Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors

Change, according to Webster, means “to make the future course of something different from what it is or would have been if left alone, to transcend, to become different.” “Status quo,” according to Ronald Reagan, is “Latin for ‘the mess that we’re in’.” When Lou Holtz was asked about his lifetime appointment at Notre Dame where his teams had 100 wins, 30 losses and 2 ties and won a national championship, Holtz said, “That just means that I can be declared legally dead at any given time!” He knew that even his lifetime appointment was subject to change.

The only thing certain is that there will be change. The face of America is changing. There are culture changes, aging changes, unforeseen circumstances-that-you-could-not-even-have-imagined changes. Like it or not, it is a change or be changed world.

The Bible guarantees change. I Corinthians 15: 51-53: “We are all going to be changed.” Jesus, speaking in Matthew 18: 3, said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Today’s scriptures deal with a dramatic change. (Read Revelation 21:1-5.) A city like that requires change. Something has to take place in our spirit in order to allow us to make the change to something so different! Notice that it says, “I am creating all things new,” not “I am creating all new things.” The earth as we know it, to be heavenly, must be changed. It is we who must make it so. It will be a new earth – a new earth where people love each other as Christ has loved us. That will require change!! Two thousand years later, we haven’t yet brought ourselves to make the change, the change to a heavenly Jerusalem. Jerusalem would have been the city familiar to those in the New Testament time, but as someone said in Bible Study this week, that city could be anywhere in this universe – anywhere, that is, where people love each other – ALL people love each other – as Christ loves us. Our challenge is to change OUR city - the city of The Colony - into that heavenly city.

And yet, for two thousand years, we have resisted Christianity’s call to that change. Because we have resisted, the rich have gotten richer, the poor – poorer. Economists tells us that never before have the rich and the poor been so far apart. The fact is that we are afraid of change. There are at least three reasons that we fear change. God gives us a remedy for each fear.

The first reason that we fear change is loss of control, potential loss of power. If we change jobs, if we give up our job, if we are replaced by someone else, if we retire from our job – we will lose prestige. We will no longer be “the boss,” the “go-to person,” the person to whom others come for leadership answers. If we give up our position as chairperson of a significant office in our church, we will lose prestige; we will no longer be the “go-to” person, the important person. If our children leave home, we will no longer be in control of their actions and their decisions. Where will we find our meaning? Where will we find our purpose? Where will we find our friendships? Will people like me? There’s a remedy for that fear – one that comes from scripture, one that comes from the one we call master. It’s called servanthood. We can become servants – willing servants, just as active, just as involved, perhaps in a different role, but as servants. I saw a lot of that here yesterday at the Mother’s Day Tea, people willingly working in the kitchen to make sure that others enjoyed the day. Some people look out for what’s best for themselves rather than what’s best for their family, their country, their church. Change is the only road out of selfhood to servanthood. Our job is to serve God, regardless of our position or our situation in life.

The second reason we fear change is distrust. Today, in the 21^st century, we do not trust. We don’t trust our leaders – those who would lead us through the changes. It’s not just our leaders in government that we don’t trust. It’s our employers/our leaders on the job; it’s our leaders in the churches. According to Gordon Venturella, there are two questions that every unchurched person has of church leaders, whether they verbalize those questions or not. 1) Can you be trusted? 2) Do you know where you’re going? The remedy to the fear of distrust is easier than we might think. The remedy is communication.

Change is made easier when leaders tell us where we’re going. That’s why three years ago, we developed a vision team here at FUMC, The Colony. Their task was to create a five-year plan for FUMC, based on input across the congregation. That plan was issued in 2006. Our ongoing task as a church is to keep that five-year vision updated so that those who are here, those who walk through these doors will understand what we are about. They will know what we mean when we say that our mission as United Methodists is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. They will know what we mean when we say that we have “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.” That’s why our building committee chairperson Michael Walden came before you with an initial information report just before Easter. That’s why we take the time to have a moment for mission in our worship services. That’s why we invite everyone to come to our bi-monthly administrative council meetings the third Tuesday of every odd month. That’s why we have a newsletter and bullets in the bulletin and on the screen. That’s why we have a communications committee – so that we can learn how to communicate where we are going, so that we can build trust, so that we can change as Jesus commanded.

The third reason we fear change is stress. The face of America is changing and it is a stressful face, often a spiritually empty face. We run faster, buy more, access more, and find that there is less and less time for intimate meaningful relationships with family, friends and God. We can only handle so much change in a period of time. The remedy to stress is assurance. We are guaranteed that assurance in our faith. In Revelation, in just five verses we are told seven times that God will be with us. Sometimes we forget that, or perhaps we don’t believe it.

We need time for reflection. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting ‘The Last Supper’ in the little Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, he spent a good deal of time in apparent idleness out in the cloister, much to the annoyance of the monks who were paying for his services. For a time nothing was said, but after a while finally a delegation went to the artist and complained that the church was not getting its money’s worth. Leonardo heard them out, then explained simply, ‘When I pause the longest, I make the most telling stokes with my brush.’

In the church, that pause is what we call worship. We need worship. We need this hour of focusing on God to make our most telling strokes, to relieve our stress, our overload and start again the next week to follow, and, certainly, We need this hour to obey the new command that Jesus made in today’s gospel – to love one another as Christ loved us!

It’s not that Jesus’ command in today’s scripture to love is “new” as a tradition; it is new in nature. According to this Gospel, we are to love one another in an agape love. That means we will tell the truth; we will be faithful to share the word of God; we will continue to act for those who may not be responsive to God’s word; we will encourage; we will listen. One of my fellow clergy – Roy Spore – in Whitesboro, Texas, dialogued with the confirmands at FUMC, Whitesboro, this week on what it means to have a personal relationship with Christ. He asked them what it is that friends do for one another if they love one another. The confirmands gave many answers, but two stood out to him. They said, “Friends who love one another hold each other accountable”, and “Friends who love one another lift one another up.” If love is understood as acting toward one another as God acted toward the world and Christ has acted toward his disciples, then love is not simply a feeling. If love is a way of speaking and doing and being for one another, then it is not strange to speak of love for one another as a “commandment.” That requires change!

It would have been so much easier if the Spirit had not blown where it did, showing Peter a gospel meant for ALL people, both clean and unclean. But the Spirit is a spirit of love and cannot resist drawing disparate elements together – not apart. Today’s scripture has a broader vision of the future and a greater hope for our humanity than we have ever imagined, a vision articulated by the 148^th Psalm, which sings of a time when all the earth and all created things shall praise the Lord. That means change!

How does that speak to our fear that our community or nation will never be the same again with the inclusion of immigration? How do we reach out to each other to find common ground when the differences in our values and ideals seem so great, so irreconcilable? Just think of a few of the issues which so deeply divide us – many of which we studied recently in “Confronting the Controversies:” abortion, euthanasia, affirmative action, gay rights, welfare reform, school prayer. Can we learn how to face one another in ways which do not destroy our communities, homes, schools and even our churches? The question is “How do we overcome our fear of change in order to bring about here in this City that new heaven and new earth – that place where we love everyone as Christ loved us, a place where there is peace? How do we make this place a New Jerusalem, a place of accountability and a place of lifting up?” The answer is Change. How do we overcome our fear of change? A great responsibility falls upon the Christian church to overcome the stress, the frustration of changing ideas and values, the loss of power. We are challenged by Jesus’ words, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this shall the world shall know you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.” No matter how hard the times or difficult the issues the church is to be a community of love. The answer is that we must make this change with an attitude of servanthood, communication and the everlasting assurance that God will be with us every step of the way! Amen.

*I am indebted to Gordon Venturella for the inspiration of this message.