Text: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

“Let’s be the church” is the theme that the Seasons of the Spirit worship resource suggested for today as a means of focusing on this text from Hebrews. It may strike you as a silly title to go with this text. ”What were the authors thinking when they chose this theme?” “Aren’t we already the church?” you may ask. “We’ve been working at being the church for a long time. Isn’t it a little late in the game to raise this as a theme?”

Then, the resource suggested we sing “We Are the Church,” Avery and Marsh’s once popular hymn from the early 1970’s. It may seem a little dated and simplistic to our sophisticated ears. When I decided to use it in the service anyway, I could hear Carol Bartlett’s dismayed voice. The one time we sang this song at Lakeshore, a number of years ago, I remember her protest. Somewhere in her past, she had been around children who had been taught the chorus and had sung it over and over ad nauseum.

Yet, there may also to be some wisdom afoot here. Yes, we are the church and yes we have been working at being the church for a long time. But being the church is not nearly as simple as the song sings. If we say that “I am the church and you are the church and we are the church together,” what does that mean in Palo Alto, California, in the late summer of 2007? We have some time honored practices that have served us well and may serve us yet. We also have genuine questions and concerns about what it means for us to be the church right here, right now. Some of the solutions we worked out in the past are not serving us so well. None of us is getting any younger and the culture keeps changing around us, leaving us with faulty assumptions and outdated methods for bearing witness to the world in which we are embedded. “Let’s be the church” may seem glib on the surface; still, it may be a challenge for us to live into the future that God has for us as God’s people gathered in this faith community.

What has become known as the Letter to the Hebrews almost did not make it into the Bible, but it has become an important source of Christian wisdom and understanding. Originally, the creators of the canon had to attribute it to Paul to justify its inclusion. Contemporary scholars are quite sure it was not written by Paul, nor is it really a letter, at least not in the tradition of Paul’s letters. It reads more like a long sermon. It is not known for whom the book was written or when or by whom. It does seem pretty clear that the exhortation was written for a group of Jews and gentiles, possibly gathered in Rome, in a time between periods of active persecution of early Christians. The writer reminds his audience of the persecution that they, and their immediate predecessors, have known; and the writer also seems keenly aware that there is more persecution just ahead.

I highlight this because I think it is important for us to acknowledge, as we consider this ancient witness, along with what it means for us to be church, that we do not live in a period between persecutions. Though we surely have had and will continue to have our own experiences of suffering, pain and death, few, if any of us, have first hand experience of being persecuted for our faith, of being hunted, hounded, humiliated and martyred for our belief in Jesus, the Christ. My guess is that this rather privileged position we occupy makes it difficult for us to wrap our minds around the depth and passion of these ancient texts.

What we do experience though is living in an age in which our faith seems increasingly irrelevant to the majority of the culture in which we are embedded. In age that is scientifically and technologically sophisticated, the ancient truth claims of our faith can seem as silly as slogans like “Let’s be the church” and songs like “We Are the Church.” As Bob pointed out last Sunday, writers like Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris write books on the irrelevance of God and the evil done in the name of God and religion, and those volumes become best sellers; even Mother Teresa loses sight of where God may be present among the unrelieved squalor and suffering of Calcutta. It may be easy to skate the surface of Christian faith, but it is more challenging than we often admit to live it deeply.

Still, the ancient words may infiltrate our consciousness with a spark of hope, a dollop of faith, just enough love, and we lift our heads to see if there may yet be something significant in our tradition. Ironically, part of the focus of the book of Hebrews is on those members of the community who were slipping away, losing hope, forgoing faith in the Jesus movement in favor of the less demanding conventional traditions with which they were more familiar. The writer over and again calls people to keep the faith – even when it is faith in the unseen and the unknown, even when it is hanging on to a promise unrealized, even when it is walking a road toward an unknown region.

“Even when it’s tough,” the writer seems to say, “let’s be the church, let’s hold on, let’s live into God’s future.” Toward the end of the exhortation to be faithful, to be the church, the writer says, “Oh, yes, there is some assembly required. There are a few practical guidelines I can give you, some instructions that might be helpful in carrying on the work.”

First and foremost, there is love. It is the substance of which the whole enterprise is made. “Let mutual love continue.” What a wonderful word, so deceptively simple. “Of course!” we would say. But wait…this is not nearly as easy to do as it is to say. This is not sentimental love; it is not self-giving love, in the sense of sacrificing one’s self to an unresponsive or ungrateful other; it is not congenital niceness. It is love that is characterized by sharing and compassion and, as Thelma Parodi pointed out Tuesday, by respect. It is love that does not make room for backbiting, gossip, or polite put downs. It is love that recognizes the other as my sister or brother, like me, a child of God. It is love that challenges me to give my best and most careful attention to how I treat those who are closest to me. It is love that does not allow me to take for granted those who are members of my own family or community. It is love grounded in mindfulness.

Then there are several natural extensions that follow from that sort of mutual love. Hospitality to strangers is vital to the life of a faith community. How do we welcome strangers to our life together? How do we make room for others? How do we say, like my southern relatives, ‘Y’all come” or as the old hymn says, “Whosoever will may come” or, in our best western parlance, “Howdy, stranger, you’re welcome here.” Our tendency, too often, is to be self-protective, to close the doors and lock them tight against the dangers, known and unknown, of the outside world, those who might rob us or attack us or challenge us or just do things differently. If we’re going to be church, we have to make sure the doors are open to one and all.

There is the thorny matter of those in prison and those being tortured. Most likely the writer is referring to folk from their own community who had been imprisoned and tortured for their practice of the faith. Still, the word of concern of for prisoners and victims of torture is not irrelevant to our current reality. Our creation of a vast and unwieldy prison system that targets the poor and people of color raises questions about how we practice what Jesus said about care for the least and also what it means to practice mutual love and hospitality. “Remember these sisters and brothers,” says the writer, “as if you yourself were among the imprisoned and tortured.” This is ministry is a function of the compassion that is key to the gospel of Jesus, the Christ.

A word about marriage and sex also lifts up the practice of mutual love, of compassion, care and respect in our most intimate human relationships. It is not a word, exalting the nuclear family or a single, narrow definition of heterosexual relationship. It is a word modeled on the ancient covenant between God and her people. It is a word that adjures all people to be faithful and loving in their relationships, so that everyone involved, self and other, feels respected and is seen and treated as a child of God, rather than as a disposable object. If true love has an opposite it may be objectification of the other, failure to treat the other as human, a loving and loved creation of God.

Then there is an admonition to remember those who have taught us and helped to shape our lives in the faith community. What’s that? You say I’ve skipped over one. Hmmm…oh that one! the one about money. Wow! I wonder how many good Christian folk skip over that one. I remember hearing Jim Wallis talking about biblical literalists of the Christian Right who are so obsessed with issues of sexual morality. (It takes some fancy interpretation to make issues like gay marriage and abortion biblical concerns at all.) Then these same literalists seem to forget to remember all the passages, especially those in the gospels attributed to Jesus, that critique the accumulation of wealth and advocate care for the poor. “Keep your lives free from love of money…” What a liberating gift! “Be content with what you have…” “Oh, to be free of all this stuff I carry around, that I have to store and keep up and protect.” Remember those birds of the air and those lilies of the field and how God cares for them. “Well, yes, but…can I really count on God in my retirement?” Here was a community facing persecution, imprisonment, torture, and martyrdom and the writer has the audacity to remind them, “…we can say with confidence: ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’” Could we live like that? Is that what it means to be the church? To let go of our anxieties, to forego our fears, to trust that the future is in God’s hands and that God will indeed provide for our every need?

Ok, then there is that word about appreciation and remembrance of those who have taught us and shaped us, that great cloud of witnesses who gather round when we meet to worship and to serve, the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers in the faith, whose legacy we are as the church of Jesus Christ. We are encouraged to “consider the outcome of their way of life” and “to imitate their faith.”

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Therefore, let’s be the church, the body of Christ, the people of God who, among other things like preparing budgets and managing property and setting church policy also practice mutual love, hospitality for strangers, compassion for prisoners and victims of torture, faithful relationships, simple living without greed and accumulation of goods, and the wisdom of the elders. “…let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God…” Let us “not neglect to do good and share what we have.”

Simple, obvious guidelines for Godly living, for being the church? Yes and no. If we repeat them glibly and mindlessly, they will remain essentially meaningless, irrelevant to the world around us. What if we really tried to live like that instead? Let’s be that kind of church; can we?