The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2024, Dr. Tamilio

Who is the greatest?  This is what the disciples argued about one day, and Jesus called them on it.  Jesus tells them that whoever wants to be first must be a servant of all.  He uses a child — one that had no status in ancient Palestine — he uses a child as an example, saying, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”  In other words, the first will be last and the last will be first.  I always felt that this would be a terrible advertising slogan.  Come, join the whatever church, where you will have to be like a child: you’ll be last AND you will be a servant to others.  Okay…  Sign me up!

Passages like this one do challenge us to define what we mean by discipleship.  They also tell us what it means to be part of the Jesus community: AKA the Church.

On one hand, being a Christian is a servant role.  As I have said many times before, being a Christian means that we are to serve God in the service of others.  However, that is not what being part of the church is all about.  You can serve people and help people in any number of ways without being part of any religious organization.  There are many atheists who engage in charitable work or who help others.

But the church is different.  There is something that we get here as well — and it is important to pause every once in a while and take stock of what some of those things are.  As I have also said in the past, the church is the place where you are accepted for who you are, not judged for who you are not.

If you are on our Constant Contact list, you receive emails from us on a regular basis informing you of church-happenings.  Recently, I send out a message attached to a meme.  The meme, a quote by N.T. Wright, reads:

The church is not a society of perfect people doing great work.  It’s a society of forgiven sinners repaying their unpayable debt of love by working for Jesus’ kingdom in every way they can, knowing themselves to be unworthy of the task.

I included a message, encouraging people to share this meme on social media and to include this message with it:

You will find this [i.e., what is written in the N.T. Wright quote] at the Congregational Church of Canton.  Join us for Worship on Sundays at 10:00 am, and for Bible Study on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm.  Come, see how we offer a Word of love, not judgment — of compassion, of forgiveness, of living what you believe and believing what you live.  We don’t talk politics.  (There is a reason why they call it a sanctuary.)  We believe, as Brennan Manning said, that we are all “beggars at the door of God’s mercy.”  We celebrate forgiveness, love, peace, second chances, and getting your hands dirty as you serve God in the service of others.  Bring yourself — your doubts, your pain, your guilt, your grief — bring it all.  The arms of Jesus Christ are open wide, and they are welcoming you home!

That is what we offer here.  Think about it.  Every facet of your life is a competition.  Everything: work, play, politics, economics, you name it.  If you’re not keeping up with the Joneses, then you’re worried about whether you’ll have enough money, or whether or not your health will hold out, or what kind of world your children or your grandchildren will inherit.  There is no shortage of the problems that keep us up at night.

By giving us the church, Jesus offers us an alternative.  The church is the place that fills the emptiness within you.  The church is the place where you heal from the brokenness within you and around you.  It is the place where there is no shortage of unconditional love.  It is the place where your guilt is taken and nailed to a cross.  It is where hope rises from cold, dark tombs.  Some people say that the church is a family not bound by blood.  It is bound by blood: the blood of Christ.  The church is the place where you can doubt, ask questions, and simply be who you are.

One of the big catch words today is authentic.  I hear it everywhere.  Makes sense.  In a world where everything is becoming more and more virtual, it helps to stop once in a while to figure out what is real.  Psychology Today published an article a year ago entitled, “How to Live an Authentic Life.”  The author, Andrea Mathews, offers all sorts of advice: “First, there is no such thing as a ‘negative’ or a ‘positive’ feeling,” she says, “they are all just feelings.”[1]  Okay.  She also says that life does not necessarily get better, but that, over time, we get better at handling life.  Her conclusion is that we are all a work in progress.  We never become our authentic selves.  “We are always in a process of ‘becoming’ more and more authentic as we live and choose.”[2]

I do like a lot of what Mathews says, but when I finished reading the piece I felt as if it was all just sugar-covered pop psychology, with all due respect to the author.  It is like those saying we hear all the time:

• You never get over the pain. You just move through it.
• It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.
• Life is what you put into it and how much you tale out of it. You put in more than is expected and you take out less than what you want.

Eh…  I don’t really even know what that last one means.  I can only read so much of this stuff without gagging — and believe me: I have used some of these lines before, too.  I have offered similar advice to people.

Let’s get real.  Life is tough.  It’s hard.  It wears you down.  The bills, the boss, the kids, the car that needs a brake job, the struggle to lose weight, or to quit smoking, or to quit drinking, or the pressure (that we put on ourselves) to be a better friend, a better spouse, a better Christian.  Hardships mount.  There’s no shortage of struggles.

The church is different.  The church is the one place you can come to and not feel as if you have to say the predictable and proverbial “great” when someone asks you how you are.  For some, it takes all they have just to pick up the pieces of their lives and walk through these doors.  We are authentic as Christians when we admit that we are broken, and we can’t always fix it ourselves.

But we can come to a place where we are loved — where we are loved unconditionally.  We can bring our sins, our failures, our guilt, our broken dreams, our dashed hopes — the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between.  We bring it here and we find that we are loved, accepted, and claimed as worthy not because of who we are or what we have done, but because of the One who loves you.  This is the place where you come as you are to discover who you are: a broken, lost sinner who is loved and forgiven by Jesus Christ and whose life has ultimate meaning because of that.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

[1] Andrea Mathews, “How to Live and Authentic Life,” from Psychology Today (online).  Published May 30, 2023.  Accessed September 22, 2024.

[2] Ibid.