Scripture can be found here…
How I Came to Be a Presbyterian:
I was a newcomer to the Presbyterian church in my mid-30’s. I had taken a position as Director of Christian Education at West Presbyterian Church in Binghamton, and, within a few months of joining, had determined this was the church for me.
Here’s how it happened. I’d been on the fence for months. I’d left the church of my childhood a few years earlier, to join an Episcopal community, but had discovered some dissonance there, with things I believed about how church should work, particularly with their understanding of leadership.
To be completely honest: I had issues with being told that the priest—that one particular person—represented Jesus Christ in the church.
I just didn’t believe that. I don’t believe that. I believe what scripture tells us: together, we are the body of Christ, and together, if we listen carefully and faithfully, we can figure out what God is calling us to do.
So, I went to work for the Presbyterians. And then, one day in January of 1998, I was sitting in the pew watching something I’d never seen before: a new class of deacons and elders were being ordained.
The very first ordination vow jumped out at me. It grabbed my heart. It was:
Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord and all and Head of the Church, and through him believe on one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
I realize that’s kind of a mouthful, and a pretty densely packed theological statement. Here’s the thing that grabbed me:
Lord of All and Head of the Church.
Sitting in my pew, I did a silent, invisible fist pump. “YES,” I said, in my heart. It’s JESUS who is Head of the Church. That is what I believed. That is what I believe.
And that is what set me on my path to becoming a member of this denomination, which, we noted on Reformation Sunday, strives to be “reformed and always reforming, according to the Word of God.”
How My Friends Reacted to Me Becoming a Presbyterian:
Now, coming, as I did, from a non-Presbyterian background, it was not unusual, those first few years, for me to have conversations with friends from my previous churches that went something like this.
ME: So, I’m a Presbyterian now.
THEM: Presbyterian, huh? Whoa. Wow.
ME: Yep. Presbyterian. Reformed. Reforming.
THEM: So, you’re ok with the whole PREDESTINATION thing?
At which point in the conversation I either began to stammer and stumble (that would be, in the early days) or, start on a little speech as to what I believe predestination really means (that would be, later days).
What I Believe Predestination Really Means:
One classic view of predestination is that God has decided who is saved and who is not. The idea goes back to Saint Augustine, and our great-great grandpas in faith, Martin Luther and John Calvin, jump on that train and ride it right into the Reformation.
BUT. This focus—on who is saved and who is not—absolutely misses the point of the doctrine. The point is: God is absolutely sovereign and absolutely free. God alone is Lord (remember? “Lord of all and Head of the Church”). And therefore salvation is a gift God gives freely—it is an outpouring of the goodness of God, not a measure of our own goodness.
The doctrine of predestination isn’t meant to give us anxiety. It’s meant to give us freedom to focus on what God wants us to focus on—which is, to say, loving God, heart and soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Why We’re Talking About Predestination Today:
And the reason I’m getting into all this is that today we’ve heard a passage from the second letter of Paul to the Thessalonians. There’s a phrase in there that sparked all this reminiscing and theologizing in me. That phrase, which Paul writes to the people of the church, is “God chose you.” To paraphrase the passage: We give thanks for you, because God chose you from the beginning.
These would have been powerful words for the Thessalonians to hear. This was a Gentile community in a European outpost of the church, and living their faith then and there was a lot like walking a tightrope. They were living in in-between times. On the one hand: there were threats all around—it was becoming increasingly dangerous to be a Christian, with an unhinged Roman Emperor who increasingly liked to persecute and execute Christians. This terrifying reality took up a lot of head space and heart space for the members of the church. On the other hand: God had chosen them. God had been revealed to the Thessalonians through the witness of the gospel, through the person of Jesus Christ, and that meant real joy, real abundance, real belonging. Jesus Christ was the Lord of all and the Head of the Church. So, among the people of that little community under fire, the body of Christ was living and active. The power of God was at work among them.
This truth, if they embraced it, could release them from their anxiety, and allow them to be bold in living their faith in God and sharing the love of Christ with those who needed it. They could rest assured that God was strengthening them to love God and to love their neighbor— in every good work and word.
What all this means for us:
Like the Thessalonians, we live in a world swirling with problems, with things that may frighten us or distress us—external threats and internal struggles that are real.
But we have something else in common with the Thessalonians. Jesus Christ is still the Lord of all and the Head of the Church And we know that the power of God is at work in our community, because every day we are working together to love God with all our heart and soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Consider these facts:
Every week we come together to worship God, to give thanks, to praise God and to find strength in God’s word for our journey of faith.
Every week something like a quarter of our worshiping community also gathers for some form of Christian Education—whether that is the Thoughtful Christian Class, or the Course in Miracles, or Bible Study, or Sunday School for children and youth.
Every week, about a third of our worshiping community offers their head space and heart space by working to strengthen some aspect of our ministry, whether that is membership on a board or committee or team, participation in and support of worship on Sunday morning, or one of our ministries of hospitality.
And this week we celebrate the one-year anniversary of our CHOW Food Pantry. At our Mission Committee meeting the other night, Sara Wokan shared the following information:
From November 1 2018 to October 31, 2019, our CHOW pantry served 246 adults (under retirement age), 48 senior citizens, and 147 children
We received 178 referrals from the CHOW office at the Broome County Council of Churches. In addition we also served 36 walk-ins. (Each of these is a family, anywhere from one to 6 people or more).
We—this faith community—donated 2007 lbs. of food. That’s a bit over one ton.
Sara and I had a conversation yesterday about volunteer hours. I thought her numbers were on the low side, and when we talked it through, she agreed. Food pantry volunteers alone—whether staffing a shift in which we welcome the community, or receiving a delivery, or shopping for extra things we need—all told, gave something like 16 hours each week to the Food Pantry. That’s more than 832 hours over the course of the year.
The power of God is at work in our community.
On Faith and Giving:
We are in the midst of our Stewardship season. This is the time when we ask all who are a part of this community to consider how we support it in all kinds of ways: with our time, with our talents, and with our treasure—that is to say, with our money. This is the time when we ask you to consider giving financially to UPC.
There are all kinds of measurements of the power of God at work in a place. I’ve already named several, all connected with various ways in which we give of ourselves. Financial giving is another measurement. While it is, of course, just one of many, it’s still an important one. Currently, about 50% of the annual budget of UPC is supported by the gifts of our members and friends, and about 50% is supported by our endowments. While we are deeply grateful for those who gave so generously in the past, this ratio is not sustainable over the long haul. Endowments can take hits from bumps in the economy—in the 2008 recession our funds lost about a third of their value. A congregation that thrives on what I think of as “living giving”—giving by the people who are here, now—is a congregation built on a sustainable model. It’s a congregation that is living—and giving – boldly and faithfully.
So I ask: How might each of us begin to give more boldly in support the mission and ministry of Union Presbyterian Church? Each of us has to determine what that means, according to what we are able to do. It took me some time to figure out how to give in a way that felt both faithful and sustainable for my own finances. I didn’t start out tithing to the church—that’s the classic, biblical model of giving, 10%. But over the course of my years as a Presbyterian, I increased what I gave incrementally, until I was tithing on my take-home salary. In the beginning it was a little scary. But now, it’s what feels right for me.
God loves us, and God chose us—God invited us to be a part of God’s household of faith. And this is sheer gift, complete grace. God will not love us any more if we give more, and God will not love us any less if we give less. What we give is our own response to God’s call to care for, not only our faith community, but for all the responsibilities of our lives.
I pray for each of us in this season, that we might learn to live boldly into our calling as God’s people. I pray that, together, we might continue to see and show the power of God working in our midst. And I pray that the love we share here might continue to flow out into God’s beautiful and broken world. Thanks be to God. Amen.