2nd Sunday after Pentecost
June 7, 2015
1 Samuel 8:4-20; Mark 3:20-35
You will probably not be surprised to learn that at
Annual Conference there was a special presentation by our District
Superintendent, Rev. Moore-Koikoi, and a few of my colleagues who serve
churches in the Sandtown-Winchester part of Baltimore as well as one lay person.[1] They shared stories about life in their
churches over the past several weeks since the unrest; some stories were
uplifting, others were heartbreaking.
One story of lament was shared by Rev. Moore-Koikoi. She was on the ground the evening after the
unrest, supporting the clergy in the area and joined a prayer march with the
clergy. The riot police didn’t appear to
take kindly to the clergy walking and praying in the street and so some members
from the community surrounded the clergy as they walked and prayed and joined
them at the end when they went inside a nearby United Methodist Church. It turned out that these community members
were from the Bloods, Crips, and the Black Mafia family, gangs who had declared
a truce in the midst of the unrest. One
of them knew one of the clergy. He
turned to him and said, “You used to be my pastor. I’ve got some pictures of home with your
children and me, when I was at church.” Rev. Moore-Koikoi’s lament was that “we
had him!” We had this young man in our
churches and we let him go. When he
didn’t find family and opportunity and unconditional acceptance in the church, when
the church stopped listening to him, he found family and opportunities and
acceptance and someone who listened to him in a gang. Then Rev. Moore-Koikoi shared what she called
a “grace note.” When she went a couple
weeks ago to visit on of these churches, she talked with a pastor who reminded
her of two brothers they had also met that night. This pastor had followed up with the brothers
and got them enrolled at Coppin State University. When the people of faith dare to believe and
step out in faith, look what God can do!
At the end of this presentation a motion was made to designate today,
June 7, Dare to Believe in Stronger Baltimore Sunday, with a special offering
collected. The motion was passed
unanimously and so today and next Sunday, we will collect the special offering and
send it the week after next into the Conference. Dare to Believe in a Stronger Baltimore. There are three parts to it: Stronger
Churches, Stronger Relationships, and Stronger Communities.
The first of these is Stronger Churches. A
stronger church is one who dares to believe that the church will not collapse,
but endure. In our Gospel lesson this
morning Jesus says that “A kingdom involved in civil war will collapse. And a house torn apart by divisions will
collapse.”[2] Our country faced exactly that scenario, and
on April 12, 1861, it did collapse. The
United States of America ceased to exist as anyone had known it to that
point. You’re all well aware that it
survived, of course, but it took many years of healing before it could consider
itself whole again. And we as a church
have been through some of our own divisions.
Yet we dare to believe that we, too, will endure. We dare to believe that God has the final say
on God’s church. It’s not our church,
anyway. When God’s kingdom is involved
in civil war, it does not collapse. What
does happen is that some leave the kingdom, like the young man who joined a
gang, finding there what he didn’t find in church. Stronger churches have compelling reasons for
coming to church. They have warm
welcomes for new people, not smothering or overbearing, but genuine smiles and
greetings of “it’s nice to have you here.”
Stronger churches have a variety of ways to get involved. Not everyone is interested in singing with
the choir, and that’s ok. There’s the
nursery, Vacation Bible School, Sunday School, there’s feeding the men
at Streets of Hope in the winter and donating canned food for Eastern
Interfaith Outreach and serving in our food pantry, there’s the collection of
health kits and dry foods that I took to Sandtown a couple weeks ago. A stronger church is also a praying church,
and I want to encourage you to pray for this church every day. If you don’t have a regular daily praying
time, then set the alarm on your cell phone or on your alarm clock as a
reminder to pray each day. [PG: If you
need a suggestion for what time, I suggest 2:01 p.m. I know many of us aren’t morning people, and
201 is also our street address, so it should be easy to remember.] It doesn’t need to be a long prayer, simply
one sentence is enough: Lord, I pray for Cowenton [Piney Grove]. Let’s give it a try, each day, and see what
happens. Dare to believe in Stronger
Churches.
The second part is Stronger
Relationships. A good friend of mine
was sharing with me about her marriage, and she said that she and her husband
“rely on our relationships with others to build and maintain our own
relationship. We are stronger when we work together. We are healthier when we
allow others to participate in our lives, choosing not to do things all on our
own.”[3] A stronger marital relationship is one that
relies on other friendships to help build up and strengthen the marriage. A stronger friendship is one that allows
others to participate in the friendship.
There is no selfishness here, there is no greed or envy, there is no
rejection or exile.
We
find a story about a weaker relationship in our Old Testament lesson this
morning. Samuel has been a prophet and
judge for Israel for most of his life, and now that he is old, the people want
a king so that they will be like the other nations. Samuel feels rejected by them and is upset by
this request, rightly so. He brings it
to God, as we are to do with all things, and God says, “Listen to the voice of
the people; for they have not rejected you.
No, they’ve rejected me from being king over them.”[4] Samuel reports God’s words back to the people
and describes what life would be like under a king. However, the people don’t care, “We know what
we want and we want a king to be like everyone else.” Well, they got their king, and that decision
ultimately led to the end of their country.
It’s a case of “be careful what you wish for.” It’s also a case of human beings thinking
they know better than God and that their plan is better than God’s plan. Our relationship with God is weaker when we
put our plans ahead of God’s. Our
relationship with God, with ourselves, and with others is weaker when we try to
be like everyone else, because God didn’t call us to be like everyone
else. He didn’t create us that way, and
he doesn’t call us to become like everyone else. He called us to become more like him. And as a church, God isn’t calling us to be
like every other church, or even like every successful church or every
well-attended church. God is calling us
to be us, and not Camp Chapel or Mountain Christian Church, or any
other church you find yourself comparing us to.
I shared when I returned from maternity leave last fall that I had
visited other nearby churches during leave, and it wasn’t to “check out the
competition,” it was to get to know our neighbors and see how they serve our
community so that we might, either share with them in ministry and not reinvent
the wheel, or fill in a different gap where there’s an unmet need in our
community. We’re not called to all the
exact same ministries as another church.
We’re called to serve in the intersection between our interests and
passions and strengths and the needs of our community. That’s how we build Stronger Relationships
and Stronger Communities. Dare to
believe that we can build them.
Stronger
Communities is the third prong of Stronger Baltimore. One of the songs I’ve been hearing a lot
lately, [and I heard it again this past week at Friendship Circle] is “Will the
Circle Be Unbroken.” A Gospel song
originally written in 1907 by an Englishwoman, Ada Ruth Habershon, it was
inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame a hundred years later, in 1998. While it’s about the circle here on earth being
broken when loved ones die, and then the circle being unbroken in heaven, the
“better home awaiting, in the sky,” I think we can apply it to our communities
here, as well. Many of our circles have
been broken, and not just by death or moving away for work or retirement, but
by violence and harsh words and bitterness and unresolved conflicts. If God’s kingdom is to come here on earth as
in heaven, then we need to work to repair the circle here. The problem is that “many [people] would
rather sever the ties altogether than live with the memory of ties that were
broken. Many would rather abandon people and community for their own
self-justification than to admit their own contributions to the problem. And
many would rather stir up the proverbial pot than sense opportunities for
kindness, graciousness, and gratitude.”[5] To build stronger communities, to strive for
the circle to be unbroken, requires some hard work. Some of you are probably thinking of concrete
ways to go about this; others may stuck on not knowing what to do. The good news is, to quote a fellow pastor, “If
we listen to the community, the answers are in the people of the community.”[6] So spend some time listening to our
community. Find out what some of the
needs are that aren’t being met. And
that intersection where the community’s deep need meets your deep passion,
that’s where we are called to serve, and that’s how we move towards Stronger
Communities.[7] Dare to believe that’s where God’s calling
you to and that you can make a difference in that place.
In our Gospel this morning Jesus points out that “No one
can break into a strong person’s house and steal anything without first tying
up the strong person. Only then can the house be burglarized.” The good news is that Jesus is the stronger
person. In fact, the Gospel of Mark even
calls him that, just two chapters earlier, when Jesus’ cousin, John the
Baptist, describes Jesus by saying, “One stronger than I am is coming after me.
I’m not even worthy to bend over and loosen the strap of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize
you with the Holy Spirit.”[8] Jesus is the stronger one. Dare to believe in him and that he can
overcome any obstacle you perceive or any obstacle you have placed in the way of
building stronger churches, stronger relationships, and stronger
communities. It can be done. I dare to believe it. Do you?
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