We are the Church

Good morning, Friends! I still feel like saying, “Happy New Year!” It still feels like a new year to me, and I hope and pray that it will be a good one.

I’ve been reflecting for the past several weeks about who we are, and what we’ve done over the past year. We’ve done a lot of good things together.

We have been here, every Sunday, almost without fail. We did have to cancel worship one Sunday, a year ago, because of an ice storm. But we’ve been here every other week.

We’ve been here on beautiful, sunny Sundays, and cold, rainy ones. We’ve watched the seasons change, right outside our own windows.

Right now, the land is sleeping – it’s resting. Soon, we’ll see the first buds on the cherry tree, and the first few daffodils coming up. We enjoy the dogwoods and the heavenly smell of the magnolias, and later on the beautiful crepe myrtles.

We’ve got a lot to be thankful for. The days are already getting longer. Soon we’ll see the birds come back. The seasons of the year are all a blessing.

We’ve had a lot of great meals together. Some have been fund raisers, like the Fish Fry and the BBQ. Most have been fellowship meals, where everybody brings food, or where everyone puts in a small contribution to help pay for it.

One way or another, we got together for a meal about once a month on the average. And every time we gather at the table, it’s a blessing. We meet as friends, and we feel the presence of Jesus with us. We can’t see Jesus, but we know that he’s here.

All during the year, we read passages from the Bible together. I often wonder, what it would be like, if Jesus visited here?

What would it be like, if we heard that Jesus and his group of followers were coming up the road, like that group of Buddhist monks you’ve read about in the news this week.

Would we go out to meet Jesus, and ask him to come and stay with us? Would we be honored by his presence, and would we remember Jesus’ visit for the rest of our lives?
What would that be like?

Or what would it be like, if one of those letters in the Bible were addressed to us? What if Paul wrote a letter, to the Christians living in High Point? Let me read from one of Paul’s letters, and let’s imagine it’s written to us.

From Paul, chosen by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from Sosthenes, who is also a follower. To God’s church in High Point.

Christ Jesus chose you to be his very own people, and you worship in his name, as we and all others do who call him Lord.

My prayer is that God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ will be kind to you and will bless you with peace!

I never stop thanking my God for treating you with undeserved grace by giving you Christ Jesus, who helps you to speak and understand so well.

Now you are certain that everything we told you about our Lord Christ Jesus is true. You’re not missing out on any blessings, as you wait for him to return.

And until the day Christ does return, he will keep you completely innocent. God can be trusted, and he chose you to be partners with his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

• 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

I sometimes think that we’re too modest about who we are. I mean, after all, we’ve been worshiping here, in this same place, for almost 253 years now.

That’s a pretty long time. This year, the rest of the country’s going to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We’ve been here three years longer.

Maybe we ought to send a birthday card out to the rest of the country, and say “Happy birthday, from your older brothers and sisters!”

Just one of my crazy little ideas.

We’re not a large church. We currently have about 100 households. That’s not as many as we’ve had sometimes, but it’s a lot more than our meeting first started with.

There’s also about another 100 more people who are on what I’d called the outer edge of Springfield. Their hearts belong here, even if they’re not on our active membership list.

Actually, we don’t draw a lot of hard lines about who belongs here. Our idea of membership is, if you can get along with us, we’re happy to get along with you.

We’re a Christian church, but we see Christianity as a pretty big tent. If you come here, if you participate in our life together, if you support the meeting any way you can, and if you feel like you belong here, well, that’s not a tall fence for anyone to jump over. You belong here!

I like to think we’re more inclusive and welcoming than some other churches. We don’t ask where you came from or what you believe. We just say we’re glad you’re here.

I heard somebody say last week that they once went to a church where the preacher yelled at people all the time. And I’ve heard people ask me, if this is the kind of church where they’re going to get yelled at.

I guess that yelling at people isn’t something I feel called to do. People used to tell me that when I preach, I sound less like Billy Graham and more like Mister Rogers. (By the way, Mister Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister – I don’t know if you knew that.)

I guess when they had the class in yelling and scolding back in seminary, I must have been out with a cold that day.

Actually, I think it’s because I love you, and I respect you. I think you’re intelligent, and I believe you all love Jesus at least as much as I do.

Every week, we read something from the Bible. If it’s complicated, I try to explain it. But a lot of the time, our Bible reading is really just a reminder of something we already heard or already knew.

The Bible is such a rich resource of things that make us stronger. The Bible never runs out of new things to say, or old lessons for us to re-learn.

We’re a small church, but we try to be a good church. We have people here who love God, who want to live good lives.

We like to sing. We love good music. Thank you, Weiyi! Music is something that lifts our hearts. It’s like turning up the oxygen in the room. Music and singing are like getting on the elevator, and pushing the button for a higher floor.

Prayer is like hitting the button and heading for the top floor. It doesn’t matter if our prayers are long or short. It doesn’t matter if our prayers sound good, or if they only make sense to us. Prayers bring us closer to God.

I said that prayer is like hitting the button for the top floor. Prayer is also like hitting the button for the lowest floor, for the sub-basement at times. God meets us when we’re lifted up. But God also meets us at our lowest place, at a level where we think we’ve been forgotten and where we think that even God can’t find us.

Not true! God can always find us. All we have to do is open our hands, open our hearts, and ask God to be here. We’re a church, every time we remember that.

We do a few things to reach out and serve the community, and not just serve ourselves.

Every week, on Wednesday morning, we host a group of volunteers who come and pack kits for people who need the most basic things to stay clean and healthy.

The volunteers come from at least 10 or 12 other Quaker meetings. And contributions to buy the supplies come in from all across the state.

Last year, they broke every record for packing and shipping these health kits. The demand has been overwhelming. We are helping homeless people. We’re helping people who have lost their benefits, and migrant farm workers who live in tents or in the back of their cars.

We are helping newly released prisoners, and victims of natural disasters, and families with brand-new babies who don’t have anything to take care of them.

That happens here, every week, right in our own basement.

If you’re here on the first Sunday of every month, you know we collect groceries for the local Food Pantry. I helped Shannon load them up last week to take them to COAT. Every month, it’s between 80 and 150 pounds of food.

One of the reasons we support this particular food pantry is that they don’t ask a lot of questions about whether people have the right papers or whether they deserve to be helped or not. They mostly just ask, “Are you hungry?” and “Can we help?”

We kind of like that idea of ministry.

One group, right here in our meeting, deserves a lot more credit than they usually get. Did you know that the Circle pays for a hospital bed, at a Quaker hospital in Kenya?

This is a part of Africa where most people live on tiny farms, or keep small flocks of animals. They live on an average income of a dollar a day. A hospital bill of $100 would wipe them out. I’ve visited that Quaker hospital. It’s in a rural area, and I saw sick people who had walked or been carried for 60 miles to get treated. And our meeting provides a bed.

Our women’s group also supports a teacher at a Quaker school in Belize, in Central America. They don’t have public schools in Belize, and the Quaker school helps kids who would otherwise have no school at all.

There’s a Quaker meeting attached to the school, so we support the pastor and try to reach out to the spiritual side as well.

Our women’s group helps to provide snacks each month at Hospice of the Piedmont. They help with scholarships for summer camp at Quaker Lake. They send cards every month to homebound people in the meeting, and people who are sick or lonely. They do a lot of good things. Thank you!

Next Saturday, two or three hundred people will be here for our Fish Fry. Most years it’s a fund raiser for our budget, but this year the Fish Fry is going to help two members of our meeting who have been very sick and need help.

It’s really good food, and it’s going to help some people we really care about. I hope you all come! But my point this morning, is that it’s a ministry.

At the end of next month, we’re hosting our annual blood drive in memory of Sophie Lane Bryant. I went online this week and made my appointment to give blood!

If you’ve ever needed blood yourself, or know someone who needed it, this is a great way to give back, as well as to remember and support one of the families of our meeting who lost a dear child.

My point is, we’re not a large church, but we do great things that we can be proud of. And I’ve only touched on a few of the things that are part of our life together.

We’re the stewards of almost 20 acres of forest, that creates a green space in the heart of our community.

We reach out to an entire world through our meeting web site. The web site is old, and it badly needs to be updated, but it’s the door where a lot of people find us.

One of the most important things about our meeting, and I really want to underline this, is the way we get along with each other.

We don’t agree about a lot of things. Of course we don’t! We come from many different places, and we all have lots of different ideas.

But we don’t come here to disagree with each other. That’s not our purpose as a church.

Right now, when people are putting so much energy into ripping our country apart, we have a witness to share: we don’t have to be divided. That’s so important!

We don’t have to agree about everything, in order to love each other. We hear each others’ hurts and needs, and we pray for each other.

It’s not an act. It’s real. We are bound together, not by politics or class. We are bound together by our shared experience, by the things we do, by our love and faith.

No matter what some people say, we don’t have to be divided. We know that we can get along, because we do it, every week.

We know about acceptance, and respect, and forbearance. We know about praying for each other, and helping each other. We know about loving each other, and sometimes forgiving each other.

No one can divide us, if we remember who we are, if we remember that Jesus has brought us together. We are sisters and brothers, because God has made us that way.

We may not be a big church, but we are a church, here in this place. We pray in Jesus’ name. We refuse to hate anyone. We welcome whoever comes to our doors. We reach out with a message of love and acceptance. We are a church, we are a good church, together.