Sermon June 2nd Christian Formation

Deut 6 and mk 10

Good morning friends, it is good to gather in worship with all of you this morning!

We've got a busy morning today-

We are having a congregational meeting where we will discern how to add classroom space to our building-dividing the fellowship hall, or renovating the front of the sanctuary, or a couple of other options. We have a potluck where we will honor the Sunday School teachers among us-those servants of the church who are doing what is probably the most important work of the church, every Sunday morning. We've given Bibles to 3^rd Graders-an act that resonates back to the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement, and the fundamental belief that each of us can read the Bible for ourselves, and interpret it in the church. Finally, after my sermon, we will be dedicating four children, celebrating their presence in our congregation, and committing ourselves to watching over them in the journey to adulthood, to be the priesthood of all believers in their lives.

I am excited about all of these projects, and I notice that they all have something in common-they are all tasks that we take on as a church because of our commitment to Christian Formation- our commitment to finding ways to walk with people as they deepen their discipleship and come to know Christ more. There are lots of things that the church does that are important-worship and service and stewardship and pastoral care. But at it's foundation, our task is Christian formation-growing in the likeness of Christ. When we asked delegates at the Mennonite convention in Pittsburgh what is the most important task of the Mennonite Church, the answer, far and away, was Christian formation. As the Denomination's Purposeful Plan reads, “this first and highest priority commits us to fashion and mold our lives after that of Jesus Christ. As the sent One of God, Jesus sends us into the world. As missional communities, our congregations, conferences, and agencies will ensure that people are invited to make a commitment to Christ, discipled in the way of Christ, taught to engage with the scriptures, helped to develop Christian identity from an Anabaptist/Mennonite perspective, and given the capacity to cultivate their vocational calling.”

So too, today, do we consider these tasks of invitation, discipleship, and scriptural study, as we reflect on all the steps of faith development.

Now, before we dive into the task of Christian formation I want to acknowledge that I have something of a fraught relationship with this whole concept.

Many of us, I know have stories of formation gone awry, when authority figures used their power and privilege to push in ways that did not feel like the spirit of God, and tried to form us against our will.

we talked last week about difficult stories in the Bible, and some of my memories of formation come out of those difficult stories.

I remember a high school game night, where we gathered for worship and after some praise songs, the speaker said “if you have not accepted Christ as your savior, you need to leave now!” and the friend next to me got up and ran out alone. I was formed that evening. I got up and followed after. We had a long talk about how much it hurt to be threatened for not believing the right things, and I felt convicted then, and continue to believe that Christ was more present in caring for a friend than in casting out the unbelievers.

Forming someone-I'm pretty sure that's always a dangerous thing to do. To claim authority over another's future is to ask for trouble, and there is no certainty of success. I might go so far as to say that to take responsibility over another's salvation is at it's core a sin-we cannot get between another person and God. Rather, as Paul commanded, we are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Yet at the same time, encouraging people who are trying to live more faithfully, who are looking to grow towards maturity and wisdom, to enter into the give and take of real relationship, well, that is the core of fellowship, it is what it means to be church together.

So for the church, and for parents, there is always this split challenge-we want to be helpful, to provide good guidelines, to be a resource for learning and growing, to push just enough, but not to far. But we want everyone to embrace faith for themselves, as mature adults, without force or feelings of obligation. No wonder it is complicated! It's been a challenge from the beginning-ever since the first Christians started having babies, and asking the apostles what to do with them, Christians have faced the problem of second generation Christians.

After all, from a Biblical perspective, the normal way to become Christian is to convert as an adult. John the Baptist in the wilderness, inviting people to repentance of sins. Jesus walking by the sea shore, calling out follow me, Peter baptizing Cornelius and his whole household, Paul traveling around the Eastern Mediterranean, proclaiming the gospel and inviting people to reformat their lives to look like Jesus. These are all examples of adults inviting adults to be part of the kingdom of God, to make an active and mature choice to join a new way of being human, if not a new religion. Dealing with children is not clearly spelled out in the New Testament, and I suspect that's why the church never did figure it out entirely-generally, people decided to baptize infants, to make sure they were saved, and then invited them to an adult faith later in life, through a process of confirmation. But it remained controversial -as you might know, 500 years ago, a bunch of Christians threw a fit, and suggested again that only people who believed should be baptized, and they baptized one another, and became the Anabaptists, the ancestors of the Mennonites. Yet even still, churches often wrestle with difficult questions-how old is old enough to be baptized? What does it mean to have a mature faith? How are children part of the community of believers?

These are the theological questions that torment us from our New Testament frame.

So this morning, I chose a text that speaks to a very different understanding of what it means to be part of the community of faith, and a very different vision of what it means to be formed in the church.

I rest not in the New Testament vision of conversion, and instead offer for the parents who bring their children this morning, and to all of us, the Old Testament claim of belonging to a story.

Our text from this morning, Deut. 6, is the most significant in the Jewish faith. The Shema, “Here oh Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one” is the primary confession of faith-the statement of essential monotheism that defines Judaism to this day. And this list of commandments-Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength-this is the greatest commandment that Jesus outlined when he was challenged by a rich young lawyer. In fact, Jesus came back again and again to this section of Deuteronomy-this was the heart of the law of love that he preached.

And what I notice is that this primal confession of faith is inextricably linked to the generational transmission of the faith-this first commandment is to be written on our hearts, on our doorsteps, but it is also a story we are to tell to our children, so that they too know who we are and why we do what we do.

When our children ask, we tell them first the story that they already belong to-that a loving God has welcomed them, that Jesus has taught us what is right, and we seek to love in return, both God and neighbor.

That's what I see in this story about Jesus and the little children-a reminder that a warm embrace, a loving presence, and a full welcome are the core of faith formation, and that the driver of real faith is not fear or anger, but love and curiosity.

We are always working on these tasks of story telling as a congregation-it is one of my hopes for our small groups, that they would be places to share more stories and go deeper in relationship with one another. The Peace and Service Committee is still having Holy Conversations with people, asking about formative faith stories, and about our relationships with the broader church. This is the kind of formation that I think speaks to the Biblical vision-a family that welcomes with open arms, and does not worry so much about whether you have met all the qualifications that would let you be in or out.

Because in the journey of Christian formation, we cannot force people to do what we want-whatever that is-act right, love us more, become Christian.

But what we can do is sprinkle liberally the opportunities for formation in our world, and live in such a way that those around us notice, and want to come to us.

So before we begin with the dedication of these children this morning, I'd like to close with a question-

what are your most powerful memories of Christian formation? Who are the teachers you remember who guided and taught well? How did your parents interact with faith, or were you formed by other mentors? What are the moments where you decided to go deeper into Christ, or change your perspective on the world?

For me, one critical formational experience I've been thinking about recently are the annual musicals the children's choir put on every summer at my home Church with our director Marylyn Mierou. Every year they came like clockwork- God with a Capital G, Zerrubable's in Trouble, Oh Jonah, and the one where I put on a giant paper machie mask with the heads of four different animals on it and growled through the sanctuary-I think that one was about Daniel. I remember them as times of learning-learning how to be community with the other kids at church, learning Bible stories, such that those are the memories that still come up when I come across them in my reading today, learning about responsibility-memorizing lines and practicing singing together.

It was a chance to enter into the Bible story as a community of believers, to join with the community through the generations and write the story on my heart. May those same stories continue to guide and shape you in your walk with Christ.