August 14, 2005
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Knowing God, Building Relationships, and Doing Justice is the way we have articulated the vision of our congregation. Our vision reflects our values of spirituality, relationships, and justice. Last week we focused on spirituality, next week we will focus on justice, today we will focus on relationships and on how when we bring our best to our relationships, we can strengthen our church and create a community of love and care. Relationships are the social interactions between and among us and there is no shortage of relationship advice in the air. Listen to talk radio and you will hear advice from the right and now on the left, on how we should be in political relationship to one another. Watch the judge shows; Judge Wapner and the People’s Court who begat Judge Judy, Judge Mathis, Judge Maybeline on Divorce Court, Judge Brown, and others will show us the legal implications of relationships gone bad. Maury, Montel, and Dr. Phil will tell us what to do when we mess up relationships. Oprah, and Ellen, and Jane Pauley, and Tony Danza will help us feel positive about our interactions with people. Relationship advice is all around us. I have received and sent an email that gives some relationship advice. Among its teachings are these: Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have, or sleep all you want; Relationships can be negative or positive. The ones built on distrust, an imbalance of power, that are fueled by addictions or assumptions, or my way or the highway thinking are not healthy. Relationships that involve physical abuse, verbal abuse – those words that strike at the heart of our self-esteem, “you are worthless, you will be worthless, you will not amount to anything”, that is verbal abuse. There is another kind of abuse; it involves the breaking of trust, the giving and withholding of affection as bribery or punishment, tearing down the hopes and dreams of another, building yourself up at the expense of another with no regard to another, that is emotional abuse. Strong relationships cannot be built on abuse on any kind. What makes for healthy relationships? How about being caring and accountable. What would our relationships be like if we entered into relationships that give space and room for growth, that are about trust, honest communication, and not having to have my own way all the time. Relationships centered on the welfare of all concerned, the satisfaction and growth of all concerned, the respect of all concerned are healthy. Relationships that do not expect total agreement and that are not undone by a disagreement, and that can maintain care and respect throughout are healthy relationships. We learn about relationships in our families and among friends. Among people we know well, we learn to share, to respect parents, to respect children, to set limits, to negotiate boundaries, to feel safe, and to grow in confidence. And when the home is dysfunctional, it is where we learn to keep to ourselves, respect no one, do what we want when we want, and take what we need and want. We learn about relationships at work and at school where we experience joy and disappointment, where we can measure our competence and our need to be better against classmates and colleagues. It’s where we learn to understand people who are different than we are, but who also share our desire to do well, to make good grades, do good work, build a better life, or just test ourselves to see what it is possible for us to achieve. We learn about relationships in all parts of our lives, and we bring what we know about relationships to all that we do, including the church. I know that there are people, some may be in this room who struggle in difficult relationships; but we have called this church a safe place, and so I want us to spend a few minutes considering what relations supported by the church might look like for us. We have declared that we are going to be about building relationships here, developing friendships and partnerships to help us get on with the ministries of this congregation, bringing all that we know and all that we will learn about relations with us. Part of the way we are in healthy relationship here is to celebrate diversity, declaring as we do that diversity is about: Different Individuals Valuing Each other Regardless of Skin, Intellect, Talent, or Years (from a poster seen on a colleagues wall). Paul understands what a gift diversity is in the church and what a gift it is to the relationships we have in the church and how it can build up our communities in Christ. He writes to the Romans after telling them to present themselves as living sacrifices, after urging them to be transformed, after inviting them to discern the will of God. It was to a Christian community in Rome that Paul wrote in order to help them and to help us understand that among all of our relationships, our primary relationship is with God, and that if we will be true to our relationship with God, our relationships with each other will strengthen us and encourage us. How will we build our relationship with God and each other? We can love genuinely – we can have honesty and integrity in our relationships here, caring about others and letting ourselves be cared for, giving ourselves to each other as we receive the best from each other. One way we can give ourselves to others is through mentoring. The advice we give, the Christian service we model, the way we make room for others are signs that we want to be in relationship with each other as God directs us. There are young people in this congregation who will learn what it means to be a Christian by watching and learning from us. They need us to form friendships with them and to support them in their Christian growth. There are young adults who long to have friendships with older adults. I have heard some of you who have been here a while, talk with great joy about how it was when you first came to Broad Street. You were invited into a church school class, you were asked to help build something, or to help fix something, or to cook something, and you did, and the friendships formed then, not only helped you find your place in the church, they helped you to form lasting relationships. I can promise you that there are classes that need more people, there are things that need to be built, and things that need to be fixed, and food that will need to be cooked. There are people looking for ways to know where they fit in this church, and they are eager to be involved. We know that we grow through involvement with others, and we know that not everyone will involve themselves voluntarily. They may be reluctant because they are shy, or they don’t know who to ask, or because they assume that a group is exclusive and closed to anyone not already in the group. I want to ask yourself these questions: what can I do to make myself or a group I am in more open and available to others? How can I make room for others in this church? How are the positive lessons I have learned through family and friendship, work and school be put to use in our congregation’s ministries. Have the lessons learned helped me to know how to value myself so that I can value others? What can I do? For Paul, our relationships with each other are about building up our community, they are about doing all that we can to help us together become the people of God because we are in relationship with God and each other. What we are about here is serving God and being in good relationship with each other. When we are, good things can happen and we can celebrate the hope that is in us now and the hope we have for the future, let’s start today. Our new General Minister and President, Sharon Watkins, preached the final night of the General Assembly. In her sermon, she called us to hope and covenant. What she said to Disciples from the United States and Canada, and from around the world makes sense to us here at 21st and Broad Streets. She said, “We are the church of Jesus Christ—Disciples of Christ—with a mission in the larger body of Christ – a particular mission for these times. We are a church whose time has come… “We cherish our individual faith journeys, but we do not travel alone. God has called us together into church…as church, we love each other and challenge each other. We come together out of a desire for joyful community rather than a binding sense of duty…It’s covenant, not hierarchy that unites us. We’re a ‘want to’ people, not a ‘have to’ people. We are a church whose time has come. “We are a church with a network of international relationships stretching back more than 100 years. And we are a church, in this century, growing by leaps and bounds across a broad range of racial and ethnic communities. In an ever shrinking world where people need to know how to communicate across culture, to find oneness even in the midst of beautiful diversity, we are a church whose time has come! Believe with me, Disciples. Engage with me in a discipline of hope” (Sharon Watkins, “More Than Enough” a sermon delivered July 27, 2005 in Portland, Oregon). People are looking for communities of hope, and I believe they can find hope here. People are looking for us. They are looking to see how we will help each other, and be in relationships of service to each other. That is what Paul meant by contributing to the needs of the saints. It‘s what you did when you gave to Tsunami relief, and to the people in those parts of Niger where a plague of locusts and a severe drought has destroyed crops, and left people on the brink of starvation. Paul means financial support to be sure, because that is what Christians do. Let me say here, you all have been diligent in your support of the church, some of you way over and above your regular giving, and I and the leaders of the church are grateful. When we use what we have to offer ministries of care, when we offer education and outreach opportunities, we contribute to the needs of the saints, people in the church and in the community, and we offer ourselves to each other. All that we do to build up this community and to reach out to other communities is a sign that we have prayed as Paul prayed, that we might live as Christ has taught us – in good relationships with each other, in a way that brings honor to God and glory to Jesus Christ. It is Christ who wants a relationship with us, who in his teaching, his healing, his dying, his rising, from his place at God’s right hand, in his continuing love, reaches out and continues to welcome us into relationship with him. “Welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you, to the glory of God” (Romans 15.7). Let’s be here, ready to be in strong relationship with each other and in relationship with those who come through these doors. And, let’s go out from here, and bring to this church the people who can be fed at our table, and who will feed us by their presence. May we always be about building relationships and as we welcome one another to the glory of God; as we do, may Jesus Christ be praised. Thanks be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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