We are ALL
children of God
23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under
the law until faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our
disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25
But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26
for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of
you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There
is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong
to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
[This sermon was preached on
The last time I was here, the Gospel
reading was from Luke. It was the story
of how Jesus preaches, for the first time, in his home congregation, in
Then Todd began his sermon talking about
how I would eventually come back to preach for you this summer. He was pretty confident that no matter what
craziness I brought back from
Let’s just take a moment and covenant to
that shall we? No driving Greg off a
cliff. Sound fair?
I do that because ever since that Sunday
in January, I have felt a certain amount of pressure to come up with something
truly radical, completely out there.
Here goes:
Jesus lived, ate with and loved the
outcasts; Jesus made an intentional effort to invite and include all people—all
people—in the
Pretty radical, huh?
This past year, I worked at First
Congregational Church in
The answer’s actually pretty simple:
“They don’t want to.”
But why don’t they want to come to
church? Why is church for us a place of
community and hope and support? And for
them, it’s just about the most boring hour one could imagine?
Is there something in the story of our
faith, something in the gospel that makes church unappealing to young
adults? Or is it something in our
tradition, our presentation?
Is it what we’re saying or how we’re
saying it?
You know the story of a young
adult. They grow up in the church. They do youth group, and eventually get
confirmed. And then, in high school or
in college, they stop going to church.
Then, 5 or 10 years later, when they’re married and have children they
come back to church.
That was the old system—let ‘em go and
hope they come back—and for the most part it worked. It doesn’t anymore. The people of my generation aren’t coming
back to church. And those who were not
raised in the church are not seeking it out.
There’s nothing here for many of us.
It used to be that you married someone
of the opposite gender. You had
children. You found a home and a stable
job and you stayed there. And the church
structure was built to minister to those needs.
What church doesn’t have childcare during their services?
But so-called Generation X has a whole
new set of needs. Some young adults never
marry. Some never have kids. Some move from job to job, city to city. We young adults face new and difficult
challenges: education, jobs, divorce, romance, sex, drugs, in some cases
extreme wealth, and in other cases extreme poverty and debt. Many of us feel we need to face those
challenges alone. And on the whole, the
church has done nothing to adapt its ministry or its structure to address those
needs.
So I come back to Jesus and his
intentional efforts to create change so that he could invite and welcome all
those who were left outside the walls of the Jewish community. Ministry is about people, about listening to
the stories and struggles of people, about meeting and supporting all people
where they are. And the simple fact is
young adults are not in our churches.
And we have no idea what their needs are.
We need to go out and find someone, sit
with them one-on-one and swap stories.
We need to listen, we need to ask questions and listen to the
answers. We need to rethink who this
church is for.
This is the question Paul, in our
reading today from Galatians, is answering.
Certain members of the Galatian community argued that to be a member you
had to follow all the Jewish laws, circumcision, food restrictions, in addition
to faith in Christ. That, that was how
you got into Heaven. The major issue at
stake for that early community was a matter of tradition. Some Jewish members argued that the old
traditions needed to be kept. Paul says
that Jesus is bringing something new, a new way to think about ministry and
inclusion.
Paul says this church is for
everyone. Jesus breaks down difference
and brings GOD to everyone. There is no
difference, no inequality between Jews or Greeks—that is to say, those who
followed the tradition and those who didn’t—no difference or inequality between
slaves or free, men or women. All are
children of God.
If Paul were here today, I think he’d
say this again. The church isn’t just
for the Baby Boomers, just for the people who attend worship every Sunday. Young and old… all are loved by God. We are all children of God.
And I think Paul would go even
deeper. He’d see that the needs of young
adults are no longer about getting into Heaven.
The needs of the young adults are: discovering what love is, knowing
that God, that anybody, loves them and finding the strength to get through
another day. Young adults need help to
manage their lives, just like you and I.
<pause>
You and I have something to offer these
young adults. The story of our faith is
a powerful testament to living through, surviving and overcoming adversity,
isolation and oppression. Our faith
gives the promise and the hope, of a better tomorrow, of a more just world.
And just like young adults, we each have
our own stories of faith. Stories of
pain and anger, stories of grace and calm.
Imagine what could happen in the conversation between you and a young
adult, when you opened up all the stops, and told all the stories of your life
and heard their stories.
<big pause>
This is just part of what I’ve learned
in my first year of seminary. Young
adult ministry has taught me a lot about my generation, and how to minister to
them. It has taught me about faith and
about who this church is for.
I tell you all this because it excites me. I have hope for the future, in what we can
do, and how we can grow. I tell you
because it’s part of the reason that I’m so excited to be in-care at this
church.
Yeah, in some ways, each of us in this
room has to dig deeper. We need to ask
ourselves: who is this church for? We
need to evaluate our ministries, our willingness to reach out, and compare them
against Jesus’ version, and Jesus’ vision.
In some ways, we all have a lot to learn.
And in other ways the congregation has
something to teach.
I came to Vassar convinced I was an
atheist—for me, the church had ignored my needs, left too many questions
unanswered, for too long. I left the
church in high school confident that I would never return. By my sophomore year I was decidedly more
confused and unsure. It was my sophomore
year in college, on Easter Sunday. I
told myself that I was coming to church to sing… just to sing. I told myself that I had no interest in God,
in church, in finding a community or challenging myself to dig deeper.
But the next week, I came back. And something happened that I never expected.
At least five people remembered me from
the previous week. They asked sincerely:
“How are you doing? How was your week?”
It was that day, in the space between
eight small words, two seemingly casual questions, that I realized that God was
worth the struggle, that God was worth the time in prayer, worth wrestling
with. My junior year I came to church
every Sunday. I challenged my ideas
about faith, church, God, and eventually Jesus.
And I discovered that as radical and crazy as I thought I was, I wasn’t
nearly as radical or crazy as Jesus. I
found, through Jesus, through the story of our faith, and the stories of other
people of faith, I was welcomed, invited even, I was loved and through this I
found hope.
Ministry is a funny thing, though. It’s not so much a profession that one
chooses; so much as it chooses you. The
language is that we are “called” to serve.
It sounds a little funny, “Hellooo… anyone home?” but it’s really true.
My senior year, still coming to church
here, I was at cross roads in my life.
College was almost over and I needed to figure out where to go
next. And I heard this voice: “psst! Yeah, you!
over here!”
It was God, leading me to a road and I
couldn’t help but be curious. At first
walking down that road was fun; there were lots of great people encouraging me,
a lot of support and love. But this year
I learned that that road is not one that is always easy. It can be very isolating for a 23 years old
to be in seminary.
Picture it: me, a dashing young fellow, having a nice
time at your local bar. I introduce
myself to someone.
And then they ask:
“So what do you do?”
“uh… I’m a student.”
“What are you studying?”
“Religion.”
“That’s cool, where do you go?”
“Oh, a school just north of Boston.”
(This is what we call dodging the
H-bomb. Avoiding the reaction where
people step back and say: “oh, you go to Hahvahd.”)
(And at some point you have to give in)
“Well, I’m in seminary, I’m studying to
be a minister.”
“Haha!
Quit playin’! Seriously, what are
you studying?”
God is certainly not without a sense of
humor!
This journey, this road called ministry,
has also been filled with some difficult but powerful moments.
This spring, during the first week of
Lent, a pivotal member of First Church Somerville’s community died
suddenly. It was powerful for to be
present to a community shocked by the death of someone they loved. I’d never seen a community come together and
support each other like that. At the end
of my year, the widow—who was not a young adult—thanked me for praying for her,
and thanked me specifically for my ministry to young adults. She had always been a married woman in the
church. And now, suddenly, her
relationship to the church had changed.
But as Somerville was thinking about inclusion and inviting outcast
young adults, as Somerville questioned who their church was for, she found that
she was included, welcomed, and loved, even now as a widow.
Ministry is a wild thing. Faith is a wild thing. We have, in our hands, in our stories, a very
radical thing. And I mean radical in the
very best way.
<pause>
Jesus lived, ate with and loved the
outcasts. (Who are the outcasts now? Young
adults? Someone else?) Jesus made an intentional effort to invite
and include all people—everyone!—in the kingdom of God and in the community of
Heaven. And so should we.
Friends, we have been blessed and
charged.
Thanks be to God!