Sermon: We Are Family

Rev. Jennifer Whipple
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)         

We Are Family
Psalm 133
Acts 4:32-35

April 15, 2012  

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our minds and hearts gathered together this morning be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, for you are our Strength and our Salvation.  Amen.

             I tend to be a little bit of a whiner when it comes to preaching, especially on weeks when I just don’t seem to be inspired.  With thousands of years of masterful preachers who have come before…including Jesus himself, what does one say that has not been said before?  So, the other day when Ryan asked me what I was preaching about this Sunday, the Sunday after our grand Easter celebration, my answer was, “God!”  Not so helpful….  (Boy, does he put up with a lot!)  By the time my mom asked me the same question I had at least come up with something a little more creative.  I told her I was preaching about “that hippie commune part of Acts.”  But when I really had the chance to think about the scripture and was forced to put fingers to keyboard, I came to realize that it was another one of my family members, along with a little help from the Holy Spirit, that got me on track for today.

 I had one of those God moments.  You know, the ones where things suddenly come together, and you realize that there has to be someone or something out there that is bigger than you.  You see, this year my Holy Week experience and Easter celebration were book-ended by opportunities to spend some time with my eldest nephew James, now 11-years-old, working on his God and Church award for Boy Scouts.  The week before Easter we met to tackle the first official lesson in the God and Church award, which was about Jesus – the human being – the man who walked the earth, gathered people around him, was crucified at Golgotha, and laid in the tomb.  This week we met to tackle the lesson about Jesus – the son of God – the divine, the one who we celebrated last week as risen– and are called to celebrate not only each week but each day, alive and among us. 

            There is the saying that goes, “from the mouths of babes.”  Well, this is now the third of these awards that I have worked on with James – and it never ceases to amaze me how much he teaches me and how he is able to break things down and “simplify” (in a very deep way) our faith and what it means for us in our everyday lives.  So the final question in the lesson about Jesus as a human was, “Why is it important that Jesus was human?”  To which James responded because he wouldn’t have “gotten us” otherwise.  Because he was human he can understand what we go through in our lives. 

            The final question in the Divine Jesus section was, “Jesus knows you and loves you.  He forgives you and offers you eternal life.  Jesus invites you to believe in him.  It’s that simple.  He is standing and knocking at the door of your heart and is waiting to be asked inside.  What does that mean to you?”  And James’ response was, “It means that we have a choice.  It means that we can decide whether to believe and whether to live like we believe.”

            For my brother and sister-in-law it was a no-brainer about who to ask to walk through the journey of these awards as counselor with James, after all, I am a pastor (and supposedly know at least enough to get him through) and more importantly, we are family.  In the family I was raised in, you help when you can…no excuses.  They knew that I couldn’t say no.  And with answers like those ones, why would I want to?

            However, in putting all of these things together in my head it made me realize that part of the power of God in Jesus Christ is that through him families have been formed.  You see, there are folks in the world, myself included, who claim a variety of different people as their family members.  Of course there is the family that we are born into – our family of origin in which we have no say over who will officially be the members.  But I also have a best friend who I have known for the last 30 years, and she is part of my family.  And when I was in dance lessons or on my tennis team as a teenager there were my dance family members and my team members, with whom I spent more time than my own family – so they became family to me.  And I was a church kid – no question about it – spending most of my time there between my own activities and those of my parents who were (and still are) uber-involved – so there was my church family.  And that, for me, was a most important family.  Some of those people – my church family members – knew more about me than my own birth family members, and they helped me to grow and develop and recognize ways to use my gifts in service.  We certainly had our love/hate moments, our times of concern but times of joy and blessing as well.  Over the last nearly 7 years that is what has developed for me here too – a family in faith that means a great deal to me.  And my guess is that if we had lived back in the time of Jesus’ first followers – or if we could somehow hop back in time to take a poll – they would say, “We are family.”  Jesus himself said that those who believed were his family members. 

            So we gather together because we believe something in common. We believe in God who blessed us with Jesus – the man who held up for us an example of the best we are called to be, but also the Son of God, who gave his life for our forgiveness.  And the thing that is always most interesting to me is that people truly do come from all walks of life to gather here, so the fact that we have landed in this particular community intrigues me – and is by far my favorite part of our visitor gatherings – when people accept the invitation to explain how they found CCB.  Because, unlike in the time of the apostles when there was usually only one community of Jesus followers in towns and cities, many people nowadays have “church shopped” before they arrive here, so there is something about the Congregational Church of Brookfield specifically that draws us together in relation to our faith, our lives, and the opportunity to share them with one another.  And, I would have to guess, that the United Church of Christ motto has a little bit to do with that – that we claim no matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey you are welcome here.

            The question becomes – once we find the right “here” to celebrate our faith in God who loves, comforts, challenges, forgives, and wants the best for us – loving us unto death itself, what does it mean?  Does it mean just an hour on Sunday morning, or do we recognize the risen Christ knocking at the doors of our hearts each day inviting us to come along for the ride – a ride that calls us to a higher level of care, compassion, community, and generosity – of the challenge of working through conflict and coming out stronger on the other side, the joy and opportunity to call out the gifts in one another and to help each other put those gifts to use in service to the living God who invites us to witness to the world about our faith in word and deed?

            I believe the early Christians had it right in many ways.  They must have known or at least heard of the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 133 about how good and pleasant it is to dwell together in unity – that God’s blessing would certainly be upon them despite the difficulties of being the new start up movement in town – that being together and growing together in faith meant being blessed beyond imagining.  They were certainly the first open and affirming community – welcoming all who wished to know the presence of God through the experience of life lived in following the one who knew God most intimately – who was part of God, even Jesus the Christ. 

            I am not naïve enough, though, to think that their communities were perfect and completely protected from the natural whims of humanity – of jealousy or pain or even greed.  (You just have to read on a few verses in Acts to find those things!)  After all, if that were the case, and if all followers of Christ had lived in such a way as is described in Acts, Paul would not have had to have written multiple letters to clear up the conflicts that broke out in early communities of believers.  But at their best, I do think that they got what it meant to be a community of Christ followers – sharing beliefs with one another and the world around them, and taking care – not only of their own – but others in order to help bring about God’s kingdom on earth.  At their best, for the short period of time that they were able to sustain living in such a way as this, they were able to show that genuine community and human compassion were stronger even than some of the powerful cultural and political forces of the time.  They were able to return God’s generosity of blessing with generosity of their own to one another and the world.  With one another they were able to live, not from a place of overwhelming fear, but from a place of grace and peace and generosity – from a place of deep and profound faith.

            On this Sunday after Easter God invites us to live from that same place – in the midst of a world that would have us do the complete opposite – to hoard and push aside and battle to the top.  To live from a place of grace and peace and love does sound like entering into a hippie commune for some.  But it could just mean taking Jesus up on the invitation when he knocks on the doors of our hearts and joining together to share our God moments with one another, to find encouragement to keep on keepin’ on, and the energy to serve the world.  Because at our best people will see us and will wonder what on earth gives us the strength and courage to live our faith that proclaims new beginnings and new life for all!  At our best people will see us and through God’s amazing grace and power they will see not just Jennifer or Joe or Toni or Dave, they will see, as one pastor put it in his reflection on this passage, “Jesus with skin on” walking through and working in the world here and now.  At our best people will realize that we gain a lot from being a part of this family of faith, and they will want a little bit of what we have! 

            There are many ways that people become part of our family of faith.  Some are born into it.  Some, like Grady, are baptized into it.  Some walk through the doors because a little white Congregational church is all they have ever known, while others have spent months or years looking for a place where they can be themselves in their faith and be loved in the midst of all that means.  Still others come because they have heard of an opportunity like Good Friday crosswalk, or the Easter Sunrise Service, or the involvement in Relay for Life, or other community outreach projects that are bold and courageous acts of witness to our faith – and they want to be a part of that witness. 

            Today, my brothers and sisters in Christ, in this post-resurrection blessed Easter fog, we celebrate the fact that we are family.  We are family because we have come together to learn and to grow, because in this place we have recognized God’s presence and have witnessed to one another about that presence in our lives, because we lift one another up in community and compassion, and because with the strength and encouragement of our brothers and sisters in faith behind us we accept the invitation to be generous in reaching out to our world that needs to know the love and healing power of God – that through the Holy Spirit has the opportunity to work through our words and our hands.      

            So may we be excited about God’s invitation to gather in this family of faith – renewed each week, each day, in the unending love of our brother Jesus Christ.  And may we accept that invitation, opening ourselves up to God’s power, in order to find our place in God’s community of believers working to change ourselves and the world for the better.  Amen.