Being a Blessed Church
Luke 7:36–8:3
June 17, 2007: Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Rev. Kathleen Crockford
United Congregational Church of Westerly
United Church of Christ
It is so good to be home. I enjoy having time away to be renewed and refreshed and see good friends. I enjoy making a yearly pilgrimage to the retreat center where we meet in British Columbia. The center is located on a beautiful lake in the south central part of the province. There are fruit and grape orchards all around and the lake is surrounded by mountains. Some in the distance are even topped with snow. But I still love coming home. Home to this church and you, her people.
This is the place where I feel God’s presence most strongly: here, among you. And for this I feel blessed. This is the place where I know I can share the joys and challenges of life and listen to yours as well. This is the place where we can ask the deep questions of life and search for God. This is the place where we can ask what God is saying to us through the scripture about how to live our lives. This is the place where God calls us to love others and reach out to those who are suffering, both near and far away. This is the place where we can discover that God’s love is so deep and powerful and present to us in all times and places that we need not be afraid. Even in our loneliness or pain or turmoil, God promises to be with us and will hold us up.
I love this church. It is a church filled with wonderful people. All of you are God’s treasured, beloved ones. We are blessed in so many ways. But is it not enough for blessed churches to be satisfied with ourselves and hoard those blessings. We are called to use our blessing to be a blessing to others. And that takes the gift and blessing of listening. Listening to what God is calling us to be and do.
Listening to what God is calling us to do as a church takes time and intentionality. It is not only the work of the pastor but of all the leaders and members of the church. And sometimes listening to God is hard work, because it may mean letting go of the way we think things should be and being open to the way God would have us be. It is probably safe to say that most of us want things around us to be stable and don’t like change. We get use to traditions and want to stick with them. But traditions are only meaningful if they also open us to God’s transforming power to make more loving, more caring, more forgiving, more generous, more faithful.
In the reading from the gospel of Luke we heard a story about a woman who found Jesus at a dinner party, and began anointing his feet with very expensive ointment, washing them with her tears and drying them with her hair. This expression of faith and devotion shocked and angered those who saw it, including Simon, the host of the party. But Jesus honored the woman’s actions because it expressed how deeply thankful she was for God’s love and forgiveness. She was blessed and transformed. She let God be more for her, and in return gave more for God.
This story as a lot to teach us about being a blessed church. Being a blessed church means letting God be more for us, so that we, like the woman in the story, can be more for God.
Being a blessed church means that we think of ourselves as the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul outlines a vision of the church as a living, breathing, acting body with Christ as its head. We sometimes think the church is like a business, or an organization, or even a family, because in many ways, it has attributes like each of those groups. But really, the church is unique. There is nothing quite like it in the world. It is a body–a living, breathing, organism. And as such, it is important to keep it healthy and to discover and heal the parts of the body that prevent it from growing and being full of vitality. It is important for all the parts of the body–that’s you and me–to do our part to feed, nourish, and care for itself so that we can grow in spirit and be God’s heart and hands in the world.
If Christ is to be the head of the body, all the parts need to stay in touch. That happens through prayer. It is essential for the blessed church to seek the wisdom of Christ always. Prayer is at the center of a blessed church. When we are too busy to pray, we won’t know what Christ wants for us. We would be like that proverbial chicken with its head cut off, running here and there and not knowing our true direction.
Being a blessed church means that we live in faith, hope, and love. N. Graham Standish, in his book Becoming a Blessed Church, puts it this way: “When a church lacks the faith to trust God to work in its midst, the hope to believe that good things are possible, and the basic love of God and others, it begins its slow descent toward death. Still, how does a church renew faith, hope, and love when it is struggling? So much in a church depends upon leadership–-not just pastoral leadership, but lay leadership as well. A church always mirrors its leaders. If the leaders are self–focused and selfish, the church will be too. If the leaders are tentative and fearful, the church will follow suit. If the leaders are afraid of God and growth, the church will also be fearful. In the same vein, if leaders have a strong sense of faith, hope, and love, then so will the church and its members. That faith, hope, and love will carry over into members’ lives so that they become more faithful, hopeful, and loving with their fmilies, in their workplaces, and in responding to the suffering of the world.” (Becoming a Blessed Church, The Alban Institute, chapter one).
A blessed church has faith that God is trustworthy and will move within us with power to help us to do what we could not do alone. A blessed church has hope for the future that God blessings will come, even if it means going through some struggles to get there. A blessed church has a strong sense of love for one another that will help us face problems and failures with grace and patience and help us act with love. This kind of love shows and visitors notice it.
And finally, a blessed church is one that is filled with God’s purpose, presence, and power. (From Becoming a Blessed Church:) When we know that our purpose as a church matches God’s purpose, we are blessed. When we encounter the presence of God in the life of the church—at worship, in meetings, in our music, in our activities, in each other—we are blessed. When we witness the power of God in the coincidences of God that lead us each day, the miracles that happen around us and within us, and in the amazing events—both seen and unseen—that assure us that God is in our midst, we are blessed.
And so it is a blessing for me to say, I love this church. I pray for this church and for each of you. And I am convinced that God is calling us to be a blessed church and bring glory and honor to Christ, the head of this body. Amen.
Copyright © 2007 by Kathleen Crockford