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“Imagine a World with More ... HOPE”

7/31/2022

Hebrews 10:23-25
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but always encouraging one another.

This is the third in our “Imagine the World with More ...” series and today we are stretching our imaginations to create a world with more Hope. In current casual usage, this word Hope has come to mean something more nearly synonymous with wish—we ‘hope’ it won’t rain tomorrow for the parade, or I ‘hope’ the Giants win today. In both of these instances what we are doing is actually wishing these things will happen or not happen as the case may be.

But the sense in which we are here today to discuss hope has nothing to do with wishing. Looking through scripture, we find that these are some things that hope is:

Hope Is Expectant. Throughout scripture we find an expectation that God will transform our hope into reality. Not a wish, but an expectation.
Hope Is Not a ‘Sometimes’ Feeling. We celebrate our relationship with God even in the midst of troubles and we trust it.
Hope Is Foundational to Faith. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
Hope is Not a “Maybe”, The Greek word for hope that is used in the original texts means to ‘wait for salvation with joy and full confidence.’
Hope is a Gift from God. It’s not something we have to make up on our own. With the Holy Spirit in us, hope is a gift for always.

When we put our Hope in God, we are trusting God based on promises given and promises kept. Throughout the Old Testament especially we read story after story of people in a tight spot continuing to put their hope in God—often in spite of all evidence to the contrary. This is what it means to put our hope in God, even when everything around us tells us a different story.

So, how might a world with more hope impact our communities and the people in them?

In the curriculum on which I’m basing this message, they ask about our liturgical practices. What do we do in our prayers, our hymns, the symbols we show in our church, that affirms our hope in God? I thought immediately about the old hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness*: “All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!” or one of the relatively newer hymns, Sing My Song Backwards**: “Sing my song backwards from end to beginning, Friday to Monday, from dying to birth. Nothing is altered but hope changes everything.....”

Or there is the hanging in our sanctuary showing an empty cross with new green leaves, new life, growing out from it. Have you ever thought about the things we do inside our church as sending messages of their own? And what message are we sending?

How can our community—all of our communities--be spaces of active hope? As we read in our opening scripture: let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Perhaps by following the words of Isaiah 40:31: Those who wait for (or hope in) the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Hope in the Christian tradition, as mentioned earlier, is not wishful thinking, but expectation rooted in the promises of God. What promises might we have let drift away simply because it did not occur to us to place our hope in God and hold to it?

Hope is an act of imagination. God gives us hope. Our task is to imagine how we fit into God’s plan—to imagine how we can be hope in a sometimes despairing world. We imagine what could be in the midst of what is. This isn’t as easy as imagining more Compassion or more Community. It’s a more nebulous concept.

How can we show more hope to each other? How can we show others they can have the same hope within themselves? I don’t have a quick and easy answer but it’s certainly worth working on.

God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, once gave us this promise:
“I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

If God knows (and God surely does) then all we are called to is to commit to hope—hope for ourselves, for our church communities, and hope for the wider world. Commit to holding hope and commit to watching and listening so that we never miss the opportunity to be hope for someone else along the way.

Let us imagine together.

* Thomas Chism & William Runyan; (c) 1923, Hope Publishing Co.
** Brian Wren & Ann Loomes, (c) 1983,Hope Publishing Co.

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IMAGINE A WORLD WITH MORE.....COMMUNITY

7/24/2022

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Acts 2: 42-47

Those who had come to follow the way of Jesus continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. Awe came to every soul. And many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common. They sold their property and goods and distributed them to all, according to their need. And continuing daily with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people.

This is the second in our “Imagine the World with More ...” series and today we are stretching our imaginations to create a world with more Community. Community is a multi-layered word with a lot of similar meanings.

Broadly, it means a group of people sharing a common point of identity. It is often determined geographically: “the group of people living in that valley over there”, but in today’s internet connected world one can be connected by a shared interest or belief without ever sharing geographical space with others in the same community. A group of scientists worldwide who are all working together to find a medical answer to a pandemic can be as much a community as a small group of neighbors fighting to preserve a local historic building.

A church is a community. A school is a community. People who love dogs often form instant community when they meet other dog lovers. Anyone who uses social media can find themselves members of unintentional communities when they keep finding themselves sharing interests and showing up in the same feeds. The point being, there are a great many ways to experience community.

So—what is it we actually mean when we try to visualize ‘more community”? In biblical days the good of the community was prioritized above the good of the individual. One was born to a community or tribe and the preservation of that community was the most important value.

Much of our culture in the western world today is built around the idea of individualism—a concept which grew out of the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century Europe. This was a time when people began to question established beliefs, such as the authority of kings or of the Church, in favor of reason and scientific proof. Without those absolute authorities, the thought also developed that everyone was of equal value and had equal rights, leading to such worldwide events as the French Revolution and the establishment of the United States of America.

While this is, as a whole, a good thing, bringing balance between the rights of the individual and the needs of the collective culture, recently here in the US many have grown to value the individual more than our collective culture, to the point where a belief in equal rights has morphed into a belief that “my opinion is equal to your facts”. We all carry some of this “I can do it myself” individualism with us whether we are conscious of it or not, because we were born into a culture saturated with it.

Scripture provides a counter narrative, where the early church imagined a world where God’s limitless love shaped the way we gathered, care for one another and structured ourselves to share resources.

How might imagining our current world the way the early church imagined God’s world change our perspective? If we take this question seriously, what does it mean about how we practice our faith?

Take a moment to consider what communities you are a part of—not including church right now: school, neighborhood, family, social groups, volunteer organizations. What do we receive from the communities we participate in? [conversation] What do we give? [conversation]

Our church congregation is community, even in this culture that emphasizes the individual. What are some of the ways that we care for each other here—ways that we build community among ourselves? [conversation]

There’s one last word of caution now that we’ve looked at ways we might create community from our churches. We must always be aware that building community within the church might actually keep us from serving the community beyond the church. While “we take care of our own” might sound good at church but doesn’t offer much help or security to anyone not yet “our own.” If we ever begin to see ourselves as “us in here” and “them out there” we are already closing the gates.

How might our church keep from becoming too inwardly focused? One of the biggest problems experienced by some churches is an unwillingness to be changed through the addition of new contacts, new members, new ideas. How do we reach out to include others in our greater community if we aren’t willing to hear their ideas and welcome their changes along with their presence?

Do we truly want to reflect scripture’s image of an open and welcoming church, one that strives for the health of the whole community or do we actually prefer our culture’s ‘cowboy ethic’ or the brave loner—saving the world—before riding off into the sunset—alone?

Which vision of a world with more community do we really with to create – God’s or ours?

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Imagine a World with More....Compassion

7/17/2022

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Matthew 25:31-40

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ "

This is the first of our six exercises in imagining a world with “more...” and this week we’re going to be stretching our imaginations to envision a world with more Compassion. I don’t think any of us could argue that there is not a crying need for more compassion in our world today.

In grazing through my somewhat random collection of sources while preparing this message I found a quote from Forbes Magazine, of all places, from last year that asked this question: What is empathy vs compassion? This is how the question was answered:

‘Empathy and compassion are very different. They are represented in different areas of the brain. With empathy, we join the suffering of others who suffer, but stop short of actually helping. With compassion, we take a step away from the emotion of empathy and ask ourselves 'how can we help?”

That’s an interesting distinction, and I’m not entirely certain I’d agree with it 100%, but while the author of this piece seemed to be leaning towards saying empathy is the better of the two, to me it’s pretty clear that what Jesus is talking about here in our scripture today is compassion, rather than empathy (at least by this article’s definition). So, imagining a world with more compassion means a world where we do something about the sufferings of others, not just say, “oh, that’s too bad, I’m so sorry,” and pass on by.

When we talk about a world with more compassion, we can think as large as the whole world coming to care for others. Or we can mean our church body doing more. Or we could mean just one person – our own self – adding compassion to our interactions with the rest of the world.

Perhaps the hardest part about expanding compassion in the world is believing that we can actually make a difference. Are we convinced that whatever we might do would be too small to make any difference? After all, I’m only one small non-entity – so are you. What difference can we make? Maybe we need to revamp our thinking.

In our story from Matthew we just heard Jesus himself praise those who simply gave a drink of water to one who was thirsty. You can’t get much smaller than that – and yet Jesus praised those people and I don’t recall him ever saying that any one of us was expected to change the whole world all by ourselves.

Yes, working in a food bank is great, gathering warm coats in the winter is great, making a large donation to a worthy cause or a homeless shelter—all of these are great—truly--but so are the smaller gifts.

A friend of mine who is going through some tough times right now, recently shared on-line that a person – so far anonymous – regularly sends her cards with messages of encouragement, but those simple cards mean the world to my friend, lifting her up when she needs to be reminded that someone out there cares.

I can testify to how this kind of thoughtfulness can fill you with hope. Years ago when I was going through chemotherapy, a couple—friends of ours—regularly sent me cards. The cards were snarky and a little bizarre--and they made me laugh. I’ve never asked which of them picked them out, but whoever it was spent a lot of time carefully picking out those odd cards with a warped sense of humor that made me laugh out loud at a time when there wasn’t a whole lot to laugh about in my life. I looked forward to those cards.

Big things matter, small things matter—compassion comes in so many colors, shapes, and sizes. Imagine our world filled with compassion. A world, say, where no one is ever left hungry Can we even stretch our minds to an idea that big? Can we move our stake out that far?

Compassion, not just for those we know and love but for those we’ve never seen or spoken to. Compassion for those on the other sides of those ridiculous political wars we have going on all around us. Compassion, even for those who hate us—maybe they need it more than anyone else. And don’t forget a little compassion for ourselves. Many of us are going through hell right now—unemployed, juggling jobs and children, caring for someone sick or aging, depressed and feeling like we are out of options. Can we maybe even scrape up a little compassion for our own exhausted selves?

Compassion doesn’t need to be a thing we do—it is mostly an invisible movement within ourselves—a change of attitude. Taking things we’ve always thought were just “how it is” because the people who raised us seemed to think that way, or the people we call friends—taking those ingrained ways of seeing the world and judging with a clear heart whether or not they are really true.

Actually taking the time to look at our ingrained biases and changing them if we discover they are not true. Learning to see other human persons as they are, not as those inherited biases say they are: Brown-skinned people are not dangerous. Immigrants trying to build a safer life for their children are not here to rob you. All unhoused people are not drug addicts.

There are so many ways we classify people – just at a glance – knowing nothing about them. We see the clothes they wear, the jobs they work, we hear their regional drawls – but do we ever just see people – God’s beloved children? Imagine if we—all of us--learned to see and respond to each other with compassion, the way Jesus did.

Just imagine it—let your imagination run freely...all the ways this world could be so different. Think about it during this coming week—let your imagination run wild. Most of those ideas won’t stick, but think about if even one did? How could one change in attitude change the world if multiplied by the millions of people who live here?

And the King will reply, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

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Imagine a World with More...

7/10/2022

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1 Corinthians 1: 17-19, 25

Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate....For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."

We’ve been talking about the subject of Covenant for the past several weeks now. It’s such a big subject that we will likely be talking about it for quite a while yet. We’ve been largely focusing on our history of covenant – both that of the Disciples at large and within our own congregation, but we’re going to switch directions for a while and do some imagining about ways we can move more deeply into covenant within our churches and with those outside.

Most of the material we have been using thus far, as I’ve explained in the past, has come from our national office, from a curriculum titled A Covenant Conversation, but staring today we’ll be using another curriculum titled, Imagine a World with More, (also from our national office.)

Here, we will be asking ourselves to stretch our imaginations and envision our church with more... more Compassion, more Justice, more of many things that perhaps we haven’t truly considered until now.

The dreaded ‘we’ve always done it this way’ has been the scourge of the church for generations – the reluctance to change anything that we are comfortable with – the things we think we know how to do and don’t require us to change. But over the past two years we have been forced into many changes. We’ve made changes and we’ve survived. But those were changes made of necessity.

But now we are being asked to use our imaginations and to go places we’ve not necessarily even considered in the past. We’re being called to see if we need to change some basic parts of how we do ministry, how we care for one another, maybe even how we define just who “we” are.

This series is based in the belief that God’s love has no limits – and neither does God’s imagination. Perhaps it’s time we start thinking in terms of God’s church having no limits, either. Many of us have operated too long in a mind-set of scarcity. One of my favorite sayings reads like this: “Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It’s not pie.” That’s a mind-set that assumes that if anyone gets more of anything then I’m going to get less. But that’s not how God works.

If we truly believe that God’s love, God’s imagination is limitless, then we can never lose by someone else gaining something they haven’t had – love, grace, hope, support, life-affirmation, welcome. With God, all of these come in limitless supply. We don’t have to give up anything to make these available to others. The only thing we ever need to give up is our fear that we will prove to be insufficient if we reach too far.

In presenting her State of the Church message for 2022, Our General Minister President Terri Hord Owens shared a story she had always loved. The story was originally told by preacher-storyteller extraordinaire Fred Craddock. Fred told a story of being a kid in Humboldt, Tennessee, and how on summer evenings when the house was too hot they'd go outside and lie on the grass in the backyard.

And sometimes his dad would join them and pluck a stalk of grass and look up at the stars and chewing on the grass he'd get philosophical and he'd say, ‘How far can you think?’ Fred would say, ‘Well what do you mean?’ Dad said, ‘Well, think out there. Just think out there as far as you can.’ And then he'd wait a bit and say, ‘Are you thinking as far as you can think?’

Fred said, ‘Yeah, I think I'm thinking as far as I can think.’ ‘Well imagine you're driving a stake right there. That's as far as you can think. Put a stake there.’ And then Fred said he would do that in his mind and then dad would say, ‘What now? What's on the other side of your stake?’ ‘Well, there's more.’ Okay, then dad said, ‘move your stake.’ And in his mind he'd move the stake out even farther.” God's imagination is so limitless that we are called to continually move the stakes we place out a little further.

Let’s spend some time together in the next few weeks, discovering where we have planted our stakes in the past, and imagining just how far God might be calling us to move that stake...and where.

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RECAPPING, Part 2

7/3/2022

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Hebrews 8:6-7
[In comparing the ministry of Jesus to the High priests of old, the writer of Hebrews assures us...] “The ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.”

We began this conversation about Covenant back at the end of May using materials and a framework provided by our national body. This curriculum, titled A Covenant Conversation, came into being because of recent revisions to the Design of the Christian Church – revisions which it was thought might help us better live out our calling.

As part of that work, it became clear that what was needed was not only a review of the specifics of the Design, but an exploration of our theological foundations. Hence, this curriculum was developed and offered to us to use as best fits our own circumstance.

We were given several sessions, each with its own short video and a list of discussion questions. Unfortunately, we were forced into a “make-shift” access to some of the materials when I had to go on medical leave for a few weeks. Now that I’m back I’m attempting to gather these random bits and form them into a coherent narrative again. Forgive me if I repeat myself in all this. I just don’t want to miss out on something worth studying.

Last week I recapped the first two videos that were shared – the first from Dr. Sandhya Jha and the second from Dr. Casey Sigmon, mostly discussing what I considered the major points of each presentation. This week I want to continue that re-cap with a collection of questions for each of you to answer, based in your own experiences and your own theological reflections.

Dr. Jha’s video particularly focused on the history of the Disciples, and the first question asked with this session reminded us that at the time the Design and the Preamble were being created -- in the late 1960’s -- the nation (and much of the world) was going in a direction that seemed to say that racial reconciliation was impossible, while the Disciples were choosing to move in the opposite direction --- choosing unity and reconciliation.

What can we learn today from that history? What can that time, that movement, and our choices back then teach us about how to choose today? Not only what did we choose and why, but what did we resist?

What other movements today call us to that same kind of resistance? What in our world today cries out for resistance?

Another question from this same session states that three things are named in the Preamble as weaving us all together: baptism; faith in a living Christ; and a table of gratitude. Have you seen these three play any role in the life of your church? To what end?

Moving on to Dr. Sigmon’s video, she spends much of her speaking time describing the kind of church she spent much of her prior life in and her reasons for leaving it. The first set of questions to be answered are about how you came to be a Disciple. Were you born into a Disciples home? If so, what keeps you here? Is your current congregational home the same one you were born into? If not, how did you end up in this particular congregation? Sometimes it appears that we simply drift with the flow. In that case, why did the drift bring us here? Such questions really do matter.

If you weren’t born a Disciple but came from another church at some point, another denomination, what moved you to leave your prior affiliation and join the Christian Church? Can you name it?

If you were previously un-churched, what drew you to us and what keeps you here? What keeps you in this covenantal relationship with our particular tradition?

Another point Dr. Sigmon makes in her video is the connection between covenant and assembly. We have only recently gone through a rough two or three years when we could not assemble, due to plague and laws to mitigate that plague. When we could not even assemble in one room for months on end, how did we do at staying in covenant with each other? What did the loss of a physical connection do to our covenantal connection? What could we have done to do it better? What new ways did we consider that we would never have thought of in the past? Were they effective for you?

We had to stretch and grow our imaginations and learn new ways to connect – not just learn them, but accept and use them. We here at Church of the Open Door went all the way back to snail-mail as one of our first connecting points. And then to YouTube, as well as connections on our Facebook page and our web site. We didn’t go as techie as some other churches because we didn’t have the resources, but we did what we could do. Was it enough?

These first two lessons especially, ask us to look behind us, into our pasts, but this last question asks us to look into our future, and just as in the 60’s we were called by covenant to reach beyond the separations we had previously accepted as normal, and move into unity with all of God’s people, so now we are being asked to expand our ways of coming together to include not just the neighbors who live near us, but also those who may live at a distance but still, for some reason, feel called into union with us. We appear to be being called to make further changes in how we do “assembling.”

As we continue our discoveries into who we are, and why we are, may we make the effort to dig deeper in this thing called covenant – and find out where and why it may call us next, because covenant is a living thing, constantly moving and evolving. Where is it taking us now?

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“Imagine a World with More ... HOPE”

IMAGINE A WORLD WITH MORE.....COMMUNITY

Imagine a World with More....Compassion

Imagine a World with More...

RECAPPING, Part 2

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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