OUR VISION

I. A Place in History

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. On earth God placed Human Beings. To us he gave great power over earth and over the creatures in it, so that we would control the entire planet. And God offered us life.

But we desired to become gods ourselves. We sought power. We sought power through knowledge, and we took the power. But with that power came responsibility which we could not handle. Responsibilities which we could not fulfil cut us off from God and from life. Our foolishness tempted God to destroy us, to eliminate humanity from creation. But God did not.

What God creates is good. Despite our mistakes, God began to claim us back. So God began to work among us. God chose Abram from his father's house to begin a new nation. His family, the Hebrew people, was chosen by God to be a light to the nations. Isaiah 49:6. Through them the world would learn about God. The Hebrews were to know God as others did not. They were to obey God as others did not.

To the Hebrews God gave his commandments. To then God sent judges and prophets to help them understand God's laws. But the Hebrews were like every other people: They sinned. The became arrogant about their special relationship with God. They forgot the responsibilities that God gave them. They tried to find an easier life than that of being God's chosen children. So God punished the Hebrews, often using the nations around them to bring God's punishment. The Hebrews were sometimes attacked and conquered, and even carried off to a foreign capital.

Yet God did not forget God's people. Where once God's prophets cried out that because they have rejected the law of the Lord … I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem Amos 2:5, later God would instruct them to comfort my people, speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand full measure for all her sins. Isaiah 40:1. The Lord cared for the chosen Hebrews, for they were God's people and the Lord was their God. Exodus 6:7, inter alia.

God chose a people from all the peoples of the earth. And when the right time had come God brought forth from that people a son, a son of humanity and a son of God. Through that son, God offered us once again the choice of life. But what we had rejected in the beginning we rejected again. The messenger of God, who was God, we executed. Yet even this did not end God's efforts to turn us back to God. In fact, that execution is now seen as only the beginning. For God reversed all that we thought we knew, and in the resurrection demonstrates God's power and God's determination to have us decide again the question we decided so badly before.

With Pentecost, the special value of Jesus' life and death became the foundation for our new work. God's gift of life appeared in the world on tongues of fire and the church, the body of Christ Ephesians 1:23, inter alia, was begun. The church's task, our work, is to proclaim the Good News to the whole creation Mark 16:15, to bring our neighbors to God, to be Christ to the world. We believe that we, the church, empowered by God's spirit, are working on this task.

Estranged from God, men and women wound themselves and one another and wreck havoc throughout the natural world. Human hopes for achieving the good are thwarted so long as we seek to realize such ends apart from God. Discipline, ¶69, page 74. In the world we can see around us, the work of the church is sometimes so hidden as to be all but unobservable. Even the church itself appears to be less a fellowship of believers than an occasional gathering of locl citizens. The active power of God seems only a myth. But in the midst of our condition of alienation, God's unfailing grace shows itself in [God's] suffering love working for our redemption. ¶69, page 74. We believe that the superficial appearance of the world is not the whole story. We believe that we can show God's love at work in the world.

II. A World of Love

In a world that seems governed by chance on the one hand and passion on the other, seeing God's love requires a knowledge of what to look for. This knowledge is, finally, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But it is a gift for which we may build the foundation. By showing small samples of this love, we give the ability to recognize greater love. This love is shown first of all in the example of our own individual lives and then by the example of the church set out in especially visible ways. Christian teaching from its beginning has known God's redemptive lovve in Jesus Christ … both in personal experience and in the larger community of believers called the Body of Christ. Life in the Spirit means for individuals the life of prayer and inward searching, but it also involves them in the communal life of the church: in its corporate worship, service and mission. ¶69, page 75. These things we can show.

When we ourselves need to renew our vision, and when we wish to set up a living illustration of the world of love, we may go apart for a while, retreating for a time from the battleground of the world. This is what we do when we pause in a quiet place for prayer. This is what when we organize a weekend retreat in a church basement. This is what we do we do when we go to church camp. These activities give us moments or days when we can find some aspects of God's love less mixed with daily life. From these times we take away not only renewed strength but also a renewed vision, a restored ability to see that love whose image had become broken and cloudy.

[W]e join our fellow Christians, affirming within the communion of saints our oneness in Christ. With them we gladly declare that the foregiveness of sins and life eternal are ours through the power of God's invincible love. In this love we live and move and have our being. In this love God made and sustains the good earth and all creation. In this love [God] creates in our hearts a desire for true community and arouses our impulses to engage in unselfish service. ¶69, page 75. To teach the shape of such a love we form a living illustration of it, a simple design in which the pattern of love cannot be missed or mistaken. We draw a living picture of a world where Christians are one in Christ, where our declarations are both sure and happy, in which our lives are certainly bathed in the love of God, where creation is good, where there is the desire for true community, and where our impulses to serve bear fruit. Such is the picture we paint.

Our illustrations of life are not perfect, for we are not perfect. But as by the gift of sight we are able to recognize a real forest from a drawing of it, so too by the gift of vision the illustration of a loving community may teach the ability to recognize the love pervading the world. This is our hope.

The picture we provide will be a simplified world; there will be fewer people, a smaller space, and many difficulties will be solved in advance. But when we form a little Christian world aprart from the rest of life, there are some aspects of reality which we do not want to lose. These are the parts which we wish to illustrate, to emphasize and point out. What parts of life are important for illustrating God's invincible love? Foremost of course must be the constant awareness of the presence of Christ. This can be seen in the attention given to scripture, the constancy of prayer, and in the continuing joy and certaiinty felt by the people. This is God's loving action in human existence through the ever-present agency of the Holy Spirit. Grace, so understood is the spiritual climate and enironment surrounding all human life at all times and in all places. ¶69, page 76.

We wish also the emphasize God's endowment of each person with dignity and moral responsibility. ¶69, page 76. This means that each person in our little world has both a place of respect and a recognizable task of service to the rest. This responsibility comes to us much as responsibility came to the Hebrews: as a direct result of our reciving special gifts from God. Since God gives each person a special place in God's sight, we also have special services to perform. In fact, the special office God grants us is to do our special acts of service. Christian experience is not only deeply private and inward; it is also corporate and active. The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion. God's gift of liberating love must be shared if it is to survive. ¶69, page 80.

Perhaps the most cherished doctrinal emphasis among United Methodists is that faith and good works belong together. … On the one side, faith is intensely personal …. On the other side, … inward assurance, if genuine, is bound to show itself outwardly in good works. ¶69, page 77.

This, then, is the world of love which we see. This is the picture we help others to see. This is the living image we create when, as learners and teachers, we gather away from the rest of the world.

III. Learning

Learning is discovering, playing, and sharing. All learning begins with the encounter of the new and unknown. The ideas, object, and actions which are discovered are probed, seen, turned, stressed, touched until they are familiar, until they are understood. Learning is completed when the newly familiar is shared, when the images that intruded on us are so mastered that we can bring them to another person. Learning is the way through which we come to terms with the world.

The act of discovery is the coming face to face with the unexpected, the new, the unknown. It is having an intruder appear within the realm of my knowledge. It is becoming aware of what existed beside you without your knowing; it is the opening of eyes, or the turning of the head.

What is only seen is not known. The baby takes a block and touches. He grasps it, moves it, tastes it. He drops is, throws it, pounds it on the floor. He looks at it. He turns it around. He casts it away. He learns through all this what a block is. Just the same way we take what we discover and twist it, turn it, bend it, get under it, stand over it, go around it. With our eyes, our ears, all our senses, but especially with our minds, we play with what we find until it becomes familiar, until we know it. Whether it is a leaf or an idea, we have not learned until its image has been reflected throughout our minds, bouncing back and forth, turned and rolled about.

Yet knowledge cannot be believed until it is shared. Sharing completes the cycle of learning: When I share what I learn I both prove to myself my own understanding and confirm the plausibility of my conclusions by the test of another mind. Without communication, learning is incomplete. With sharing, learning is either confirmed or begun again.

Our intent is to teach about the whole of human life, for we are teaching religious understanding. All religious experience affects all human experience; all human experience affects our understanding of religious experience. ¶69, page 81. Each thing that is discovered, reflected upon, and shared is a part of learning. No part can be ignored. No part can be dismissed or shoved aside. Every aspect of being alive is a part of learning. Every part of being alive can be used to teach God's presence and God's love.

IV. Leading

The leader is the one of us who knows the path. We will follow the leader because we have faith that she will take us where we want to go. A leader is a guide, a unifying force, and a salve for our uncertainty. Because we trust her, we yield to the choice that she makes even when we would have chosen another way.

The leader embodies our unity, representing to us a common hope and goal. The leader is one who will show us a better way when we choose foolishness. We have confidence in the leader because she has confidence in herself. Bucause our faith in her is constantly confirmed, we will follow and support our leader even when we do not understand. The leader is with us, understands us, suffers with us, shares with us.

Jesus Christ is the great leader. He has chosen us among his followers to help him lead. We are confident of our leading because we are following Jesus. We can be trusted because our faith is with him. We are one with our followers because we are all following Jesus together.

Our goal is the Kingdom of God. This is our unity. Our path is the footsteps of Christ. Because we have taken a few more steps along the road we are asked to turn and help some who follow us. Because we serve them, we are leaders. Because we are sure the light we are given will not fail, those who follow us are also certain, and we are accepted.

We follow one road; those who follow travel with us.We support each other. We move together. If we falter, they falter. When one who is with us steps off the trail, we call him back, just as our leader calls us.

We are not afraid. We are not uncertain. Not because we already know the trail, but because if we misstep we can call out and find the path again. Because we are sure of this, those who come after us are not afraid to follow. This faith is not ours alone. We teach it to those who come with us, so that they may be called to lead those who come after them. We lead not just to the step behind to where we are walking, so that we may all be followers together. Amen.