THE CHURCH AS LOVING COMMUNITY

THE CHURCH AS LOVING COMMUNITY

            I will be preaching in North Carolina this weekend at the ordination of David Wilson-Stayton Fuentes, one of our former interns and youth ministers at Oakhurst.  In thinking about this, I was reminded on my ordination in Norfolk in June some 42 years ago.  Caroline and I were called as co-pastors to a small church there, and soon after we arrived, the elders informed us that they suspected that the treasurer was embezzling money from the church.  When we asked them how long this had been going on, they said at least a year – they were waiting on the pastor to take care of it!  Quite a surprise for us as we started out!

            It was a complicated situation.  The treasurer (I’ll call him “Bill”) was a member of the church, and his wife was the church organist.  The church only had 12 members, and we likely would lose those two of them – not an auspicious beginning for our new pastorate! Caroline and I talked about this and prayed about it.  I called Bill and asked to come to meet with him. I did not tell him the subject, but I did ask that his wife be with us.  I was really nervous and scared and unsure of how to proceed.

            When we arrived at his house, he showed us to the den where we would meet, and my eyes got wide, and my heart rate accelerated even more.  He was an avid hunter, and on the walls of the den were shotguns, long rifles, and crossbows.  You can imagine what was in my mind as I thought about raising the difficult issue of his embezzling money from the church.   After a bit of small talk with him and his wife, we plunged in.  I said:  “Bill, one of the reasons that we are here is that the elders believe that you have taken money from the church, and we are here to talk about that with you.”  I sort of trembled as I said this, especially eyeing the weapons on the walls.  To our surprise, he responded: “Yes, that is true.  I got into a tight spot, and I needed the money.  I have been intending to pay it back, but I haven’t done it yet.  I am sorry, and I will do it now.  I’ll also resign as treasurer.”  Caroline said:  “That sounds great, Bill, but you will also need to come before the elders to confess and to apologize.  You hurt them, and you hurt the church.  But, if you will do that and will pay back the money in a timely fashion, Nibs and I will recommend to them that no criminal charges be made, and we hope that y’all will stay as members of the church.”

            He agreed to this and did it.  Some of the elders wanted him to be criminally prosecuted, but in their collective wisdom, they decided to allow him to resign as treasurer, to make restitution, and to remain as a member.  He did all that!  And, I was simply amazed at it all, but especially that God had used stumbling, bumbling persons like Caroline (she says “speak for yourself, Nibs”) and me to be vessels of such healing and loving.  It clearly wasn’t our technique that enabled this – we were like Peter and Mary Magdalena, who stumbled and couldn’t recognize and yet who became vessels of healing and loving.

            That event was so crazy and so powerful, but it helped to shape my ministry from the very beginning.  So, I give thanks to God for it, because I learned that God intends us, and especially the church, to be a healing and loving community.   And by “love,” I don’t mean the sentimental, sweet love that our culture uses so often to sell products.  I mean the loving that bridges the powerful gaps and chasms of the world, the loving that calls us into difficult situations and seeks to welcome those who seem lost and forlorn, because that is indeed who we all are.

            So, this concludes the short series on the meaning of the church – people called out of the categories of the world to form a new community, a community centered on love and justice.  The most stunning and condemning part of all of this is that most of our churches reject this, in our actions and sometimes in our words.  It is why God is moving now to shrink the church and refashion us as the people and the community whom we are meant to be:  “church,” deriving from a Greek word meaning “people of the Lord.”