Prayer

Lord as we ponder your words open our hearts that we may understand and know you. Amen 

Sermon    

Here it is September the children are back to school. 

It for us marks the beginning of new church season. We have had, I hope a restful break from meeting and decision making. I hope it has been a time of rest reflection and renewal to take on once again the work of the church which God has given us. 

We move back into (although we never left) into being an active community of faith the professes God at work in the world through his son Jesus the Christ in the action of the Holy Spirit.  We continue to learn and grow and struggle and rejoice in being Christian, knowing that this has set us apart and that our Christian calling and service is something that we strive to live in our every day.

We are wonderful people who love one another as Christ has loved us , we will have yet another year of no hard feeling critical words upsets, slighted feeling absolutely no conflict. We will not let our egos cloud our judgement, we will not seek perceived power for ourselves, we never speak cruel words or work behind someone’s back.    mainly and primarily because we are Christian and Christian as we know never fight among themselves never get angry and when we leave the loo all you ever smell is roses.  Amen and have a nice day. 

 Perhaps we need to set our divinity aside for a moment and look at our humanity.

One of our greatest stumbling blocks in the church is our failure to embrace at times a full humanity and realize that yes even Christian if we are to be in community with each other as we are called to be will as sure as the sun rises in the morning will have times of conflict, hurt and disagreement.

And as sure as the sun rises in the morning there is going to be times this coming year that we will be huffy sometime with someone in the church.  When the glass of patience is well, empty.

We as Christian sometime live with the great albatross around our necks that says we can’t fight with each other because we are Christian and we are supposed to love each other. So I won’t say anything. 

 Hear is a story from William Wilimon relates about his home town. 

Not far from our home in South Carolina, just down the road there was a church. Actually by the time I came along it was no Longer a church. It was just a decaying, rotting shell of a building there once a church had been. Now kudzu vines slithered over its broken roof, all of its windows where gone, and the front door stood open to the elements the only thing that know crossed the beckoning thresh hold.. 

“What happened” I asked my grandmother one day. “What happened to all the people who went to this church?”

My grandmother laughed slightly “Well son, she said that was a church, a very active church too. I remember it will when I was a girl. There used to be serves there every Sunday, picnics in the spring and fall, then they had their great falling out.”  “What is that”  I persisted.

“Well, the great falling out was when Mr. Jones, or was it Mr. Johnson at any rather when either Mr. Jones or Mr. Johnson wanted to pave the drive into the church. Some of them thought it was a waste of money. Said that Mr. Jones or Mr. Johnson, whoever he was trying to take over the church.  You can see today that the drive was never paved. After that fight, the church split. One group went and took what it had and left. A few of them stayed tried to keep the church going for a while. Eventually, they just died off or moved away and what you see is the end of the argument.”

This is a story I have heard played out again and again.  People leave organization because they can. Because people seek out genuine honest relationship to be in community. This means good if not excellent communications skills