As I was reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s Bread of Angels this week, I came across this passage: “We believe we know what is right and what is wrong and we do not welcome anyone who challenges our beliefs.” This, by the way, was written in 1997, and had nothing to do with our current political situation, which is telling in its own way.
She continues: “And yet God is dedicated to doing just that”—challenging us— “because it is the only way to get us to believe in God more than we believe in our own beliefs. Jesus was not the only one God sent to shake us up. God is always sending us people to disturb us—to wake us up, to yank our chains, to set us on fire—because about the worst thing that can happen to us, religiously speaking, is for us to hold perfectly still without changing a thing until we turn into fossils.”
One of the blessings of working within this congregation has been that you seem to have a good sense of when to listen, when to hold on to traditions and when to acknowledge that change needs to happen—or when it is already happening. And one of our best traditions is coming up: our Thanksgiving dinner together. What could be more Christian than coming together and giving thanks to the God who has given us so much, in celebration with the community that God has brought together? Fellowship is not all of what we are, but it is an important part of what we are.
As we come together for fellowship, we are also listening to each other. Here again is Barbara Brown Taylor: “God is ahead of us, calling us forward. God is all around us, speaking to us through the most unlikely people. Sometimes it is a mysterious stranger, but more often, I suspect, it is people so familiar to us that we simply overlook them—our own children and parents, our own friends and neighbors—all of those hometown prophets who challenge us and love us and tell us who we are.”
People often think of church as that thing you do in the pews on a Sunday morning, but church is also in the relationships—in the love we share, in the discussions we have, in the things we learn as other people speak of their own lives. As Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
I look forward to gathering with you.
Grace and peace,
Becky
Prayer:
God of love and grace, we give you thanks that we are called into a body, a group of people—not simply as a mass of individuals but as persons called into relationship, both with you and with each other. We thank you for the kind of relationships that are built over time, as we hear about each others’ lives, and know each others’ triumphs and griefs. Thank you for the ways that community can teach us about steadiness and faithfulness, for creating a community that can hold us when we are off-balance, and simply for love and laughter and jokes in common. Thank you for the gift of being known. For these and so many other blessings, we give you thanks for your grace. Amen.