One of my favorite spiritual authors, Dr. Lauren Winner, tells a story of when she was first stepping into Christian faith as a young adult. She expected that when she became a Christian she’d find herself surrounded by people just like her – people who agreed with her, who saw the world like she did, and who shared the same questions about God that she had. Instead, she found herself in churches with people who frustrated her, who seemed stuck on the wrong things, and whose lives didn’t seem anything like she had imagined Christian lives were supposed to be.
Dr. Winner found herself in the office of one of her spiritual mentors – a pastor who would eventually become a bishop in the church of England. As Dr. Winner sat with her pastor, complaining about all the things that were wrong with all the other Christians she knew, and how they were boring and shallow, her pastor said, “I realized awhile back that if I built a church filled only with my friends, it would be a rather small and homogenous church… Dull, really.”
We often talk about church as yet another “association of like-minded individuals” – as if it’s a club filled with people who all agree about everything. But that’s not what church is (or at least t's not what it’s supposed to be) at all. Jesus had a habit of upsetting expectations, of offering the biggest challenges to precisely the people who were closest to him, and of never letting anyone get to comfortable in their way of thinking. Jesus reminds us that when we think we have all the answers, that’s precisely when God is likely to turn things upside down and challenge our preconceived notions. Church is one of the ways Jesus continues to do just that – challenging us, calling us to grow, inviting us to discover more about who God is and how God is at work.
One of the gifts of the church is that it gives us a family far larger than the one we were born into — a family we might not have chosen on our own. In a world where people are increasingly isolated into echo chambers, the church gathers us into a community of real connection. Here, we share life with people we might never otherwise meet — people who are different from us, yet united because Christ has called and claimed us. We don’t get to choose who shows up in our pews or in our lives, but by God’s mysterious grace, they become part of our story and help shape us into who God is calling us to be.
A few weeks ago, we celebrated All Saints’ Sunday. On All Saints’ Sunday, we remember the faithful folks who have gone before us – the people who make up our family of faith across the ages and around the world. All Saints’ Sunday is a reminder that the waters of baptism are thicker than blood – and that because we belong to Jesus, we therefore belong to each other. The family of Christ crosses every boundary, it bridges every cultural divide, and it insists that all our other allegiances are secondary. The diversity of God’s creation – including the diversity of the people who are part of the church – is part of what makes it beautiful. And, the Good News is that, if God loves the people who we think are dead wrong (and, God does!) that means that God also loves us when we get it wrong. Our wrongness or rightness is not the determining factor in God’s love for us. God’s love is for all people, in all times, and all places. The determining factor in God’s love for us is not what we have done – it is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. And, therefore we are invited to learn to love like God loves – to embrace others with as much openness and grace as God does. And, even when we don’t, God still embraces us with a radical love that cannot be stopped.
This is Good News we need in the midst of a world that is sometimes scary and overwhelming. Of course, the world has always been scary. Life has always been difficult. And, yet, God’s love is for us – and for all people – in every season. God has sustained God’s people through ups and downs. And God will sustain us. Part of how God does that is by binding us together with all sorts of people – and helping us discover that each of them (each of us!) is, in our own way, created in God’s image.
Everyone you meet is someone who is created in God’s image. Everyone you meet is someone for whom Christ died. The diversity of this thing called church (even the people who sometimes frustrate us!) is part of how God is at work in our world and in our lives.
I’m thankful that I get to be part of the church together with y’all here at Williamsburg UMC. I am thankful for all the saints who God has put into my life who I never would have met if it weren’t for Jesus. And, I’m thankful that we get to follow Jesus together.
~ Pastor Brian