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1. The best time to begin regularly brushing and flossing your teeth is:
A. One hour before your dentist appointment.
B. When a free toothpaste sample comes in the mail. Or...
C. Years before your teeth sleep in a different room than you do.
2. The best time to schedule that routine maintenance on your car is:
A. The same day you're having the engine replaced...why make two trips?
B. The day you've called in sick...not knowing that your boss is planning to drop off her car to have the routine maintenance done,,.at the same garage, Or...
C. Whenever we have experienced a cycle of four different seasons here in St. Louis...or about every 3 months.
3. The best time for our church to make a purposeful commitment to staying focused on Christ and in unity with one another is:
A. When the last ofthose annoying newcomers have left and the five ofus who really love God can finally worship peacefully...in someone's living room.
B. When we can finally save money on printer ink because both the attendance and the offerings reported in the bulletin have only 2 digits, OR...
C. The best time for our church to make a purposeful commitment to staying focused on Christ and in unity with one another is:
Right now...while things are great and we're growing and we're on the right path!
Staying focused on Christ - abiding or "remaining connected" to Christ at all times - as our gospel reading this morning admonishes us to do -- AND staying unified - connected - as a church: that is the most important thing we can ever do here together. That is the thing that will determine our health...our success...our growth...our happiness...our future. Recognizing, embracing and being absolutely committed to keeping that connection with Christ and one another as strong as possible. Nothing else can protect us...and, in that circle of unity, nothing can ever permanently harm us.
Both of the readings we heard this morning were directed to the church. In the Gospel of John, Jesus was speaking to his disciples as a group...the forerunners of the church of which we are still a part today. He said, "I am the true vine...you are the branches." Stay connected and you "will bear much fruit."
How many of you have ever been to the "wine country" in Missouri up around Hermann? If you've ever walked through a vineyard or even seen a grape vine, you know that the main vine grows up out of the ground - that's the part of the plant that's connected directly to the source of life. Along the main vine, though, there are many branches that grow off and that's where the clusters of grapes - the fruit - grow and mature and ripen for harvest. Break off a branch from the vine, though, and it will never produce another thing. It's useless when it's disconnected. That's why Jesus says, "apart from me [- Church -] you can do nothing." That is, nothing of any lasting spiritual value.
Now, we Americans don't like to be told that we can't do things for ourselves. We think we can do it all. We want to believe that we have everything we need for success and happiness and wealth and glory all in our little hands. And when things begin to collapse we get desperate and we work harder and harder...like hamsters running as hard as they can around and around on that little metal wheel. Exhausted from going nowhere. Or we turn to things outside ourselves that hold even less promise for help: drugs, alcohol, obsessive sex, theft, lying. Just another kind of hamster wheel. Only one that leads to disaster even quicker.
Jesus is trying to tell us: "Remain in me, and I will remain in you." You see, it's O.K. to be "power hungry." Just be hungry for the power that comes through Christ: spiritual power. The apostle Peter wrote, in his second letter to the church in his day, "Divine power has given us everything we need for life...." For spiritual life. For the real life. For the only kind of life that's going to last. For life with God through Jesus Christ.
That power for living a life of spiritual success and happiness and wealth and glory comes to us when we are connected to Christ in unity with one another. After Jesus was Resurrected from the dead, he told his disciples to wait there in Jerusalem until they had been "clothed with power from on high." In a few weeks, on Pentecost Sunday, June 11th, we will remember that day when the Holy Spirit of God came to establish the church - the body - of Jesus Christ. Jesus departed this world as one...Chris's Spirit returned and continues today to work in the world as many...through us - the body of Christ in this place.
In order to harness that power that Christ provides to do God's work, we must be in this together. That has always been Christ's prayer for us. In the 17th chapter of John, Jesus prayed these words to his Father/Mother God: "I have given [all my followers] the glory [, the power] that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
In his letter to the Ephesian church, St. Paul wrote, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit -just as you were called to one hope when you were called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Creator of all, who is over all and through all and in all." CONNECTION: Us with Christ and us with one another. It's essential.
Unfortunately, we often don't realize our need for that connection until it's too late. Too many of us use our faith like a spare tire - only in case of an emergency! Too many of us fail to realize how much we need and depend on one another until it's too late.
Some years ago, Life magazine ran a series of stark black and white photos that illustrated a tragic story. The first picture was of the dimly lit kitchen of a Nebraska farmhouse. A distressed mother was surrounded by people attempting to comfort her through a long night. During the previous day, while she tended to her farm chores, her little three year old boy had wandered away from the house out into the wheat fields. She had turned away for just a moment...and then he was gone.
The boy was too short to be seen above the stalks of wheat. The mother and father frantically searched all day. Finally, at dusk, they called their neighbors. Through the long, cold night men searched with lanterns and flashlights. Nothing. At dawn, someone had another idea. More than fifty people came and held hands in a long line and began to sweep through the vast fields. Photos showed a human chain moving in ever widening circles through the vast fields.
Finally, around noon, they found the boy. He was dead. The last picture showed the father, his face streaked with tears and dirt, carrying the precious body from the fields. As he emerged, he was quoted as saying, "If only we had joined hands sooner, he could have been saved." "If only we had joined hands sooner...."
If only those parents hadn't waited so long to call for help from their neighbors. if only the people gathered there had thought sooner to work together, instead of scattering out in different directions...that story might have ended with a celebration, instead of a funeral.
There's so much to be gained in the church by reaching out to others...by being unified in our efforts...by being connected with Christ and one another. Potential disaster can be averted...the results we desire can be achieved.
I have to be honest and tell you that this is not the first time I've used that story in a sermon. I first told that true story back in 1994. I was a student clergy then...and the church I was serving in had lost it's Associate Pastor and fired the Pastor and the church had split and the finances were a disaster and the church was barely clinging to spiritual life. I was trying to help hold things together; we had an interim Pastor coming in and it would take several years more for that church to get back on solid ground together.
Telling that story then was probably "too little, too late" at that point, and there wasn't much I could have done to prevent any of what had happened in that church. But there is a great deal I can do now, as your Pastor here at M.C.C. of Greater St. Louis, to see that this church never goes there.
NOW is the time, church, for us to make a commitment to stay centered and focused on Christ. No matter how busy and preoccupied and excited we get - nothing matters more than maintaining that strong spiritual connection. In personal, and corporate, prayer and worship and study, we must guard that connection with our true and life-giving vine at all costs.
And we must stay in unity with one another. That doesn't mean we never have different ideas or opinions but it means we join hands anyway and move together in the same direction. It means that NOW is the time to develop and nurture our relationships with one another. It means NOW is the time to learn how to put people ahead of plans and how to change what doing or how we're doing it if we realize that there's a better way.
We have the incredible grace and blessing to be healthy and growing and strong and optimistic about the future of this church. It's no accident that a single one of us is here "for such a time as this." NOW is the time to look around at one another and to look inward and upward to Jesus Christ and proclaim, "We're all in this together." Let the circle be unbroken! Amen!
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