I am always encouraged when people from congregations across Northern Oho can blend their gifts and energy for the good of the entire district and especially when we can worship together. Hebrews 2:12 says, “In the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” And that is what we want to do this morning.
At Elm Street, we don’t see large crowds on Sunday mornings, so it is a special treat to gather with such a large number of brothers and sisters in the faith.
Some of you may have come here this weekend a bit discouraged about your congregation. Commitment levels are down. Absenteeism is up. Volunteers are few. Challenges are many. You may feel worn down, used up, and done in. You may be tired and exhausted and almost ready to give up the fight because the giants you face seem so big. And you recognize your need for encouragement and hope. A lot of us here know that feeling.
The Elm Street Church began over a hundred years ago as a mission project. By the late 1950s, it had become a large congregation, but then in the 60s, attendance began to dwindle, discouragement set in, and mission efforts almost fizzled out. So, when Sue and I were interviewed 25 years ago, one of the board members told us, “We don’t need much. All we need is someone to do the marryin’ and the buryin’, and there won’t be much marryin’.”
Discouragement is not a new phenomenon among God’s people. The letter to the Hebrews was written to a congregation that was disheartened, discouraged, and disillusioned. According to Hebrews 10, the memory of hardship, suffering, and public abuse was still fresh on their minds. They had gone through tough times. Even their possessions had been plundered. The writer says in 10:32, “You endured a hard struggle.” Chapter 12 tells us that their knees were weak and their hands were drooping. It was a congregation that had become tired and weary, and their lame feet needed healing. It reminds me of the words in Martin Smith’s song “Shout to the North,” which say, “Rise up church with broken wing. Fill this place with songs again.” Many of you understand the sentiment of those words because hope has receded into the horizon.
One modern writer reminds us that “The most important currency a congregation has to spend is hope. If hope gets spent down, there isn’t much of anything else left.” (Alan Roxburgh & Fred Romanuk. The Missional Leader).
When I was in graduate school, my research project focused on a congregation that was going through severe conflict. One of the things I found was that the conflict had gone on so long and had become so intense that some members had lost hope. They were saying things like “It’s hopeless” or “It won’t get better.” Many of them were unwilling to invest more energy into the life of the congregation and they left. Discouragement can rob us of our hope for the future.
The book of Hebrews is “a book for dreamers,” one writer has said. Or maybe we should say “It’s a book for visionaries.” (Issaac S. Villegas, The Mennonite. June 2, 2009) It’s a sermon filled with hope. Try reading it aloud sometime and listen to its message. It will take you less than 35 minutes and its 13 chapters will refresh your soul.
In some ways, Hebrews reminds me of a little boy at our church. We see this little boy nearly every Sunday and he seems normal in every way but one. He can’t walk. Instead, he runs. It makes some of us tired just to watch him; he has lots of energy. And if you try to catch up with him, he will suddenly veer off in a direction you don’t expect. That’s kind of the way the book of Hebrews is written.
As Hebrews begins, the ideas and understandings of Jesus come tumbling out, one right after the other.
• First, the author tells us that God spoke through the prophets of old, but that more recently he has spoken through Jesus.
• Next, he focuses on the importance of the angels in heaven, but he says that Jesus is greater.
• Then he praises Moses, that great leader of the Israelites, but he makes clear that Jesus is even superior to him.
• And just when this Hebrew congregation begins to think, “OK. We get the point. It’s all about Jesus and him alone. All that matters is his majesty and glory, praise his Holy name,” the writer turns in a direction that sweeps up the members of this discouraged church and carries them along in his understanding of God’s heavenly purposes.
And we begin to realize that it is the faithfulness of Jesus that brings hope and significance to the church that He has established. Jesus is the church’s one foundation. He is our hope. And we can take courage because we are his household and together we serve the same Lord. We are partners in a heavenly calling.
At first glance, that opening line of Chapter 3 “Therefore, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling…” almost sounds like a filler phrase or a throwaway line like the “dearly beloved” greeting that pastors sometimes use at weddings and funerals. But then we realize that this is not a ritualistic formula. Rather it is a profound statement about Jesus, about the church, and about our own calling. And we begin to understand that as the people of God, we are called to work in partnership with Christ and with each other.
When I was 6 or 7 years old, living on a farm in southeast Iowa, I remember working on a project one cold, winter day with my father in our machine shed. I can still remember the warmth coming from the potbellied stove nearby.
On this particular day, I worked as my dad’s partner in converting an old, 4-wheeled, horse-drawn manure spreader into a more modern two-wheeled model, so he could pull it behind a tractor. I remember that it took a whole bunch of steel bolts to put it together. My dad is 92 now, and when I asked him recently if he still remembered that project, he said, “Oh yes. We did quite a few things like that back then.” It was, after all, the mid-forties and times were hard.
My task was to have a bolt ready when my dad needed it and to drop it into the hole so he could tighten it. We developed a kind of rhythm.
Grab a bolt. Drop it in. Tighten it up. Grab. Drop. Tighten. We were working together as partners. He had the vision. I had the bolt. He was my father; I was his son. We were partners, working together, taking something old and making it new.
It’s not a perfect illustration, but you get the idea. It was an uneven partnership, just as our partnership with Jesus is uneven. And the new thing Jesus is doing is bringing people together. Walls and barriers have been around long enough.
A Catholic priest from Boston used to say, “There is just enough room in the world for all the people in it, but there is no room for the fences which separate them.” (Barclay)
One of the most profound and moving texts about bringing people together is found in Ephesians 2 where Paul describes how two streams of humanity that were completely at odds with each other have now become one. Listen to Ephesians 2:14. “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us.”Paul writes that God is creating one new humanity and is reconciling both groups to Himself in one body. Heavenly Father and Holy Son partnered together to bring about something entirely new. The creation of a new community came about because Jesus as the ultimate peacemaker gave up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
The intervention of Jesus on our behalf makes peace possible not only between God and humans, but also among humans in a way that was impossible before. It was never God’s intent for people to live their lives separated, divided, and alienated from each other. So, God sent Jesus.
Now, that heavenly calling has become our privilege and our responsibility. In II Corinthians 5, Paul says that “we are ambassadors for Christ, since God makes his appeal through us.” And we read in Chapter 6 that we “work together with him.” God has offered us the privilege of joining his team to reconcile a broken world. The church is God’s instrument for accomplishing his mission.
As we all know, our congregations are not always robust either in our commitment or in our resources. Our buildings may sag, our programs may lag, and our choir may sing off key. Add to that our own brokenness and weakness, and we don’t have much to commend ourselves. In fact, Jesus is really all we have going for us. But he calls us into his family to work in partnership with him. And in spite of our spiritual infidelity and our fits of unfaithfulness, Hebrews 2:11 says that Jesus is not afraid to call us brothers and sisters.
Some of you may have family members you don’t want to claim because they embarrass you for some reason, but that’s not true of Jesus. Ephesians 1:5 says that God has destined us for adoption as his children. We didn’t choose him; he chose us. And as a result, there are probably people working side by side in your church and in this district who wouldn’t give each other the time of day were it not for the fact that Jesus includes all of us in the family of faith. We are partners in a heavenly calling. And Jesus is leading the way.
The significance of our conference theme has come home to me in many ways in recent months. And I want to share a couple of them with you.
Last year, when a Lima police officer shot Tarika Wilson, a mother of six children, in a botched drug raid, old racial and cultural wounds were reopened. Many of us began to realize that our city was divided because people didn’t know each other or trust each other. As a result, black and white pastors, who didn’t know each other began seeking each other out, eating lunch together, and talking.
At one of those meetings, an elderly, black pastor sitting beside me, stood up and said, “When I was growing up in the South, I was taught to hate whites because of what they had done to me and to my family. But when I met Christ, all that changed and today I can truly say that I love every one of you.” It was a transforming moment. It is what can happen when we accept the call of Jesus into his family. It doesn’t matter what age we are, what color we are, or what shape we are in.
So where does that leave us?
None of us lives far from someone who needs a lifeline to hope. God has called all of us to roll up our sleeves, even if our muscles are not so great, and to partner with Jesus in bringing reconciliation to our needy world. God is already at work and he has a lot to teach us if we are willing to ask what He is up to around us.
Back in 1990, when Sue and I were living in Bluffton, we felt that God was calling us to move to Lima to be closer to the Elm Street Church. We realized that our ministry would be more effective if we could identify with people close by, especially since many of them did not have cars or telephones. I don’t have time to tell the story, but it became clear to us that God was already at work. He provided a wonderful place for us to live just across the street from the church.
And in the years since then, even though the neighborhood we live in is diverse and economically depressed, we have gotten acquainted with some wonderful people whose spirits and financial resources have been ground down by bad choices and unfortunate circumstances. We know their names, we knock on their doors, we share their burdens, we pray with them and sometimes they pray for us. And we return home recognizing that God was at work before we got there.
For these neighborhood visits, we always walk or ride our bikes so we don’t pass up opportunities for conversation, but after being in San Diego last month, I told Sue that maybe we should apply for a grant to the Congregational Commission for a couple of those two-wheeled Segway machines so we can get around faster and still stay close to the ground! In fact, why not get one for every pastor in our district. That could be the district’s segue into neighborhood ministry.
Lightheartedness aside, deep down I’m convinced that until our congregations take the Great Commission seriously and move into our cities and neighborhoods like missionaries who go to foreign countries, we not only miss tremendous ministry opportunities, we put the credibility of the church’s witness at risk. For many years, Sue and I have been praying for someone to move into our neighborhood for the sake of the church. Last week, God answered our prayer. Have you looked around to see where God is at work and considered how you could join Him?
In Lima, not only has God shown us that he is already at work, He has shown us what it means to work as partners with other congregations. I believe a lot more could get accomplished if congregations, large and small, could catch the vision of partnering with each other in ministry. After all, we are not in competition with each other, are we?
For several years, our congregation conducted summer Vacation Bible School, relying on our meager resources and the energy God gave us. Then God opened the door for us to partner with a small, black congregation, the Future Church, whose pastor spoke last night. One time we were really stretched when nearly 100 kids showed up.
One of those kids came back for Sunday school. He is now 12 years old and he lives just a couple of blocks away. When he was younger, he lost his dad in a gun fight. His mother is in and out of half-way houses because of her addictions. He lives with his grandparents, along with 4 other cousins, but he walks to Sunday school alone every Sunday. Members of the congregation have noticed him and they talk with him and encourage him. He battles with anger because of all that has happened to him, but he is maturing. We’ve found that it takes a whole church to raise a neighborhood kid in the way of Christ.
We send him along with other kids to camp every summer and, to make that possible, our congregation schedules a benefit sale in the spring to raise funds. The sale requires lots of preparation, but that project demonstrates another level of partnership and sometimes impacts people in ways we don’t expect. This year a young woman drove up during the sale, and hurriedly asked if she could use the phone for some emergency business. One of our members took her to the phone. On her way out, she noticed the sale and picked up quite a number of household items.
When that church member helped her carry them to the car, she told him that she had been homeless for the past 8 months and was ready to start a new job. With tears in her eyes, she said that had it not been for this sale, she would never have been able to get the things she needed and this was a great help to her. Joe explained that while this sale helps our kids attend camp, it is also a service to the community to offer used items at reasonable prices.
But our partnership arrangement is bigger than just our congregation or our city. And here is where the rest of you come in. Every year at District Conference we hear how important our camp is to the kids in our churches. Just this summer again I have heard of the transformation that camp has brought to the lives of some of our youth. Camp is a ministry that all of us together provide in partnership. It may be costly, but it is a way of reaching kids that none of us can provide on our own.
And we can multiply the effects of partnerships of congregations over and over, whether we cooperate to plant new churches, team up for disaster projects, gather to work and pray for congregational renewal, or share in the ministry of evangelism. We work as partners in this heavenly calling.
Last month our Annual Conference moderator said "All of us have to learn over and over again how much we need one another, and once we do that we’ve learned something that’s close to the heart of the Gospel." As people of God, we are called to work in partnership with Christ and with each other.
Are you and your congregation ready to ask what God is doing around you? And are you ready to reach out in partnership with others to join in His work?
Our congregations and our district may be facing tough times, but because of Jesus, we live with hope. Our material poverty need not translate into spiritual bankruptcy. Our program disappointments need not result in psychological depression. Our relational crises need not turn into crippling alienation. We are not alone and we need not despair.
Hebrews 3 tells us, “We are his house, if we keep on being brave and don’t lose hope.” We are part of the household of God, partners with Christ, and in covenant with one another. And, based on that reality, we can take courage because together we serve the same Lord. So, in the words of Hebrews 3:14, “Let’s hold tightly to our faith until the end.” (CEV
