Nancy Myer
“All Together Now”
November 17, 2024
Hebrews 10:15-25
Hebrews 10:15-25
15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
16 ‘This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds’,
17he also adds,
‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.’
18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
19 Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Sermon
It was about so much more than just the food. Fifty-one days ago, on Friday, September 27, Hurricane Helene rushed through western North Carolina, leaving devastation upon devastation in its wake. Many mountain residents were caught by surprise at just how much damage the storm could and would do… and all of them were left with equal amounts of heartbreak and frustration. And yet in the midst of so much uncertainty came an opportunity to come together as a community.
Paul Galbreath lives in Asheville, NC. Having recently retired as a professor at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Charlotte, Paul and his wife, Jan, spend their days in the mountains of North Carolina, where they’ve lived for a decade. Dr. Galbreath is a writer, and he took some time to write about their experience following the storm. He wrote, “By Saturday morning, it became clear that there would be no quick resolution to this crisis. Most of us had food in our freezers that was quickly thawing. Fortunately we have a gas stove and a charcoal grill, so we offered to host a neighborhood meal. Neighbors brought whatever needed cooking, and I manned the grill for four hours. After most of us had eaten, one of my neighbors who had headed back to his house came back down our stairs to tell me that two women were walking around the neighborhood looking for a place to grill their package of meat. He wanted to know if he could direct them to us. Of course! I made sure the coals were still hot and proceeded to meet a mother and daughter who lived around the corner from us. For the next few days, varied groups of neighbors met daily for meals. Stores were closed, streets largely impassable, so we all shared our food supply. Equally important was the chance to connect, to pool resources, and to share any news that was available. Mostly, we longed for human contact and an opportunity to work through the grief and trauma that we were experiencing… While I privately labeled the gatherings as ‘eucharistic meals,’ there was no overtly religious content to our gatherings; simply the basics of food and wine shared together with any and all who found their way to our dining room. We were filled with gratitude for the gifts of food and one another.”
Dr. Galbreath said it himself. Food was needed, yes, and a creative way to cook it. But it was about so much more than just the food. It was just as much about the human connection, the space to process together.
Our scripture today is one about community. Perhaps we wouldn’t pick up on that at first glance. There’s a lot in there about Jesus the Priest making a once-and-for-all sacrifice of his own self, and to be honest, that probably made a lot more sense to a Jewish audience 2000 years ago and less sense to us here and now. Instead, I invite you to focus in on the theme of togetherness: “do not neglect to meet together” Hebrews says.
This togetherness that the Church is to embody must be marked by three characteristics. 1) We are to approach with a true heart in full assurance of (pause) FAITH. 2) Hold fast to the confession of our (Pause) HOPE. 3) Provoke one another to (pause) LOVE and good deeds.
Three features that are to define the Church: faith, hope, and love. We’ve heard these before. We know well Paul’s words in his letter to the Corinthians – “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.” But how do we accomplish this? How do we get to the point where we are embodying those three characteristics? How exactly do we go about approaching everything with faith, holding fast to hope, and provoking one another to love? We do it together.
Such togetherness is not exactly easy in these days. We are living in absolutely polarizing times. We now find ourselves on the other side of the election that we knew would do anything but unite our country. We could bury our heads in the sand, retreat to our individual lives, wait until conditions are more favorable and then re-emerge and re-engage. Or we could gravitate to one another, be intentional about meeting together, and creatively imagine how we can live out faith, hope, and love in some concrete ways.
The good news, UPC, is that I’ve already seen you doing this. You listen to one another’s faith stories in Sunday School classes and step up to share your own. You answered a call just this week to donate food to TABLE so hungry children in Orange County can be fed. You make baptismal vows and then sign up to tell stories in Godly Play or get messy making paper at Vacation Bible School.
I’ve seen you living into hope! When the boiler wasn’t working and the sanctuary was chilly, you put on a coat and kept coming on Sunday mornings, because being together was important. You show up to bear witness to the resurrection when one of our own dies. You drive to Montreat for a weekend retreat and put yourself out there to get to know new friends from other generations.
And love? You’ve got that one down. With the urging of our Racial Equity Team, I have seen you have hard conversations about how we can be better siblings to all of God’s children. You pour resources into campus ministry so that over 150 people can gather for an alumni weekend and celebrate over 30 years and counting of a ministry where young people had a place to belong, a place to believe, and a place to become who God created them to be. You put up a banner outside over the front steps that says “We Choose Welcome” – because you mean it.
On Thursday night, the session and the board of deacons had a joint meeting, and Mike Edmiston started us off with a devotion. In that he spoke of a meditation he remembered from Presbyterian Campus Ministry Sunday in 2019. In her meditation, the student said, “you can’t heal from on high.” Mike still remembers it today because though he wasn’t in any particular need of healing that day, a few years prior he had been in a place where he really did need some help and healing. At a time when he most needed support, he sought it out here. What he found here in this community of faith were people who cared for him, loved him, and carried him through.
The gifts of faith, hope, and love – gifts we receive from Christ – you cannot find those just anywhere. There is not exactly a surplus of any of those in the world right now. But when we come together and work hard to practice them together, we get a glimpse of that kin-dom life and lean a little bit more in the direction of that beloved community for which we all desperately long, especially when the world gets to feeling bleak.
A friend of mine is on staff at Quail Hollow Presbyterian Church in Charlotte. One Sunday morning the Choir Director called her and said, “I think we’re in for an interesting morning.” A car accident had knocked out power in a corner of southeast Charlotte and there was less than an hour before folks would show up expecting to gather for worship. The sanctuary has a lot of dark wood and stained glass windows that don’t let in much natural light. The space is too cavernous for voices with no amplification, so the staff circled up with some elders to start problem-solving. They looked at each other, and then without words, but all in agreement, got up and started working. Two people walked down the main hallway, opening doors and blinds to shed some light. Another made sure the bathrooms had enough light from the windows to be used. They walked into the Fellowship Hall, the only room with large windows, and opened all the blinds, pushed back the partition, and let the light in.
Someone opened the closet and started pulling out chairs. Another grabbed a podium and set it up. The piano in the corner was uncovered and opened. Yet another person went into the sanctuary to get the cross from the communion table, and three others grabbed a cart and started loading it with hymnals. By the time worship started, ushers were stopping people as they approached and redirecting them to the Fellowship Hall. The choir was in position, the organist was on piano, and the room was filling up. It was time to worship, and it was bright in there! The sermon series they were currently doing was called… and you can’t make this up… “Powered by the Spirit!” Of course, just as the worship service began, the power came back on. They all laughed but continued where they were, because as it turns out, they really liked being closer together in that smaller space. My friend described the experience by saying, “The Spirit felt alive and more tangible.” Stripped of their usual creature comforts, they were in literal darkness. And yet powered by faith, hope, love, and the desire to be together to worship in the light, their community figured out how to come together.
So why do we “do” Church? Why is it that we make the effort to show up here on Sunday mornings, to attend mid-week small groups and committee meetings, to gather together in person to sing, pray, wonder, and respond? We do it because it matters. And part of why it matters is because it’s how we connect with faith, hope, and love.
We do it because more than anything else, God wants to give us the three-fold gifts of faith, hope and love – and God also knows that those gifts are best experienced when we are together. God calls us to this place, to this work, to this ministry and we would do well not to “neglect to meet together”.
We do it because when the going gets tough, we need our people, and we need to be reminded that we belong to God. I’ve seen you show up, again and again, as the Church. And I know you – and we – will continue to show up. We will continue to show up because God’s story is OUR story. We will continue to do it – together – because this is a world desperately in need of faith, hope, and love, and goodness knows we can’t do it on our own. Amen.