January 26, 2022
A Note From Pastor Todd
This Sunday we hold our church’s Annual Business Meeting. For me, this event brings to mind words like polis, polity, and even politics; because our church’s business is about being the people of God. And that takes all of us. Let me explain. Polis is a term that is often translated as “city” but actually referred to the admirative and religious center of a city, and later referred to the people under the authority of the polis. Polity is a term that came much later based on polis, referring to an organization creating the rules of life together. We often refer to a church’s polity as the way it organizes itself or its policies. Politics, before it was a negative term, referred to the way people related to each other within the policies of a community. In the end, it is all about people. People who care for one another and care for their common task.
As a church we are a voluntary association, meaning we are a group of people who chose to organize ourselves as a community of followers of Jesus, God’s anointed one, otherwise known as God’s Christ or Messiah. Jesus actually redefined what a religious community is for those who followed him. A first-century Jew understood the center of Jewish religious life to be the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus declared that he would become the new temple, the new center of God’s covenant and worship within the world, replacing the physical temple in Jerusalem (for example, see John 2:18-22). This was only temporary, however, as in our Lord’s ascension, and the following descension of the Holy Spirit upon those who understood Jesus to be Lord and Christ, we have been anointed by God. And this anointing allows us to become the new temple (1 Peter 2:5); not as individuals, but as a community with our spiritual gifts working together like instruments in a concert. We are now the body of Christ in the world as we heard in last Sunday’s second lesson (1 Corinthians 12:27).
The temple was not the daily center for the life of many Jews in Jesus’ day, but only for those who lived in or near Jerusalem. Most Jews were dispersed across the ancient world and gathered in synagogues to hear the scriptures, read and preached, and pray. Synagogue comes from the Greek words meaning to bring together or bring together again. A synagogue is where the Jewish people reunited as God’s covenant people apart from the temple, reaffirming their covenant with God and each other. The Greek term for the Christian gatherings was different. That word, ekklesia, meant those who were called (or called out) together. This is the root of the English word “church.” The Apostle Paul declared that the “church” was the body of Christ, called to be an interdependent community that uses its gifts in concert to the glory of God. We are so dependent on each other that some gifts cannot be used unless other gifts are present (1 Corinthians 14:28).
So this Sunday we gather as members of those people who have been called out and anointed to serve God in this community of faith we call First Covenant Church Seattle. And we do this to go about the business of being the people of God. That is, to be stewards of the essential resources God has given us: our spiritual gifts, our relationships to one another, our relationships to the world, the tangible resources of our lives, and our new life in Christ. To do this business takes all of us. If a person and their gifts are missing, we are incomplete, both in making decisions about our church and living out the mission of our church. Our annual meetings are an essential part of our being a church, so I encourage all members to attend. We have great opportunities before us, and they require all our resources to discern those opportunities and mobilize our efforts around those opportunities according to our gifts.
I thank God for each of you and how you each bring your unique gifts and voices to our church family. I am optimistic for the future ahead of us, pandemic notwithstanding, but it will not come without its challenges. Yet we have over a century’s history as a church is called out by our God to proclaim and embody the gospel in our world in challenging times. God has been faithful in the past and will be faithful in the days to come. As I said above, this is political in the best sense—in the end, it is all about people. People who care for one another and care for the common business of being the people of God. May we faithfully respond to God’s faithfulness to us.
See you Sunday. We are incomplete without you
Pastor Todd
P.S. If you are not a member of First Covenant Church, stay tuned for information about an upcoming Membership Class this Spring. We would love to have you be a part of our church family.