Text: Colossians 3: 12-17
I want to start off our message this morning by thanking all of you for the gentleness, patience, and tolerance that you have shared with one another these past few weeks. As a community, we have been exploring the larger conversation taking place in our denomination about human sexuality. There are still lots of questions and unknowns, but thank you for making the time to listen and pray and reflect. As these months continue before February, please feel free to ask questions and we’ll let you know of opportunities to have further conversation as they arise.
One of the things that these past four weeks highlighted for me, however, is that we are truly bound together in love. For the vast majority of those gathered here, our presence in this community of faith is rooted in something that goes beyond our disagreements or differences. And so I want to take some time today to explore that.
Will you pray with me?
Holy God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts and minds be holy and pleasing to you, Our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Be tolerant. Forgive. Allow peace to rule your hearts. Teach and warn each other.
Paul invites us through his letter to the Colossians to think seriously about what it means to be a community formed by Jesus Christ. A community that takes seriously its baptismal vows. A community bound together by the love of God.
Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
What unites us is not the rules we follow or our ethnicity or which team we root for, but Christ – who is in all things and in all people.
And the image of Christ should be renewing and transforming our lives and our community so that whatever we do, we do it as one coordinated body.
The truth is that this is harder than it sounds.
We have a really hard time putting into practice these things as a congregation because the demands of the world outside of this community are so heavy. Work. School. Sports. Dance. The lawn needs mowed and dinner needs made. Our lives are being pulled in a thousand different directions with every single one of them demanding that we wear a different hat or become a different person in order to be successful.
The vast majority of us spend less than 3-5 hours with our church community each week. 3-5 hours is all the time we have to look towards Christ, pray together, sing, hear the word, eat some cookies, and then we all head our separate directions once again.
You know… some of us spend more time each week in the fall in community at football games than we do at church.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing! I know I was gathered together with friends around the television yesterday watching Iowa and Iowa State.
But it made me realize that perhaps congregations today have much more in common with football fans than with the kind of community Paul is calling us to embody in these scriptures.
We are brought together around our common love – football in one case and God in the other. We sing and cheer together. We pray together – “Please, God, let us get a first down.” And when the game is over and the refreshments are cleaned up, we head home… back to our lives.
My experience with going to football games is that for the most part I don’t know the people around me. I know that we share a common passion and for a couple of hours we are all on the same team, but I have little, if any sense of obligation to the people who are around me in the stadium. I don’t get their phone number and check in on them later in the week. I’m not going to be invited their kid’s wedding ten years down the road.
Some of you, I know, are long time season ticket holders, however, and faithfully show up at every game, week after week. And I’ve heard a few stories about the community you have formed with the people around you. Over the years, you’ve gotten to know one another – you talk about what you do and how your families are.
I imagine the same thing happens here at church. When you sit in the same pew week after week, there are others who do the same. You take that time before worship and after the postlude to ask questions about how life is going. You know the names of their kids. You ask how work or school is going. You follow-up with someone has been sick.
There is a bond of love that starts to be formed as we gather together each week.
Before our Father’s throne we pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.
What happens, however, when there is conflict?
What happens when we disagree?
What happens when we are offended by something that another has done?
If we were simply fans in a stadium, maybe you would stop talking with that person or switch seats. There is little if any sense of obligation to one another, much less accountability for one another.
But that is not true in the church.
In our baptismal vows, we promised to proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We promised to pray for one another. We promised to surround one another with a community of love and forgiveness so that we might all grow in our service to others.
Our congregation has 451 professing members on our rolls and has listed 87 people who have been baptized as infants or children. That means there are 538 people who are bound together under the care of this congregation. 538 people for whom we have made vows to surround with love and care.
There is a really key part of those vows that is really hard to remember.
We promised to surround one another with forgiveness… because we are not always going to get it right.
I know that when we look around, we do not see 538 faces in our midst.
Some members of our body simply live in new places, but their connection to our church continues and then come back and visit when they can.
Some members of this community can no longer be physically present with us on a Sunday morning, but we try to reach out in love and help them to remain connected through visits, cards, and calls.
But others are no longer active in this community because of something that went wrong.
Maybe an inappropriate comment was made.
Maybe they felt like they didn’t have it all together like they should.
I need to name a simple truth:
We are not saints. People in this church will let you down.
But you are not a saint either. And you will let others down at one point or another.
When we do fail one another – when we make mistakes, when we fall off the wagon, when we lash out in anger or frustration – well, that is actually when we need one another the most.
That is when we need this community of folks who are not only brought together by Christ’s love, but bound together by that love. And as Christ’s life transforms our community, then how we treat one another changes as well.
We share each other’s woes, our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.
Too often, I have seen churches allow conflicts and problems to remain hidden. We don’t share with one another the woes in our lives for fear of judgment. And out of fear of being judgmental, we aren’t willing to hold one another accountable for the promises that we have made.
But listen again to the words of Paul in his letter to the Colossians:
Put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Be tolerant with one another.
Forgive each other.
Put on love.
Friends, you are part of a community that is unlike any else in this world. We are bound together by Christ and these words, these values, this attitudes, form the core of who we are and how we treat one another.
And the Body of Christ, we are called to be honest, share the truth, but always with those attitudes at the core of what we say and how we act. In that way, no matter our conflict or struggle, we can always love one another back into community.
When was the last time that you reached out to one of your brothers or sisters in Christ and gently asked why they haven’t been in church for a while? Give someone a call and listen more than you speak.
When was the last time you texted your friend and reminded them about the great children’s activities that they’ve been missing? Pull out your phone right now… and do so with compassion for the busyness that is probably bringing a lot of stress into their life.
When was the last time you stopped to visit the older couple who used to sit right behind you? Forgive yourself for not doing so sooner… just go!
Have you ever told the person who sits next to you what it means to you to give faithfully? Or shared how much it means to you that they are present here in worship each week? Or asked them if there is anything you can pray for in their life?
For too long we have talked about people and their problems and their failings behind their back rather than reaching out and letting them know that we are here, and we want to be on this journey with them.
I have seen too many churches treat one another as strangers instead of as brothers and sisters in Christ’s love. Siblings, bound together by a love so strong that it cannot be broken.
When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.
This church knows how to love, how to serve, and how to pray. When someone lets us know that they are in need, we show up. When a loved one is dying, we bring prayers. When someone is recovering from surgery, we show up with food.
Our greater challenge is to continue pushing ourselves to love when it is difficult. When we are disappointed. When we aren’t satisfied with how things are going. How to love as family, flesh and blood of the one Body of Christ. You never cease to amaze me with your outpouring of love… so now let’s allow that love to continue to move us deeper into relationship, deeper into the tough questions, deeper into the dark and troubled places of our lives. Even there… especially there… let us be bound together in love.
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