Summer reading assignment

Ah, July in Texas. What a great idea!

Actually, it was great. I’ve just come back from a small gathering in Austin. About 1000 bishops and deputies, and a host of others like me showed up for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Our time together was marked by lots of meetings (What’s church without meetings?), lively conversations, healthy debate, shared learnings, great fellowship, joyful reunions, vats of guacamole, and compelling liturgy, including preaching by our Presiding Bishop and others. I continue to give thanks and praise to God for the ministry and witness of Michael Curry, who inspires us with the loving, life-giving and liberating message of Jesus.

All of it got me thinking about the church: What is the church really about? What is it for? Is it an institution whose time has come and gone? Does it have a future?

We should always be asking those questions. A mentor put it this way. In every generation, the church needs to ask whether it is doing and being what it is called to do and be. Statistics indicate a transitional time for the church in our culture. That makes some folks anxious or fearful. I take it as opportunity to think creatively about our call. This guiding question for me in my ministry comes from Brian McLaren: Is the church a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school of disciples who are still on the way?

The vision of church as school, the belief that a synonym for disciple is student with Jesus as instructor leads me to give a summer reading assignment. For the next few Sundays, our lectionary will offer selections from the New Testament letter to the Ephesians. It has become one of my favorite books, as it speaks of the mystery, marvel, miracle of the church. It speaks of blessing, inheritance, hope and call. Mostly it speaks of grace and how we respond to it.

Take this summer to read, mark, learn, inwardly digest what this letter has to say about the church, and your place in it. I believe the whole letter can be summed up in these few verses,

Ephesians 2:8-10:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

These verses tell us that it begins with God’s grace, that our place in the community is not a reflection of our spectacular religious achievement, but is the outgrowth of original blessing. Our life in the church only makes sense as we see that all is gift. How would this week shift if you carried with you this notion of amazing grace?

It goes on to say that we are given gifts for a purpose. We are God’s workmanship, the result of God’s creativity, created for good works. How would your week shift if in whatever you do, you recall that you are God’s creative work, intended for expressions of gratitude and generosity, the response to grace?

It goes on to say that God has called us to a new way of life. God has prepared a way for us, good works in which we are meant to walk. How would your week shift if you woke each morning and asked God to show you clearly the path God would wish you to walk?

There will be no written book report on your summer reading (although if you want to send your comments to me, I’d love to see them). Rather the report will be your life, as people see your good works and give glory to God in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:
Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org

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