It feels like a convergence, multiple events coming together to clarify direction.

William Sloan Coffin dies on Wednesday, April 12. He serves as campus chaplain at Yale, then pastor of Riverside Church in New York City. He is a prophetic voice for peace, social justice, and civil rights, Gary Trudeau, the cartoonist, immortalizes Coffin as the off-beat Rev. Sloan in Doonesbury.

One of my favorite quotes is “We all belong one to another. That’s the way God made us. Christ died to keep us that way. Our sin is only and always that we put asunder what God has joined together.”

Since coming to St. Luke’s, I cherish another Coffin quote: “Diversity may be both the hardest thing to live with and the most dangerous thing to be without.”

Bill Coffin dies at the age of 81.

Second, Rev. Dave and I attend the Large Church Initiative in Washington, D.C. This yearly event is designed to strengthen the ministry of congregations averaging more than three-hundred fifty in worship.

At Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, I hear Jim Wallis speak. Wallis is an evangelical Christian and liberal social activist.
He is the author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.

What is so refreshing about Jim’s speech is his call to move beyond the old polarizing labels of Left and Right, without having to settle for a mushy middle. He encourages us to search for the moral center of a question. “Find common ground by seeking higher ground and you’ll discover new and unexpected partners.”

He speaks of the rise of a generation in search of an agenda worthy enough for the whole of their lives. Young people are hungry for a new moral middle, he says, not leaning to the left or to the right, but digging deeply into the questions that affect all of us. The day of the monologue by either side is over. The dialogue has begun.

Number Three! Two days ago, four staff from St. Luke’s (Jim Ramsey, Lynda Fickling, Chris Wilterdink and I) attend the Fusion Conference. Dan Kimball is the leader. Dan is the pastor of Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, California. He is helping churches embrace the culture, inviting postmodern adults (young adults) into community with God and each other.

As I listen to Dan, I think about Chris Wilterdink and Sarah Boon who are gathering contact information for the 18-27 year old crowd related to the St. Luke’s family. Check out the information in the worship bulletin.

Dan reminds us that, as Christian churches, we have an advantage. In our culture, virtually everyone has some knowledge of Jesus. When people think about Jesus, their thoughts are generally positive. People respect him for what they believe he stands for, even if they don’t know his teachings or believe the resurrection. People are simply open to talking about Jesus.

The barrier to conversation is a set of misperceptions about the church. People are open to Jesus; but not to the church. One young woman says, “Oh, I’m all about Jesus. It’s religion that I can’t stand.”

Dan says that one of the major misconceptions that we will have to interpret is that Christianity is an organized religion with a political agenda.

If we want to be authentic, we need to confess that religion has not always played a positive role. It has too often been sectarian and divisive. Religion is often used as a sword to divide, rather than a balm to heal. .

If we are going to have anything to say to the culture, we will need to claim our identity as an organic community which values diversity, is a catalyst for hope, and takes action in the places Jesus frequents.

These three witnesses, Bill Coffin, Jim Wallis, and Dan Kimball, focus my thoughts as I watch St. Luke’s prepare for five volunteer in mission opportunities this summer: two teams to hurricane relief in Mississippi, two teams to serve the poor in the San Luis Valley near Alamosa and in Olney Springs, east of Pueblo, and a team to Habitat for Humanity in Carbondale.

I believe that faith makes hope possible. And hope is the single most important ingredient for changing the world. Instead of being divisive, faith can be reconciling; instead of wounding; it can be healing; instead of debilitating, empowering; instead of creating more obstacles, we have a faith that removes them.

It is true that many people today are hungry for spirituality, but have no appetite for religion. Still others, who are part of a religious community, are asking how their faith might be connected to the urgent problems of the world. But spiritual interest may no longer be enough. In today’s world, the test of any authentic faith is action.

In the Bible, faith is not something you posses but rather something you practice. You have to put it into action or it really doesn’t mean anything. Faith changes things. It is the energy for transformation, both for the individual and for a society.

As I listen to people, a recurring spiritual theme is the hunger for new dialogue, for bridge building, for new relationships across former dividing lines. I see how weary people have become of the old liberal-conservative debates that have turned families, churches, and society into warring factions who don’t even know each other. We are looking for common ground, without compromising convictions.

We also find real enjoyment in the diversity of our faith community. When we listen to one another, we begin to realize the richness of the many traditions and experiences that are St. Luke’s today.

How do talk without promoting a political agenda? How do we help people see their lives through the lenses of faith? How do we have values-based lives that give us a sense for making decisions? How do we grow to full humanity?

We can’t do it alone. That’s what the Jewish exiles discover as they rebuild their beloved Jerusalem. Together, they repair the crumbling walls of the city – everyone with a job to do and the work fitting together. Even in the face of nay-sayers, Nehemiah and his volunteers-in-mission embrace the task, seeking renewal and hope after exile.

I am convinced that we can make a difference. We can create new ways of looking at and talking about crucial questions that could alter the framework and spirit of the current debates which have deadlocked the public discussion and blocked solutions to our most serious problems.

We are sometimes adrift, apart from our best values. Our public life is a bankrupt battlefield of competing special interests without the framework of moral discourse. At St. Luke’s, we will seek to contribute to that discourse by raising the public implications of the spiritual values we often claim to believe.

All three of my witnesses, Coffin, Wallis, and Kimball, reflect on the formation of their social, or spiritual, conscience.

My first building block for the commitment to make a difference in the lives of other persons was my mother’s rules for giving, for the giving of self and the giving of resources.

First, if there is a child that nobody else will play with, you play with him or her. It is the rule of play for us. Nobody gets left out.

Second, when someone asks for help, you help. You share pencil or paper. You share your lunch. You give canned food to the community pantry. You never pass a Salvation Army kettle, or an offering plate, or a homeless person without the giving of a gift.

My parents shaped me for participation in a community of moral conversation. Over the next several weeks, I want us to think about shaping spiritual lives. I want us to converse about finding common ground by seeking higher ground. I want us to grow toward full humanity by living the teachings of Jesus.

On May 14, Mother’s Day, I want to explore the challenge of “Raising PG kids in an X-Rated World”. I am working in Nashville, Tennessee, as a Director of Ministries with Children and Their Families, when Mary Alice Gore, “Tipper”, the wife of Al Gore, writes a book about parenting in an explicit society.
I want to look at the culture of “excess” and think about what we can do to protect our children and fight back.

On Friday, May 19, the movie, The Da Vinci Code, opens. I encourage your participation in the educational series on May 7 and 14 hosted by one of our most well-read teachers, Scott Wesson, the The Christian Connection. My sermon on May 21 is entitled, “The Water Cooler Response to the Da Vinci Code.” The movie will make Christians uncomfortable and we will have to defend what we believe. How can we be a non-anxious presence at the water cooler or over lunch, when people ask questions about the Christian faith.

On Memorial Day, May 28, War and the Way of Jesus.

How do Christians think about, talk about, support our troops in wartime?

I officiated at the funeral of the first casualty of the war in Iraq, John Edmonds. How do we honor those who lay down their lives? What criterion do we use to participate in the conversation?

On June 4, Living in Interfaith Community, what kinds of relationships do we have with persons of other faiths and why?

One June 11: Choices that Turn the World Upside DowN. We will celebrate the 50 years of ordination of women in the United Methodist tradition.

On June 18, in honor of the many families who shelter a gay or lesbian child, I am to share an open letter to a gay son.

My desire is to give us the tools to be in constructive conversation. How do we find common ground by seeking higher ground?
It is the question we ask every week as we leave this sanctuary and go into the world. What does the Lord require of us? To do (justice), to love (kindness), to walk (humbly) with God.