“Everyone can see we′re together! As we walk on by!”
Those are the words from one of the verses of Sister Sledge’s hit song, ‘We Are Family,’ that is sung at almost every wedding reception anywhere in the world.
I am sure that you know the words and have probably danced to the music! We are family. I got all my sisters with me! We are family! Get up everybody and sing!
The cover of this year’s West Deptford Township’s annual cover has my smiling face on it because the photo they used came from this year’s National Day of Prayer program, which St. Paul’s is responsible for running each year. To me it is the essential example of community and of our fulfilling God’s call to love and welcome everyone! Welcome the stranger, Jesus declares … “my followers will be known by their love!” If you look carefully, you will see an imam, a Lutheran pastor, an AME pastor, police chaplains, my Muslim poet friend, and of course this United Methodist pastor.
As we head into the autumn of the year, I am focused on our need to share love with each other. To welcome others with love and to actually obey God and Jesus Christ despite the divisions that are encouraged throughout our nation.
Most of you are aware of the personal challenges that my family has gone through as summer waned, directly impacting me. I have had total strangers embrace me, care for me and show love for me. There was the security guard named Dave at the Sentara Hospital in Virginia Beach. As he hugged me one day he said, “Dave, if you need me, you know that they can find me and I’ll be there for you.” I don’t even know his last name and our friendship began when he told me, “Buffalo Bills shirts are not allowed in the hospital.”
Then there was DonnaLyn from Jamaica in the hospital’s Oncology Unit … she hugged me every day that I was there and softly asked how I was … me, a complete stranger, and she had so many others she had to care for. The waitress at Huntley’s who gently put her hand on my shoulder because she said I looked sad. The guy from Brooklyn at the bagel shop, who just made me laugh and my second time getting a bagel asked why this guy from New Jersey was in Virginia and I told him.
Part of our responsibility as Christians is hospitality. In Ezekiel, we discover that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was their failure to be hospitable. I think we all know that the second commandment of Jesus and therefore of God is to love all of our neighbors. In that love we are to reach out to our neighbors, inviting them to discover God just as we have.
So in the coming months I want to again challenge all of you. I have once again rediscovered how life all too often does not follow a pattern we would prefer. As DonnaLyn told me, “We don’t know what day we will be born on, and we don’t know what day we will stop breathing, but in between those days we get to choose how we live.”
My challenge for this “new church year” (yes, it is bizarre that we establish an active church year from September through May but that’s what we do) is that each of us agrees to invite friends and family to St. Paul’s, whether to worship with us in person or online. By next May, I would like to have at least 15 more people worshiping in church with us each week.
Again, I want to thank the St. Paul’s family for caring for me and caring for my family. It has been my privilege to serve as your pastor since 2016 and your love means the world to me. I was once a stranger and you welcomed me.
Blessings,
Pastor Dave