Gathering is what Christians do. It's what turns individual teenagers from Holden, Worcester and Whitinsville into a youth group, gathered in the name of the Holy Trinity. It's what turns our group of fifteen into a group of forty when the parishes of the Lutheran Interparish Youth Group (LIPY) assembling around the same campfire for bible study. It's what turns our forty into a moving, waving, dancing crowd of almost six hundred believers, praising God and eating forgiveness at God's table.
We gather to hear words of forgiveness and promise, to worship God because God is truly awesome, and to demonstrate that Christ indeed has a living, breathing body with numerous hands, feet, hearts and minds. We gather to sing, because musical praise is a long and storied part of being Lutheran, indeed of being disciples, who sang out even on Jesus' last night. Whether we pump our fists and cry out for God to “take it all”, surrendering our lives, or belt out harmonies on How Great Thou Art as though it were a modern rock tune, we gather to sing.
We gather because God is great, because the love of God is too big to be contained and not shared. Not just among the believers, but among all the people of the world. Our speaker for the weekend, Pastor Ralph Supper, himself a Hammo alumnus from his days at Emmanuel Lutheran in Warwick, RI, challenged us to see how unbounded God's love is. He encouraged the assembly to see this love spilling over from our lives into the lives around us. Not just among family and friends and fellow Christians. But to everyone whom we encounter.
We are called to love the way God loves. Crazy, risky, dangerous, world-upsetting, life-changing, seed-planting love. We are challenged to trust that the only thing that belongs on a poster that begins “God Hates...” are the words “...posters that claim that God is not Love.” When we are tempted to fill in some group of people, we have failed as followers of Jesus. For when we look to Jesus, whose Cross informs our best understanding of God, we see no hate. Only forgiveness, mercy and love are offered to meet the hate of the world.
We gather, because we need to look squarely at that Cross to be reminded. That it is among us, that it is on us, that is was for us. All alone, we are too tempted to pass it by without looking into the loving eyes that are looking down at us.
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