April 10, 2010

• What are we called to do by faith?

  We are a people of faith, we accept the reality of things hoped for and we believe in all that is unseen.  We have been preceded by other people of faith who have shown us the wisdom of living in faith.  We have their witness to convince us of the wisdom of moving forward in faith.  We must not let fear or doubt stand in our way of doing what we are called to do by God.  We must keep our eyes on the example of Jesus who continued in his earthly ministry confident he was doing what God had called him to do.  This is my paraphrase of Hebrews 11:1 and 12:1-2a. 

   

  The faith of Eternal Joy MCC has been, is, and will be tested by the circumstances of this world.  You will survive this testing only if you claim the reality of your hope for the future of this congregation to serve God by serving this community with your witness to God’s love for all of creation even those marginalized by society.  You must believe in your strength and your resources even when they are not apparent to the eye.  Faith is not required if we live only on that which we have and what we can see.

   

  During the coming year our challenge will be to examine our past, celebrate the joys, lament the times of grief, and achieve a peace about what has past so we can honestly let the past go.  It will be important for us to accept that what has past cannot be changed and cannot be brought back.  Forgiveness means giving up any hope of a better past.  If we cannot forgive and release, the wounds of the past will continue to weaken the body of this congregation.  We must also be willing to let go of the desire to live in the good times of the past.  Times have changed, people have changed, and we can never again be who we are.  We must live expectantly into who we are to become.

   

  We will work together to discern who we are called to become.  We will prayerfully consider the call God has for Eternal Joy MCC and we will consider what tasks will be necessary for us to move forward in faith toward the vision the faith gives us.  It is important for us to remember being people of faith does not mean we abandon our reason and we just sit back and wait for God to bring about what is hoped for.  We must examine who we are, identify our strengths so we can maintain them and discover our weaknesses so we can work to strengthen them. We will develop a clear picture of who we are and where we want to go.  Hopefully we will achieve this by encouraging participation by as many people as we can in identifying how we can live out our faith and bring hope, justice, and peace to the people, community, and world around us.

   

  Our final task will be to identify the skills and talents you will need in a spiritual leader to take you into the future or your hope.  This is the final task because it is necessary for you to have done the hard work of healing and releasing your past, taking inventory of your strengths and weaknesses, and finding your vision for the future before you can even begin to consider who you need to lead you into that future.  There will be a temptation to rush through the hard work but our faith tradition reminds us that Abraham and Sarah had to wait in faith into their old age for God to provide the child they desired.  Moses, Miriam, and Aaron in faith lead the people in the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land.  The people waited hundreds of years for the coming Messiah.  Our tradition also shows us that attempts to rush God’s time resulted in complications and disappointment as in the conflict that has resulted from the birth of Ishmael.  Waiting for God’s timing may stretch our patience as it did the people who followed Moses in the desert.  And, waiting can cause complacency resulting in our missing God’s signal to proceed just as many missed the coming of the Messiah because they were preoccupied with the concerns of the day.  We must be willing to wait for God’s time, we must not allow ourselves to become discouraged and long to go back to a past that is no more, and we must also stay focused on the tasks set before us so we do not fail to see when God has opened the door for us to move forward and we do not miss when God sends to us the one God has called to lead us.

   

  What we are called to do as a people of faith is to always move forward into the future trusting that God has prepared the way for us, trusting in the unseen forces and resources that will carry us into that future while never avoiding the work we must do to equip ourselves to fully live into God’s promise.  It is my hope and my prayer that we will covenant together as a people of faith to do what is asked of us.  Amen.

  • 10:54 pm
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