Church News

 

From our Senior Minister

02/24/2010

Unlike the Olympics that are held for two weeks every two years, the Church lives out our call to celebrate with each other every time we gather.

 

I love the Olympics! 

We are inspired to see the nations of the world come together to highlight their best athletes in a competition that is both fierce and friendly. 

We see a vision of how we wish the world could be all the time—enemies setting aside their enmity for a shared passion that transcends national self-interests—in this case, sports. 

We are offered a model for the way that we can celebrate our own national pride while cheering on the success of other nations.  

Most importantly, we catch a glimpse of the face of God’s Original, Intentional Blessing when we watch the whole realm of God—all nationalities, religious expressions, ethnicities, colors, sexual orientations and genders—come together in a shared experience.   

That’s how I experience our worship on Sunday mornings, too.  As I watch our children come forward for Children’s Moment each week, my heart is in awe of the little United Nations we have in front of us.   Kids from all walks of life sit before us—“red, brown, yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight.”  Kids whose families are aligned along the whole continuum of the economic spectrum. Kids from single-parent homes and kids who have two homes, shared with different parents.  Kids who have been adopted from nations other than ours, and kids who were born at Baylor hospital two blocks away.   

When I stand up in the pulpit to preach, I realize it’s not just our kids that are so diverse—but our whole church community.  Men, women; gay and straight; seniors and youth; rich and poor--all singing “In this very room, there’s quite enough love for all of us.” 

We come together each week, not even really thinking about what makes us different, because we are united around a shared purpose—to worship the God who created us all; to celebrate the mission we share in Jesus Christ. 

Living in a diverse community, in a diverse world, is not easy. Remember how the destructiveness of divisiveness and hate intruded on the Olympics in the 1972 Munich Massacre?  

So, too, can that same destruction be detrimental to the life of a church community.  Even though we are bound together by the mandate of Christ to love one another and even our enemies, sometimes it’s just too hard. 

Let me be clear--I am not writing this because something has happened or is happening that is upsetting the church community.  (Sometimes people misread between the lines in both newsletter articles or in sermons I preach—thus the clarification!) 

Truthfully, as I watched the Canadians receive their gold medal for ice-dancing last night, and the silver medallist Americans who were just excited for Canadians as for themselves, it moved me to reflect on the fact that, unlike the Olympics that are held for two weeks every two years, the Church lives out our call to celebrate with each other every time we gather. 

And so, though I love the Olympics, I love the Church of Jesus Christ, and you, the Body of Christ, even more. 

Thank you for the way you embrace and engage the diversity of this congregation with the loving heart of Christ. 

Honored to share in ministry with you all,

 

Deborah