2 Corinthians – Salvaged Faith

UMC 101: The Local Church & Membership

Posted on February 27, 2022Leave a comment

Text: 2 Corinthians 3:12-13, 3:18-4:1, 5-6; Book of Discipline 201-204, 214-221

Over the last seven weeks, we have explored together some of the foundational beliefs and practices of the United Methodist Church.

Our focus on grace and faith put into practice.

The call to reach out and share the love of God with all people.

A charge that makes room for difference and invites us to use our brains and celebrates diversity.

All grounded and centered in the core of Christian tradition… praising the God of all creation who became flesh and lived and died so that we might truly know life and who continues to empower us by the Holy Spirit.

As we come to the close of this series, we also come to a transitional date on the Christian calendar: This Sunday before the season of Lent is Transfiguration Sunday.

It is the day that a few of the disciples retreated with Jesus to a mountain top and witnessed the glory of God.

They experienced for themselves the very presence of God, radiating with light, in the person of their rabbi, Jesus.

He shone like the sun and they could hardly take it in… much like Moses before them.

Moses, too, had been to the mountaintop.

He had spent time in the presence of God and for more than just an afternoon.

In the account of Exodus 34, Moses spends forty days and forty nights with the Lord learning about the covenant God wanted to make with the people.

Exodus 34:29 tells us that when Moses came back down from the mountain, his face was radiant. He shone and reflected the glory and the presence of God. But the people were afraid and so he put a veil over his face (34:33).

The Apostle Paul picks up on this idea in his second letter to the church in Corinth.

He describes the law of Moses as a ministry of condemnation, because as individual human beings we couldn’t live up to what it asks of us.

That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a reflection of God’s glory… it was!

But Paul believes that the ministry of righteousness we receive from Jesus through the Holy Spirit is even more glorious, because we are set free to truly reflect God’s glory in all that we say and do.

We are transformed by God’s glory and Paul describes the church in Corinth as Christ’s letter… written not with ink, but with the Holy Spirit.

They are the reflection of Jesus Christ to the world and all who see what they say and do will come to know the glory of God.

That local community and its members reflect the light of the knowledge of God’s glory to everyone they meet.

And so do we.

As our Book of Discipline proclaims, “The function of the local church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is to help people accept and confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to live their daily lives in light of their relationship with God” (¶202, p. 147).

It goes on to say that the members of the church gather for worship, to receive God’s grace, to be formed by the Word, and then we are sent out to do the work of Christ. (¶203)

Or as that familiar song from our childhood reminds us:

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…
Everywhere I go, I’m gonna let it shine…

That light, however, it isn’t my own light.

It isn’t your light.

It is the light of Jesus Christ.

I was thinking about the solar lamps that I installed in my garden last summer. Every evening they light up the path.

But the lamp has no light of its own… it simply captures and stores up the energy from the sun.

The more time it spends soaking up those rays, the brighter and longer it will shine.

Much like Moses shone radiantly after those forty days and forty nights in the presence of God’s glory.

And to keep our lights shining…

To fill up our lamps…

We need to continually spend time in God’s presence.

So as United Methodists, we don’t believe that membership in the local church is simply a box that we check.

It is a commitment and a covenant we make together with God and with the other members of our congregation.

In the coming weeks, our confirmation students will be exploring these vows deeply, but maybe it is good for all of us to get a refresher.

Membership Vows

Renounce, Reject, Repent
Accept God’s freedom and power
Confess Jesus as our Savior
Serve as Christ’s representative to the world
Strengthen the ministries of the UMC
Participate with our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness
Receive and profess the Christian faith

Just as John Wesley brought classes and societies of people together to focus on their spiritual life with one another, our membership vows are a commitment to “a lifelong process of growing in grace.” (¶216.1).

We turn away from sin and evil and turn our lives towards Jesus. Then, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we become ambassadors of Jesus to the world. We see each member as a vital part of the church and we have “method” for helping one another to keep these vows.

First – a local church provides opportunities for a member to grow in their discipleship. From small groups to worship, from mission events to our stewardship campaign, this local church offers ways for you to go deeper in your faith and to discover the will and grace of God. Each one is an opportunity to spend time in the presence of God.

Second – we share a mutual responsibility for one another. We need you, just as much as you need us, and together we shoulder burdens, share risks, and celebrate joys. We encourage one another along in this journey. After all, the people that make up our church are the body of Christ and we also experience the presence of God in one another.

Third – each person is responsible for their own participation. We can have all the opportunities in the world, but ultimately, you are the one who prays, who shows up, who gives, and who reaches out to share God’s love with the world.

However, as part of our Wesleyan heritage, we are called to hold one another accountable to these commitments. Those early Methodist class meetings were designed for members to keep one another on track, it is the responsibility of the local church to reach out in love to invite people to return and to nurture people back into community.

Sometimes that might look like a call or a note from the pastor, but this is the responsibility of all of us.

It is the phone call you make to invite someone to join a small group with you.

It is the note you put in the mail to let someone know you have missed them in worship.

It is the way you speak up if someone in a meeting has said something harmful.

It is the advice you offer when someone seems to be taking a wrong turn in their journey.

We do all of this, because we believe that through these ministries and this community, the glory of the Lord is transforming us more and more everyday into the image of Christ… and that we reflecting that glory to the world.

In Sara Groves’ song, “You are the Sun” she writes:

You are the sun, shining down on everyone.
Light of the world giving light to everything I see…
I am the moon with no light of my own
Still you have made me to shine
And as I glow in this cold dark night
I know I can’t be a light unless I turn my face to you.

The work of the local church and our responsibilities as members of that church is to turn our faces to the Light of the World and let God shine through our lives.

As the Book of Discipline says:
Each member is called upon to be a witness for Christ in the world, a light and leaven in society, and a reconciler in a culture of conflict… to identify with the agony and suffering of the world and to radiate and exemplify the Christ of hope” (¶220).

And we don’t do it alone. We do it together.

The work of the local church is only possible because all of us have gathered our resources and our talents and our time together so that we can reach out to the people in this community, and work to help one another grow. And we also are part of a larger connection, so we partner with other local churches – like inviting students from Windsor UMC to join us for confirmation. We work to be stewards not just of our resources, but of God’s creation as we participate in the mission of the larger United Methodist Church. (¶202, p147-148)

Let us keep soaking up the light of God so that in all of these things, the glory of God might shine through us.

Amen.

Practicing Our Religion in Public

Posted on February 11, 2016Leave a comment

By some accounts, yesterday morning I did exactly the opposite of what Jesus tells us in Matthew.

Some of us gathered at a local coffee shop, a public place, to pray and impose ashes and remember we are merely human.

We were out there, practicing our religion in public.

I always find this passage from the gospel of Matthew such a very strange text to be assigned for Ash Wednesday, but there it is. Every year, on this day, these are the words that are proclaimed.

When you pray, shut the door and pray in secret.

When you give, don’t look for praise.

When you fast, don’t let it show.

All of these seem to speak against exactly the kind of public activity of gathering in a coffee shop to impose ashes.

Or the rather public display of walking outside of the church after worship with a big black cross on your forehead.

We are starting a series in worship here at church called, Renegade Gospel, and are reminded that Jesus didn’t come to start a religion. Jesus didn’t come to hand out new rituals for us to follow.

But you know what, Jesus did come to start a revolution.

Jesus did come to re-instigate a relationship.

Jesus came because of the simple fact we remember today. We are nothing but dust and to dust we shall return.

When we look deeper and contextually at our gospel reading in Matthew today, we come to understand that Jesus isn’t warning against being religious people in public.

No, he is asking us to stop pretending to be religious just because we are in public.

Jesus is calling us back into relationship… with God, with ourselves, with one another.

He is calling us back to the reality of our sin, our failures, our outward trappings of religion that demonstrate little or no faith on the inside.

As the Message translation sums up this passage: When you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production… Do you think God sits in a box seat? Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. (Matthew 6:5-6)

That sentiment is echoed in the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:13. He is reaching out to them and asking that they listen, that they heed his words, because of what they have seen and heard about his faith.

He hasn’t hidden it. He has lived it. Fully. And living his faith has gotten him into lots of trouble.

The kindness and holiness of spirit, the genuine love and truthful speech… all of it has brought dishonor, ill repute, punishment… and yet he and the other disciples persist. They are not afraid to live out their faith publically for all to see and directly in the face of the religion of the day.

We might think of religion as the rituals and rules, the culture and conditions of faith. It is the box we put our faith in.

But Jesus comes to break the box apart and pull us out into the world.

Jesus comes to help us understand that our relationship with him is about far more than prayerful words and pious actions.

The gospel is yearning for us to be so caught up in its mercy, love and goodness that we can’t help but live into its revolutionary reality.

We are called to stop pretending to be religious and start living faithfully.

Whether this morning, gathered in a public space, or right here, tonight, in this community of worship, we are proclaiming the revolutionary message of the gospel.

We are dust.

We are nothing.

We are sinful.

We need help.

And those words are anathema to our culture. In a world where we try to show how strong and powerful and successful they are – they are tantamount to treason.

But we stand on the street corner and say them anyways… because they are true.

And because Jesus has come.

The one who created us out of dust will re-create us from the dust of death.

There is mercy and forgiveness in this place.

There is life, even in the midst of death.

And that, we should proclaim from every place we find ourselves.

We should invite every friend and stranger alike into that revolutionary truth.

What God Has Sown

Posted on November 16, 2014Leave a comment

In this past month, I have found new appreciation for the Apostle Paul.

You see, on top of being an apostle and a scholar, a writer and mentor; in addition to the work he did as a tanner to pay his own way through ministry; he was also a fundraiser.

I think that tiny detail skipped my attention for so many years, because I didn’t know what it meant to be a fundraiser. I wasn’t aware of the strategies and the prayer and the faith that goes into soliciting money from perfect strangers.

But I do now!

I have spent my entire life hearing that phrase, “God loves a cheerful giver” out of context… and you probably have, too.

While Paul has many other topics to cover in this letter to the people of Corinth, chapters 8 and 9 represent a sort of “stewardship letter” much like many of you received in the mail last week.

Corinth was a rich and powerful city in Greece. The ports had made them wealthy beyond measure. So it is natural that they had resources to spend and to invest and to, yes, even donate to the church.

Paul was encouraged by the apostles in Jerusalem to remember the poor and needy in the city (Galatians 2), and he wanted to honor those who had sent him out in ministry by sending back gifts that could support their work. Much like our apportionments today, the funds he was raising would be used for ministry in the other places the apostles had influence. And Paul knew Corinth would be the place where gifts could be abundant.

In his letter to them, Paul first of all talks about these poor people in Macedonia who have absolutely nothing but the love and grace of God, but somehow managed to pull together an incredible offering to send with Paul. He writes that though they were impoverished and struggling, they heard his plea for money to help the needy in Jerusalem.

From chapter 8: 3-4: “they gave what they could afford and even more than they could afford, and they did it voluntarily. They urgently begged us for the privilege of sharing in this service for the saints.”

And Paul says, all the while, I was telling them about YOUR generosity, you people of Corinth. I was telling them about how much YOU had promised to do. They wanted to be a part of that… part of this incredible opportunity we have to care for the needs of others. They gave out of their poverty, and now it’s your turn.

Paul asks the Corinthians to carefully consider their obligations and to take note of where their resources are needed and then to give cheerfully and jubilantly out of their abundance to the Lord. He wants them to give only what they know they can. Paul didn’t want them to make a commitment they couldn’t fulfill. He wanted them to give freely, and not out of obligation. He wanted them to think long and hard about what they could give and then to do so generously.

I was in Paul’s shoes many times over my work with Imagine No Malaria. And I know what a fine line it was to walk between challenging people to give more than they thought they should and yet not more than they actually could.

On one occasion, a well-intentioned person filled out one of our pledge cards and sent it in with an extraordinary commitment to give over three years $5000. I added the donation to our totals and celebrated reaching a milestone! But then they called me a few weeks later when reality set in and told me, “I want to support this project so very much, I see how much good it is doing and I am so excited about being a part of it, but I simply can’t afford to do so at the level I told you I could.”

And you know what. That’s okay. I told that person we were so thankful for what they could share. We were overjoyed that they felt called to give and worked to make the adjustments they needed.

In chapter 8 of his letter, Paul writes that he wants the Corinthians to give what they can afford. If they can make some adjustments to their life and want to make a sacrifice here and there – great. If they have great resources at their disposal, then by all means, they shouldn’t look upon this call and drop in a few dollars. They need to give what they can actually afford to give. The goal is not to make them suffer or create financial difficulties. The goal is to prayerfully ask what God has blessed them with that they can bless others with.

Not one of us should feel guilty about what we can afford to give. We shouldn’t feel pressured to end our support of other good things in order to give here. Every one of us should hear the call, look at the needs, and then joyfully respond from our resources… whatever they might be.

In the early eighteenth century, a scholar and pastor Matthew Henry wrote: “Money bestowed in charity, may to the carnal mind seem thrown away, but when given from proper principles, it is seed sown, from which a valuable increase may be expected.”

Paul asks the Corinthians to think of their gift as an investment. To sow whatever seeds they can so that the Kingdom of God might bear fruit in the world… and so they might personally experience the joy and grace and abundance that come to us when we freely give.

Our commitment to give financially to this church might not make a lot of sense to the larger world. But we do so because we have seen the good it can do.

In the United Methodist Church, we understand that our gifts not only provide this wonderful space for ministry in this neighborhood, but also help to support Women at the Well and help to build churches other parts of the world. Our gifts help our children to learn more about Jesus, but they also help educate communities about diseases like Ebola and Malaria so that every child has the chance to grow up and live an abundant life. Our gifts raise up leaders among our youth here in Des Moines, but they also are providing scholarships for new pastors in Eastern Europe and the Philippines.

Every dollar given to the church is an investment in the gospel. It is a seed planted. And in time, God will reveal how Faith Hall and our children and the women in Mitchellville and communities like the Bo District in Sierra Leone… how all of these investments and seeds will bear fruit for the Kingdom of God.

That is why we are here, after all.

We are here, in this place, for the Kingdom of God.

We are here to worship and to praise God… the source every breath and snowflake and every good thing.

In our passage from Deuteronomy this morning, Moses encourages the people to remember the long road they have been on… the road that was sustained every step of the way by the grace of God.

God was the one who rescued them from Egypt.

It was the Lord who led them through the desert.

It was God who fed them and gave them drink out of rocks and manna.

And he wants them to remember when they get to the promised land… when their lives settle down and they find good work and have food on the table every night… he wants them to never forget who it was that God them there.

Everything we are and everything we have is a gift. It is grace. It is a blessing.

We are here today because God spoke and light and life came into being.

We are here today because God wanted a relationship with us.

We are here today because God moved in the lives of people like Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the Israelites, James and John and Paul and the Corinthians.

We are here because of the faithful people who were led by God to turn a farmhouse into a church in 1925. We are here because the Holy Spirit moved and breathed life into this congregation.

Today, we are the beneficiaries of God’s grace and love and power that moved through countless generations before us. All the resources and abilities we have are gifts from our Lord and Savior.

And like the Israelites, we should never forget that simple fact.

It is not our own strength that has produced our abundance. No, it is the strength of God that has brought us here.

And God has sown his power and blessing in our lives SO THAT we might bear fruit for the Kingdom.

You see… God made an investment, too. God planted gifts and resources into our lives. God has nurtured this church and helped us to grow so that we might in turn be a blessing. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace.”

Grace for living.

Grace for giving.

Grace for working.

Grace for singing God’s praise.

God has made sure that you have what you need in order to serve him.

The Macedonians gave out of their poverty.

The Corinthians gave out of their wealth.

But each gave because they believed they were sowing seeds for the Kingdom of God. And each gave out of joy and thanksgiving for the abundance of what God has planted in their lives.

So today, as we make our commitments to the Lord, may we always remember where our abundance comes from.

May we commit without hesitation.

May we commit without guilt.

May we commit what we have and trust that as God has blessed us, so God will bless others. Amen.

Strong in the Broken Places

Posted on July 5, 2009Leave a comment

All of us are gathered here this morning to celebrate. In fact – if we didn’t have something to celebrate, each of us would be inside our own churches or maybe even still in bed this morning. But no! We got up, we got dressed, we brought out the lawn chairs this morning because there is so much to celebrate we just couldn’t stay home! We just couldn’t stay quiet! Can I get an Amen! (AMEN!)

Isn’t it such a great day to get together and celebrate the fact that we suck? Yes you heard me right. We suck. We are not perfect. We can’t do it all. We are not the best, or the brightest, or the most talented. We don’t have the most money, or the biggest churches, or even… and I know I’m going out on a limb here… we probably don’t even have the most wonderful pastors in the entire world. We make mistakes… a lot of them… all of the time. We are a nation that is stressed out, frustrated by our jobs, worried about our families, just trying to make ends meet in a world that seems to be out to get us.

Now – I know that doesn’t sound like very good news. That doesn’t sound like a very good reason to celebrate either… but hang in there for just a second!!

Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian and ethicist at Duke University, has a rule that I think applies here. His rule is this: You always marry the wrong person. But that rule has a very important qualifier – the wrong person is the right person.

Pastor Brian Volck heard that rule of Hauerwas’ and realized that our relationship with God could be described the same way. Volck writes, “We in the church Christ gathers are generally a nation of rebels, impudent and stubborn. We repeatedly go whoring after idols of status, security and national pride or, out of false humility (oh, I couldn’t possibly make a difference in that situation, we) fail to respond when we see members of the Body harm others and themselves. And – here’s the catch – the Creator of the Universe chooses us to be His people, sending us into the world unarmed, scarcely ready, flawed, dependent… In short, we are the wrong people for the job.”

But you know what? It’s precisely because we are the wrong people that we are such a perfect match for God’s plans.

In our scripture for this morning, we find Paul writing to the church in Corinth. Now, we may not know all of the circumstances, but it is safe to assume that the people in Corinth thought Paul might be the wrong person for the job as well!

Corinth was a city that was all about power and strength. They hosted athletic contests and games where competitors outdid one another in feats of strength. They were an economic power house being a huge harbor on the Mediterranean Sea. Power and success were worshipped in Corinth much as they are in the United States today – even among the Christians that Paul ministered to there. And Paul had impressed them with his letters, but something about Paul-in-person, turned them off. Two chapters before our reading today, we find one of these complaints quoted… “His letters are weighty and strong,” some Corinthian writes, “but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible.”

The people in Corinth much preferred the “superstars” who came into town after Paul left – the traveling circus of visions and wonders and contemporary music and dramatic preachers. Superstars who swept them up in an emotional fury and then left them begging for more! Superstars who were paid a pretty penny for their services.

Compared to these showmen, Paul seemed rather lame. He didn’t charge anything for sharing the word of God with them. He seemed to always be getting in trouble with the local governments. And he wasn’t that entertaining when he showed up either. He spent way too much time telling them what not to do, rather than making them feel good about themselves. We don’t know all of the details of the exchanges back and forth between Paul and the followers of Christ in Corinth, but there were some problems there.

So part of the reason that Paul is writing to the church is because he needs to defend himself a bit against the misguided theology of his opponents. With great sarcasm and irony, Paul writes to compare himself with these “superstar apostles” who have been visiting Corinth as of late.

You have no problem putting up with those fools, he writes, so let me tell you just how foolish I am. Instead of boasting of all of the things I can do like they are so prone to do, I’ll boast of my weaknesses! I am a fool for Christ. I’ve been beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, robbed, hungry, thirsty, and homeless – you can’t necessarily call that successful ministry by the world’s standards. Oh, I can match them, vision for vision if they want to talk about ecstatic experiences and revelations from God – but I’m not going to play that game. I will not boast of anything but my weakness and God’s power.

In fact, Paul writes, just to help me remember that I am weak but God is strong, I was given a thorn in my side – a permanent reminder in my life – that I am not perfect, that I don’t have it all together, but that God chooses to work through me anyways. I don’t have to be everything because God is everything and God’s power is made perfect in our weakness.

We may not be the right people for the job, but through God’s grace we are perfect for the job.

Paul is desperately trying to tell us some good news! News that is contradictory to the Corinthian view of power and to the ways of this world… it is because we are weak, that we are so strong in God. It is because we are flawed and imperfect that God’s grace has room to maneuver. It is when we get our overinflated egos out of the way that people can see Jesus Christ in our lives.

Throughout history, God has chosen the wrong people to be his servants. He chose Jacob the trickster, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, Mary and Joseph, a poor unmarried couple to nurture the Christ Child, a whole band of disciples who got it wrong more times than they got it right. And God chose Paul – a persecutor of the church to be one of its greatest evangelists. In each and every single one of those partnerships – it was God’s power working through their lives, not any personal strength that they had.

Earnest Hemingway wrote that “Life breaks all of us, but some of us are strong in the broken places.” In the church, we might rephrase that to say that we are all fallen and broken people, but some of us turn our brokenness over to God and through God’s grace, we become strong in the broken places. God uses our hurts and our pains and our frustrations and our failings and makes something beautiful out of our lives.

This is a time for celebration. We come to celebrate this Independence Day holiday, and to celebrate the birthday of our community – and in the midst of that celebration there is a lot of boasting. But let us also remember to boast about our weaknesses. Let us also remember to boast about the places where our communities are broken. Let us remember a hospital that almost closed, and a river that threatened to overrun the town. Let us look through the pages of our history and never forget the times when only God’s grace got us through.

As we gather today around this table as the family of God, some of us are feeling quite broken. We may not speak of it, but we all know that it’s there. We need to remind one another that through God’s grace, we can become strong again; we can endure whatever hardships come our way.

Let one another know of your struggles. Don’t be afraid to speak them out loud! Don’t feel like you have to pretend that everything is okay when it’s not… Because it is in those broken places in our lives that God does his best work. It is our faith in the midst of those broken places that gives us the foundation we need to stand on.

God’s grace was sufficient for Paul. God’s grace is sufficient for me – in spite of my weakness. God’s grace is sufficient for you… And God’s grace is sufficient for this nation and this world – no matter how broken, how unredeemable we may seem. Amen. And Amen.

Christ-Colored Glasses

Posted on June 14, 2009Leave a comment

Parker Palmer is someone who often writes about life changes and how to navigate them with faith. In college, his book, “Let your Life Speak” became required reading for all students as they thought about what vocation was calling their name. And in his book, The Active Life, he writes about a moment of insight and transformation in his own life:

I took the course in my early fourties, and in the middle of that course I was asked to confront the thing I had fears about since I had first heard about Outward Bound: a gossamer strand was hooked to a harness around my body, I was backed up to the top of a 110-foot cliff, and I was told to lean out over God’s own emptiness and walk down the face of that cliff to the ground eleven stories below.

I remember the cliff all too well. It started wit ha five-foot drop onto a small ledge, then a ten-foot drop to another ledge, then a third and final drop all the way down. I tried to negotiate the first drop; but my feet instantly went out from under me, and I fell heavily to the first ledge. “I don’t think you have it quite yet,” the instructor observed astutely. “You are leaning too close to the rock face. You need to lean much farther back so your feet with grip the wall.” That advice went against my every instinct. Surely one should hug the wall, not lean out over the void! But on the second drop I tried to lean back; better, but not far enough, and I hit the second ledge with a thud not unlike the first. “You still don’t have it,” said the ever-observant instructor. “Try again.”

Since my next try would be the last one, her counsel was not especially comforting. But try I did, and much to my amazement I found myself moving slowly down the rock wall. Step-by-step I made my way with growing confidence until, about halfway down, I suddenly realized that I was heading toward a very large hole in the rock, and- not knowing anything better to do – I froze. The instructor waited a small eternity for me to thaw out, and when she realized I was showing no signs of life she yelled up, “Is anything wrong, Parker?” as if she needed to ask. To this day I do not know the source of my childlike voice that came up from within me, but my response is a matter of public record. I said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The instructor yelled back, “Then I think it’s time you learned the Outward Bound Motto.” Wonderful, I thought. I am about to die, and she is feeding me a pithy saying. But then she spoke words I have never forgotten, words so true that they empowered me to negotiate the rest of that cliff without incident: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.” Bone-deep I knew that there was no way out of this situation except to go deeper into it, and with that knowledge my feet began to move.

No matter how old we are, or experienced we are, or how familiar with the world we may be, there is a moment in each of our lives when something shifts – when we begin to see things in a whole new and transformed way. A moment where we let go of our fears and our old way of seeing things and suddenly the whole world opens up.

In many ways I had one of those moments at Annual Conference this year. For the most part, it was your regular old, run of the mill conference. We debated issues and voted on little keypads, we worshipped together and got to spend time with colleagues. But there were a few moments – here and there – where my world got turned upside down by the turn of a phrase or by a challenge issued forth from the pulpit or lectern, or a passage in the book that I took along with me.

After worship today, if you are able to stick around for our Administrative Board meeting, I’m going to be sharing a few of those challenges with the congregation. But for this morning – in light of our scripture readings I want to focus on just one… something that Bishop Trimble said from the pulpit…

“I don’t want you to tell me what’s impossible.”

Bishop Trimble was asking all of us to take a leap of faith, to take a risk and to step out on behalf of the God that we worship and to stop saying the word can’t. Things like…. We can’t start a ministry with the local Hispanic community because none of us know Spanish… He doesn’t want to hear it. We can’t grow our church because we live in a dying and aging county… He doesn’t want to hear it. We can’t be renewed and revitalized and transformed because we are a church that is already here and doing what we are supposed to be doing… He doesn’t want to hear it.

That last one is actually my own take on our Nicodemus story from this morning. In John’s gospel, this religious leader seeks Jesus out in the middle of the night to ask him some questions. He’s curious. He probably believes in many ways that Jesus – the young upstart that he is – has something to teach him. He’s willing to listen. But when Jesus starts talking metaphorically about being born again, suddenly this inquisitive Pharisee puts on his jaded glasses of disbelief and doubt.

What on earth are you talking about? You can’t be born again after you have grown old already? What, am I going to crawl back into my mother’s womb?

And Jesus looks him square in the eye – Don’t tell me what’s impossible.. Yes, you HAVE to be born of water and the Spirit to enter the Kingdom of God. You have to be reborn, replenished, revived by God’s grace… you have to accept the gift of life that I am offering you. All you have to do is say yes… and it’s yours. Don’t tell me what’s impossible.

Judith McDaniel suggests that this passage in John is as much about our ruts of disbelief and doubt as they are about those of Nicodemus. “we collect pennies from heaven when what is being offered is unimagined wealth… the very kingdom of God,” she writes. “Jesus is telling Nicodemus, and us, that God’s kingdom is here. The kingdom of God is not some far-off goal to be attained, for there is nothing we can do to attain it. The kingdom is present now, as a gift from God. Only God can gift us, can beget us as a totally new being in a new world.”

In other words, just take off those jaded glasses of disbelief and doubt and try these ones on for size. These Christ-colored glasses of truth and reality will open you up to the radical transforming power of God’s Spirit and I promise you… everything will be seen in a new light.

“In fact,” Emmanuel Larety writes, “to be in tune with God’s reign and presence we all need a transformative overhaul of our traditional ways of seeing and being… knowing and experiencing the world… [and] when this happens, it is as if we have begun life all over again.” (46, B-4)

As I think about what is happening in this congregation, I absolutely see signs of rebirth and awakening. And you know what the first clue was for me… Not once has someone said to me… We can’t. Not once has any committee or group or person said that we couldn’t do something – that it was impossible.

But I think that transformed way of seeing started long before I ever got here. I think that the summer before I arrived, when you were seriously contemplating with one another what the future of this church would be, you found yourselves on the side of the cliff with Parker Palmer. You were stuck dangling there by a thread, not being able to go back to the way things were before… perhaps not even wanting to, but also not quite knowing the steps to take next. And that motto from Upward Bound comes to my mind… “If you can’t get out of it, get into it.”

And so you dug your heels into it and took the leap of faith and were willing to find some way to move around on that cliff. That step of trust happened long before I got here, and in many ways, it is that transformation in the way you see and experience the world that has allowed me to do what I need to do.

So we definitely are on track for the first part of the Bishop’s challenge… and for responding to Jesus plea with us and Nicodemus from our gospel reading today. We are open to the possibility of transformation, of being made into something different. We are ready to say – Yes, Lord… Melt us, Mold us, Fill us, Use us… just send your Spirit upon us!

I think we are ready to see ourselves in a new light… but this morning, I want to extend that call just one step farther… I want to challenge us to look at the world and its people in this new light too.

That’s the challenge presented to us in our letter to the Corinthians this morning. Paul is begging his brothers and sisters not just to see themselves as transformed, but to see everything in a whole new way… For the love of Christ, Paul writes, urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them… From now one, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view… if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!

What Paul is saying is that if you are in Christ, if you are wearing your Christ-colored glasses, the whole world and everyone who is in it is transformed before your eyes. As John Stendahl puts it, if we see in the imagination of our hearts, ourselves, our foes, and this old world all thus transfigured by the death of Christ, will we not deal differently with each? (138, B-4)

If we are going to be transformed… if we are going to be the living Body of Christ in this community… then we have to see everything differently. We need to see that cliff we are on not as a challenge, but as an opportunity. We need to dig in our heels and dive in deep to this part of the world that we find ourselves.

This past week, we had a horrible tragedy in our community. In fact, as we were driving home from Annual Conference late on Sunday afternoon, we drove right by the house on L Avenue where the unspeakable happened. And I got to thinking about the theme of our whole conference – radical hospitality – and what it means to invite and welcome people into our midst.

As your pastor, I knew that there were people hurting in this community following this tragedy. I knew that there were people feeling forsaken who needed to be surrounded in prayer. I knew that we were lost in how to respond. And so I set up a space for prayer here in the building. And I contacted a few of the people I knew who had been personally affected and let them know about it.

I had no idea if anyone would show up. I had no idea what I could possibly say or offer – except I knew that Christ was here.

I’m not sure that anyone physically showed up. But I know people were affected by the fact that such a place even existed – that there was a place – whether they decided to come or not – where they could go. A place where people who were lost and hurting would be welcomed with open arms.

That is after all, how we started this worship service… with a cry to gather us in.

Here in this place, new light is streaming
now is the darkness vanished away,
see, in this space, our fears and our dreamings,
brought here to you in the light of this day.
Gather us in the lost and forsaken
gather us in the blind and the lame;
call to us now, and we shall awaken
we shall arise at the sound of our name.