SISTER SLEDGE, FUNERALS, FAREWELLS, AND GOLF
In case you haven't noticed, quite often in these messages I try to craft a subject line that will make you wonder, "I wonder what he's come up with now?" There have been, based on your feedback, more than a few memorable ones over the past couple of years, but I think this week's is one of my favorites. What could a disco (disco, Lamar, disco? - COME ON, MAN!) song, a funeral, saying goodbye to some friends, and a golf tournament possibly have in common, much less be decent fodder for a weekly pastoral message? Well...
Last month, while Erin and I were up north for her brother's wedding, we took in a Pittsburgh Pirates game with my parents. For the first time since I spent a full year in Pittsburgh, our beloved Pirates are in the playoffs. Whenever Pirate glory days are remembered, one of the most beloved teams in their history, the 1979 World Champions, had as their theme Sister Sledge's 'We Are Family.' As I heard this song during a retrospective while we were there, as corny as it may sound, I thought about the church - specifically, our church.
There's nothing quite like a winning baseball team (sorry, football fans, but it's true) that galvanizes a city, bringing complete strangers together in a way that is quite uncommon. People who normally wouldn't give each other the time of day feel, well, like part of a family.
Instead of a baseball (or football) team, we have been given the ultimate common denominator that should bring us together as a family, in fact the common denominator that has called us together as a family, the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, represented each week in our congregation through the Lord's Supper. Whether we realize it or not, we ARE indeed family, for we gather through one common, shared, connection - God's love embodied in Christ, sustained by the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday of last week, I gathered with many friends, colleagues, and fellow United Methodists from across the state to give thanks to God for the life of Rev. Freddie Charles Henderson, a long-time pastor in our connection who went on to glory. Sitting in the beautiful, historic sanctuary of First United Methodist Church, I couldn't help but be reminded of the joy of being part of The United Methodist Church - the larger family of which the people of North Cross UMC are a part. In a society where so many spend so long avoiding death, running away from it as fast as we can, refusing to acknowledge that Father Time is undefeated, one of the great gifts of the church universal is that we gather in the midst of sorrow for a loved one, but in the simple act of gathering we declare once again our firm, unshakeable belief that, as the apostle Paul would say, death has no victory, death has no sting.
Without our church family, it would be very easy to get caught up in the things of this world, living in fear of the worst thing the world has to give us, death. Thanks be to God that through the family of the Church, death, and life, are kept in their proper perspective.
The last Sunday in September, we, the family of North Cross UMC, got to participate in one of the neat, but often overlooked, rituals in our church's tradition - the Order of Farewell to Church Members - as we said farewell to Gary, Shelley, and Landry Holcomb. Through this simple, neat liturgy, we gave thanks to God for our shared time together, and prayed together as a church family for our friends as they moved on to another season of their lives.
Many of you came up to me after the service and said that you'd never seen anything like that before - and for that, I am sorry. What family wouldn't gather to properly send off members of the family as they moved on to another place in their life's journey? These holy moments are part of the joy of looking at participation in the family of this (or any) congregation.
Finally, over the past few months, you may have noticed the announcements for the Methodist Children's Home for Greater New Orleans Annual Golf Tournament. Today it was a joy to be with our own Chuck Hughes, David Frady, and Lance Smith as we spent an afternoon together in great fun and fellowship while also supporting our friends at the Children's Home, one of the great ministries of the United Methodists of Louisiana. Additionally, we were represented by the leader of our Gloryland music ministry, Lance Williams, who graciously and generously served as a volunteer behind the scenes. What a joy it was to see our North Cross family so well-represented in service beyond our congregation to further God's work in another setting.
Why a whole column about these various incidents in our recent history? As you may know by now, we are spending this season of life exploring the idea of, "Why ARE We Here?" One of the main reasons we are here is because we are family, and the more intentional we are about being family to one another, the stronger the ministries of this church will be, and the stronger we will be as a whole.
Grace and Peace, Lamar