“Souls Made for Community”

     I want to let you all in on a little known fact about myself. I share this with some reluctance, because I don’t like to brag, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that I am all puffed up on myself, but facts is facts, as they say, so I’ll just spill the beans and let the chips fall where they may. Here it is: I am a GREAT golfer.

            I know, I know, you might object. You might say, ‘But Reed, you don’t even own a set of golf clubs!” You might say, “But Pastor, the closest you come to golfing is watching the Masters on television.” You might even add in, “Reed, you never practice golf, why you have never swung a golf club since you were in high school anywhere except on a miniature golf course.”  All true, yes.

But let me tell you – I am a great golfer because in my head I know I am. I don’t need to practice to be a great golfer, because in my heart I believe I am.

Lots of folk think they are great Christians. Now they don’t own a Bible, and if they do it is gathering dust on a bookshelf. They might on occasion turn on the TV to watch a televangelist. They may even have a bracelet with WWJD on it – what would Jesus do. And they have not seen the inside of church since they were back in high school. They are Christians, they insist, because they believe they are.

In the same way that I am a great golfer.

            The Rev. Mary Luti, who is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and preached at my installation here some years ago, tells of a wonderful person who came to see here one day and said that she had been coming to church for quite some time, but had not been raised in the faith, and wanted to become a Christian And then she asked where to begin.  Mary reflected on this. Perhaps reading the Bible – always a good thing – unless you get bogged down in the boring “begat” sections. Perhaps reading a book on theology – again, always a good thing, but the Christian faith is about more than head-stuff. But she said instead, “Keep on coming to church, become part of our community.” Because what better way to learn it than to live it, and to live it in its rich, living, organic form?

            Which is, of course, the problem for anyone of us of sound mind. It is why so many people in all sincerity say, “I am spiritual, not religious.” Because being spiritual is something we think we can do on our own, without all the other stuff that comes with being part of a faith community – including, of course, all those problematic people. The personality conflicts, the power plays, the insensitive remarks, the enabling behaviors. As one theologian once put is, “Church is the place where the one you can’t stand always is.”

            Sounds a lot like a family, doesn’t it? Like a family, and not one of those idealized old-time Leave it to Beaver type families, but the messy kind we all pretty much end up in, with Uncle Frank who tells the same boring jokes and dozes off in the easy chair, and grandma who can’t resist pinching your cheeks and telling you how much you have grown, and the little sister who can’t let go the grudge now forty-year old, and on and on.

            But then there is the other side to family, families they stay together by keeping in touch, by being there for one another, offering support and encouragement, providing  comfort in times of trouble or loss, showing up for each other, and so much more.

            Paul the Apostle (Ephesians 2: 19-22) reminds us that we are part of a new family, a Christian household of faith, part of God’s family. Which is a great thing these days, because while it was once true that we lived in a Christian culture, that is just not the case these days. We are in a very real way aliens in the society we once created. So how much more important it is that we are no longer strangers and aliens from God, but have joined a new family, a new household.

            So getting back to the golfing analogy, the question is not merely an intellectual one: “Do you believe?”, or “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”, or “What would Jesus do?” It is also the political and social question: “Will you join up?” And, more importantly than that, will you come to practice? It is like that cartoon going around the internet, with Jesus speaking to a young man kneeling at his feet, and saying “No, when I said follow me, I did not mean on Twitter.”

            We are souls –spiritual beings --  made for community.