So I wanted to include my sermon that I wrote for Williamsburg Landing, a local retirement community. It was off lectionary, focusing on the John reading for the week and the Ephesians reading. I included the Ephesians reading in my sermon because the John reading had been read earlier in the service.
“I therefore, the prisoner in the
Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been
called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one
another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the
one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of
Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,
‘When he ascended on high he made
captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.’
(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what
does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?
He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so
that he might fill all things.) The gifts he gave were that some would be
apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip
the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until
all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no
longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of
doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But
speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the
head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by
every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly,
promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” This is the word of
God for the people of God.
I
wanted to add this Scripture in with the Gospel lesson today because it is a
truly powerful passage and it fits in perfectly with what I want to talk about.
Introduce self – summer intern (explain Calling 21), talk about school
This Ephesians
passage really speaks to me because this summer is all about discovering my
call and discovering what it means to be worthy of the call. I’ve been able to
do so many amazing things, from teach music at VBS to helping at music camp, to
writing liturgy for services, preaching, teaching Sunday School, doing music
sessions for Respite Care center and WindsorMeade, and so much more. I’ve been
thrown into the deep end of what it means to be in ministry and I’ve been
slowly developing what I want my ministry to look like. The Ephesians reading
and the John reading focus on Jesus being the bread of life, and us being a
part of the body of Christ. For most United Methodist Churches, and many other
denominations, the first Sunday of the month, which is this Sunday, is
communion Sunday. For me, communion signifies our unity to the body of Christ.
When we partake in the elements, we are a community sharing in the common call.
In Winchester,
they have a program called WATTS, which stands for the Winchester Area
Temporary Thermal Shelter. The local churches each take a week during the
coldest months of the year and house homeless guests. The guests are provided
with a hot dinner, a cot to sleep on, breakfast, and they are usually given a
bag lunch for the day. At Shenandoah, we at the Spiritual Life office saw that
this was a great program and we wanted to get involved. Since we couldn’t house
homeless guests on campus for a lot of reasons, we decided that every Sunday
night for the duration of the program, SU students would take dinner and
provide a Bible study. I’ve been volunteering at WATTS for two years now, and
it has been such a meaningful experience for me. I’ve helped organize
volunteers, coordinate transportation, and eat and talk with the guests. It’s
so powerful to hear their stories and be in community with these people. When
we go and eat with the guests, I truly feel like part of the body of Christ. We
are not only providing food, we are feeding their souls as well. Even though we
may not get everyone involved in the Bible study, the ones who do come
absolutely cherish having that time to talk about Godly things. And even the
ones who don’t come, they see us, and what we come to do, and they are
grateful. This program helps the guests look for jobs, regulate their
medications, and give them a place to stay so they don’t freeze at night. I
feel honored to be a part of this program and it I think it exemplifies what we
are called to do as a part of the body of Christ.
I’ve found that
food is a wonderful common ground. Whether it’s a pot luck, family dinner, food
bank, or communion, we always gather around food. When the people came to
Jesus, they were expecting food, and yet they received so much more. He told
them to go out and do the work of God through him. There’s a book that I read
last year called “Take this Bread,” by Sara Miles. It’s a story about this
woman’s conversion to Christianity and what she does with her life afterwards.
Sara was raised an atheist. Her parents had had bad experiences in the church
so Sara grew up learning to hate the church. When she got older, she worked as
a restaurant cook and spent a lot of time in impoverished and dangerous areas
as a newscaster and writer. She led a pretty rough life through her 20s and
30s. When Sara was 46, she by chance walked into a church. She had absolutely
no intention of regularly coming or becoming a “religious nut” as she called
it. It happened to be Communion Sunday that day, she participated, and her life
was changed forever. Just by partaking in that simple act of receiving bread
and wine fundamentally changed this woman’s life. She had no clue what she had
gotten herself into and started reading anything and everything about religion
and Communion, trying to figure out what this feeling was. This is a quote from
her prologue, “I stumbled into a radically inclusive faith centered on
sacraments and action. What I found wasn't about angels, or going to church, or
trying to be 'good' in a pious, idealized way. It wasn't about arguing a
doctrine — the Virgin birth, predestination, the sinfulness of homosexuality
and divorce — or pledging blind allegiance to a denomination. I was, as the prophet
said, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I found it at the eternal and
material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine poured out freely,
shared by all. I discovered a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet
subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the poor,
the despised and the outcasts are honored.”
This is what
encapsulates what we are called to do and share through the church. When Sara
discovered this, she knew that she had to act on the issue of hunger where she
lived. She opened a food pantry in her area and it exploded to many different
locations. This food pantry program has feed hundreds upon hundreds of
people…and it was all inspired by a woman eating a piece of bread and taking a
sip of wine.
Now what I learned
from reading this book is that it doesn’t matter what your background is, or
who your family is, or what you’ve done, all are welcome in Christ’s body. It
gave me a new perspective when I took communion or even shared a meal with my
friends. I read this book after my first experience with the WATTS program, and
even though I had already deemed that experience “awesome and fulfilling,” once
I had read this book, the experience took on a completely new meaning.
So what does it
mean to be worthy of the call? I think we’ve seen that to be worthy of a call
means to feel completely unworthy of the call. I think that’s when God uses us
most because that’s when we are most open to God’s plan. I love Isaiah’s call
story because it’s so fresh. Isaiah is kind of having trouble reconciling that
he is living among sinners but he doesn’t know how to be worthy to reach them.
He cried out “ ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I
live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’” Then an angel took a coal and placed it to
Isaiah’s lips and told him that his lips were clean and his sins forgiven. “Then
(he) heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go
for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’” Now there are a lot of call stories
in the Bible, and they all come from different perspectives and different
plots, but I just love the call story of Isaiah. Even if we feel like there
isn’t a job for us to do or a call for us to follow, there is. Calls change and
transform all the time, and no matter where we are in life, there is always a
purpose behind where we are.
Now since I’ve
been an intern this summer, I’ve been kind of obsessed with this concept of
call, if you haven’t noticed already. What I love about the John reading is
that when the people come to Jesus, they are coming for physical food, right?
Jesus takes the opportunity to present a call to them. When they ask “‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered
them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’”
This is in essence a call. Jesus is telling them to believe in him, and
everything else will fall into place. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?
Through the two readings today and the stories, we can see
that the concept of the body of Christ and serving him through call takes on
many different shapes and forms. When we partake in a meal together, whether it
is communion or just a normal meal, we are being the body of Christ together.
I’m so glad to have been able to come and share and worship with you today and
I hope that I will have another opportunity to visit Williamsburg in the near
future. Thank you again for inviting me to come today, and now let us sing “Let
there be Peace on Earth,” number 211.
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