The way our theme today – membership – gets expressed on the last page of your bulletin is in marketing terms. There is a place – an increasingly important place – for marketing strategies here at Westminster. But that is not where I am going today.
We could hire the best minds at Eric Mower and Associates Advertising.
We could create a slick marketing plan for Westminster. We could have the best website in western New York. But if people walk through our doors and do not experience community then all the advertising in the world won’t matter.
So I begin today with a question, "What is Christian community?"
What is it people experience at our coffee hour or in the pews or at a bible study or tutoring alongside other volunteers at this church that causes members of long-standing or first-time visitors to say, "that’s what I am looking for, that’s what I want in a church?" What is community?
Let me say before we take another step we are standing on one of the bedrock themes of the bible. The entire movement of the Holy Scripture is from isolation to community.
The bible starts with God’s loneliness. So God creates humans. You could say from our inception we were made, we were intended, to be in community. But the community God creates in the Garden of Eden is disrupted. Adam and Eve violate God’s command. They eat the fruit. So Adam and Eve isolate themselves.
They hide in fear and shame from God and one another.
Remember how God comes walking in the cool of the Garden looking for Adam and Eve? The story tells us, contrary to popular belief, it is God who seeks us out. From the garden on, the bible is the story of God’s relentless pursuing us. God’s desire to end isolation, to mend broken lives, to heal fractured relationships. The Hebrew word for that is shalom.
But some of you might disagree. You may be thinking, "I’m the one who pursues God. I’m the one who says prayers of yearning. I’m the one who lives the dark night of the soul. I am the one who longs to see the face of God."
Indeed, many of us have that experience. What we fail to notice is we become so wrapped up in our concerns, our pain, our longing God can’t get through to us.
This happened to me recently in our parents’ forum here at Westminster.
I walked into the meeting feeling that I was the only parent in the world who was going through what ever it was I was going through. Sometimes you feel all alone as a parent.
We were talking about communication that night. The presenter was in a chipper mood. He shared his list of top ten things you’ll never hear a mom or dad say. Things like: Well, if Timmy’s mom says it’s ok, that’s good enough for me; or, Don’t bother wearing a jacket, the wind-chill is bound to improve; or, Could you turn the music up louder so I can enjoy it too?
The laughter in the room from other parents made me realize I wasn’t alone.
I knew in my gut listening to the other parents giggling and gaffawing that raising teenagers was something I shared in common with other people.
My shoulders relaxed. Strength seeped into me from the way people in the room connected with one another that night.
I am not saying laughing was the reason I felt better – though laughing, we know, is good for your health. I am saying it was connecting with other parents, being in community, that bolstered me in a dark moment. Community: God overcoming isolation and fear bringing people together.
Now here is the sermon in a nutshell: God pursues us, and we, in turn, pursue others on behalf of God.
Let me dwell on that first point just a little more. God pursues us.
If you are not feeling particularly pursued today by God let me offer these names:
Peter and John called by Jesus on the lakeshore, St. Paul on the road to Damascus,
Martin Luther from the depths of depression, Mother Theresa from an obscure Albanian village to Calcutta, Francis Thompson who wrote the "Hound of Heaven," who pursued her down through the years; or poet Kathleen Norris who said, "I came to understand that God hadn’t lost me even if I seemed for years to have misplaced God."
Come to think of it maybe the best
marketing plan we could have would be members who….