| 1 John 1:1-2:2 "The Beginning of Something New" |
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| Written by Rev. Denise Peckham | |
| Saturday, 22 April 2006 | |
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In the beginning God said let there be, and there was. In the beginning was the Word and what came to be was life, and the life was the light of all people. (John 1) In keeping with the Johanine tradition the author of today’s text is echoing the familiar words of Genesis and the gospel of John. No doubt this young Christian community was familiar with the images of beginnings. They were the beginning of something that was overtaking the world. They were becoming what we would come to call the church. Beginnings are not always easy though. Ask a newly married couple how that first year went or the new parent who is sleep deprived, and you will find that beginnings are not all they are cracked up to be. We romanticize what those beginnings will be though. We have visions of long walks on pristine beaches or family meals where everyone is smiling and the conversation remains civil. We never imagine we would disagree or argue, yell at our children, or wish we could be anyplace but where we find ourselves. But the real world intrudes our dreams. The early church was no different. Visions of unity and holiness were short lived. By the end of the 1st century you had groups claiming that Jesus wasn’t really human, that he only seemed to die on the cross. In other words, there is no fellowship with God or the Son, there is no salvation for the community of faith. No doubt this notion caused a lot of tension within the early community. There may have been some who had seen the Lord crucified, who had heard first hand of the empty tomb, who had risked their lives to follow this Jesus of Nazareth. Forget about the risk you take when you tell a co-worker that you go to church and Sunday school, this is a real life and death issue I’m talking about. Not only could a follower of Jesus be ostracized from their community, they could be imprisoned or even killed. Interesting that what our minds can’t accept we try to explain away. As much as we try we can’t explain away life. Life in the community of faith is a testimony to the real presence of Jesus Christ crucified and risen. Four times the author of this text reminds us that through Jesus we have fellowship with one another and that this is possible only because of his obedience to death on a cross. This human being gave all he had for the sake of koinonia, a ten-dollar church word, many of you already know as fellowship. This is not just any fellowship though, it is fellowship grounded in God’s love for us through Christ. It is koinonia that creates the church. For those who choose to live in this fellowship life is different. Life is lived in light and truth, both of which tell us we live in and for the glory of God. While these opening verses of 1 John may not tell us what that looks like, the ones immediately following do. This fellowship is more than a community that does what is right, it is more than a fellowship that donates time and talents for the good of the greater community; it is the body of believers grounded in the greatest commandment which is to love God with all our hearts, minds, soul and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. We show our love for God and neighbor in a number of ways, but perhaps the easiest way to think about loving God is looking at the commitment we make when joining the church. When we join we say we will pray, show up for worship, give and serve. It is a simple statement, yet I know that living this out is not easy. Do you pray daily? It’s hard to find the time to do so. But yet we make time for so many other things! You could start by simply saying thank you ever morning because you were able to get out of bed – or for the fact that you have a bed to sleep on! You could work your way up to “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it!” Harvey Harris used to say that he had a standing appointment with Jesus every morning over coffee. Prayer comes first in this membership pledge, I think, because it has the power to transform, not only the world, but perhaps most importantly, the one praying. You are here today, present in the fellowship of believers. Jesus went to synagogue every Saturday, which is perhaps why there aren’t a lot of Bible accounts of him that take place on Saturday. Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, his day to worship God in the community of faith. He heard the Hebrew scripture read, he read the Scripture himself and talked about it with his friends. Jesus attended festivals and community events. This Lenten season was filled with opportunities to gather and worship. The music threw open the gates of heaven and we were showered with grace; the word was proclaimed and we recalled what it meant to be a finite beings who live into a future of hope. Some of us studied, walked the labyrinth, meditated and prayed together. And where two or more were gathered, Christ is there. How do we respond to the love and mercy of God in Christ? With our gifts and our offering. The church takes an offering because we are called to recognize that nothing we have – not our homes or cars, not our families or our lives - is really ours, it is God’s gift to us. Perhaps in the United States this is a difficult lesson. We are taught from a young age that if we work hard we can make a lot of money and that the money and stuff we get with it is ours. We are an arrogant people whose lifestyles are not guaranteed, regardless of what the American ideology proclaims. When we give back to the church we recognize that we are giving back to God what is already God’s. We proclaim that this community of faith has priority in our lives and the lives of others. We are saying in a concrete way that this fellowship supports not only itself, but the community it lives in. Service is what we do. The church is the community of the saints, made holy (or as John Wesley would say, sanctified) by Christ to go into the world and be available to the least of these. This service includes our giving to the needy of Darfur, rebuilding a house in New Orleans, going to a reservation in Ship Rock, singing in nursing homes. It is our willingness to write to our congressional leaders when the proposed budget would cut assistance to the most vulnerable of our society – the elderly and the children. It is filling out a postcard in May that will be sent to Austin for the “Save the Uninsured” campaign. Service is making a meal for a member who is in crisis, mowing the lawn for one no longer capable or giving your stuff to the Journeymen for the junktique. We are reminded today by this evangelist’s words that the church is not perfect, that it messes up; the church sins because it is made up of people. The church has been separated by racism and sexism. Institutionalized “isms” are sin. Did you know that the Methodist Church had a Central Jurisdiction for African Americans that was not dismantled until 1968? And what are we to do with the immigrant? Some would leave them to die on the street or be indefinitely incarcerated. Institutionalized racism is hard to dismantle, but to walk in the light and the truth we must. Women were not considered worthy of ordination in the Methodist Church until 50 years ago, and there are still some churches that refuse women in the pulpit. We struggle as a denomination to be inclusive, but have denied membership to gay and lesbian persons and have judged them unworthy for ordination. Institutionalized sexism is hard to dismantle, but to walk in the light and the truth says must. Walking in the light and the truth is walking in active integrity. It invites you to claim your identity in Christ regardless of the world’s deluded denial of sin. While the church might not be an ideal community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer claims that the church is the “community of men and women who have genuinely encountered the precious grace of God, and who walk worthily of the gospel by not casting that grace recklessly away.” Living out the pledge of prayers, presence, gifts and service is not easy. But the good news is that in the beginning God saw all of creation that was brought forth and called it good. That includes human beings. Created as we are with free will and the ability to sin – not just make bad choices or ignorant decisions – but willfully do what is evil, God in Christ still calls us together as children of God, to claim a new identity as Easter people. We have the power to transform our world, to usher in the kin-dom of God. Where will you begin? Will you commit to prayer, will you come to worship and Bible study, will you give with joy regularly, will you break out of your comfort zone and serve the least of these? What will set you apart, child of God? |
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