Sharing God's Gift of Love

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As I was walking back to my office on Sunday after the (indoor) potluck luncheon following the (indoor) service, I felt the warm glow of love for our congregation. The potluck was phenomenal, and the “loaves and fishes effect” was in full swing with food in abundance!

Somehow, all the logistical shifts we made due to the torrential rain seemed to fall into place: dedicated A/V volunteers, fabulous music, inspiring lay preachers and liturgist, our phenomenal Deacons, our revitalized Congregational Life board, and our amazing staff all worked together to make an enlivening (indoor) service and potluck lunch come off without a hitch! It all looked seamless and easy…but a large contingent of Plymouth folks was hard at work making everything happen. I was worried that the heavy rains would dampen our attendance and that we’d have a half-empty sanctuary, but it was quite full! YAY, Plymouth!

When I came home, the first thing I told Jane Anne was, “I love our church.”

Paul opens his first letter to the church in Corinth by saying, “I thank my God always for you, because of God’s grace that was given to you in Christ Jesus. That is, you were made rich through him in everything.” That is what I felt on Sunday. Our congregation has been enriched and enlivened by the Spirit and the wisdom of Jesus. You can feel new energy and new vitality happening in all corners of our congregation.

Maybe you came away on Sunday with a similar experience of loving God and loving the people she has called together to form Plymouth. We are not perfect, “not a congregation of the sinless,” as our membership covenant replies. And yet…there is so much goodness, so much energy, so many things percolating that I cannot help but be grateful for the abundance of wonderful folks who comprise Plymouth.

Paul speaks of the abundance of God’s grace given to us through Jesus Christ, and I see that in the incredibly giftedness of our congregation. I’m reading a good, challenging book by Yale theologian Miroslav Volf right now called, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Volf speaks about God as the ultimate giver and says that we cannot return a gift to God, who has everything and needs nothing. But he does see us as a conduit for the action of God in the world. “Faith is an expression of the fact that we exist so that the infinite God can dwell in us and work through us for the well-being of the whole of creation.” He continues, “Faith is the first part of the bridge from self-centeredness to generosity.”

In our culture, we see almost everything as an economic transaction, giving this in exchange for that. God’s economy doesn’t work that way, and that “gift economy” is what I saw in action last Sunday. We worked, prayed, sang, celebrated, and ate together.

Together, we recognized God as the giver. And we took some of what he had given to us and turned it not toward ourselves, but toward this vibrant community of faith. And as we were cleaning up after the potluck, we saw more abundance and faith, as volunteers from our Faith Family Hospitality Ministry Team set up cots for the families without housing who are sharing our church building this week.

One of the most important parts of growing in discipleship is to be part of God’s “gift economy.” Growing in faith can help us acknowledge that everything we have and are comes from God. And then to put our faith into action as conduits of God’s grace and abundance. “The gifts flow into us, and they flow from us,” Volf writes. “We are God’s gifts to our neighbors.”

May we continue to grow in faith and awareness of the gifts God entrusts to us.
Shalom!

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