The Comma

Yesterday afternoon a talked with a reporter from the Seattle PI.  I was looking forward (with some trepidation I must admit!) to getting the paper this morning because I wasn’t at all sure about how his story would come out.  It’s not a bad piece.  The part I take issue with was how I was quoted:  “People talked about risk,” he said.  “But I was so proud of the congregation because of the deep care that people showed.”

This about exactly misses the point of what I was trying to say and get him to hear.  Oh well.  Congregational meetings don’t make good sound bites.

As I tried to say at the congregational meeting one thing that I have found so moving and strengthening in this process of discernment has been care.  Everyone has cared.  People that have been in support of Nickelsville moving here care.  People raising objections and concerns about risk care.

The point is that everyone cares.  And that is what unites us as church – we all care.  I kept hearing that yesterday at the meeting.  I’ve been hearing that all week.  We care deeply about our ministry with each other and deeply about our ministry in the communities we serve.  How we express that care – and the issues we see, the things we are concerned about vary.  That’s good!  That helps us take in the full breadth of our care.

But we live in a society where we divide people up by those who care – and those who do not.  We do it all the time.  If someone thinks like me, they care.  If they don’t, they don’t care.  That is exactly what didn’t happen at a really extraordinary congregational meeting yesterday.  With deep respect for each other, careful listening, the congregation showed its care for each other and the variety of ways that we expressed it.  We didn’t become divided into us and them as we see religious communities behaving all around the world.  We showed something different.  We re-imagined care.  A care that is big enough to take in the variety of opinions, concerns we carry within us as church.

Three months from now our time with Nickelsville will be drawing to a close.  We will have learned a lot through this time.   Through this experience I have heard our congregation hope that we might re-imagine ways to continue to take steps in walking with the homeless in other new, bold and creative ways.

But something just as important I hope may also be a gift of this time.  I see it already.  That is, that we as a congregation are re-imagining what it means to care.  Re-imagining how we talk with each other as we see and hear each other knowing that we all care.  Our care is what unites us all.  In fact, I think it is the core of what following Jesus and being a Christian community of faith is all about.

I sent this note below about the congregational meeting today to church council and the coordinating committee for discernment about inviting Nickelsville to our parking lot.

We could not have been blessed by a greater community of leaders who have held with such faithful care and responsibility the issues that are involved and done that from a place of such deep respect and care of and for each other, the congregation we serve and the community we serve.  I have told people again and again this week of how proud I am of the church for how we have been about this discernment process. 

I want to thank John Lewis for outstanding leadership at today’s meeting.  It was an excellent congregational meeting that enabled the congregation to hear and speak to each other from a place of deep respect and care.  And it is that deep care for each other and the community’s we are called to serve that is our strength as we walk ahead.  As Kathy Kripps shared, we walk out of this meeting with a charge to move in a particular direction and with a variety of concerns expressed about that direction.  Now is the time for us as leaders to be good listeners to and with each other.  We walk into this next step in ministry with our eyes wide open.  We will seek to walk into this commitment that the congregation made faithfully as always. 

We have been in this place before as church, and will be again, when a direction as been called for and there have been reservations and concerns about that direction.  But we have come together as church again and again.  And we will now.  I know that because of what I have seen, heard and experienced today and this past week.  Deeper than any particular thing that we might wish for individually is our longing to be God’s people of love and justice, compassion and care. 

We saw that at the meeting today: 

In the words that everyone spoke, deep care. 

In how we talked with each other, deep respect.

In discerning what is the right way forward, deep listening to God and to each other. 

It is that care that we have for each other and the community’s we serve that will lead us forward. 

We will have incredible leadership (that would be all of you!) as we saw these past weeks, step in and put in countless hours of ministry to look seriously and carefully at all questions and concerns. 

We don’t always have to agree, and won’t.  But we will walk forward together as church because that is our call. 

We will be the body of Christ because that is who we are – which means we are always broken and always full of resurrection, full of hope. 

We will stumble and fall at times, and we will get up again and again because that is just what we do. 

And we will be reminded of the tie that binds us together, deeper, so much deeper than all that might seem to divide us. 

It is what we say in our covenant each Sunday – that we “Care for and pray for each other in trials of the spirit and times of joy.”  Today was a meeting where both were present – trial and joy.  As leaders, we must lean back on the covenant that we make with each other and show ourselves and each other how to walk, in the way Jesus calls, in faith, in hope, in love together.

God is present with us.  I have no doubt of that.  And Jesus there, beside us and before us on this road ahead.