Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 24
November 11, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
BEING CHURCH
Acts 2:41-47
Since we gathered last week we have been saddened by surprise and surprised by joy. The sad surprises of the deaths of Margaret Cole last Monday and Charlie Scott yesterday morning. And the joyful surprise of Paul Debusmann’s return to health having been very ill this time last week. It is a blend of sadness and gratitude to hear of Eleanor Zimmerman’s passing last night after a struggle these past months with her health. And the joy of today celebrating in the waters of baptism.
Whenever I arrive at the office in the morning and I see my message light blinking, I wonder what awaits me. The little automated voice first tells me the date and time someone has called. Whenever the voice says the call came in before 6:00 in the morning I know who it is. It’s David Cook. He called on Wednesday of this week after hearing the shocking news of Margaret’s death, asking what we could do and making some very helpful suggestions about ministering to those affected. He closed his voice message saying, “Well, I guess we’ll just be church to each other.”
Pondering what to say today in light of the week’s events, David’s message became a word from God to me. Even though next Sunday is Pledge Sunday I decided against a straight-forward stewardship sermon that I’m sure would have caused you to empty your pockets on the spot and chose instead to go deeper to the heart of the matter of who we are and why we are and encourage us to think together about what it means to simply be church.
This fall in the midst of our centennial celebration we’ve focused our attention on practices crucial to the life and ministry of the church: the practices of hospitality, worship, spiritual formation, service and generosity.
These practices were clearly evident in the life of the early church. They’re all there in that beautiful early church portrait we just heard read from the book of Acts: They were baptizing, teaching, learning, fellowshiping, praying, sharing their possessions with anyone who had a need, gathering for food and worship with glad and generous hearts, and having the goodwill of all the people. It’s all there: the basics of what it means to be church.
It seems to me we’ve made church more complicated than it has to be and we’ve forgotten the basics. I think when you get down to the essentials you can say that being church is all about learning and doing three things: Loving God, Loving One Another, and Serving the World. That’s it: Loving God, Loving One Another, and Serving the World.
None of the three stand alone. They are concentric circles. And we are incomplete persons, Christians, and churches without engaging all three.
We Love God by Loving One Another and Serving the World.
We Love One Another because we Love God and God commands us to love.
We Serve the World because God loves the world and calls us into the world.
That’s what it’s all about. No need for the hokey-pokey or to turn ourselves round and round in circles. We’re here to Love God, Love One Another, and Serve the World.
Anne Lamott has written a beautiful piece in her book Traveling Mercies about why she makes her teenage son, Sam, go to church. Sam is the only one of his friends who goes to church. But Anne says, I make him go to church because I want to give him what I found in the world, which is a path and a little light to see by. I want him, she says, to follow a brighter light than the glimmer of his own candle, and to be part of something beautiful.
Lamott came to her church when she was poor, pregnant, and addicted. And they brought her clothes and casseroles and the assurance that her baby was going to be a part of the family. She said they also began slipping her money. A number of the older women who lived pretty close to the bone financially quietly stuffed tens and twenties into her pocket. One woman named Mary Williams always brought her plastic Baggies full of dimes. And every week Sam gives her a hug and sees her generous love for him.
Lamott said, “I was usually filled with something like shame until I’d remember that wonderful line of Blake’s - that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.”
That, she says, is why she makes Sam go to church - to endure the beams of love, to witness generosity, to find a path and a little light to see by, and to follow a brighter light than the glimmer of his own candle.[1]
Loving God. Loving One Another. Serving the World. That’s what it’s all about.
To love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength is the first and greatest commandment, according to Jesus. To Love God is to give all of who we are to the God who gives us life. It is to live our lives to honor God and give God glory. It is to live with an open heart of gratitude for all the gifts of life.
We learn to Love God through worship. Through words and music in gathered community we lift our hearts in praise and thanksgiving, confession and commitment to the One Who Made Us. To worship is to live more fully each day into our baptismal confession: Jesus Christ Is Lord. To worship is to be intentional about our spiritual formation as we seek to become more like Jesus. To worship is to open ourselves to transformation.
We learn who God is and who God has called us to be as we open our hearts to scripture together and alone, listening for the voice of the Spirit to teach us and guide us and lead us into truth and grace.
We grow in our love for God through prayer and other practices of spiritual formation. More than anything else, prayer nurtures our relationship with God. Whether in silence or words or tears, through prayer we commune with God, we talk with God, and we learn to listen for God’s voice.
Loving God through practices of worship and prayer will always lead us to Love One Another.
Scripture tells us if we say we love God but do not love our brother or sister we are liars. We cannot love God without loving one another.
We Love One Another because we Love God and God commands us to love.
This love is expressed through radical hospitality, opening our arms to extend the gracious welcome of Christ to each other and to every guest. We acknowledge the sacred in each person and we bow in reverence to one another, helping meet one another’s needs, taking care of other, sharing life together.
The staff and MCC are talking about ways we can better connect with one another and take care of each other, making sure needs do not slip through the cracks.
In worship and prayer we connect with God. In relationships we connect with one another.
It’s what I’ve seen you do this week.
In the shocking aftermath of Margaret’s death I saw Kevin and Mera Corlett open their home as a gathering place for family and friends because Steven’s house was undergoing a renovation.
I heard of your phone calls, asking what you could do to help.
I saw you bring food for the family throughout the day on Wednesday and during visitation that night, and then again on Thursday before and after the funeral. And I saw you serve it with hands of care and faces of compassion.
Others of you made sure that some of Margaret’s friends who just last year lived on the other side of the world could be here on Wednesday and Thursday to mourn the loss of the one they often called their “blonde teacher.”
You put aside whatever else was going on in your life and you joined with others to follow a brighter light than the glimmer of your candle and become a part of something beautiful in the midst of deep sadness. It’s not at all easy, but it is beautiful.
In “Song of Myself,” Whitman wrote, “Sometimes touching another person is more than I can bear.”
Sometimes it’s more pain than we can bear. Sometimes it’s more beauty than we can bear.
It is our love for another that calls us into such pain and beauty -- a love my family and I witnessed first hand during the illness of our son.
In just a few weeks in this very room we will celebrate the first Karen wedding in Louisville as Mo Dai and Hay Moo La Ay join their lives together in marriage. Several of you have offered in a variety of ways to make sure it is a day to remember.
We are at our best when someone is in need. And amid our flaws, that just might be the best thing you can say about a congregation.
My desire is for us to take our hearts of love outside these walls and love those we don’t even know yet. It’s what we’ve referred to this Fall as Risk-Taking Mission and Service.
We do some of this already through the relationships we build through our English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. We also reach out through United Crescent Hill Ministries. And we minister to homeless women and children through Choices housing and ministry.
I would like for us to consider taking a Saturday morning once or twice a month as a congregation to do something of service and ministry in our community: feeding the homeless in a park, cleaning up a portion of our city, visiting a nursing home, painting a house, writing letters to those who are homebound, building relationships with the poor of our city.
It was said of the early church that they had the goodwill of all the people. That means that their love and care for one another spilled over into the community around them.
Our love for God and for one another with us push us deeper into the world to serve. We Serve the World because God loves the world and God’s love is in us to love what God loves.
Not everyone has a positive view of the church for some reason or another.
Fred Craddock tells the story of his father who never went to church. When preachers would come by and talk, he’d give them the standard line: “I know what you fellows down there at the church want. You want another name on the rolls, another pledge for the budget. Right? Isn’t that the business you’re in?” Craddock said he probably heard his dad say that a thousand times.
But one time he didn’t say it. It was the last time Fred saw his father alive. It was in a veteran’s hospital. He weighed seventy-four pounds. The breathing tube down his throat made it impossible for him to talk. Flowers and potted plants were all over the room. Even the table you swing across the bed to hold your food had flowers. Little cards were sprinkled throughout the flowers. Cards were also stuck on the bulletin board. And a stack of cards twenty inches deep sat beside his bed.
Every one of them was from the church: Men’s Bible Class, Women’s Fellowship, Children’s Department, Youth Group. Every church organization imaginable had sent flowers with notes assuring him of their love and prayers. Craddock’s father saw Fred looking at all the cards and remembering all those things he used to say about the church.
Unable to talk, his father picked up a pencil and wrote on the side of the Kleenex box this line from Hamlet:
In this harsh world, draw your breath in pain and tell my story.
Fred read the line and looked into his father’s eyes, asking him what story he wanted told. His father took back the box and wrote out this confession:
I was wrong. I was wrong.[2]
We are seeking to be the church - loving God, loving one another, serving the world - and to do so with glad and generous hearts.
I have been so proud of your generosity this year. Your giving has revolutionized the attitude around here toward new ministry. When a new idea arises, it is no longer immediately shot down because we don’t have the money.
With our growing nursery, new toys were desperately needed. When I told Karen Scott we had the money to purchase a thousand dollars worth of new toys she looked like a child on Christmas morning. And so do the children who now play with those toys.
A dream arose in the heart of Tim Baker, teacher of our Middle School Youth, to help create a better space for the 40 youth who are present on Sunday morning. He presented the idea to staff and the MCC and then to the congregation, and we found the only obstacles were logistical not financial. With the money available we’re finding ways to work around the logistical. Your faithful giving is going to help create a wonderful space for our youth.
And we’re moving forward with plans to hire a full-time Associate Pastor to Children. Another remarkable example of what your generous giving is making possible.
My prayer is for you to pray about your financial pledge to the ministry and mission of our congregation this upcoming year. Help us be the church. Help us do all we can to better love God, love one another, and serve the world. Help us be church to one another and to the world around us. Bring your pledge card next Sunday as a commitment to God, as an offering of worship, and help us grow in gladness and generosity, ministry and mission.
Loving God, Loving One Another, and Serving the World.
If we will simply be the church, we will touch people’s lives with God’s love and fill up this room with people who need to be offered another chance to believe, another chance to change, another chance to experience the church, another chance to meet Christ and make friends, and who may one day write about the church: I was wrong. I was wrong. Their rooms filled with flowers. Their lives filled with love from this church.
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1. Anne Lamott, “Why I Make Sam Go to Church” in Traveling Mercies, Pantheon, 1999, 99-105
2. Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Abingdon, 2001, 14
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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