1 1First Christian Church Riverside August 11, 2013 Exodus 18:13-23; Acts 2:43-47 WE ARE DISCIPLES Will you pray with me? Holy and Loving God, may we be attentive to your word in this hour and listen with ears wide open. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. As the Pulpit Committee proceeds with its work, I have offered to do a sermon series to support the work we need to do as a congregation to welcome a new pastor. I know from conversations with folks that many people are members of this church because they felt welcomed and they find the work that this church does to be rewarding. However, as you welcome a new Disciples pastor, you may find that person is much more connected to the denomination that has been the practice of this congregation in the more recent past. As I have talked to people, I know that this congregation at times in the past has been very connected to the work of the Region and has had people serve in Regional leadership. For many years, this church was one of the top three financial givers to the ministry of the Region. I have also heard the stories of your relationship with Loch Leven, the camp and conference ministry located in Mountain Home Village. I have seen the pictures of summer camp, family camp, and work camps. This congregation has volunteered and provided funding to purchase materials needed to maintain, upgrade, and enhance the ministry at Loch Leven.
2 Often we define who we are by what we are not. It is no different with the church. Often we Disciples tend to describe ourselves in the negative, by what we are not: we re not hierarchical, like the Catholics; we don t baptize infants, like the Methodists; we don t require acceptance of any formal creed for membership in the church, like the Presbyterians. So today I will spend a little time talking about who we are and what we believe as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). There are three parts to our denominational identity that I would like to share with you this morning. They are: Our Identity, Our Vision, and Our Mission. Let s talk about these a bit more. Our Identity We are Disciples of Christ, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. As part of the one body of Christ, we welcome all to the Lord's Table as God has welcomed us. There are four key concepts in this identity statement: Movement, Wholeness, Welcome, and Table. A movement is something that is fluid, not stale or stagnant. When the first believers of Jesus gathered together in community in the time of the Book of Acts they were known within society as People of the Way; the way of Jesus, the way of the Messiah. They were considered a movement, perhaps even what we would consider a cult in our modern times. But that movement never lost its ability to adapt and find new ways to embody the vision of living in Christian community. That is the community we see in our reading this morning a community that is outside the norm, that strives for the greater good, the wholeness of the community, where all are welcome. This is a movement that never says, but that is the way we have always done it. It celebrates the diversity that enriches our lives together in relationship
3 with Christ and with each other. It is a diversity that encompasses all the traditions and experiences we have had as individuals and a community that creates the community we are today the community that God continues to call forth and that Christ continues to lead that we might ground ourselves in the life and ministry of the one we know as Jesus Christ. Wholeness is partly that sense of being connected. It is something we are as a body made up of many parts individuals, ministries, struggles, thanksgivings. But wholeness requires that we give up something in order to be a part of the whole. It may be time on Sunday morning, it may be letting go of the past so that we can be present to this moment and the future, it may be conceding some desires or expectations for ministry so that we can move forward with common purpose. Wholeness breaks down our humanly constructed divisions and encourages us to be engaged in a common purpose. It connects us like puzzle pieces that come together to form a beautiful picture that is not evident until all the pieces are joined together where everyone has to be a part of the picture in order for it to be complete. Welcome: As part of the one body of Christ we welcome all to the Lord s table as God has welcomed us. This is the most common reason I hear about how people come to be associated with this congregation. They have felt the welcome here. The gift of welcoming graces us with the joy of being together in ministry and in fellowship. There is a mutual feeling of acceptance I see you and you see me and we know that we can be sisters and brothers in our faithful living. We can accept all of who each of us is and know that our common purpose will allow us to work together despite our differences. When we can have this attitude of welcome and acceptance, then we can open ourselves to the possibility of transformation in intentional and healthy ways.
4 Part of that welcome and transformation is the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is a public act by which the church proclaims God s grace, as revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a visible sign of God s gracious invitation and our human individual response in faith. Just as baptism represents the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it symbolizes the death and burial of the old self of the repentant believer, and the joyous birth of a brand new being in Christ. Those who founded the Disciples movement taught baptism by immersion as the accepted form. Table: For Disciples, the table is not just someplace we come to but it is what we do. It is the place that the broken body of our individual lives, of a fragmented world can come and be restored. It is a simple act with radical implications just as Jesus preached a simple message of love that changed the world and is still impacting lives two thousand years later. We believe in an open table where anyone who accepts Jesus Christ is welcome. The good news is that we don t have to have our lives all together before we can sit down to dinner with one another. This is the place where we discover and live out the unity that is ours in Christ. It is a gift to us rather than something we create. In the Disciples tradition we celebrate Communion or the Lord s Supper in weekly worship. This celebration is one of two sacraments in the Disciples tradition and a central element of worship. Disciples' observance of the Lord's Supper echoes the Passover feast, when Jesus shared bread and wine with his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the living Christ is met and received in the sharing of the bread and the cup, representative of the body and blood of Jesus. The presence of the living Lord is affirmed and proclaimed to be the dominant power in our lives.
5 Our Vision: To be a faithful, growing church that demonstrates true community, deep Christian spirituality and a passion for justice. This is based on Micah 6:8. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. We are not alone in our faithful endeavors. I have always liked the passage we read from Exodus this morning for that very reason. We are a community of faith and that implies that we each have a role and work together, not alone, for the benefit of the community and a just world. Here is how the Disciples resource materials describe who we are: *We practice unity and inclusion at the Lord s Table for the sake of mission and for the sake of the world as the one family of God. Most congregations do this by celebrating communion every Sunday. That s why we use a chalice as our logo. *We practice believer baptism that a person makes the choice to follow God s call rather than the choice being made for them as an infant. Baptism is the basis of membership in the Church and also a mark that every person is called to serve God the idea of the priesthood of all believers. *We honor our heritage as a movement for Christian unity by cooperating and partnering with other faith communities to work for bringing about wholeness healing and justice in the world. This is what it means to be ecumenical. One example is our cooperative work with the United Church of Christ in Global Ministries for the past 25 years and our newer effort to share staff in the area of family ministries. *We are called to study and read scripture for ourselves. Rather than having tests of faith and creedal statements, we critically and thoughtfully study scripture, taking into account the history and background the context in which it was written.
6 *We also honor the heritage of Christian unity by staying together in covenant as a witness to the world that even when we disagree we can still make room, welcoming all to the table as Christ has welcomed us. Our spiritual ancestors were fond of saying, unity, not uniformity. *We move to answer God s call for justice particularly in the areas of care for the earth, the challenges for women and children, poverty and hunger and immigration. We seek to do this work in cooperation with other people of faith. Some say we get dirty for Jesus as a way of conveying the hands-on mission orientation of many of our faith communities. Our Mission To be and to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, witnessing, loving and serving from our doorsteps "to the ends of the earth." - Acts 1:8 These are our marching orders. This is what we are to be about. A very simple instruction that is very difficult to live out day to day and has the power to change the world. Next week we will learn more about the history of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and how that history shaped who we are today as denomination.