Synod Assembly Opening Worship
Marks of the Christian Community

May 19, 2006
Text:  John 15:9-17

Someone sent me the following bulletin blooper, “Don’t let worry kill you off.  Let the Church help.”  We can laugh, but it is a knowing laugh, surely tinged with a measure of sadness.   One of the difficult things that I experience in this office is the frequency with which people talk with me about divisions in congregational life. Those divisions may have taken place long ago or in the recent past.  It does not matter.  They leave great pain.  It’s not unusual for tears to well up in the eyes of the one who is speaking with me as some of the details are shared.  “Why do you think this happened,” I asked in one recent conversation.  The answer was immediate.  “I think most of us were interested in getting our own way and not in what Christ wants for us.”

I suspect that her answer is an apt description of other failures in Christian community that lead one to withdraw from another.  Surely we have known such failures also in our marriages, families, and friendships. And, such divisions can manifest themselves in a congregation’s relationship with the synod and the church body.  More than one pastor has told me stories about how dissatisfaction with the bishop or the synod staff or a decision made by the church body make it difficult to make a case for strong mission support.   And, those stories may be 30 years old.  But they live on and continue to shape or twist relationships.  We want our own way and not what Christ wants for us.

What are the results of such division that occurs “when we are most interested in getting what we want and not what Christ wants?”  You know those results as well as I.  When we are a part of those divisions we are inclined to justify ourselves and point the finger at the other.  Distrust and disconnection are rampant.  Sadness abounds.  Love is replaced by hatred, anger, and resentment. Rather than “putting the best construction” on the actions of the other, we view them with suspicion and find fault at any opportunity. In short, we kill one another and betray our identity. When such takes place in congregational life, it’s no surprise that one will usually see little fruit in that congregation’s mission and ministry.  Rather the congregation will turn in on itself and quickly assign blame to others for its current predicament.

As if such things are not bad enough, there are greater risks.   In the process, although we will not usually acknowledge this truth, we may risk using our Lord’s name in vain.

When we participate in such division we risk separating ourselves from the very One in whose name we gather together, namely, Jesus, the Lord of the Church. And, that is deadly.

In our text our Lord Jesus describes the community that is knit together in him.  We catch a sense of what God wills for us.  Most of all Jesus wants these disciples to know that they are chosen and beloved by God through him.  When our children were young, my wife, Heidi, put a poster on our closet titled “101 Ways to Praise Your Children.”  The poster was a constant reminder to find ways to communicate to our children that they are precious and beloved.  One cannot read these chapters without sensing the depth of Jesus’ love for his own.  The love that God the Father has for him, is the love that he has for them. 

But for those who may be inclined to think of faith in Jesus as only an individual matter,

Jesus’ next words are crucial. To be loved by Jesus is to be called into community.  “This is my commandment that you love one another.”  Here he adds not “like you want to be loved” but “love one another as I have loved you.”  With this command and with this love comes a gift, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

Although having washed their feet and modeled servant-hood, Jesus wants these disciples to know that they are not mere slaves, people who are doing only what they have to do.  Jesus calls them friends and insists that in him the very nature of God is made known.  What’s more, their place within this divine circle is not secured by the strength of their faith.  It is secured by his embrace of them.  Imagine yourself in that place and hearing these words, “You did not choose me but I chose you.”  With that gift comes the invitation, “abide in my love.”  Make this love your dwelling place, your home, the source of your identity.  Talk about Living in God’s Amazing Grace, here it is!

But this community embraced and formed by God’s word in Christ is not a dead end or a “cul de sac.”  It will not exist for its own sake.  This community, chosen and beloved, like Jesus himself, is sent “for the sake of the world.  “I appointed you to go and bear fruit,” Jesus says, “fruit that will last.”  Fruit, like bearing witness to God’s embrace of this world, by words and deeds that point to Christ through whom God would draw all. Fruit, like, “let me say it again”, Jesus says, “ loving one another as I have loved you.”  With that direction comes an incredible promise, when it comes to bearing fruit that will last,  “the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”

Well, having heard such an inspiring word, do you think that this band of disciples, this small congregation, “got it”, once and for all?  Oh, to be sure, for the moment they thought they did.  Earlier Peter had made the “Rasheed Wallace Third Game Guarantee”.  “I won’t let you down, Lord.  I will lay down my life for you.”  To that Jesus replied, “Will you lay down your life for me?  Very truly I tell you, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.”  A bit later the other disciples will insist, “We’re right behind you.  We believe you are from God.”  “Is that so?  The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his own home, and you will leave me alone.  Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.”

Talk about community, congregational failure!  Yet Jesus does not leave them to their own despair.  Nor does he take back his choice of them.  Rather, he “lays down his life for them” that God might be glorified through his obedient love for the Father and for them and for this world.  And, on that day of resurrection, he gathers these sheepish friends and breathes his Holy Spirit upon them, grants them the gift of peace, and sends them again to bear fruit that will last.  They know that they are chosen, beloved, called into community, blessed with the Holy Spirit and sent.

Fruit that will last?  Guess what? We are that fruit.  Our gathering this day is a result of the Holy Spirit working through that group and others throughout the generations who caught the promise of God’s abiding love in Christ, who knew themselves to be beloved, chosen, appointed to bear fruit that will last and who mirrored something of that love in their life together. 

But now let me return to the opening of this sermon, the lament about divided congregations, hurtful and hurting people and places that have lost sight of what Christ calls them to be.  I know of no congregation, no denomination, no community of believers throughout the ages that has in every time and place gotten it right.  And here, let me point out that “a full house”, filled treasuries, and ostensibly happy people” are no guarantee that we have embodied the words of our Lord in this text.  The story of the Church is the story of those first disciples -at one time, bold and confident at another confused, bewildered, and scattered. One time we treasure community and are willing to lay down our lives for the other and at another we despise community and are most interested in getting our own way.

We come into places like this or under a baobob tree in Tanzania or a house church in Serbia, in order that the crucified and risen Christ might again form us into being Christ for the world.  In these spaces you know yourself to be “marked with the cross of Christ forever.”  In these spaces you have been born again by water and the spirit. In these spaces, you get to hear the risen Lord address you, “As the Father has loved me so I have loved you; abide in my love… You did not choose me but I chose you.”  We get that precious commandment to believe that Word and the Holy Spirit that enables us to do so.  In these spaces we are given the blessed freedom to acknowledge the ways in which we have denied our Lord, gone our own way, failed community, and hear our risen Lord forgive us and and gather us again into community.  In these spaces, as we receive Christ’s Body and Blood, we hear the echoes of Jesus’ words, “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”  In the process we catch a glimpse of the joy that yearns for completeness.  Maybe the Holy Spirit enables us to let go of those times when the community, the church has failed us or when we have failed the community, the congregation, the church. 

“I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.”  There are some joys in this office.  They have to do with signs of your love for one another and signs that God is using you to bear fruit that will last.  They include seeing congregations that were once seemingly hopelessly divided and hurtful places moving to health and revitalized ministry.  They include participating in the anniversary celebrations of congregations and hearing stories about how God’s promises in Christ have sustained a congregation and its people throughout the ages.  They include seeing congregations move beyond themselves to care about what’s happened to those who have experienced destruction from hurricane Katrina or who those who are struggling with hunger, malaria and AIDs in Africa.  They have to do with congregations asking what has to die in us and our thinking in order that Christ might do a new thing among us.  They include see the way in which God is rising up future lay and rostered leadership in congregations like your own. They have to do with congregations valuing their connections with this synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the whole of Christ’s Church.

But for the moment the greatest joy is coming into this space, hearing the crucified and risen Lord name us as chosen and beloved, gifting us with one another and with himself, sending us into the world with the promise, “whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.  That what converts a church, a congregation, an individual from one that kills to one that gives life.  Amen.