Henrietta United Church of Christ Rev. David Inglis Draw the Circle Wide

Transcription

1 Henrietta United Church of Christ Rev. David Inglis Draw the Circle Wide Scripture: 1 John 4:7-12, The Message by Eugene Peterson 7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other, since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love--so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about--not that we once loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us--perfect love! HUCC: Strong in Fellowship stewardship message Susan Selvek Sermon: The spirit of Christian fellowship is for sure one of the things that makes HUCC such a strong, vibrant, soul-nourishing, and contagious church. That spirit of Christian fellowship is what makes this bunch of people of all ages and backgrounds and perspectives and walks of life into one interwoven church family. It s what makes people s souls feel like they ve found a home the first time they come. It s what draws us out of our own little cocoon and expands our sense of ourself into an us-ness, which we then want to support with our time, talents and treasure, because it feels so much better to be part of this us than to live just for me. So what is this spirit of fellowship, really, and what makes it happen so strongly here? If we know what creates it, that might give us clues as to how to keep it growing stronger. I pondered that for awhile, and what came to me is the image of the wagon wheel that many of you have heard me describe before, which comes from the 4 th Century Christians in Egypt. I think this is a great way to picture Christian 1

2 fellowship. God is the hub of this wheel. As we often sing, God the still-point of the circle, round whom all Creation turns. Each of us is a spoke, coming from all different directions and different points of view. And the closer we spokes draw towards the hub, the closer we become to each other. And the closer we are to each other, the closer we are to the hub. If you ve been in our Newcomers Class in the past several years, you ve heard us talking about this image, and then you ve experienced how quickly and easily people who don t know each other can move closer to each other and closer to God. How does that happen? We trust each other enough to share our stories of faith how we learned about God when we were growing up, maybe how we experienced God along the way, what our spiritual hunger was that drew us to this church, and how we find our soul being fed here. Within an hour, our souls feel at home with eath other and connected to each other. We have created the Christian fellowship that s as precious as air. And we realize that we re the ones who create it for each other, through sharing our soul s need for God in our lives. Now let me suggest some other ways we can move towards the hub of that circle and towards each other in Christian fellowship. W e can humbly trust each other with our need for support, and encouragement. We do that all the time when we ask for prayers for ourselves or our loved ones. And we did that in our new support group for caretakers of aging loved ones. It felt so good to open up to each other about those difficult situations where we often feel alone in our frustration and stress. Our next session will be December 6, and anyone can come, including people you know who aren t part of this church. This circle of Christian fellowship is always open. Another rewarding way to grow in fellowship is to come together in our desire to know God and to grow in our faith. This Advent, we will be offering two new Advent Bible studies to give everyone a chance to do that. Joan Barnes is offering one Tuesday mornings called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, about 2

3 the characters in the Christmas story. That will be 10:00 Tuesday mornings starting November 29. And Duane Bartz is offering one on the Advent scripture readings recommended for Advent in the Lectionary. That will be at 7:00 Thursday evening starting December 1. No prior knowledge of the Bible is required. In both of these, you will draw closer to God and to each other as you grow in your faith and understanding of God s word. We can grow closer to God and to each other through gratitude, praise and worship. You know, we can go to church out of habit, obligation, to see our friends, or because of the goodies at coffee hour. But that doesn t really do much for us. Or we can come to worship to open our heart, soul and mind to God. We can bring our need for God, our gratitude to God, the burdens and concerns and distresses that baffle us, our aching emptiness, our scatteredness and need for a center. And there is something about turning to God together, singing together, praying together, listening for God s living word to us together, that draws us towards the center together. W e find ourselves in a force-field of God s love for each of us and all of us. Our hearts are opened, our spirits are awakened, our minds are expanded, our wills are guided by something bigger than ourselves. This Tuesday we ll be drawing our circle of worship wider still by hosting this year s Community Interfaith Thanksgiving Service at 7:30. I m so much looking forward to including in our circle people who worship God in a variety of ways, with music as varied as our Handbell Choir and a gospel band, all creating one big wheel, and all drawing closer to the center together as we join our hearts and hands in gratitude and praise to the God of us all. That will be a real taste of heaven! And we grow closer to God and each other by giving more and more of our life to God and by giving ourselves to what God is doing among us and through us. We all say, Here I am, Lord. Use my time, my talents, my treasure, my whole life, to be an instrument of your peace, your love, your hope, your light in my family, my workplace, our church, our community, and our world. And when 3

4 we are all doing that together, we ignite a dynamo of faith, hope and love - the living body of Christ - that blesses each other when we are gathered, and that blesses the world when we go our separate ways. Today we are dedicating our pledges of our time, talents and treasure for the coming year. W e are committing ourselves to keep this dynamo going and growing in the coming year, even and especially as HUCC changes pastoral leadership. W e are saying to eachother, I will help keep HUCC a strong, stable home for your soul and a shining light for our world. In today s scripture reading, John wrote, My dear, dear friends, if God loved us [enough to send us his Son as a sacrifice], we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us perfect love! There s a hidden challenge in this that s easy to miss. Jesus kept defining each other and one another in ways that really, really stretch our circle of fellowship. He kept eating with the kinds of people we wouldn t want to be associated with,, and he said consternating things, like Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Jesus did and said these things for the same reason he died on the cross for us. He was showing us that the dynamo of divine love at the center of everything is pure, unadulterated, unconditional love for everyone, no matter who or where they are. At its essence, sin means separation from God. Sin is when we re far out from the center of the wheel, and far apart from each other. We live in estrangement, because we re in our own separate little worlds and we have lost sight of God and of each other. In Jesus life, his teachings and his death, Jesus was saying to us and to everyone, You can come home now, come back to the Center where you belong where you belong to each other and belong to me. So here s the essence of Christian fellowship and what distinguishes it from 4

5 all our other affiliations and social groups. Christian fellowship is not based on our similar interests or backgrounds or perspectives or virtues though we may find those commonalities within our fellowship. Christian fellowship is rooted and grounded in God s unconditional love for one and for all, which includes the seemingly deserving and the undeserving, people who are like us and people we don t even naturally like. God has drawn the circle wide so wide that noone is outside it. There are only those who don t know if they re in this circle, and those who recognize that they were created as part of this circle, who are grateful to be in it, and who want to draw closer and closer to its center and to all the spokes that are in it with them. Christian fellowship is made up of people who want to be in this circle, no matter how far out they find themselves. And so true Christian fellowship that s rooted and grounded in God s love also draws the circle wide, draws it wider still, including everyone who wants to be in it, assuring that no one stand alone. No matter how far out from the center people feel, we re standing side by side, as spokes in this same wheel learning to draw closer to the center together. So in its essence, Christian fellowship is the circle of God s love in action. Love as our Source, love is our means, and love is our goal. Draw the Circle Wide. Draw it wider still. Let this be our song, no one stands alone, standing side by side, draw this circle wide. The strength and depth and breadth of this circle is always growing as we move towards the center and expand the circumference. So... Let the dreams we dream be larger Than we ever dreamed before. Let the dream of Christ be in us Open every door. Draw this circle wide. 5