at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

On the astronomical calendar, today is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. On the secular calendar, today is Father’s Day. On the choir’s calendar, this is the last time they will be singing before taking their summer break. And on our church’s calendar, the year is coming to a close. Last week, the young people did a great job of leading us in worship. And now that Sunday School is over, and the last day of public school will take place this coming week, many of you will be taking off on summer vacation, or at least taking a break from coming to church.

And so I would like to spend a couple of minutes talking about this past year. I believe this has been a watershed year in the life of the First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ. And that is because this is the year that we really began to focus on what it means to be Christ’s disciples.

Over these past 12 months, I have talked and written and preached extensively about our transition from a membership model to a discipleship model of church. In a membership model church, the focus is to get and keep members in order to fill board vacancies and increase the number of pledging units. But in a discipleship church, the goal is to help each person continually grow in relationship with God through Christ. In a discipleship church, the question to be answered is not “are our numbers up?” but rather how are we deepening our relationship with Christ? How are we answering Christ’s call to serve within and beyond the walls of our church? How are we living out our faith, not just on Sunday morning but every moment of our lives?

As part of becoming of a discipleship church, we have encouraged you to engage in spiritual practices to nurture your journey of faith and relationship with God. We have already seen the fruit of this transition to a discipleship model church: participation in Sunday evening small groups has doubled; pledging has increased 26%; spiritual relationships have developed and deepened, and lay people have been inspired and empowered to lead book groups, develop new ministries, and to conceive of and run with new ways of doing things, such as the recent Time and Talent Stewardship campaign.

At our annual program meeting last month, we unanimously voted to adopt new purpose, vision, and mission statements to reflect our transition to a discipleship church.

First our purpose, which you’ll find on the front of your bulletin. Say it with me: “Forming Disciples, Transforming Lives.” If you know or remember nothing else about this church, remember those four words: “Forming disciples, transforming lives.” That’s what we’re all about.

Second, our vision statement, which answers the question of what God is calling us to be and become in our community and the world. Our vision statement: “We are called together to embrace God’s transformation of our lives and our world by becoming and serving as Christ’s disciples.”

Finally, our new mission statement, which describes how our vision will be achieved: “Our mission is to form disciples of Christ and transform our lives, and the lives of others, through Christ. We do this by nurturing our relationship with God through the spiritual practices of daily prayer, weekly worship, daily bible reading, serving within and beyond our church, developing spiritual relationships, and giving generously.”

These six practices, or “marks of discipleship” – which I have talked about repeatedly this past year, and are represented by these beautiful banners made by Janet Clough & Co. as constant reminder – these six practices are presented not as a mechanistic approach to the Christian faith, but rather as habits of the soul that open us to the wonder and mystery of God’s active presence which transform our relationships and our lives.

Now, as you’ve been listening to me these last couple of minutes, you may have noticed that three important words keep coming up:

First of course is discipleship. Jesus calls us to be disciples, and commissions us to go out and make disciples. That is job one, our primary purpose, our reason for being.

The second word is transformation. God wants to work in and through our hearts so that our lives can be transformed – from being lost to being found, from being in exile to coming home, from shadows to light, from sorrow to joy, from brokenness to wholeness, from death to new life. That is the Good News of Jesus Christ.

And the third word is relationship. You’ve heard me say it so many times before, and here I go, one more time – it’s all about relationship. Everything important in life is rooted in our relationship with God through Christ and with each other.

Being a disciple is all about relationship, and our transition from a membership model to a discipleship model of church is all about focusing on our relationship with God through Christ and with each other. And the six marks of discipleship are all about relationship. They are the way we can grow in our relationship with God and in turn with each other, the way we can tend to those relationships, and allow God to do something in us and with us.

Our scripture lessons this morning are all about relationship – experiencing and listening to God and responding to God, and experiencing the wholeness and fulfillment and joy that comes from that relationship.

First, there is Job, who is a good and faithful man with a loving wife, ten children, and much property. But then, Job’s world collapses. All of his servants are slaughtered by enemies; all of his camels are stolen, and lightning kills his sheep. A desert wind lifts up the roof of the house and the house falls down, killing all his children as they eat dinner together around the table. Then itching sores erupt all over Job’s body, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. And finally, left to scratching his sores with broken pieces of pottery, Job erupts, saying “God curse the day that I was born! Why didn’t I die at birth! Why am I suffering? I am innocent!!” Job has lots and lots of questions for God. And finally, in chapter 38, God speaks.

You are talking, talking, and you don't know anything, God says. Then he gives Job two orders: one, pull yourself together and act like the human being you are; and two, listen to me and answer the questions I'm going to ask you. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks Job. “Have you commanded the morning since your days began? Do you give the horse its might? Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars?” God goes on like this for four chapters, talking with power, beauty, compassion, anger, tenderness, sarcasm, understanding, and brilliance. We only have part of God's talking in today's lesson, but it’s enough to get the idea.

What's going on in this passage? God doesn’t answer one of Job's questions but instead talks about morning stars and the creation of water. But here’s the important thing: Job is listening: Job is experiencing God; and that experience of God transforms his life. Job realizes that before, he knew a lot about God and even went so far as to be absolutely faithful to the God he knew about; but until now he did not know God, he had not listened to God speak in person, and had not responded as a human being to God's voice. Now Job can do that, because now he has a relationship with God.

Our gospel lesson, the story of Jesus’ stilling of the storm, is also about relationship. After a long day of teaching, Jesus gets into a boat with his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee. But as familiar land recedes into the horizon, the skies darken and the winds begin to howl and the waters start to churn.

And while the disciples are frantically trying to prevent their boat from sinking, Jesus is fast asleep in the stern. In their despair, they cry out to him, “Do you not care that we are perishing?” He gets up, commands the wind to stop and the sea to be still, and then turns, and asks his followers "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?" The disciples have been following Jesus for years, but while they admire and respect him, the disciples’ do not yet understand that their relationship with Jesus is simultaneously a relationship with God. They have heard him, but they have not recognized his voice as God's. And the minute they hit a crisis, they throw everything they’ve learned overboard. They experience panic and frenzy rather than the centered and secure peace of God. Jesus’ stilling of the storm, however, catches their attention, and in time they will hear and respond to the incarnate God and fully live into the relationship that is God's gift to us.

So what do these lessons say about us, and what do they say about God? Well a lot – a lot about relationship and how we get it wrong, and a lot about the nature of the God with whom we are created to live in relationship.

How many of us are like Job? How many of us let knowing about God substitute for knowing God? Knowing about God is not the same as being in relationship and listening and responding to God. Job realizes this after he experiences God, and we can realize the same thing when we let God break into our own lives and allow a relationship to happen.

And like the disciples, we get angry at God for not helping, we accuse God of not caring. That’s what happens when we substitute knowledge about God for a relationship with God. We can learn, like the disciples did, that we human beings need not be alone but can live in relationship to God by living in relationship to the human being who is God.

If you don’t yet have a relationship with God, now is the time to develop one, now is the time to become a disciple of Christ and to grow closer to God through the six marks of discipleship. Yes, it can be scary entering into something that might change you, that might transform your life. But hear the Voice in the whirlwind saying "Peace, be still!" Hear God's voice, know it, respond to it. Live the new life of relationship with God through Christ. Relationship – that’s what it’s all about. Amen.

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