to pay some serious attention to some important factors in this discussion: how does God want to use this facility to help us live up to our calling have an impact on our community? How can we best partner with God to help point future generations toward God?
I know that this conversation is sensitive and complicated, but as long as I’m calling on this church to consider its common destiny in God, let me invite you to ponder the implications of Paul’s vision from another level. His lofty and uplifting words tell us that our efforts at doing church are akin to raising a living, holy temple in the Lord. You already know what the Temple in Jerusalem was, right? You know that animals were butchered and offered as sacrifices, and that people brought the first fruits of their crops to be offered as sacrifices, right? The clear implication was that the Temple was a place where sacrifices were made so that people could be made right with God.
Isn’t that part of our larger calling as a church? Isn’t this, by use of Paul’s inspiring vision of the living temple, supposed to be a major shaping factor in our ministry? While we no longer believe in animal sacrifices, and while we no longer use the altar to make our bloody offerings, our calling remains the same. We are called to be a place where sacrifices are made so that people can get right with God. I know that my words are cutting against the grain of the modern thinking that tells us that people don’t need any help in getting right with God, because there’s nothing wrong with them that needs fixing.
But even at the heart of the social gospel, people are called upon to make sacrificial efforts to improve the greater good for the greatest number of people. Even the most modern educators are realizing that if you divorce religion from education, children still need to be taught values and morality. While it is not our role to judge people, it is our role to sit up and pay attention when people are in pain. It is our role to step in with sacrificial acts of love when people find their lives caught up in the turmoil and trouble of this chaotic world. It is our role to offer ourselves and our resources to help people get connected with God when they come asking for our help in doing so.
I believe that our common destiny needs to include this very important feature of sacrificial living. Our common consensus needs to embrace a vision that is big enough to incorporate viewpoints that are different from our own. Each of us is being called upon to make individual sacrifices for the good of the whole organization, the community at large, and the generations of people who are yet to come. May God help us find the way forward toward that brighter future.
Welcome, Announcements & Prayer Requests
A Candle for Peace NC #575
Call to Worship (Based on Isaiah 40 & Psalm 23)
Leader: Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
People: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still water.
Leader: They shall mount up with wings like eagles.
People: He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Leader: They shall walk and not faint.
ALL: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Hymn NC #386 The Church’s One Foundation
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Shepherding God, you bring us into your presence and shower us with your love.
People: You call us to abide in your love and walk in your grace.
Leader: Help us live your love not only in our words but also in our deeds.
People: Open our hearts and minds to your teachings, that we may be servants of your love.
Leader: Transform our church, that we may be shepherds of your love.
People: Touch us with the awe and wonder that came upon those early disciples as they heard the teaching of the apostles.
Leader: Help us to have that same spirit of community the early church had, as they prayed and shared their joys and concerns with one another and with their Lord.
People: Let us follow their example as we lift our prayers to God. Lord God, we pray for those in our community who need your healing and comfort.
Leader: We pray for those persons in leadership across our country, that in this time of crisis we might join together and make wise decisions.
People: We pray for our brothers and sisters around the world, whose lives are torn apart by war.
Leader: Keep us diligent in well-doing and grant us the power to love one another.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC #400 Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation
Psalm 23, Isaiah 54:9-14, Ephesians 2:11-22
Sermon Our Common Destiny
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC #44 Beautiful Jesus
Benediction
Leader: Lord Jesus, all that we have is yours, and all that we are is yours.
People: In offering our lives to you, may all that we do serve you, Lord, to the glory of your name.
Leader: We go forth in God’s care, taking love wherever we go.
People: We go forth in God’s grace, sharing mercy with everyone we meet.
Leader: Go forth in God’s name, taking Christ, the cornerstone of our faith, wherever you go. Go now with the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
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