It was as bad a worship service as I have ever been a part of. I came to call it “nuclear Sunday” as the congregation almost melted down. Our implosion began just before the benediction with an announcement that a beloved staff member had resigned, upon which, the aforementioned staff member stood up and loudly declared, “I most certainly did not resign!”  The senior pastor sat frozen. I was an associate pastor, a year and a month out of seminary, and the bishop had not yet laid their hands on me and said, “Take thou authority.” Congregants stood up and spoke out and after a few minutes the senior pastor, lay leader, and the beloved, but just dismissed, staff member left the sanctuary to work things out.  Should I dismiss the congregation, lead a prayer, call for a hymn: I had no clue and was afraid to overstep my role. Finally, the 3 returned but said nothing and mercifully the service ended with some sort of benediction. I stood by the back door and in the parking lot offering pastoral care for 90 minutes. Reentering the sanctuary, I found the senior pastor laying down on the front pew and spent the next 20 minutes offering pastor care to my senior pastor.  Just the day before and Connie frolicked in the Atlantic Ocean together, she was still at the beach and I was bitter that I was not there too!. 

Coming home to our empty house, I felt angry, confused, and adrift. Before I could pull off my tie, my phone rang and my friend John blurted out “Hey Paul, some of us are going to the lake. Come on with us!”  The last thing I felt like doing was being with church members- even good friends. I muttered weak excuses as John pressed: “Connie is gone, there is not one thing you can do right now to help the church, it’s going to be a long slog, do something fun!”  It was a solid argument, but I begged off, grabbed a bag of chips and flipped on the TV.  Minutes later my phone rang, John’s impish laugh crackled, “Paul, we are in your driveway, put on your swimsuit and get out here!  I’ve got food and drinks.”  Three days a week I ran, at 6am, I ran 3 miles with the guys piled into John’s SVU, all of them church members. Minutes later we were all laughing and slinging each other around on the innertube and skis.  As the sun faded we pulled out into the middle of the lake and enjoyed a Mini-Mart diner of peanut butter, Oreos, and grapes. All afternoon, my friends had given me the great gift by not mentioning church, but as we broke bread we each confessed to not knowing what to think about church or what to do next. I felt a slight window of hope.  

It’s been over 25 years, but as I pondered our baptismal vows to “surround one another with a community of love and forgiveness”  I remembered my friends pulling into my driveway and pulling me into “community”(pl). Over that next year, when I thought about giving out, giving up, or giving into bitterness: I was re-centered by that Sunday afternoon communion, bobbing in a life jacket eating grapes, surrounded by good friends, simply treading water with me. That moment reminded me of what was good around me: I was not alone, the church was better than its worst moment, and I was loved by loving and forgiving people, who mostly tried to love each other. 

One of my favorite parts of our baptismal liturgy is where the celebrant asks the congregation: “Will you nurture one another in the Christian faith and life and include (even an uncertain rookie associate pastor) in your care?” And God’s people say: With God’s help we will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We will surround one another with a community of love and forgiveness, so that we may grow in service to others. We will pray for each other, so that each of us might live as a true disciple walking in the way that leads to life.” It is hard to overstate how foundational that is. 

On any day you can read a newsclip about church members missing the call to “surround one another with a community of love and forgiveness”. The schism infecting the UMC offers a steady stream of name-calling instead of nurturing, shunning instead of surrounding with love, conflict instead of community.  We are like a once married couple that is now unable to remember any of the love that once drew us together.  But that is not who God invites us to be, this Wednesday night at 6pm Paul Franklin will lead a discussion of Bishop Carter’s, “Unrelenting Grace: A United Methodist Way of Life” in room 124.  Sadly, the larger American Christian culture may be even more focused on divisiveness than our divided UMC.  And yet, where else can we go,  who else besides the church seeks to  be a community rooted in love and defined by forgiveness? 

The prophet Isaiah looks at the church and sees a lot of room for improvement: “Act justly and do what is righteous… keep the Sabbath, avoid evil. Don’t let the immigrant feel excluded from God’s people.  Don’t let the eunuch say, “I’m just a dry tree.” The Lord says to the eunuchs who keep the sabbath: I will give you a monument and name better than sons and daughters. I will bring the immigrants and those Leviticus’ bans from serving into my holy church and fill them with joy as they pray. My house will be known as a house of prayer for all peoples, says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts. God says I will gather still others to those I have already gathered.”  Isaiah says there are still others, out beyond the reach of Isaiah’s vision- still more inclusion than we might imagine.  With boundless Love, where is there room for exclusionary lines? Love welcomes, Love embraces, Love heals, Love empowers, Love transforms!   

The Prophet Isaiah speaks to a church that has lost its way.  Isaiah cries out for justice and for inclusion- which are foundational values of love. “Don’t let the immigrant say, “The Lord will exclude me.” Don’t let the eunuch say, “I’m just a dry tree. No God says, I will give you a name better than sons and daughters. I will accept them and My house will be known as a house of prayer for all peoples, says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts and I will gather still others!”  It is one thing to be tolerated or allowed: maybe you have been the last one picked in kickball- “oh I guess we have to take Purdue’! Love delights in others, gives them names better than sons and daughters, embraces who God made them to be, and celebrates their beloved-ness. Isaiah envisions a community that surrounds everyone with love and forgiveness. Isaiah imagines God’s love being more than he can imagine adding “God will gather still others”, because it is God’s nature is to gather the outcast! Love gathers.

In Mark’s telling of Jesus flipping over the Temple tables, Jesus quotes Isaiah, “Hasn’t it been written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?” Do we have that kind of shimmering vision of a welcoming church, a vision of God, an image of Christ whose Love is big enough to hold all people: immigrants, eunuchs, outcasts, theological opponents, you, me?   Do we understand how foundational and radical our vow to surround everyone with a community of Love and forgiveness really is? 

In Acts 8, we encounter a beautifully educated Ethiopian Royal, riding in a Lamborghini chariot. Philip does not borrow from the Levitical law that excludes but Isaiah’s poetic promise, “do not let the eunuchs feel cut off”. (56) We hear the assistant secretary to Queen Candice ask with trepidation, maybe fearing they will be excluded one more time, “What would keep me from being baptized?” Philip baptizes them and names the eunuch as better than a son or daughter because God gathers people: that is the nature of God. And even though the eunuch never sees Philip again they went on their way rejoicing. 

Oh how might our worlds and the world be changed if you and I leaned into Jesus’ great  command to love others as ourselves? What if we dedicate ourselves to surrounding everyone with love and forgiveness?  We will need forgiveness because our love will fail, but: what could be a better aim for our lives, goal for our church, work for families, gift to our framily, or hope for our worlds than to surround each other with love and forgiveness? 

As a postscript, I called John and shared my Nuclear Sunday story, he only half remembered being out on the lake that afternoon.  We never know how deeply our acts of love and inclusion may resonate with someone. God tells us to give, to love, to lend not to get something back, but because that is who God is and who God invites us to become.  (Luke 6) Your act of love- your word of forgiveness, your card, your text, your pulling into someone’s driveway might help some reeling associate pastor hand on. You don’t know, they might count eating grapes while treading water with you as a holy moment that kept them afloat.  Let us rededicate ourselves to community, to surrounding each other with love and forgiveness. Oh, our world needs a shimmering portrait of God’s love incarnate in us right here in Nashville and nothing renews and restores our souls like practicing Love and Forgiveness.   Amen.