Somewhere We all Know

1 John 4:7-21

            When I started college, I remember one sermon more than anything other by my campus minister.  It was a sermon on “what I needed to know about college.”  It’s message was simply about love.  It was not at all ironic then that when I worked at American university, I ran into students who had encountered almost the same sermon a few years earlier on their first Sunday at American University’s campus ministry.  And four years later, at the Baccalaureate service on the night before graduation, the same story was told.  Everything they needed to know in college was simply summed up in one simple word: Love

             Throughout this year, I have watched a group of scared 18 year old freshman bond.  I have watched as people kept streaming through the door to create the community we now have today.  I watched as your hospitality created something that thousands of churches in this country, Methodist or otherwise, have no idea how to create: a space for authenticity, questioning, and dialogue. 

            This week has been extremely painful for me as a clergy of the United Methodist Church.  As I write this, I continue to watch the actions of the General, the quadrennial gathering of Methodist who make many decisions including our language of GLBTQ persons, the possible reduction of support to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.  This week in fact has left me feeling we have gone backwards in our understanding of the church.  We continue to tell people that we are the Church of Jesus Christ, but we don’t act like it.  We say that Jesus said “love your neighbor” spoke of the good Samaritan, asked that whoever is sinless cast the first stone, and finally gave us inspiration for this stanza of scripture, which we read very clearly….Love one Another, because God loves you.  It’s simple.  If you learn anything, you must learn to love.  And you are learning, but the church has not.

Brokenness and Love

            The United Methodist Church, just like every other church, is broken. We do represent God, but it can be sure that we as human beings, created and enveloped within a human creation, even if we proclaim Christ as the head, ALL fall short.  But we have something important to strive toward….perfection…perfect love if nothing else with the world and with our brothers and sisters throughout the world.

            Perhaps the United Methodist Church will fall.  Perhaps in a few years, there will be a division.  But for now, I must think that we continue to fight to move on to perfection of our church, just as we move onto perfection of us as human beings.  That’s actually what Wesley envisioned as part of his grace…sanctifying grace is the grace that makes us perfect in this lifetime, not just in the next…It was a grace that Wesley believed in fervently.  It’s grace came around us after we had been “saved” and was with us to make us into the embodiment of Christ.  It gave us hope, moved us forward, helped us strive toward the kingdom in ourselves, so I’m pretty sure we as a church can get it right and do so in our lifetimes.

            And you know what, you all this year have reminded me that Wesley was right.  Now we’re not perfect, not in any way shape or form.  We are on a journey of transformation.  One that transformed us and one that transformes others.  We have fallen short and continue to need to move on to perfection, but we have gone a long way this year, creating a place of love and hope.  And the truth is, I consider you all to be the church more than many of churches I have been in throughout my life.  People might look at you and say, your voice doesn’t matter, your just college students and you can work in the church in areas like youth and children’s ministry, but the truth is that you each embody what I believe to be the Gospel that has taught to us for centuries.  You all are leading this congregation, you all are ready to lead other congregations.  You are going to be ready to lead the church. Even the broken one.

            Today is a day that we must remember how much God is in Love with Us.  God is in love with us when we are broken.  God doesn’t love the brokenness that we have become, God loves it when we break in the kingdom of God here on earth and cast out the demons of this world that are embodied in hate, fear, bigotry, violence, intolerance, insensitivity, and prejudice.  God loves that we won’t take no for an answer or run away hiding from the issues, won’t refer or choose to ignore the pain that exists in the world.  Darkness can not cast our darkness.  And if Darkness is the absence of light, then hate is the absence of love.  And that broken idea of hate must be restored to that of love.    The kingdom of God is none of these things, and frankly, we as the church are going onto perfection.

A Love that Must be taken to the Masses

            Tonight is our final worship service of the year.  Our community, this one I believe embodies love, is about to take a brief hiatus.  Sure we’ll do things together, even meet once a week or so during the summer, but we’re not going to worship again together for almost four months.  But when we do, we will once again embody for the world this sense of hope.

            But the last Sunday of the year is something that we must remember as being sometimes a different and yet a profoundedly important thing.  You are not just here to be eating food, to even lead this congregation, to discern your vocation.  I mean you are, but you are here to be ready to change the church for the better, to fight with steadfastness, to give your hopes and dreams to a church that needs you.  And that is what you have the chance to do now.

            Shelby, Kayla, you two will be somewhat at least leaving us.  Kayla will finish her classes this summer and we honestly don’t know what will happen next.  Shelby, in one week’s time a degree you have sought for so long with end your undergraduate career, though you will continue with us as Kayla might as well.  We’ll see.  But either way, things are changing.  And for all of you freshman and others, you are leaving.  You are going out to your communities, to your homes, to your other places that you might dwell.  It’s time now to speak your voice, to be the leaders.  Go back to Messiah, to St. Tim’s, to your churches.  Tell them that you are a leader, because you are.  Tell them you want to lead this summer, want to prepare the church and take a chance in the church because they know you are needed.  LEAD, and lead with integrity, wholeness, and most importantly LOVE.

            You have know something in this place that few know: you have known what it means to be a place of love and of communion with each other.  But it’s time to make the space where the Love of God exists as SOMEWHERE WE ALL KNOW.  It’s not about GLBTQ, it’s not about women, it’s not about racial minorities, it’s not about young, old, black, white, rich, poor, hungry, filled, introvert, extrovert, democrat, republican, Midwestern, US, biker, runner, or anything else.  IT’s about WE THE PEOPLE.  WE ALL MUST KNOW THAT THERE IS LOVE.  The CHURCH that is grounded in LOVE must be a SOMEWHERE WE ALL KNOW, not just college students in a campus ministry that is called the Wesley Foundation.  You have jobs to do. Go to Church, but go with a knowledge that you have something to spread.  Someday each of you will leave this campus ministry.  Each of you will go to somewhere you may have never been, never lived, never imagined as your home.  And when you leave then in the same way as you do now, except with a piece of paper in your hand, you will leave carrying the memories of this congregation and the teachings of this community.  If anyone ever tells you you have no voice, you have no witness, you remember that LOVE is the witness you have.  Love is the witness of this community, and LOVE is the only thing you ever needed.

Conclusion

            We love because God loved us first.  Before we leave, before we come, before the day sets and the day rises, God loves us.  And so every single day, every single moment of this summer, we must move toward personal and communal perfection of our LOVE.  It is doubtful that we will achieve is perfectly this summer, but there is no doubt that I will ask you all in the fall how you demonstrated love to a world and made the church of Love somewhere we ALL KNOW. 

            So there it is, a final call, a final bell, a final sound.  The end of the year is upon us.  WE have breakfasts, we have chocolate, but more than anything we have LOVE.  LOVE From which God taught us and love from which we know we are LOVED.  That love must be shared.  So now, don’t just invite your friends to chocolate and breakfast, to worship and book studies, go out and invite your church to encounter LOVE and to change if need be in order that God’s LOVE might be the thing the church does best.  And eventually the real church will be SOMEWHERE WE ALL KNOW!