“Belonging to the Church”
Matthew 4:12-23
Romans 12:4-18
Some of us here this morning can remember a time when belonging to a church was not only normal, but expected. I remember dear church poet laureate Stanley Koehler, gone to glory some 13 years ago, telling me about moving to Amherst in the 1960s to begin teaching at UMass.
Toward the end of his first week on the job, the chair of the English Department stopped by Stan’s office to tell him he’d pick him up on Sunday morning to take him to church. To be clear: There had been no discussion about this. The chairman hadn’t asked Stanley if he was a Christian or if he wanted to go to church. Going to church was just what people did, especially if they wanted or to establish themselves and get ahead in their careers or social standing.
Back in those days of civic religion, these pews were filled with the most powerful people in town—and for multiple services each Sunday.
You don’t need me to tell you that’s no longer the case.
What you may be surprised to hear me say is that I’m mostly okay with that.
Oh sure, I would love to have these pews filled to overflowing—especially with children and youth—and with people of all ages and races, all gender and sexual identities, and from a wide range of incomes, education, and experiences.
But I have no interest in civic religion, where the American flag flies in the church sanctuary and it’s next to impossible to distinguish between the values of the church and those of the dominant culture. Nor do I want a return to church as an institution devoted to moral and social control, what Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle calls “Believe. Behave. Be Saved.”
Don’t get me wrong: I would love for our church to grow, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that Sarah, Suzy, Fred, Chris, Jane, Doreen, and Brendon have entered into membership with us this morning. But I no longer believe that membership or attendance numbers are the most important indicators of church vitality.
What I’m most interested in is people who are committed to following Jesus and being part of a community of other Jesus followers who are dedicated to taking his gospel of radical inclusion, transforming love, and Spirit empowerment to a broken and hurting world. I’m excited about people who are more interested in becoming a Jesus-focused movement of God’s justice and peace than in preserving an institution or promoting certain politics. And I’m grateful for church members new and old who understand that the holy work of living together as church is good practice for showing others what the world could look like if all people respected and cared for one another. I’m grateful for everyone who understands church as a laboratory of love from which we move out to do God’s work of loving and healing the world.
In contrast to the old church of “Believe. Behave. Be Saved,” let’s become the ever-evolving and -deepening church that lives out Christ’s invitation to “Belong. Be Real. Be Transformed.”
Some time after the apostle Paul wrote his letter to the church in Rome, that community was feeding 20,000 of the city’s poor on a regular basis. A Greek philosopher described Christians to Emperor Hadrian in this way: “They love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who would hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the one who has nothing. If they see a stranger, they take [them] home and are as happy as though they were a real [sibling].”
Some 19 centuries later, the decision of seven remarkable people in this famously opinionated and almost militantly anti-church valley to covenant with us as members in the one body of Christ is, I believe, a very big deal. I would go so far to say that church membership has again become a faithfully radical act.
Filled with people who, on some level at least, acknowledge their need for each other, the church runs counter to our individualist, I-did-it-my-way culture. Church membership reflects a belief that the best things, the most hopeful things, the most empowering and world-changing things happen in and through community.
Membership in a church that is faithful to the call of Jesus to bring good news to the poor and hope to the hopeless rejects the worship of wealth and power and resists injustice and oppression. Membership in a church rejects the false dichotomy of spiritual vs. religious and embraces the messy truth of a book we did not write, the nurturing care of people we may not like, opportunities and commitments that interrupt our busy lives, and the discipline of inclusive decision-making processes that—let’s admit it—would exasperate and exhaust most people.
Church membership is radical because it manifests a faith in the possibility and power of redemption—not only for individuals, but also for the big-C church and its long history of violence, repression, judgment, corruption, abuse, and exclusion, and—beyond that—everything and everyone in this world God so loves.
Church membership reflects a willingness to abide a certain amount of inconvenience and inefficiency for the sake of the greater good. Church membership recognizes that becoming the church the world needs in these times will take the faithfulness, open-heartedness, commitment, and the willingness to change of all of us.
In a world built on economic and military power, the church rests on a foundation of the crucified and the powerless. In a culture starved for constant information, the church thrives on mystery. In a society that is splintering into smaller and smaller echo chambers of like-minded people, the church calls us to open our hearts and build community with the marginalized, the left out, the left behind, and the people with whom we’re tempted to believe we have nothing in common.
In an economy that tells us that all we need can be bought, the church’s currency is compassion and care. In an age that does its best to escape pain and deny death, the church trusts that God will be with us in pain and transform death into new life.
So let us give thanks that Brendon, Doreen, Jane, Chris, Fred, Suzy, and Sarah have chosen this morning to do a decidedly un-hip, counter-cultural, even radical thing: to become formal members of a community of faith.
We thank God that you are willing to trust that walking this faith journey together will feed your souls, transform your lives, bless your neighbors, and help heal our broken world. Although we know we will disappoint you from time to time, we pray to be worthy of your trust and commitment. We pray to become God’s healing hands and active feet not only in the hurting places of the world, but also in the reality of your lives and ours.
We thank God that whatever drew you to us and this church was stronger than a thousand daily messages telling you that all you need is within you, and that should you need anything else, it can be bought. We thank you for the ways in which you will challenge and change us and, in so doing, help clarify our purpose and help make us the church God calls us to be.
Thank you for continuing to knock at Love’s door, for listening to your longing for a dwelling place in God, and for giving us another opportunity draw the circle of God’s love wide and wider and wider still.
Welcome! Now let us be the church—together!
