Call to Worship
One: We are a people of the great commandment
All: We are a people of love
One: Always calling one another
All: Always called by our God
One: The body of Christ with its many members
All: The body of Christ with its many miracles
One: We are a people of the Spirit
All: We are a people for today
One: Let us lift our voices as one
All: We lift them in worship and praise
Invocation
Divine Mystery, Loving God: We are a people gathered together in your name, in the name of your Son, our savior, in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are a people gathered, threads on a loom, woven into this amazing church, this witness, this hope.
Loving Father, we are both the weaving and weavers. We pray that our weaving is pleasing to you even as we become, even as we are transformed together in your great work.
Weave from us, we ask, a garment of love, of joy, of praise. Weave from us a cloak of comfort, strong cloth for hard labor, beautiful cloth for miraculous days, warm cloth for cold nights, and even, we pray, a shroud for the journey.
Weave from us, we ask, weave from us all, a shimmering garment of many colors, a Joseph coat, a miracle, a masterwork. Bind and tie us one to another, each strengthened by those around us, each unique, amazing, loved.
As your Son selected his disciples, Peter and Mary and Salome and John, and turned them into a church, woven into the fabric of your kingdom, so you turn us into a church, living, growing, weaved and woven. And so we pray as your church, your kingdom, in the words he taught us saying: “Our Father… trespasses… for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.â€
Prayer of Confession
You call us a covenant people, a people gathered, but we are alone. Alone behind walls of our own construction. My rights, my property, my privacy. Mine. And yet you call, again and again, calling us out from that small life that hides behind those walls. You call and we emerge, only to retreat, convinced that this is what you want from us, for us: human justice, personal salvation. Mine.
And so we call to mind those times when we have forgotten your radical call to love, to love God, to love each other, remembering only to love ourselves. We call to mind these moments when we have hidden behind the walls of selfishness, of selfness, when we have missed opportunities to be more ourselves by forgetting ourselves.
We are a people called, forgiven and forgiving. Call us still, forgive us still, even as we reflect upon our failures, growing from them into our true selves, a great choir of worship and love. Amen.
Assurance of Pardon
Know this: God will never fail to reach for us, God will never fail to call to us, infinite patience and infinite love calling us into communion, into the kingdom, into a romance with one another, with life, with this blessed creation. Dare and God will dare with you. Fall and God will reach out. Be amazing, be love, be the church the changes the world, be with me in this radical love, and God will be with us. Amen.
Imperfectly Perfect: Our Lives Together
Most of us know the story. The Allies were within hours of reaching the camp when Prisoner Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell, escorted to the gallows, and executed. His crime was treason against the Third Reich, specifically, he had joined a plot to assassinate Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reformed pastor and committed pacifist, had become a modern martyr, a witness to Christ. Most of us know these facts. His letters from prison are widely read, as is his thin volume titled “Life Together.†We know this Bonhoeffer, the man of courage who returned from London to lead an underground seminary.
There is another Dietrich Bonhoeffer we often neglect, the committed theologian who struggled with this beautiful church situated in an ever-changing world. In his dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, Bonhoeffer wrote about sacred community, and he made one very bold claim. You do not stand alone. God did not execute a covenant with individuals. God executed a covenant with a people. You are not a person without others, we only become ourselves in the context of community, we are only in relationship when the God-called in us is connected to the God-called other. Now, this should make perfect sense to us, after all, Jesus promises to be with us if two or more are gathered in his name. He tells us to baptize one another and to break bread together, to feed and clothe and visit. Of course, Jesus also tells us to sometimes enter seclusion, to go off and pray in quiet. We are at once together and alone.
Now, you’re here, so you get it. You understand that the church is the living body of Christ, that this is the sacred, sanctifying and sanctified community that Christ formed. Heck, some of you even socialize together! But let’s take a moment to really think about the place of community in today’s world, in today’s America, in today’s Boston. Take, for example, that funny little commercial for a local web site. You know the series, all about what makes Boston unique. One of those commercials features the guy, you know him, the guy with the lawn chair in the parking place while the city is buried in snow. And the joke is that they might give that space away in some other city, but here in the Boston area we claim a share of the public street with complete disregard to social conventions around first come first serve or equal opportunity. It is not about community, it is all about me. We celebrate our selfishness.
And since it’s Super Bowl Sunday, let’s take a look at the NFL. Now there have always been stars, guys that seemed just a little bit more, just a little better. But it was always about the team. Brady is amazing, he may be the best quarterback ever on the best team ever, and he will be the first to tell you that it is a team. Then there is T.O. Terrell Owens now plays for the Cowboys, but just a few short years ago he played for the Eagles. But he wasn’t happy there. It wasn’t all about him, there were others stars, other players. So Owens became a disruption in hopes that he would be traded. And in a rare show of courage, the Eagles refused to trade him, suspended him, withheld his pay. Just this week the arbitrator decided that Owens was indeed out several million dollars for his actions. But does it matter. You see, Owens is now playing for the Cowboys with a salary that makes a couple of million dollars seem like pocket change. It wasn’t about the team, it was all about him, and millions of young athletes learned a terrible lesson.
We’ve always had this rugged streak of individualism in the U.S., we’re proud of it. It is innovation and adventure, it is exploration and creativity. But it has this other edge, this self-centeredness and greed that has become dominant and accepted since Reaganomics, this idea that I stand alone. It has even crept into some of our churches. My personal relationship with Jesus. I am saved. If I check off the right boxes, if I follow this legalistic path wrapped in self-righteousness, I can escape death. Never mind that legalism, greed and self-righteousness were the very traits that Jesus condemned throughout his ministry. Even salvation in Jesus has become all about me. Maybe also about us, but definitely about me.
Then there’s Bonhoeffer. It’s not about you. You do not have a covenant with God, you are not baptized into a relationship with God. We have a covenant with God. You are baptized into the body of Christ which is the church which is us. Your salvation is not worked out in the privacy of your own home. Your salvation is worked out in Christ, in Christ the man who taught and healed and died for others, in Christ the church, this imperfect perfect body of love and openness. We come together in love for one another, in love for God. This is the church that Jesus created, the church to which Paul wrote. Paul the pastor. We read Paul’s letters to the churches he started and visited and we see the word “you†a lot. Unfortunately, our language makes it easy to miss the fact that the “you†is almost always plural. We are church, imperfect, and yet always perfect in Christ, a people of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, lovers and evangelists fully engaged with the world, fully engaged with one another.
There is another organization that is imperfect. Started by a general, a hero of the Boer War in which the British Empire protected its selfish colonial interests, a man with mixed personal motives, it has become despite this beginning one of the largest international organizations dedicated to the formation of honorable men, men who will serve their God and their country. The Boy Scout is called to do a good turn daily. That is, they are called to serve others. There is no all-star in Scouting who scores more points, there is no accumulation of goods. Sure, there’s some friendly competition, but it is never about the individual Scout. Sunday School helped form my value system, but so did Scouting. I learned how to be part of a team, I learned how to lead and how to be led. And I am not the only man in this congregation whose character was developed in Scouting.
And there is more. As we all know, Girls got in on the act. Structurally different, and attuned to the needs of young women, Girl Scouting has been important in the lives of many women and young ladies sitting among you.
Today is Scout Sunday. This isn’t something we invented. Scouts throughout the United States are attending worship at their own churches, and at the churches which sponsor troops. The Scouts that have joined us this morning are here because we sponsor their troop. You might have heard a rumor to this effect, and it is true. They meet in the basement, and they joined many congregants and Girl Scouts in our basement renovation project yesterday morning. Their leaders share our values, our commitment to turning these amazing children that surround us into amazing adults. They are our hope, they are the treasure that we will leave the next generation.
But what does it mean to sponsor a troop? And how can we sponsor a troop? Aren’t the Boy Scouts a militaristic conservative and homophobic organization? For gosh sakes, they wear uniforms!
Let me begin by explaining that the Boy Scouts of America is a democratic organization owned by the institutions that sponsor troops and packs. If the Boy Scouts is dominated by conservatives, it is because progressives abandoned the program rather than working to change it. But as a sponsor, we have a vote. We have a voice in the policies of the local council, of the national organization. Imagine what would happen if progressives organized to push their agendas as successfully as the religious right has done!
Militaristic? No. Homophobic? Well, yes actually. At the national level. But this local council defied the national organization and adopted a policy that prohibits discrimination based on affectional orientation. This local council is a witness for justice, and they have suffered for it. They lost a tremendous amount of money and membership when they took this stand. And the forces of hatred and division are working hard to reverse the policy and regain control.
So yes, we have Scouts in the basement. And we have their courageous leaders. They tie knots and hike and camp and wear uniforms. And they teach boys that it is not all about them. That it is about us. That it is about service and duty. That they must be willing to lead and to be led. A Scout, who must, in order to be a Scout, serve others, cannot exist alone. A Scout is only a Scout in relationship with others, whether those others are members of his troop, family, church, school or community. As we are not Christians alone. As we are not called alone. We are called into this imperfect perfection of love, this Joseph coat of a church. We exist for and because of one another, always calling one another to Christ, always bringing God with us, always finding God in one another, Immanuel, miracle, love.