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Dr. Mark Owen Fenstermacher THE INVITATION (Vision Sunday)

November 18, 2012

Text: 2 Corinthians 5:14-6:2

First United Methodist Church P.O. Box 936

Bloomington, IN 47402

People tell us stories about where we come from or who we come from. People tell us stories about how we got here. They tell us stories about how we started out, stories we were too young to remember, and those stories often teach us who we are. Stories can remind us who we are and why we are here. You can hear the stories coming out of The Rockaways on Long Island, if you listen. Many of the people who live out there are first responders. They are policemen and firemen who work in New York City. As the survivors of the hurricane tell their stories you’ll often hear them talk about how a brother or father went in to help at the World Trade Center on 9/11. They talk about growing up in a family where you risked your life to help other people. They tell stories about a dad or grandpa who was a firefighter. The stories of that earlier generation, the stories of the family, remind them who they are and why they’re here. The stories explain their behavior, in the middle of the storm, when they went out in chest deep flood water, tied clothesline rope from their front step, walked it to the telephone pole across the street, and then walked their kids and neighbors to safety in the dark. Stories can remind us who we are and why we’re here. My Dad, in the last year, found a box full of letters my Mom wrote when I was two and three years old in Africa. She

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did her best to help my Grandma and Grandpa, back in Indianapolis, know what our life was like at Wembo-Nyama in the Congo right before my biological father, Max, died. I’ve started reading the stories, and they tell me not only about then but now. They give me glimpses of who I was and, in some ways, am now.

My Mom says the Africans called my Dad “Chief Joy.” And they called me “Chief.” The Africans, she says, commented that everywhere I went as a little boy a party would break out. The Africans would clap, I’d start dancing, and then we were all dancing! (I suspect I was a far better dancer at three than I am now. Well, actually I am pretty sure about that…)

There is one story about me, as a three year old,

wandering down the road. Going down to a neighbor’s house and playing in their yard. The woman who lived there came out and found me playing in her yard. Far from home. Happy as could be. Not worried a bit. The family put me in their pick-up truck and drove me home. My Mom said in one story that even at three I had never met a stranger, and I would talk with everyone.

My Mom tells about the first time she told me about

Jesus being born and dying on the cross. She told me about the way he came back for his friends. She said I wept and said, “That’s the most beautiful story I’ve ever heard.”

Stories are important. What are your stories? What are the stories that have helped you know who

you are and teach you why you’re here?

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A time or two each year we set aside a Sunday to talk, in a sermon, about who we are as a community. Why we’re here. We call those “Vision Sundays.” This is one of those Sundays.

The reason we do this every year a time or two, as well

as making pretty frequent references to our mission and vision on other days, is because -as Andy Stanley of North Point Church in Atlanta says- “vision leaks.” It disappears. Like water running out of the bottom of a bucket that has a small hole in it. If we’re not careful we forget who we are and we forget why we’re here. Then, we start thinking we’re here to do everything. Or whatever anyone wants. The mission, the vision, gets lost. So you have to keep “pouring” the vision into the bucket. Keep refilling the bucket.

We’re here, like every United Methodist community,

“to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.” If you want to know who thought that up you can look at the last verses in Matthew 28. Jesus thought up our mission. Jesus, in Matthew 28, tells his friends to go out and make disciples. Teach people what he has taught us about life and God and love and community and compassion and justice. Baptizing them into a new kind of life…a new kind of relationship with God. And, somehow, as we do that life by life, we believe God is reshaping the world. Changing communities. Healing families. Straightening out relationships.

When I talk about our community I say we are a Christ-

centered community open to everyone, where people are free to think and question and grow and believe and where people are serious about putting their faith and love to work outside these four walls.

There are three things we say we focus on here. The first is offering a radical welcome to everyone. We

say we are a community where we connect people to one another and to God. A year or so ago we used Velcro as the

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symbol of that. By the way we welcome people, by the way we help people find their way around the building, by the way we have welcome coffees for new folks, by the way we invite people to join us at lunch or in our small group or on a mission team, we want to help people connect with God and one another in a gracious community.

The second way we live out our life for God is by being a

community where people can grow in God and in faith and love and grace and courage and generosity. We use the image of a plant. Becoming who we were created to be, growing up into Christ, learning the art of life and prayer and faith and serving and loving, takes time…and a community.

And, finally, we believe God wants us to be a servant

community. We talk about trading a selfish, “give me what I want” culture where people are putting bibs on, waiting to be served, to a community where we -like Jesus when he washes the feet of the disciples- put on a apron to serve. The small book of James in the New Testament says that faith without works, without action, is dead. So we believe in a faith that is a living thing, a serving thing, a dynamic thing, a power that engages the need and the injustice in the world.

Let’s remember who we are. Let’s remember why we’re here. And do that…be that. We’re here to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the

transformation of the world. We do that by connecting people to God and to one another, by growing in faith, and by serving through Jesus Christ.

Today’s God lesson is from the second letter Paul, a first

century missionary pastor, sent to the early Christians in the

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city of Corinth. The congregation was, as Paul discovered, dysfunctional with a capital “D.”

This morning’s read is a fairly familiar passage to some

of us. This is the section of scripture where Paul talks about people becoming a new creation when they center their life in Christ. This is the part of the New Testament where he says God has given us the work of representing God, being God’s ambassadors, inviting people back into a relationship with God. So this is familiar stuff to some of us.

When I look at a passage of the Bible you know I like to

look at the sections before and after the reading. I think perspective is important. It is a good thing to know what is going on. Understanding the context.

Do you know what I noticed as I began leafing through

the pages of 2nd Corinthians? The apostle is wobbling. He is struggling. Which is sort of surprising because Paul, the ex Jewish religious lawyer, was a tough guy. Pretty fearless. I mean, he doesn’t back down when faced with mobs or when put on trial. In Acts 16 we are told about the time he is thrown into jail in Philippi with his friend, Silas, and they sing hymns in the middle of the night! Later, when he is sent across the winter sea in a storm to Rome everyone else on the ship is terrified, but Paul seems to be unshaken.

But in 2nd Corinthians Paul is having a tough time. He is

wobbling. He is feeling pretty overwhelmed. People in Corinth are upset that Paul hasn’t come back

through their city on his missionary journey. They are saying this is a sign that he doesn’t like them, that they don’t matter to him, but he insists that the reason he didn’t stop for a visit is that the last time the whole experience had been painful to some in the church. What Paul said, how he led, just was never

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right and caused all kinds of turmoil so he, out of love for the people, had stayed away.

At the beginning of the 3rd chapter you can read

between the lines, and you realize some in Corinth aren’t sure Paul has the credentials to serve the church. Some people want a letter signed by the dean of a seminary, I suppose, or a letter from the mother church in Jerusalem. Others are demanding a chance to form a pulpit committee -they were obviously not United Methodists!- and vote on whether to approve Paul as their pastor. Paul begins to defend his ministry, his authority as a Christian leader, in the 3rd chapter of 2nd Corinthians and he is still doing it in chapter 10!

Then, he reports that some in the church are

complaining about his preaching. Some say he isn’t clear in his sermons. What he is saying about God and Jesus and life is sort of obscure. Hard to follow.

Paul steps back and says, “We carry this precious

Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.” He admits he isn’t much to look at. Kind of short and rather ordinary, really. Not like those TV preachers with their smooth voices and sharp looking suits. Then, the missionary pastor says (4:9-ff, The Message), “We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side.”

Despite how tough the exterior circumstances of his life

and ministry are, Paul says, on the inside he is being renewed. He and God have never had a more honest, more real, more powerful relationship.

In the TNIV, 2nd Corinthians 4:17, describes all the tough

stuff as “our light and momentary troubles.”

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I’ve got to tell you they don’t look like “light and momentary troubles” to me from where I stand, peeking over Paul’s shoulder into his relationship with the Corinthians.

So he is wobbling. Wearing down. Then, in 2nd Corinthians 5:14, Paul says he isn’t giving

up. He isn’t giving up on God. He isn’t giving up on the people in the church. He isn’t giving up on the idea of reaching the people walking the streets of the city, working down at the docks, standing in the classrooms, the rich and poor, male and female, with the good news of God’s love and truth in Jesus. In the TNIV he says, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

In The Message, we’re told, “(Christ’s) love has the first

and last word in everything we do. Our firm decision is to work from this focused center. One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

Paul is wobbling, he is wearing down, but he isn’t giving up because he is compelled by Christ’s love to keep going. Keep loving. Keep risking. Keep serving. Keep sharing. Keep speaking. Keep challenging.

And this love isn’t just for a few. This love isn’t just for those who understand it. This love isn’t just for those who believe it.

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This love isn’t just for those who keep all the rules. This love isn’t just for those who succeed at life. This love isn’t just for those who know the art and

mystery of prayer. This love isn’t just for those who are faithful. This love isn’t just for those who are poor but open in

spirit. This love isn’t just for those who are rich in things and

poor in spirit. This love isn’t just for men and this love isn’t just for

women. This love isn’t just for those who are straight and it isn’t

just for those who are gay. This love isn’t just for the young and it isn’t just for the

old. This love isn’t just for the powerful and it isn’t just for

the weak. This love, Paul says, is for all. For all. People in churches too often want to set limits on this

love, but Paul -the old, sometimes cranky old Jewish lawyer- says Christ died for all and this love is for all!

So he doesn’t give up.

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So he goes on. So he keeps up his work for God. So he won’t be driven off. The crow may fly away, but

Paul isn’t going to fly away from the folks at Corinth. Have you ever been compelled by love? Has love ever gotten hold of you, and it wouldn’t let you

go? Anne Lamott, in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith,

remembers a “bear of a man” named Dwight standing up in the pulpit of her church on Father’s Day, and saying, “I didn’t learn about a father’s love from my father. I learned about a father’s love from my wife.”

This was a year after Dwight and his wife, Anne, had

started coming to church. When they had started she had just gone through treatment for breast cancer. She was, Anne Lamott remembers, was brilliant. An activist and passionate Christian. The woman spoke from the heart and took on all sorts of causes. Anne Lamott thought the other Anne was a little cuckoo.

The other Anne was so open about her faith and need

that it made some people nervous. She had only one complete arm, and during worship the other Anne would wave her stump around when she spoke. She would wave it around when she sang. Anne Lamott says, “She was like your craziest aunt, the religious one with funny eyes who drinks.”

Little by little Anne Lamott let the other Anne into her

heart.

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One day on the phone Anne asked the other Anne about her stump. She heard the story. The other Anne’s mother had been a chemist for the military during World War II. She helped develop chemical weapons. When Anne was born she had a stump instead of an arm. Her mother was disgusted. She would position Anne in family pictures so her stump didn’t show.

Anne called her stump her “paw.” One day the cancer returned. She kept speaking up for God. “Her message was

always the same, though: God loved the world, all evidence to the contrary, and we must not give up on God. The light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. She had Dwight, a cat, Jesus, and the members of our church, and very little scared her.”

One Sunday she spoke to the children in Sunday school.

The kids ranged in age from five years old to twelve. Someone asked her about her arm. She let the children examine it up close. “Wow!” one kid said. Another said, “Whatcha got there?”

Anne told the children her story. About her mom’s

work for the military. How she had surgery to remove tiny vestigial fingers. How she learned to pass as normal, as whole. How she worked hard to be a good student and a terrific pianist and such a good girl. Anne said, “But I was very lonely. My mother found me disgusting. And only a few people over the years wanted to hold my hand.”

Then, she said, “I was totally alone. Until one day, Jesus

came into the great emptiness.”

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She was six or so. She was sitting in her rocking chair in her bedroom when all of a sudden “she noticed a baby’s face in the scar tissue. She wrapped up the end of her arm in a scarf, swaddling it, so only the features of the scar tissue showed. ‘It looked like a doll,’ she told the children. ‘and it was looking at me very, very gently.’

“I felt Jesus looking up at me, from inside the baby. And

he was saying, ‘I’m sorry it turned out this way, but you are whole in my eyes.’ So I got me back, and in Jesus, if found a real mother.”

A child asked if she minded only one hand. Anne said, “Having this paw made me notice how much

suffering there is in the world. It makes me ask, ‘What’s that suffering about? What’s the answer?’ The suffering itself means nothing. But the answer is also that I can’t look away from it. I saw that God wanted me to help relieve the suffering. And that work has given me peace.”

Have you ever been compelled by love? Has love ever gotten hold of you and refused to let go? He died for all, Paul says. His love is for all. And when

he becomes our center, our beginning and end, our final word, then we can have a new kind of life. It is like becoming a new creation. Fresh start. Forgiveness.

So he won’t keep up. He won’t stop loving. He won’t stop sharing the love of God that has found

him in the crucified Carpenter.

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God’s love compels us. God’s love won’t let go of us. For just a few minutes this morning, I want to speak

specifically to each of our worshipping communities: First Up, Sanctuary “Classic Worship”, and “The Open Door.” I want to celebrate each in just a few words, and suggest some key issues before each community. First Up You are an amazing community. I’m sure you have wondered why your worship experience had to fight to survive the recommendation of the worship schedule task force. As we struggled with questions about how best to resource the ministries of the church, and decided that the pastors had to invest in other ministries instead of First Up, I can only imagine how that hurt. For that pain I am so sorry. We try to do our best, and sometimes even when we do our best for the right motives we can still hurt people we care about…love. So for that pain you have worked through, I want you to know how sorry I am about that. You’ve come through it, and you are a small community. Led by a creative and faithful team in a creative, meaningful worship experience. The place and time allow people to step into the day, the week, an encounter with God, gently. You are blessed. The work ahead of you, I believe, will be about how you do the following:

Reach out to the larger world. Discover new ways to invite and welcome those who are not yet here.

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Stay connected to the larger community here at First. Avoid the temptation to become your own world.

Connect with one another beyond this worship gathering.

Explore what it would mean to be a missional community and how you will serve. What is your mission beyond the experience of gathering and worship?

I’ll be praying for you. Let us know how we can help as God grows you. Helps you, as a community, to continue to become a

new creation. Sanctuary “Classic Worship” Every time I see a picture of Manhattan I am stunned by the wide expanse of green in the middle of that city of tall buildings. When I think about our Classic Worship experience at First, I see it as this great, large open space -long known for great music and preaching- in the middle of world that seems paved and hard. What God has given us is this beautiful, large, rich experience of worship where people can enter, lose themselves in some ways so that God can find them, and be renewed by an encounter with beauty, with music, with prayer, with the Word,

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with broken bread and shared cup and those holy moments when people are baptized into Christ. This is an amazing place. Week after week I am blessed. God meets me in the big, wide, expanse of green that is Classic Worship. I leave the pavement behind and find God renewing me. I am know I am not alone. You are a wonderful, generous, faithful community. You’ve endured good and bad, easy and hard, on the journey. You help fund the mission field that is The Open Door. You care about reaching a new generation and those who may not feel safe in a traditional worship space or service. You have welcomed children into your worship. Some of you weren’t sure at first. Worship with children is more unsettled, more rambunctious, and yet you now light up when you see the front of the church moving with this sea of children. I can see it in your eyes! And you are key members of the team in our amazing Food Pantry ministry and in the Interfaith Winter Shelter. You make it happen and the world is different because of your faith that is way more than talk! The work ahead of you, I believe, will be about how you do the following:

Inviting those not yet here to join you…join us. God has given us something amazing and beautiful, and now the question is will we invite others to join us

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here in this sacred park…this holy space…this experience where we can run and play with God?

Welcoming those who come. Each of us beginning to take responsibility for welcoming the people we see around us. Taking the time to get to know the people we don’t know.

Remembering what Jesus says about new wine needing new wineskins. So as wonderful and beautiful as our worship life is, we need to remember that worship is always evolving. So what changes, thoughtfully and prayerfully made, can best glorify God and speak to people? This isn’t code language about a plan to change this from worship done in a beautiful, fairly traditional way to some kind of a contemporary praise service. It is an invitation to simply be open to change thoughtfully and prayerfully made.

One of our challenges will be to move through the steps ahead with the courtyard project, possible building renovations, and work with the post office block in a way that is gracious, honest, and builds up the unity of the church. With each step leaving behind some of the mistrust and frustration and anger created over a long delay in the completion of the courtyard project.

Finally, we have some building needs with this space that need attention. And we’ll need to get at those without losing our focus on ministry and mission.

I’ll be praying for you.

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Let us know how we can help as God grows you. Helps you, as a community, to continue to become a

new creation. The Open Door What a blessed and extraordinary dream The Open Door is! What a gift God has given in this non-traditional worship experience, this Christ-centered community that is open to all. Here is a place where people can be real. Can come as they are. Can bring their questions and their faith. Free to question and free not to pretend. I remember the first Sunday Sharon and I attended The Open Door. We came here for two weeks before we began our work at First United Methodist Church. I remember looking listening to the music, I remember the band and the singers throwing their hearts into worship, I watched the children dancing and spinning, holding ribbons in their hands, I saw the reflected light from the mirrored ball touching every corner of the room, and I thought, “This is where it is safe to dance with God. This is where God invites people to be alive in new ways. This is a community where people can respond to that deep down nudge of the Spirit of the Living God, and not hold back!” We are so blessed. Every worship community goes through seasons, and it is clear to many of us that The Open Door is moving into a new season. We don’t know what the new season looks like, but we are talking and praying about what God is up to…and how we can help God’s new thing be born. There is some work ahead of us, I believe. I am curious about how we will answer the following questions:

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What does it mean to be Christ centered, how do we claim our identity as a Jesus community, and not erect walls, but remain passionately open to all? Making sure everyone knows there is room here to question, doubt, wrestle with God, just stop and catch your breath from the craziness of life, and still be turned towards what God has done -and is doing- in Jesus?

How will we engage -all of us- and make this community and ministry our community and ministry? It is always easy for a few loyal volunteers to make something like The Open Door, and it has been easy for us to build our community around the personalities of pastors and worship leaders, but how will we do this together? How will you engage and own this blessed adventure?

How will we welcome those who come here looking for grace, for space, for God, for community? From welcoming them in the lobby, to providing them with information about The Open Door, about ways to connect and serve?

How do we become a deep community? How do we go beyond sitting in the same room to really knowing one another? If that were small groups, or home groups, what would that look like?

How will we be in mission beyond our own gathering here and our worship life? What will we do about a world that is hurting, that is broken, that is needy? To be healthy we need to be looking for ways to give ourselves away, to serve, to share God’s love and truth in Jesus. How will we do that?

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How will we provide experiences beyond worship that will help them grow in their faith, know the story of God’s love for the world we find in the Bible, learn what it means to pray? How will we help people grow spiritually? What will we offer that God can use to help all of us become a new creation?

I’ll be praying for you. We’re going to be inviting you to

join us in this next season. We need you. We need you to help The Open Door become a new creation.

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As he thinks about who we are and why we are here, Paul says God has chosen us to be God’s ambassadors…his representatives. What we are, he says, is God’s invitation to the world to come to God. We are God’s living invitation to the people around us to discover that they don’t have to run from God, but that God’s love is real. Forgiveness is real. New life is possible. That is why the way we live and work and worship and serve together is so very important. People will watch us, listen to us, and who we are together is the invitation to come to, to trust, the One whose love compels us. Paul says God has given us the task of telling everyone what God is doing. A friend of mine was visiting a small church in southern Indiana. As people hung around, before church, he noticed a young white man and a young black man hanging out. They were clearly friends. My buddy began to chat with them. Got to know them a bit.

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Then, he noticed the young man who was white had a tattoo on his neck and the words were in German. “What does that say?” he asked. “What does what say?” the young man asked. “The phrase on your neck: what does it say?” “Oh, it is German and it says ‘White Power’,” the young man said. “I used to be a hater.” My friend was puzzled. “Why do you have that on your neck and yet your best friend is black?” he asked. “Oh,” the young man said with a look of surprise, “I have Jesus and Jesus is changing me.” We’re God’s living invitation. Letting the world know about the One whose love won’t let go of us. Letting the people around us know God’s love can be trusted. Forgiveness is real. New life is possible. Invitations. Paul says we are God’s living invitation to the world, inviting people to come back to God. Trust God. Step into grace and the forgiveness already done on the cross.

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Some of you remember those days when, around Valentine’s Day, everyone in your 3rd or 4th grade class, made these little “mail boxes” which we would set on our desk. Then, people would go around and drop a Valentine on the desks of their friends. Some of us got two or three. We had almost nothing. Then, the cute little girl two desks over got about three million Valentines! They piled up on her desk. Didn’t that feel great? I have often wondered if the girl or boy with the million Valentines piled up on their desk grew up to be a dictator or something… Do you know there are people around you, working and studying next to you, who are convinced they are the last person in the world God would ever want to invite to God’s party? Because of mistakes, because of sin, because of brokenness in their life, they don’t think God would ever even think of dropping a Valentine’s card on their desk. God loves them. God wants them. You are God’s living invitation called to invite people to God’s party! A year ago our three sons threw a birthday party for me at the Irish Lion. They told me to invite 50 or 60 friends and family. They would pay for the whole thing! About five days before the party we remembered Jim and Mary Nagy in Elkhart. Great people. A part of the Trinity family. Jim is a tall engineer and Mary is an accountant who discovered her calling is to provide childcare in her home. So they came down to the party, and with them came an amazing young woman named Sarah. Sarah is their daughter. Also, a part of Trinity.

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So Jim and Mary and Sarah come to the party at the Irish Lion. They, along with others, came back to our house and hung out until around 8:30. Honestly, I didn’t think Michael and Sarah had even noticed one another. My younger brother, David, told me later, “Oh, there was a lot of energy going back and forth between those two!” A week after my party Michael had sent a bouquet of flowers to Concord High School where Sarah teaches. It was her birthday. She had asked for world peace, but the card he sent said, “They were all out of world peace, and I wondered if flowers might do.” They are very much in love. This coming Saturday they are getting married in Beck Chapel. Isn’t that something? I guess invitations matter. We are God’s living invitation to the world to come to God’s party of truth and grace in Jesus. Who needs to receive the invitation you have to give?