I love the church. It has changed my life. And the church isn’t the buildings. It’s not the programs. It’s not the budget or even this sermon or liturgy. The church is the people.

You, my friends. You have changed my life. By showing up. By encouraging. By inspiring with your kind words, great ideas, and loving actions. An agnostic buddy of mine once asked, “What do you see in religion? I don’t think it’s all that impressive.”

I agreed. “It’s not meant to be impressive. It’s meant to be faithful. Faithful to the idea that love will win and that grace is good news.”

I’m the worst evangelist. I’m not all too concerned with building something impressive here. I don’t need to shine. I don’t need much more than love and grace. Yet the church, and myself… have often gone for impressive.

Instead of being a place of love, the church is a place of judgment. Commenting on what people wear. How their hair is styled (if they have hair). I heard from a church that my mom was going to hell because she was divorced. I heard gay people were heading straight to hell. I heard all Muslims were terrorists. One congregation even told me that those who were born before Jesus’ time or who had grown up with a different understanding other than what was found in their church would be going to hell.

That’s not love. That is not good news. There is no grace in those messages.

Add to the fact that the church can seem to be a warehouse of petty grievances. The scorekeeper of personal slights. A place of emotional abuse, and covered-up physical abuse as scandals are uncovered.

Grace is in short supply. My first call in the Toledo area was to attract new families and develop a faith formation program. On the day we had 6 families join the church, a long-time member said, “Well, what happens to me now?”

Through the years, I’ve puzzled over that statement. It’s the type of sentence that makes your brain come to a screeching halt. I’m reminded of the comedian Lewis Black’s theory about aneurisms. “The American medical profession doesn’t know why we get aneurisms. It’s when a blood vessel bursts in your head for no apparent reason. There’s a reason.”[1]

Black goes on to say that it’s nonsense sentences like this that your brain is trying to figure out that short circuit everything and cause your brain to explode. Well, what happens to me now? WHAT HAPPENS TO ME NOW?! Now that new members are here? Now they can learn from you? Now that they liked you so much that they will give up their Sunday morning and spend time with you when they could be having coffee and watching a baking show. Or an NFL preview show. Or whatever is on TV on a Sunday morning because I haven’t watched anything for 9 years! Well, what happens to me now? Now you have more people to learn stories from. More faces to see the face of Christ in. More folks willing to work on your committees.

Well, what happens to me now? UGH.

It’s what the laborers in our Bible story were thinking. They showed up, they were working for a long, long time. All day in fact. And the boss brings in new folks. And at the end of the day, everyone gets the same pay. And the longtime workers look around and say, “Well, what happens to me now?”

As if to say, “Why did I even bother? Why did I work so hard? Why is everyone getting the same?”

Are you mad that God is generous? That’s the punchline of the parable. And our answer as people of faith is often “Yes.”

It’s like that joke of Peter showing people around heaven. He’s leading the tour and saying, “Here’s the movie theatre! What’s playing? ANYTHING YOU WANT! Here’s our buffet where you can eat all you want and never gain a pound. Here’s your favorite band in concert. And a living scrapbook where you get to relive your favorite memories. But please… please folks, let’s be quiet as we pass these folks, they think they’re the only ones here.”

I’ve heard that punchline with the Baptists or Catholics but it can be given to us as well. We who judge. We who are hesitant to give grace. We who say, “Well, what happens to me now?”

To top it off, the woman who said this… Her name… Her name was Grace. I was dumbfounded by that statement, but after nine years and some distance I can now hold it a little better. She loved her church and is an amazing servant, so it has taken me time to offer Grace grace for her statement. Grace was feeling her age. I get that now. I remember walking Eve into school for our first meet the teacher night when she was in kindergarten. I looked over and said, “What are those adults doing here?!” But those weren’t adults, those were 5^th graders and they are supposed to be there. Now Eve is a 5^th grader and I wonder who let all those babies in the school. But they aren’t babies they are kindergartner. I wonder where all that time went. The days are long but the years are short, and maybe Grace was feeling that too. She must have looked at those young families and wondered where the time went.

Maybe Grace thought it was her table. But it’s not. This is God’s table, it’s not yours or mine. What I should have said a decade ago and now say to you my dear church, “What happens to you now? Look at the love God has given you. Look at the fruits of your labor. I love you so much Grace, I want the world to meet you. I want the world to know you! These 6 families have heard God’s call and I hope they’ll spread the message of your service. I hope they will see Christ in you like I see Christ in you.”

Grace had been in the vineyard for so long, she forgot that God’s table is one of plenty! God decides how much to give and gives more than we can ever imagine; more grace than we expect. God even gives more than we would give ourselves. In the face of such abundance, we are called to be generous as God is generous. Indeed, at God’s potluck of grace, even the last in line have more than enough to eat!

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been at the table or working for God all your life or in the last 5 minutes. You can be a Christian all your life, and you can be a death-bed convert. Y’all get the same thing. Y’all get heaven. And remember, heaven and hell present the same opportunity and condition. We’re all around the table together. The difference between heaven and hell is how we treat each other.[2]

In places of grace, people are able to learn through failure. Things can be tried and things can be started and things can be stopped. It’s the idea that “For everything there is a season.” Church doesn’t really get seasons. We like things to continue as they were and if we stop them, then we’re failing somehow.

But let me try to describe it the way the Rev Otis Moss III did. He said, “Who here remembers phonographs? How about 78s? 45s? 33s? Anyone have any 8 tracks? We know you have some 8 tracks in your basements still. How about those cassette tapes? Side A & Side B and mix tapes? How about CDs? How about MP3s? Streaming? Apple or Spotify or whatever..?”

Moss says that you can play Amazing Grace on any of those and the message remains the same. The medium doesn’t matter, the message is the same. Yet the problem is that churches deify method and can miss the message.

Moss is on it. It doesn’t matter if you play Amazing Grace on an LP, 8 track, cassette, cd, mp3 or streaming. The issue is when we deify LP in a streaming world and wonder why we’re missing out on a whole new generation.[3]

The message is grace! The Good News is that there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God shown in Jesus Christ! You can be baptized as a baby or baptized right here, right now… Don’t worry about the method, just tell somebody! Play the song! Sing about God’s amazing grace!

Cause I’m about to tell you what will happen to you. What happens to you? More love! More grace! More contact with God and your neighbor! More hope! More laughter! More potlucks! More feeding people! More homes built in Costa Rica! More youth on mission trips to Pipestem or DC! There’s more than enough here, people! The problem isn’t that our method is messy, it’s that we forgot the message!

God’s grace is sufficient! Why are you judging? You need to be loving! Are you envious God is so generous? God doesn’t care, you still get grace! You still get peace! You are still loved. So come! Come to the table! Leave all that weight behind. Come to me you who are heavy burdened. Come to the table and know the grace of God. Amen.

Works Cited

^[1] https://youtu.be/sJ0s0KUUpxo

[2] https://www.uccmedina.org/sermons/come-to-the-table/

[3] Chautauqua Sermon from Summer 2019, listened to on a CD in my car driving around this month.