Scriptures: Leviticus 19: 33-34; Psalm 24; Ephesians 2: 13-22
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and
has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the
law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity
in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body
through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and
proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him
both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers
and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,
built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in
the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
-
Ephesians 2: 13-22
This is the last sermon I will be preaching before I go on vacation in a week and a
half. I want to update you on a few activities that make life exciting at PPC.
We're on the move. By Monday of next week, the church offices will be located on the
second floor of Parish House adjacent to Colorado Boulevard. Walls have come tumbling down
and new offices have been constructed. Before the end of the week and with a little luck,
carpet, lights, furniture, computers, telephones and cabinets will be installed. It's been
a long time coming.
Wednesday night the Property Management Committee and the Trustees will discuss where
we are with our major real estate development initiative. We believe we are getting very
close to an agreement on the conceptual parameters of a deal with the all the property
owners involved. PPC is in a very strong position that will bode well for the long-term
future of our mission and vitality. Stay tuned. It's a complex deal and we need your
prayers.
Every Sunday morning for the past several weeks, a group of small group leaders
committed to personal spiritual transformation and the transformation of the whole
congregation through small group ministries has been meeting for prayer, worship and
sharing. This group is seeking to discern how the Holy Spirit is using our leadership
gifts for building a deeper spiritual community here at PPC. It is profoundly meaningful
to me to be a part of the group and to see the power unleashed in people when we come to
know ourselves as broken healers. I believe that this leadership group and others like it
that will emerge in our life together will transform the character of our church community
in our ministries of compassion, member care and mission. Keep us in your prayers.
Tomorrow night the Multicultural Task Force meets to finalize a set of recommendations
to Session that, should the way be clear, twenty-five to thirty adults from our new
Spanish speaking fellowship, Hogar Cristiano, will be received into our membership. The
Reverend Luis Madrigal will be invited to serve as Parish Associate for Latina/o
Ministries. Hogar Cristiano translates "Christian home," and we hope, trust and
pray that the good people of Hogar Cristiano, many of whom who have been through so much
trial in their journey, will find that PPC is God's home and their home where no one is a
stranger. We pray that walls of exclusion will be broken down.
Through Luis' entrepreneurial leadership, Hogar Cristiano has already sponsored here at
PPC a music school for young Latinos interested in sacred music. Classes for teaching
English as a second language have begun. There is tremendous vibrancy emerging within the
group and in outreach to the Latino community.
In September, PPC and the Police Activities League of the Pasadena Police Department,
in cooperation with area arts organizations, will begin a program in the graphic and
performing arts for public school children in Pasadena. Children and youth with limited
exposure to the arts and minimal opportunity to cultivate their own artistic abilities
will discover new life through this program. The nationally unique program will be housed
in the Leishman Library in Kirk House. I believe God is using our strategic location in
the Playhouse District, our long-standing commitment to the arts, our faith commitment to
reach out to the least of these, and the human need to create and be creative in this
innovative program. Stay tuned for how you can help.
There's a lot happening at PPC. Walls are coming down. New opportunities are springing
up at a remarkable rate. We're on the move. PPC is an exciting place to be in ministry
with you.
It's been two and a quarter years since Barbara and I were called by God through the
voice of this congregation and the Presbytery of San Gabriel to serve as your co-pastors.
Many of you ask "Did you ever expect so many 'challenges' at PPC before you arrived
in April of 1998?" Let me say this. We knew that PPC had a distinguished heritage. We
knew that you had many gifts and resources. We also knew that you had a broken past a past
of some shame and embarrassment, and yes, of evil. We knew that imbedded within this
congregation was some collective corporate pain that through the grace of God would be
healed..
How do Barbara and I feel about the challenges we have had to face? It's been a lot.
We're also having a great time. We believe from the core of our being that we are called
by God to minister in partnership with you now and in the years to come. Yes, we are ready
for a break which will begin in a few weeks, but it is so great to be here. We love the
weather. We love the city. We love you. We really love you. We feel blessed and thank you
and thank God that in God's providence we are here with you. We have a bright future
together. The leadership of the church is entering into a visionary phase of our
collective life that will, with God's help, write new chapters in the life of this gifted
congregation.
It is a role and duty of preachers and indeed the whole people of God to engage in
theological reflection concerning our communal life as a congregation. We need to think
theologically about our common life because by so doing we become aware of the presence of
God working among us. Theology, in this understanding, is not a set of cold abstractions
lodged in a dusty library book that few of you will ever read. On the contrary, theology
is a living, breathing practice of telling stories about the way God is working among us
in our struggles and doubts, and in our triumphs and hope. Theological reflection on the
ordinary and extraordinary stuff of congregational life helps us see ourselves as a people
of God on a journey. On this journey, God is working among us: judging our arrogance,
confronting our sinfulness, comforting us in our heartache, dispensing grace, and
transforming us into disciples of Jesus Christ in mission to the world. The purpose of
theological reflection is to see ourselves consciously as characters in God's great story
of salvation and liberation through Jesus Christ.
Today, I want you to engage with me in theological reflection on what it means to be an
inclusive people of God as we welcome people into our fellowship who have been largely
outsiders to the dominant culture.
It is timely to theologize about inclusion and exclusion not only because the people of
Hogar Cristiano are preparing to become full members of this church, but also because our
whole society struggles with issues of inclusion and exclusion. We walk out the doors of
our own home and we encounter a world of God's remarkable diversity. In the midst of such
diversity we must choose constantly whether to fear or embrace difference in our
neighborhoods, workplaces and in our churches. Every organization in the world from the
Boy Scouts to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to the Tournament of Roses is caught in a
tension between providing necessary boundaries in order to give a sense of identity and
solidarity among its members versus a degree of permeability to permit an infusion of
creativity, people and gifts. The question for the church is how do we do so and remain
faithful to our Lord?
There are profound differences all around us: ethnicity, race, gender, age, physical
ability, sexual orientation, education, marital status, geographic location, work
experience and religious beliefs. In the face of these differences we have the natural
tendency to exclude. Exclusion comes easily. It is human to yearn for stability and the
familiar. We like to know the rules and the boundaries so that we can predict what to
expect from one another. So we naturally exclude.
In the church, we know that if our boundaries are too loose, resulting in accepting
everyone without reservation, we will be poisoned by those that will seek to do harm and
we will die. If we say we believe in anything and everything, in effect we believe in
nothing and so extinguish our reason for being, our identity and our uniqueness. But if
our boundaries are so tight and restrictive we will starve like an anorexic who stops
eating and dies. It is useful and absolutely necessary for organizations to have firm
boundaries of exclusion.
However, the church of Jesus Christ is different. Our life is solely dependent upon the
claim that we are the body of Christ and so we look to the ministry of Jesus to shape who
we include and who we exclude. We look to the ministry of Jesus and discover story after
story where he resisted the exclusive boundaries that the religious authorities erected to
preserve their power and their so-called morality. The Gospels are filled with stories
where Jesus confronts the exclusive boundaries of the religious authorities. A Pharisee
declares, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known what kind of woman this is
who is touching him that she is a sinner." Another says, "This fellow welcome
sinners and eats with them." They grumbled about Jesus not following the law, not
respecting those who had power and influence, and not respecting the social fabric that
gave life order. His lack of respect of these boundaries got him nailed to a cross. The
stories of the ministry of Jesus welcoming into his fellowship tax collectors,
prostitutes, foreigners, paralytics, and you and me, demonstrate that a central mission of
a Christian community is to welcome those who are excluded.
A faithful Christian community begins with inclusion not exclusion because that was
what Jesus did. But it also places us at risk. It can cause us to be off balance, in
turmoil, off center, and on the edge. Risk has plagued the church from its inception. We
have always been wrestling with who is in and who is out. Whether in the first century
when we argued whether Gentiles should have to uphold Jewish dietary laws, to the later
heresy trials, to the division of Christendom into Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, we
have always been trying to figure out our boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. In the
last 100 years, issues of the roles of women in the church, the debate over gays and
lesbians, the struggles to be more ethnically and racially inclusive in the Presbyterian
Church are all a part of the struggle to both define our identity and to be challenged by
our Lord who welcomes outcasts, eats with sinners, and ushers in a new humanity where no
one is a stranger.
Every time we have sought to stretch the boundaries of our church we have upset the
equilibrium of what we thought was settled. The community has become upset and it has
fought to preserve stability and to keep the arrangements of this world in conformity to
culture instead of Christ. So the church in our sinfulness has always been prone to pound
another nail into Jesus' hands and feet at Golgotha, or Auschwitz, My Lai, Birmingham, and
in our Los Angeles neighborhoods.
But at the very same time, Jesus and those who faithfully bear his name, have also
rejected the exclusive boundaries of religious and political power and control. Through
the power of the Holy Spirit, we, his followers, have been pushed out of our safety zone
into the place where one lives only by a constant and prayerful connection with a
compassionate God whose love knows no boundaries.
This place is what the biblical writers called grace. It is the belief that God pours
out upon us an abundance of resources, talents and gifts to all people in all of our
wonderful diversity. It is a belief that God provides all the mercy, kindness and
compassion that we need and therefore we need not be afraid of differences. We need not
exclude except those who would exclude. Because God's grace is so abundant, we leave
behind our fear of scarcity and self-preservation and move courageously to extend our
boundaries to strangers. Every person is forgiven and freed. Every person is a precious
child of God who has both the right and the privilege to share in the abundance of God's
creation. In a world so divided by scarcity, where too often there is little room for
grace, where people who are different are dealt with through legalisms, political
maneuvering, and hate masquerading as morality, the church community as the body of
Christ, must stretch out its arms in compassion and justice to provide sacred space for
grace. This is where we will find our life. This is where we will find our salvation. This
is where God is. Thanks be to God who is creating us into a new humanity. Amen.
