FIRST READING—Romans 12: 3-13
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
SECOND READING—Matthew 9: 35-38
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
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God of many names, remind us that we are all welcome in your sight. Teach us to banish prior thoughts of unworthiness and bring us to the blessed place of knowing ourselves as Children of God. May the thoughts that I bring to You today in reverent humility and all the sincere reflections of our hearts, bring us closer to You. Amen.
One more time I ask your indulgence by pondering for just a few moments the pseudo-word—diversynergy. Now I’m not sure that this word will ever have a large following, but for one more time I want us to think about how this word profoundly speaks to the composition of true ministry and the make-up of all of our ministries here in Open Circle and in the Church universal. For those of you who may have missed some of what we were doing along the way, let me summarize for you and remind those who don’t remember. We have been studying what Pastor Ronald C. Williams calls “Faith styles”. We have looked at the four major faith styles and their characteristics—the action oriented, the purpose oriented, the creative oriented and the growth oriented. Implicit in that conversation is a deeper exploration, an exploration that we undertake every time a team meeting or planning team of any sort, meet together to do God’s work.
It’s not too far off base to ask, “Why didn’t God just make us all alike, so that we, at least spoke the same language?” Wouldn’t it be easier if complete harmony and consensus pervaded our meetings, and even our emails.? Wouldn’t we get more things done with a set of people who all thought alike and, most of all, always agreed? Wouldn’t our meetings be shorter (yeah) and misunderstandings that can both challenge and hurt us be eliminated if we never disagreed? Of course, this is a silly idea when we spell it all out like this. And almost a little too much like the books we used to read that predicted the eradication of human will and uniqueness in any form. George Orwell showed us what that would look like—and most of us wanted no part of it.
But strangely, when we get to discussing things relevant to the church, its theology, teachings, dogma and tradition, we, not so inadvertently, find ourselves asking “Can’t we all just get along?” And of course, the desired end is that no one gets hurt along the way, or feels inconsequential, or becomes like the lone ranger riding into the sunset. But to grow as a church means that we gain along the way those tools that we utilize in order to seek a mutually satisfying consensus—when we are spiritually young, we may still come to a decision-making place with a lack of appreciation for perspectives unlike our own. Or we may come to those times of decision still feeling the need to be right, powerful, or at least not ignored. These are the predictable stumbling blocks as we sincerely seek a place that we can all be honored and treasured. I believe that God has called Open Circle MCC to be a unique faith family—a faith family where we won’t just talk about ministry by all for all, but a faith family where we will honor each other and our God enough that we will be willing to do the hard work until we welcome all strangers, not just visitors, but those who seem ‘strange’ to us as cherished friends—friends sent directly by God to have a positive impact on our family. And, perhaps just as important, we will honor every member as equally precious in the sight of God and in our own perspective. Now, I’m not saying that we don’t already try, because we do; but as a young and committed church we can benefit from constant reflection and learning on subjects such as these.
I hope that as we continue to grow in our understanding of each others’ perspectives and come to appreciate and recognize those things that others hold dear, that all of us will grow together into an even more blessed place to call home and, individually, we will grow in faith and grace. Paul wrote often of humility and grace and our reading from Romans is no different. His words speak loudly to us this day. After reminding all to remain in humility and remember that all the gifts we have are from God, he speaks eloquently to this notion of ministry by all for all. Allowing for crucial differences between each member of the body, Paul says: “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” He then calls us to practice our gifts with generosity, diligence and cheerfulness.
And, finally, again from Paul, we have a wonderful description of what the church family should look like: “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Please indulge me in touching on these crucial high points once again—sincere love, devoted to one another in love, honoring each other more than ourselves, living with spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Joyful hope, patience, faithful prayer, sharing with those in need and an active practice of hospitality make up the rest of the description. It struck me as one of the greatest mission statements ever written for a church and we might want to keep it in mind as we work on our own statement and plan for ministry.
Jesus, the great Teacher and Missionary, calls us to our mission field. Jesus is going through all the towns, preaching about the good news of the kingdom and healing all who needed healing. There were so many people that Jesus was moved with compassion, knowing that he could never get to each one personally. He turns to God for the answer and calls his disciples to intercessory prayer. He calls the disciples to pray to God for more workers—more people to share the work of spreading the good news. Taken together, these two passages are a perfect description of the concept of diversynergy.
The Gospel, the good news of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God, calls us to do more than merely welcome diverse peoples into our midst, it calls us to actively seek those people who are different from us. Let me slow down a little so that we all, including me, have time to really comprehend what that means, because it is so crucial for our ministry together. We are called to go out and find not only those people who need to hear the good news, but also those people who are completely different from us. This means that it is not enough for a church to say, “we welcome everyone”. A church, this church, must be engaged in actively seeking those who look, act, and speak nothing like us at all. Paul tells us in no uncertain terms, “we cannot all be hands or elbows”. And building a body of Christ takes hundreds of parts as varied as the ear drum from the ankle and as similar as the finger to the toe. What an exciting ministry of intentional diversity comes from this understanding.
And then, there is synergy. Looking at Paul’s analogy again: when all those parts come together engaged in the doing of the work of the church, an explosion of energy takes place that results in walking and talking, building and reflecting, welcoming and feeding all those who come our way. Some will have been invited; some will be blessed to find this faith family on their own—however folks come, they are welcomed into this diverse, wildly energetic family of followers of God. Wildly energetic because we are not all the same. Hallelujah! We are not all the same.
Traditionally, in churches that follow a liturgical calendar, next week begins a new church year. The beginning of Advent signifies seeking for newness in the midst of a story we know so well. And as a way to celebrate where we are, we are challenged to put what we have learned throughout this past year into practice. The newness is at hand! We are called to a revolutionary way of being the family of God as we seek intentional diversity and make way for the synergy that will surely burst forth from our answering the call. Diversynergy—ministry for all by all—means taking our own spiritual life and the spiritual life of this special expression of the family of God to places we’ve never been before. God has blessed us with this once-in-a-lifetime journey and we are blessed to say, “here I am”! Amen and amen!
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