Living Letters

205th Annual Meeting Sermon
by Nancy S. Taylor
The Evening of Saturday, June 12, 2004 in Abbey Chapel
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts
Text: II Corinthians 3. 1-3 Paul’s letter of recommendation

Prayer: Holy and gracious God, oil the hinges of our hearts doors that they may swing gently and easily to welcome your coming. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Strength and our Redeemer.

I have a story to tell. It is a true story. It occurred not once upon a time, but only weeks ago. It took place not far, far away …not unless you call Eastern Massachusetts (on the other side of the Bourne Bridge) far, far away. It is a story about one of our churches, told by one of our pastors. The story begins badly, but it ends with Good News, with Gospel.

The sanctuary was full that morning. A child, cradled in his father’s arms was crying. As it happened, the child cried on an off during the entire service.

As the preacher preached a sermon about God’s radical hospitality, the child cried. As the congregation sang hymns of praise to the living God, the child cried. As the congregation prayed prayers, naming intimate needs as well as distant corners of God’s battered world, the child cried. As congregants shuffled forward to taste the bread and cup of the sacred meal, the child cried. The congregation understood. The child was ill …not a cold or an earache, but quite ill. The father needed to be there. The child needed to be in his father’s embrace.

It was during the postlude that the terrible thing happened. The organist suddenly stopped playing and, in the hearing and view of the entire congregation, she loudly scolded the father for his crying child.

A few days after that Sunday, the pastor received a call from a woman who had visited the church for the first time that Sunday. Let us call her Grace. Grace informed the pastor that she was interested in pursing membership in the church. She explained that she had been church shopping for a couple of years.

And then, patiently, she rehearsed her experience. First, she returned to the church of her youth. They greeted her warmly and told her, “We are friendly and welcoming to all”, but being a divorcee, she was barred from receiving communion, teaching in the Sunday school, or volunteering as a lay visitor.

Another church also described itself as friendly and welcoming – and she found them to be so – but they taught that those who do not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior would burn in hell. She wondered about her devout friends who are Jewish.

Another church told her, “We are friendly and welcoming”, but they forbade her to read the Harry Potter books to her own children.

Another church told her, “We are friendly and welcoming”, but the pastor preached a sermon denouncing gays and lesbians as abnormal. She wondered about her friends who are gay and lesbian and about what is normal and abnormal in that church, and who decides such things.

In her telephone call to the pastor of this UCC church, she told him that she experienced the congregation as friendly and welcoming. But that wasn’t why she wanted to join. She wanted to join this church because of the way the congregation surrounded the crying child and the distressed father with patience and care. In the actions and attitude of the congregation, she heard with her own ears and saw with her own eyes the message of God’s radical and inclusive welcome. She said to herself: this is Gospel; this is church; I am home.

In visiting this church, Grace read in the members of the congregation the message of the Gospel. There she found Christ himself, written on human hearts: a letter of welcome, invitation, gentleness, forbearance and love.

Here is another story. It was told by Dietrich Bonhoeffer about his grandmother, in whose life he read the Gospel:

Julie Tafel Bonhoeffer, bravely resisted the Nazi tactics of terrorism against the Jews. One day, when the S.S. troops and Hitler Youth were picketing a Jewish shop, Bonhoeffer’s grandmother, by then in her nineties, walked right through the picketers, into the store and made purchases.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion. The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself.”1 What so impressed Bonhoeffer was that his grandmother’s deeds interpreted themselves. In them – in her – he read the Gospel.

In his letter to the Corinthian Christians Paul wrote that we are letters in whose lives others read about God.

When others read you, what do they learn about God and Gospel, about Jesus and grace? When they summon the courage to visit your congregation for the first time, do they experience the beauty and care of a well-crafted letter, whose message commends them to God?

When, with a mixture of curiosity, hunger and foreboding, strangers first step into the narthex of your meeting house, what do they read in you about God? Are the Christians they encounter convincing and persuasive? Is what they experience of you, enough to bring them back, bring them to faith, and give them hope?

In the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries, the Christian church grew, wildly, rapidly: spreading and multiplying. Yet the history books make no mention of a single outstanding missionary during all of that expansion. Why? Because countless unknown men and women did the work. Individual Christians took it upon themselves to spread the message to their own circles of friends, families and neighbors.2

Along with the cost and joy of following the gospel in one’s own life, Paul insists on the cost and joy of making that gospel known to others.

How and by what means are we supposed to do this? Well, in the UCC, we are proclaiming the gospel with the help of a New York City ad firm, television commercials and the Still Speaking Initiative. My hunch is, that we are called in this 21st century of the Christian Era to proclaim the gospel every-which-way we can: by letters and newsletters, press releases, email and Web pages, radio and television, print ads, PowerPoint presentations, banners, and signage.

Yet all of this will only mean anything, win any to God, save any from death, when those who venture into our churches read in us – in Christ’s own people – a compelling, plausible, exciting, genuine, redemptive, inviting and joyous faith.

We are letters in whose lives others read about God. When others read you – when they read and visit your congregation – what do they learn about God and Gospel, about Jesus and grace?

In the end, 21st century communications techniques can only nudge people in the right direction, and can only hold their attention for a few seconds. The rest is up to us.

May God be with us. May God help us. Amen.

1 The story is retold by Thomas Troeger, in Preaching While the Church is Under Reconstruction, p. 79.

2 The Interpreter’s Bible, p. 304, quoting the Moffatt New Testament Commentary.