What It Means to Belong

Sermon

Last week a post on Facebook caught my eye.  Written by Sharad Yadav, a guy in Portland whom I’ve never met, he lists his reason for why people should consider joining a church.  As I read it, I remembered that I was preaching on this story about James’ and John’s outrageous request, and that today we are confirming seven young men and women, and all of that seemed to reach some sort of harmonic convergence.  For me, anyway; we’ll see if you feel the same way!

Let me back up and go Big Picture with you.  Christianity is not a success story.  Christianity is not a success story.  It’s not the story of people achieving their dreams, winning the golden ticket, or following the yellow brick road to the place of happiness and joy.  Really, Christianity is the story of human failure… and God’s redemption of that failure.

Take today’s scripture lesson.  Jesus has just told his disciples for the third time that he will be persecuted, that he will suffer, and that he will die.  By worldly standards, that is failure.  He is not going to be the Messiah that conquers Rome and establishes the reign of peace.  He is going to die, and his earthly ministry will be done.

Now you and I, if a revered teacher said such a thing to us, might say something along the lines of, “That’s terrible!  You don’t deserve that!  How can we support you?  Is there anything we can do to prevent that from happening?”  Right?  But what do two of the disciples say?  “Jesus! Jesus!  Pick me! Pick me!  Give us the places of honor when you come into your power!!”

Talk about not reading the room….

One scholar put it this way.  “…whenever Jesus speaks about his suffering and death, the disciples follow it by ignoring his words and demanding greatness on the world’s terms.  Is this a hint at how difficult Jesus’ words are for us all?  No doubt.”  (Glenn Monson, gluthermonson.blogspot.com/2015/10/servants-of-God.html)

So not only is Christianity not a success story, it’s also the story of hard things being asked of those who would follow Jesus.  Jesus invites his followers to pick up their own cross, to deny themselves, to be servants.

But.  But!  Failure and hardship are not all there is to this faith, not by any means.  Christianity is about community.  It’s about being a part of something where – ideally – people work to be kind and compassionate.  It’s about being part of something you don’t have to try out or audition for.  It’s about being part of something that accepts you as you are – flawed, imperfect, a failure, a success, all of it.

So in that Facebook post I read earlier in the week, Sharad Yahdav says these things, edited a little bit.

“Here is a handful of reasons, dear friends, to consider joining a church.

• To join a church is to commit to a social circle you do not get to choose and can therefore show you whether your spirituality is [baloney] or not
• To join a church is a way of practicing – among a small group of people over a significant period of time – what you’d like the world to be like
• To join a church is to organize your life around a time to confess your limitations… and imperfections together with other people so that you can get used to receiving divine forgiveness and hope in response to your honesty.
• To join a church is to cultivate an environment unlike your home, work or play where your life is not measured according to any other purpose or goal than to discover and enjoy your own humanity.
• To join a church is to cultivate an imagination for how your unique talents and creative potential can be offered on purpose for love instead of money
• To join a church is a life lesson in how to deal with difficult people without retaliating, dehumanizing or running away

Those of here this morning, in the sanctuary or watching online, are here for a reason.  No one is making us do this.  No one is paying us to do this (except the church staff.)  Something about this Christian story, about this Jesus guy, about the Westminster community invites us to see, to test the waters, or to throw ourselves in body and soul.

Maybe it’s the good parts that draw people in – the practice of kindness, or the beautiful music.  Maybe it’s that this place is different from a lot of our other places – as the confirmands said on their retreat, there is no one from their school here, and sometimes, having an alternate community is a really good thing. Maybe it’s the place where you get reminded every week that God loves you.

And maybe, for some, it is the Christian story rooted in human failure that brings them here.  Over the years we’ve talked about being dressed in your Sunday best, having church manners, being a Good Christian.  But the reality is that God does not really care what you look like when you come to church or how much you have your life together.  Maybe it’s knowing that as you deepen friendships here, you’ll find out that everyone else is just as messed up and confused and sad and grumpy and hopeful as you are.  Maybe you’ll realize that no one is perfect and no one expects you to be perfect either.

My hope, as a pastor, and today, as a mom, is that everyone in our community, official members or no, has a sense of church as home.  By that I mean ‘home’ as Robert Frost defines it: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

I wonder if that’s why Jesus was so clear about telling his disciples the hard part about following him.  I wonder if he knew that someday, they too would suffer about something.  Their pain wouldn’t be the same as his.  But some day they might be going through something terrible and they would remember that he had gone through something terrible too.  And maybe they would remember that the terrible thing was not the end of the story.

Today is not a terrible but a wonderful day in the life of Westminster.  We get to hear the bells, and we get to sing some of the great hymns of the church.  We get to baptize a fabulous young woman who is the third generation to be a part of this church, whose been coming to Westminster she was a baby.  We get to admit into membership seven fantastic young people who have stayed the course with Westminster throughout the pandemic, teenagers who have sung in Angel Choir and gone to Triennium, who’ve done mission trips and evening fellowship, who have run through this building with a sense that they belong.

And today is a wonderful day in the life of Westminster because we get to say to them, yes, you do belong!  We wouldn’t be the same without you here.  Thank you.

This morning as I was walking the dog, my six-year-old neighbor was outside and asked me if he could come over for waffles this morning (because we do that sometimes.)  I said no, that like his dad, I work on Sundays.  He asked if I worked at a store, like his dad, and I said, no, I work at a church.  He asked me what a church was.

I paused for a second, thinking about how I would explain “church” to a six-year-old.  This is what I came up with.  “A church is a place where people come to hear good stories and to say ‘I love you’ to each other.”

So to Dean, Sarah, Maya, Catie, Katrina, Oliver, and Claire: this is what you’re getting yourselves into – a place where you belong; a place where we tell each other good stories; a place where you’ll hear, week after week, that God loves you, and we love you.

So welcome! And thanks be to God.