Wellspring UMC; All Saints’ Sunday; November 4, 2007: “Responding to the Covenant”:

- Genesis 9: 12-17; Galatians 5: 22-25

God is a God of relationships, and life is about relationships. If we think about the things in our lives which are most important and have the most meaning, my guess is that they reflect the realities of our relationships. Whether it’s a relationship to a family member or friend, a relationship to our jobs or church, or even the relationship we have with ourselves, relationships are important, and relationships are dynamic.

While in relationship we can find our lives and the ways we live them challenged. At times the lives of others and the way they live them challenge us. When relating to others, we can even find that the things we thought were true are not, and that the things we’d stake our reputations on as NOT true, turn out indeed to be realities and sometimes keys to life.

Relationships are important, but relationships are also not easy.

Relationships take work and focus. They require that there is some give and take, push and pull between those involved in the relationship. When we invest in relationship, we have to be willing to take risks. Maybe that risk is that the relationship might changed. Maybe the risk is found in joining together to take on a cause or an injustice. Maybe there is a risk that through the relationship, we might be changed into someone we cannot yet imagine becoming. Relationships are important, and in fact, relationships are key to health, wholeness, and life.

In preparing for today I found myself thinking about the relationships in my life. I thought about the relationships that I have with my wife and kids. Where I fall short and where I invest in them. Where are the fruits of that labor, and what do those relationship teach me?

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I reflected upon my relationships with you. Faces came to mind, situations and prayers arose within me, and the intricacies of the many individual relationships I have with you came to the fore. I thought about the relationship that I have with Wellspring as a whole. My role in it, your role in shaping me, and our role in shaping the world. I thought about the relationship we have with the district and conference levels of the Church, and I thought about the relationships we are a part of as members of the Williamsburg/James-City/York community.

I found myself reflecting upon my relationships with strangers. Where am I willing to reach out to them? What do they mean to me? What do I mean to them? Where might God need me to be relating more deliberately with them? How might I need them and they need me?

I thought about my relationship with the world. As a citizen of the US, where does that place me in relationship to those in other countries or regions? What is my relationship with this planet, and how might we be better stewards of God’s gift of earth?

I thought about my relationship with God. How much am I investing in that relationship? How much talking am I doing? How much am I listening? How willing am I to let that relationship shape and change me? What does that relationship really mean to me?

God is about relationships, and life is about relationships.

Today we are dealing with two themes, and both themes center around relationship. Today is All Saints’ Sunday, the Sunday when we remember and celebrate the saints of the Church, but dead and alive...those with whom we have been and are in relationship. We take the time today to reflect upon their relationship to us, our relationship to them, and God’s relating to us through those relationships. Today is a day when we give thanks for God’s gift of relationship shared with us through them.

Today is also the first Sunday if our 2008 Stewardship Campaign, the focus of which is “Look for the Rainbows.” So often when those words “stewardship campaign” arise, we immediately think of the financial needs of the church, and though money is a part of stewardship, stewardship is really about relationships. Our relationship to one another and the church, and the church’s relationship to us. But even more importantly, it’s about God’s relationship to us and our relationship to God. It’s about living into the call to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength...and commit our whole selves and what we have to God.

Most who are here today have probably heard these scriptures. The story of Noah’s Ark and the gift of the rainbow is one that we learned as a child, whether we grew up in the church or not. It is a story of God’s promise. It is a story of God’s covenant to never again destroy but to be present in all situations, even giving a sign in the sky for that presence.

For many Paul’s words to the Galatians sound familiar as well. Known as the “fruits of the Spirit,” Paul describes the kind of life we begin to lead when God’s Spirit is central to our living. That when the Spirit lives in us, the fruit of that Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Paul is saying that when God becomes the guiding force in our lives these traits are infused into our spiritual DNA.

But what do these two passages have in common? What is the uniting force behind the gift of the rainbow and the fruits of the Spirit? Relationships. In particular, God’s relationship to us.

It had been awhile since I’d read the story of Noah and the Ark, and as I pondered it again this week, I was struck by something that I often forget. Did you notice in the reading who was the intended subject for the placing of the rainbow? “God said, “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it will be sign of the covenant between me and the earth...I will remember my covenant...when the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember...” The subject intended to see the sign is God.

God places the rainbow in the sky so that God will be reminded, so that God will fulfill the covenant, so that God will remember the relationship God has with us. God loves so much, that God doesn’t want the events of the past to be stored away with memories of the garden, the fall, and Cain and Abel, rather God wants a visible reminder to solidify that ongoing relationship. God makes a sign for Himself, and subsequently for all generations, that God loves us and invites us to Love God back just as much.

In reading again the fruits of the Spirit, I asked a similar question, “what is central to Christ followers’ journey toward such living?” God’s Spirit is, and in order for God’s Spirit to be at work, God needs to be in relationship to us, and we need to be in relationship with God. In a way, these fruits of the Spirit are God’s New Testament signs on earth of God’s faithfulness to humanity. That as God pours into us, the Spirit, we are colored by love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and these signs are not just revealed to ourselves, fellow Christ followers, or even those outside the Church, but they are revealed to God. And in a way, when the Spirit bears fruit in us, God is reminded of the covenant sign of a bow in the sky.

Are there people in your life who shine and color the world? Have you seen the fruits of the Spirit revealed through them? Who are those saints for whom you give thanks? God gives thanks for them, and God sees them shine. God even sees our desire to be like them.

Where are you shining? Where is God buffing and polishing you, so that you can beam as a saint of God? Whether you see it or not, God sees us shine, and God gives thanks for your faithfulness in letting God work on you.

Where does this relationship that God has with us intersect with the many and varied relationships we have with one another? In those relationship, can you see God at work? Can we look for the rainbows in our lives? Can you see that which God sees in you, and do you know that this reminds God that THAT’S part of the joy God experiences in remaining faithful? Whether we see these things or not, God made us, and God loves us, and because of that, the rainbows and fruits of the Spirit are alive in us.

As we mentioned at the beginning of this service of worship, everyone has or will receive this morning some stewardship materials. This includes information about stewardship and a prayer guide for this season of relationship developed through stewardship. Please open this material when you get home and work through the prayer guide this week. Take this seriously, and use it as a part of the spiritual journey of your relationship with God.

I say this because God has great things in store for 2008, but God will not be able to do what God needs to have done through us unless we respond to God’s covenant of love by building that relationship with God. Stewardship is about relationships, and what God needs of us more than anything else is relationship.

I told our Church Council and the stewardship folks that God doesn’t need any of us to think about the budget needs of the church. God doesn’t want us to think about the budget needs of our households – that the car payments loom large, mortgage has risen, or taxes just came due. God doesn’t want us to worry or second guess or put roadblocks and limits on what God can do through us. Instead what God wants and needs is for us to build up our relationship with Him. If we do that, God will take care of our needs at home and church, and take care of the needs of the world.

To do that, however, we have two intense weeks of study and prayer, laid out for us in the materials provided. Work through these and I promise that your relationship with God will grow and so will your faith.

Finally, and if there is anything that you take away from this morning, it is this, I ask each of us to begin to daily, even multiple times daily, pray, “God, what do you need me to give of my time, talent, and treasure, for the building of your Kingdom through Wellspring,” THEN listen and respond out of your relationship with God.

Many of you have heard the story of my call into ordained ministry, and many of you know that I resisted that call for a quarter of a century. But one day when I was in my first job, I found myself needing God’s direction in my life, and a prayer arose from my heart. It was simple, and I prayed it throughout the day, “Lord, what do you want me to do with my life?”

The result of that prayer for me was that I had revealed to me a rainbow of God’s grace where the fruits of God’s Spirit were poured into my life, and I received God’s love. God’s unconditional, unmerited love had been given to me, and I found myself able to trust, listen, and follow. God’s covenant promise of love was mine, and I responded to that covenant. It changed my life.

Saints of the ages have done these exercises. Many who sit here have done them. God’s call at such a time as this is for each of us to do it. To ask God to build our faith and move us to become fully His, then look for the rainbows and respond. In doing so, God will do far more than we can ever hope or imagine. We will be blessed, those around us will be blessed, and God will be blessed by our faithfulness. Amen.