Life Together: We are Called Together
Pastor Michelle Lewis
Spirit Garage
Mark 2:14-17; Life Together “Community” (chapter 1)
September 1, 2024
Life Together at Spirit Garage
We are called
into surprising faith adventures together
not to realize our own goals
but to be opened up to seeing as God sees
With this message, we are embarking on a 5-week study of the book Life Together written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1938. It is a book written for pastors and folks studying to lead in churches, so it is geared to those who directly shape the rhythms of a Christian community. And together, in conversation with this book and with one another, we can reflect on how we are Christian community here at Spirit Garage. And notice some questions that are raised in this book and conversation.
Where is God leading us? What do we need to let go of? What do we need to pick up and lean into? What do Jesus and Bonhoeffer have to teach us today?
In summarizing the 30-page chapter, “Community,” tying in the Bible lesson from Mark chapter 2, and considering how these concepts show up for us here at Spirit Garage, I wrote a poem/prayer to guide us this morning.
We are called
into surprising faith adventures together
not to realize our own goals
but to be opened up to seeing as God sees
We are called
We are called! We are called to this place at this time. It is not an accident or mistake that we are here! We are called to be a part of the Spirit Garage community because God is good and gracious and merciful! The gift of being in this community is not something we take for granted, instead it is a reason for us to be grateful and to rejoice, for we are here, together, with others who follow Jesus and God’s love. We are a bunch of quirky, creative, and curious folx who are drawn together. We get to spend Life Together and this is an amazing gift!
I suspect some here remember others who have been part of this community — or perhaps there are folx in your hearts and minds who have yet to join us, but they would find a connection here — they are living away from the joy and blessing of regular connection here. One day we all will be fully reunited, until then we wait and remember and long for the time when we can be together.
And the times when Christian Community is most helpful is when life is the hardest! Not when everything is going well and as expected. I have heard so many stories from this community that the reason you are still here is because of the support, love, acceptance, and honesty you experienced when you were wandering in the wilderness of your life and faith.
In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus is calling Levi into community. Levi is a tax collector and as such he lives a lonely life. Tax Collectors paid Rome the taxes due for their area of responsibility, and then they were allowed to recoup their costs and more as they collected the taxes from the people in that area. They were pariahs. Because they were hired help for Rome and they were hated traitors in their Jewish community. Jesus walks up to Levi and invites him into community that is learning to see him as Jesus sees him — beloved and worthy because God created him.
When Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together he was teaching in an underground seminary — helping to shape and form pastors for when they would help shape and form Christian communities — but doing so in a hidden, quiet, underground way. Staying out of sight of the Nazi-control-the-everything-regime. The experience of living in that seminary community stayed with Bonhoeffer for years. Not too many year later that experience sustained him and gave him courage to follow where Jesus led him and to live with hope, even as he was under suspicion from the Nazi regime, eventually arrested and shipped from one prison to another, before his death at Nazi orders.
we are called
Into surprising faith adventures together
We are called into this community, to be shaped and formed by God’s love and by one another to practice living out the love we experience with God. And in our practices of Life Together we find ourselves immersed in surprising adventures.
Think about Levi. Jesus says, “Follow me.” And Levi got up and followed him. That, in and of itself, seems like a surprising adventure for someone who has prepaid the taxes due from an area of Israel…and then in going with Jesus, Levi finds himself at a dinner party with other tax-collectors and sinners of all sorts. Suddenly, Levi is not so alone. He is among others who are outcasts and rejected by society. He is reminded that he is beloved and worthy because God created him.
Bonhoeffer certainly found himself in surprising adventures in his life. He is challenging the Nazi regime, his colleagues, and congregants: Christians are defined by Jesus, not by political ideologies. And though he felt all the force of the pacifist position, concluded in the depths of his soul that to withdraw from those who were participated in the political and military resistance would be irresponsible cowardice and flight from reality. He was called into surprising, dangerous adventures to subvert and stop the Nazi regime from the genocide they were carrying out in Germany.
Our adventures at Spirit Garage have not gotten any of us arrested (yet) or shipped from prison to prison, and they have taken us out of our comfort zones and have helped us learn to look at the world through some Different Lenses. The anti-racism work of learning to see how white supremacy infects every aspect of our lives and our world is an adventure of faith that we have taken together, and certainly there have been surprises along the way. And our subsequent adventures together to clearly state that LGBTQIA+ folk are included in the fullness of our Life Together here at Spirit Garage, generated lots of conversations and new connections. And we aren’t anywhere close to being done with those adventures.
we are called
into surprising faith adventures together
Not to realize our own goals
The church is a divine reality, not a human ideal. Jesus is the center of our faith and Jesus leads where we are going, not our human “wish-dreams.”
This is what Bonhoeffer calls those ideas that people bring into Christian Communities in order to try to direct where the church is going — to try to shape other people into doing what we want them to do, when we want it done, and in the way we want it done. Certainly there have been “wish-dreams” in individual churches and in the wider church for forever.
Often it’s not the big, life-threatening issues that we get caught up in, instead often its the little things that are important to me, even though I’m not fully aware of the power of those little things over me. For example:
Someone who taught Sunday School for 30+ years, offers an idea that the pastor doesn’t act on. That person quits the church.
Someone says, “If we sell the parking lot and I have to walk more than a block to church, I won’t come to this church anymore.”
“If they ever remove that stained glass window there will be hell to pay,” when there is no remodeling proposed and no one has ever mentioned removing said window…
And there are other “wish-dreams” that have left a lot of people out of Christian community, because the goals of those “wish-dreams” have been about keeping people out, rather than following where Jesus leads.
In progressive Christian denominations—those denominations trying to be expansive and inclusive—women have been ordained for only about 50 years. In some denominations its a bit longer and in some it hasn’t been quite that long. But the fact still remains that half of the population has been excluded from ordained leadership in the Christian church for most of its history, even though women were the first to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection.
And people who are openly gay and lesbian have only been ordained for a little more than 10 years, if they are allowed to be open about their sexual orientation and gender identity at all to be formal leaders…
And in Bonhoeffer’s time, the Nazi-regime had a “wish-dream” to control everything and everyone. To determine that some can live and others cannot. To keep everyone in line by threat, coercion, physical and emotional harm, and by many other means.
White supremacy is still trying to control the church now. This “wish-dream” really has infected how we see and what we value, often without our realizing it or recognizing it.
And when it is pointed out, sometimes we really do not want to change. I think about the situation that Lenny Duncan shared in his book Dear Church. When Duncan was in seminary he noticed and pointed out (repeatedly, I expect) that the robes used for leaders in the worship services at the seminary are long white robes, with long pointy hoods…
Duncan shared with seminary leaders that those robes, in worship, made him feel threatened because they are reminiscent of the robes that the KKK wears. At the time that Duncan’s book was published the seminary still hadn’t changed the robes they used for worship. White supremacy.
We all have our own goals or agendas. And in Christian Community, God helps us practice setting down those agendas—Bonhoeffer says that God shatters our “wish-dreams.” And once we have realized that our broken-heart is because our own agenda has been shattered, we can thank God for that experience.
We are called into Life Together, not to achieve our own ambitions, but to follow where Jesus leads. And not surprisingly Jesus leads us to meet those who are suffering, those who are lonely, those who are outcasts, those who are pariahs in the community—folx like Levi, the tax collector working for Rome to take advantage of fellow Jews.
Jesus led Bonhoeffer into Nazi prisons where he ministered to everyone he met — other prisoners and guards alike.
Jesus is leading Spirit Garage to be a brave place where we set down our wishes to be complacent to racism and discrimination against people who are queer.
we are called
into surprising faith adventures together
not to realize our own goals
But to be opened up to seeing as God sees
To be shaped and formed by God’s love!
Looking to God for our definition, salvation, justification, judgement
To recognize Christ in others
To let go of our expectations of others and meet them with the grace God shows to us
To love others and the world by and through the love that God pours out on and in us
To experience gratitude and joy
To be freed from our fears of not enough in order to share what we have
To be the good news of forgiveness and grace
To be the promise of trying again/turning around/depending on God
Often these are the things we promise to each other when we join a Christian community. We use different language and sometimes when we are up front making promises its hard to really grasp the depth of what those promises say. So what follows is the language we use and promise to one another when formally joining Spirit Garage. And for folx who are new to this community, maybe thinking about making the switch from Spirit Garage being “a place you go to” to being your faith community — and for folx brand new to this place —this is a preview of what we promise to one another. In these promises, it is our hope and prayer that together we can be opened up to see as God sees and to practice loving as God loves. To see ourselves and one another as God sees us.
Remembering Our Membership Promises
Will you show up with this community for worship, study, prayer, service to others and fun?
I will and I ask God to help me
Will you practice being curious about Scripture, your neighbor, and God’s ongoing creation in daily life?
I will and I ask God to help me.
Will you share your sense of call and unique talents with a spirit of generosity in the life of this faith community?
I will, and I ask God to help me.
Gathering God, You knit your people together in the body of Christ and form congregations to do your good work. Be present in our celebrating and praying and our worship and service, so that this community reflects your abundance and desire for the church on earth today and always. Amen
God, we thank you that by your love and grace you draw people into you and welcome them into communities of faith. We thank you for Spirit Garage, and all who have walked in and out of this community for a moment, a reason, a season or a lifetime.
Today we pray especially for these folks who are joining,
and for the ways they will enrich the community that is Spirit Garage.
May we be as open as God, who welcomes all,
And all means all.
May we be bound together by the Holy Spirit:
in the breaking of the bread,
as we pray,
as we hear Your word spoken into our lives,
and as we serve others following the example of Jesus Christ,
who taught and fed, forgave and washed
and walked beside all kinds of people.
Amen.
Pastor: We give thanks for the unique stories and talents you bring to this community. The church is a living organism, and your commitment adds value and energy to who we are as a faith community.
Drivetrain: We promise to welcome your faith as it flows through life’s joys and challenges. We want this church to be a safe place where you can show up as your authentic self and be received with love and grace.
All: Faith is a team sport, and we are in this together. In this community, we choose curiosity over certainty, quirky over normal, and we strive to honor each other’s creative faith expressions and life experiences with respect and love.
Drivetrain leader: We also acknowledge that we will fail you. This congregation will both embrace and resist change. Sometimes we will disagree and make mistakes. So we ask that, on this side of disappointment, that you promise to stick around for the healing that surely comes. Because if you go before the listening and the mending, you will miss the holy thing about being church: the dying and the rising; the forgiving and the living. Do you desire to become members of this faith community, investing in the future of this shared mission and ministry?
All: We Remember when we said, “We do!”
All (to one another): We welcome you as members of this faith community, in all it’s creativity, quirkiness and curiosity. You are beloved, and your presence here is a gift. May God bless these new relationships and our common call as agents of God’s mercy and the abundance the world needs. Welcome!