| "A new kind of cohesive community is what Jesus set out to establish when he called Simon Peter and Andrew and then James and John, fishers all-when Jesus called them, saying, "Follow me, and I will have you fish for people." Jesus challenged the four of them to change their pattern of living, to respond dynamically to the cloudburst of God's presence that Jesus came to bring. Oh, Simon Peter and Andrew would not cease to be siblings, but they would now be joined with Jesus as siblings doing the will of God; and James and John would not cease to be children of Zebedee, but they would now be joined with Jesus as faithful children of God. And although all four would be leaving their fishing nets, they would now be joined with Jesus in fishing for people. They would not lose their pasts, but they would now be transformed both by Jesus's call to follow him and by their role, as members of the community of Jesus, in fostering among humankind a more complete fulfillment of God's will. As the story of these four followers unfolds in the gospel, we come to see that they did not always make brave or wise decisions. Sometimes they acted downright stupidly. At other times they behaved angrily or fearfully. But Jesus kept on loving them and forgiving them and putting them back to work on behalf of God's community. And we are promised the same. When we, as part of God's community, act stupidly or behave angrily or fearfully, Christ will continue to love us and forgive us and put us back to work furthering God's transformation of the world. Thanks be to God for that! After Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection, the new community of Jesus's disciples went out themselves to call a second generation to follow Christ, to be transformed, as they had been, into disciples. This next generation of followers comprised not just Palestinian Jews, persons like Jesus in both religious and ethnic ancestry, but persons from all the religious and ethnic backgrounds represented in the Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire. And the task of molding this diverse conglomeration of persons into a cohesive group, into a unified community of faith and practice, fell to leaders of the church like the apostle Paul in places like the city of Corinth. Corinth-a bustling port city, a boom town, a crossroads of trade and finance, of tourists, immigrants, and adherents of many different religions, a city in which only the tough could survive. Sounds a lot like our own New York City, doesn't it! Corinth's public market place was larger than Rome's, and three new government buildings had just been completed together with an amphitheater seating 14,000 people. In Paul's day, Corinth was probably the most robust and modern city in all of Greece. And its citizens had the reputation of being open and eager for new ideas. It was in this great city some twenty to twenty-five years after the death and resurrection of Jesus that Paul established a diverse community of Christ's followers, a community that he could only pray would someday come together cohesively, would somehow develop a unity of mind and purpose as to how to advance God's sovereign reign on earth. Now when Paul called the Corinthians to a unity of mind and purpose, he was not insisting upon a uniformity in their thought and practice. No, unity is not the same as uniformity. Indeed, the ultimate test of Christian unity is the ability to disagree over many details in thought and practice while staying united through a common affirmation of the Lordship of Christ, through a common experience of God's grace in baptism, and through a common commitment to certain core components of mission and ministry. Paul saw every church as being called to God's work in the world-every church, both in his own day and beyond.And the task that each congregation has-of building Christian community and seeking common ground-that task is no less pressing in our own day than it was in Paul's. Today it is the Rutgers Presbyterian Church that is being called to take a crucial step in developing our unity of mind and purpose, in developing our common vision of mission and ministry. For at the luncheon preceding our Annual Congregational Meeting, we will be introduced to a preliminary report from the church's Long-range Planning Committee, and we will begin to discuss it. Each of us will be asked to participate in this opportunity to share our personal visions and ideas for Rutgers' future. In this way, each of us can make a contribution to the process of shaping and forming this congregation's commitments, this congregation's goals for ministry in the name of Christ over the next decade, as together we strive to attain a unity of mind and purpose. The committee has deliberately left its preliminary report brief and general and open-ended so that it can provide a framework for thought that can easily include the specific input and suggestions you make today. So, upstairs at 12:30, when you have taken your seats at the tables but before lunch is served, several members of the committee will briefly introduce you to each paragraph of their one-page report. Then first while you wait for your table's turn at the buffet, one that the Second Avenue Deli is providing for us as a love offering, and then again while you are eating your lunch, we ask you to focus your conversation on each of the report's categories of ministry and mission and to make your contribution to the process. Representatives of the committee and of the Session will be sitting with you at each table to listen carefully and to take notes to pass along to the committee. The Long-range Planning Committee's preliminary report is, I believe, superb, and it represents a great deal of discussion and hard work. And now the committee is asking the rest of you to share your personal perspectives and ideas before the committee moves on to make concrete proposals for the development of our congregation's mission and ministry. So, in the balance of my sermon this morning, I want to help prime the pump for our luncheon conversations together and help stimulate and activate your ideas, so that you can more fully participate in our mutual search for unity in mind and purpose. Let me, therefore, pose for you a series of general questions about what Rutgers might look like ten years from now. Perhaps you will want to copy down some of the key words I use, as reminders for your discussions upstairs. (1) Should Rutgers be a "growing-edge" church? By that I mean a church deeply rooted in the past yet growing along its edge into a different kind of future; a church that is unmistakably Christian, that offers others the good news of Christ, that steadfastly affirms the meaning of life in the face of humankind's apparent chaos; and yet a church that seeks to grow in God's truth-for example, through dialogue with other religions and through conversation with the secular sciences. Don't we have much yet to learn? A "growing-edge" church. (2) Can Rutgers be an "intentional" church? By that I mean a church to which we belong because we actively affirm and explicitly choose its particular set of goals for ministry, to which we belong because we firmly commit ourselves to the well-being of its particular grouping of God's people. For such an intentional community, all other reasons to belong, like convenience or habit, would remain strictly secondary. (3) Will Rutgers dare to become a "fully inclusive" church? The apostle Paul says in another one of his letters that in Christ "there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female." (Galatians 3:28) Well, is God calling us to add categories to Paul's list, so that also in Christ "there is no longer black or white or yellow or brown, rich or poor, old or young, gay or straight, classical music lover or popular music lover"? And if so, what would the implications of such full inclusiveness be for the programs and ministries and staffing of this church? (4) Can Rutgers be a "spiritual" church? By that I mean a church that places a high priority on nurturing persons' relationships with God through prayer, and contemplation, and studying scripture, and opening ourselves to the mysteries of God; a church that constantly prays for the Spirit's guidance and trusts the Spirit to lead us beyond prudence, beyond common sense, to the risking of great dreams, to the undertaking of startling innovations; a joy-filled church full of the Spirit's laughter and energy. A "spiritual" church. 5) Is Rutgers called to be a "prophetic" church? By that I mean a church that cries out against social ills, no matter how deeply entrenched or widely accepted they may be; a church that works actively for peace and justice; a church that is willing to stand over against society and government and to hold even these to the standards of God. A "prophetic" church. (6) Will Rutgers be a "care-giving" church? By that I mean a church committed to using its talents, skills, knowledge, and energy to promote the physical health and well-being both of those among our own members who are in need and also of those in the wider community who are in need. A "care-giving" church. (7) Can Rutgers become a "vocational" church? By that I mean a church focused on equipping its laity to witness to God and to accomplish God's will in all our places of work and play. If the world is to be transformed to become more and more as God intended for it to be, does not that transformation need to be carried on outside the walls of the church, in the world where the forces of good and evil encounter each other, in the arena of lay ministry? A church preparing us for lay vocations. (8) Is Rutgers called to be a "hope-filled" church? By that I mean a church that affirms that resurrection is more than just Jesus rising from the dead, although it is that, more even than all the people of God rising from the dead at the end of time, although it is that, too. Still, isn't resurrection in its fullest sense about God's power even in this world to give life to that which is dying and to call into being that which does not yet exist? Isn't it for that reason that we are able to affirm: "In God, there is hope"? A "hope-filled" church. Rutgers ten years from now-what will we be? Will we be a church that is growing-edge? Intentional? Fully inclusive? Spiritual? Prophetic? Care-giving? Vocational? Hope-filled? And if we are to be any or all of these things, how do we become that? So now, my dear brothers and sisters, on to lunch and to our important conversations. All of you have been called by Christ to discipleship, so I join with Paul in appealing to you in the name of Christ to engage earnestly in the work of coming to agreement, so that throughout the decade ahead we may prove ourselvesa cohesive community of Christ's followers, united in mind and purpose, in mission and ministry, to the glory of God and for the well-being of humankind. Amen |
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