“We Convince by Our Presence”
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Pleasantville UCC, November 22, 2009
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up
 about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”  (Matthew 6:34, The Message)

When I was a teenager, growing up in California, I stumbled into the junior high youth fellowship program held every week at First Congregational Church of Berkeley.  I wasn’t planning on being there.  I just wanted to hang out with my friends and, as it happened, they were headed to “Fellowship” that afternoon – so I joined them.

I can still see in my mind’s eye exactly how the church steeple looked towering above our heads as we piled out of the car that delivered us to the church’s door.  It was then and only then that I realized that this program called “Fellowship” was at a church.  My Jewish mother was not going to be pleased.

That day began a journey that changed my life.  I stumbled into a place I had not intended to go, I stumbled into a community I had known nothing about, and that place and those people changed me forever.

It would be a long time before I began to see myself as a Christian.  And the truth is, if they had tried to force it down my throat, I would have run screaming from the building.  No, that’s not the way they worked.  They seemed to believe in the words of that old Christian song, “They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

Those people changed my life, and the way they did it was to start small and make it real:

Alice Rodriguez drove me home every Thursday night after Chancel Choir rehearsals so I could be part of the musical life of the church.

Bob Lyness traveled all over the world building Safeway Grocery Stories, but he was never too busy to show up on Sunday nights to be a youth leader for the very same program that drew me in and saved my life.

Genie and Lloyd Bridges welcomed me to worship every Sunday like I was the only person they had been waiting to see that day and I had just made their day by showing up.

Boyard Rowe, the Business Administrator of the Church, gave me a job when I really needed one – relying upon the recommendations of people in the church who knew me better than he did.

All of these people played a part in changing my life.  All of these people convinced me, by their very presence, that being a part of a Christian Church and believing in this Savior called Jesus might be a very good thing to consider.

We call this Sunday before Thanksgiving, “Thanksgiving Sunday.”  It is the last Sunday of the church’s year.  Next Sunday we start the church year cycle all over with the First Sunday of Advent.  The first Sunday of Advent is for Christians a kind of New Year’s Day.

As the last Sunday of the Christian year, this is a day to gather up the fullness of the past year; a time to be thankful for all that God has done.  This is a day to harvest our gratitude for the blessings we have been given, including the opportunity to live our lives in the context of a loving congregation.

But Thanksgiving Sunday also happens to be what we call here at Pleasantville, “Consecration Sunday.”  On Consecration Sunday, we gather together our gifts of time, our promises of financial support and our willingness to allow God’s Spirit to shape us and change us, so that together we might move into the coming year, supporting our mutual ministry at Pleasantville and beyond. 

Every year, as I prepare my thoughts for Consecration Sunday, I have a custom: I read my last Consecration Sunday sermon.  Last year I spoke to you about gratitude.  I spoke about how important it is to know when we are blessed and how important it is to acknowledge the One who is the source of all our blessings. 

This year, I want to bring you a simple message and that message is the theme of our stewardship season: we convince by our presence.  As Christians, we are called to live a life that convinces by example, witness, and acts of loving kindness, that the One who promised is faithful.

Back in the 90’s the initials WWJD became popular as a reminder to thousands of Christians that Jesus should be the example they followed in daily life.  WWJD: What Would Jesus Do?  It’s a good question for Christians to be asking – and on a regular basis.

For Christians, to convince by our presence means that we need to be asking ourselves, “What Would Jesus Do?” and to have the answer reflected in our daily lives, because God is calling us to do what Jesus would do if he were in our place.

To convince by our presence is to minister in the name of Jesus to people who are in need.

To convince by our presence is to minister in the name of Jesus for people who are hurt. 

To convince by our presence is to minister in the name of Jesus to someone we bump into at the grocery store, someone we encounter at work, someone in our neighborhood that we used to consider a stranger.

How would Jesus act?  What would Jesus do?  What would Jesus say?  That's our calling, that's our responsibility.  And if we are able to live out that calling, we will go a long, long way to convincing people by our very presence that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

One of the reasons I wanted to use Eugene Peterson’s translation of our gospel text this morning was the way he rendered these words:

What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving.

People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works.  Steep your life in  God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.  Don’t worry about missing out.  You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.  Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now…”  Being part of a church means being part of a living covenant between people.  Like any covenant, it takes work, it takes commitment, it requires understanding and love and forgiveness and resilience. 

Our life in covenant with one another encourages us to grow in our spiritual development.  We provoke one another to acts of kindness.  We build one another up in love.  We help one another to try to be the living presence of Jesus in the world.

Our pledges are not simply our way of giving to the life and the ministry of this congregation.  Our pledges are one of the ways that we offer ourselves to God.  Our gifts are symbols of our labor, but they are also symbols of ourselves and the way we want to be in the world.  We want to be Jesus for one another.  We want to be Jesus for the world.  Because, as the 16^th century, Christian mystic, St. Teresa of Avila said:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world…
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

We convince by our presence.  I believe with all my heart that this is one of the most important things the church can do in these days.