Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

I think and read often of Leadership, especially in a Presidential election year.

I think and read often of styles and philosophies, of what works or doesn’t work and what is right and what is wrong, for they are not always the same.

I think about it as a voter.

I think about it in my role here with you.

I think about it as a parent, Logan’s first leaders will be his parents and one way or another their influence will be enormous throughout his life. All these years later, and long after both of my parents are gone, I still find myself wondering what they would they would think of the choices that I make, what advice and wisdom they would give to me if I asked.

Truth be told, I probably think about that more now than I did 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, and I know I would be more inclined to listen to my mother today than I was 10 years ago.

But the question for us becomes what is your style of leadership? As a parent, at your job, here at Church, how are you influencing people? Because we all do have a style and we all do exert leadership upon one another, like gravity between planets we shape and shade the world view of all those around us.

And when you think of leadership styles, well most of us have dealt, at one point or another in our lives, with someone whose philosophy of life was “My Way or the Highway”.

Perhaps it was a parent.

Perhaps a teacher or a coach.

Perhaps a supervisor at work.

Perhaps even we have bought in to that style of leadership, my way or the highway.

I still can remember, as a young JV baseball coach near the end of a long practice, loosing my patience with a gifted and lazy left fielder who jogged after a fly ball “Get off of my field” I yelled and I banished him from practice until he apologized.

Ah, the arrogance of it, “Get off of my field”, as if I were Lord and Master of George Snodgrass Field in Pompton Lakes.

And it was about 25 years later that my mother met my former gifted and lazy left fielder and he recounted the story to her exactly as I have told it over the years and he was gracious enough to say that he was wrong that day and that I had taught him a valuable lesson.

All I knew was that they were going to play baseball my way or not at all.

That is one way of leading people, not a good way, but it is one way.

And when we deal with people that way, especially when we don’t need to, we fail to allow ourselves to live in a wider world than our own little corners.

And when we follow people like that we diminish ourselves and the part of us that is imaginative and creative, the part of us that is the image of God, it begins to whither and shrivel until it is about as useful and noticeable as our appendix.

And if we choose the highway or banish people to the highway, we cut ourselves off from the growth and diversity of perspectives that has always contained God’s will for us. I was asked recently if Barak Obama should have left his Church because he didn’t agree with something that his pastor said.

I think that it would be a very foolish presumption on my part to think that you are all here because you agree with and approve of everything that I say. You know that commercial for the New York Lottery where the guy announces the current jackpot and the room clears, well I suspect that there would be a similar event if I were to say please leave if you have ever disagreed with me! And I would trample a few of you on my way out, for there are any number of things that I have said over these 30 some years that I’m not sure I agree with anymore and many others that I really don’t like very much and wish that I didn’t have to say.

A Church where we agree with everything we hear is probably a Church that isn’t saying very much.

So my way or the highway doesn’t work for anyone, whether it is our turn to lead or to follow, the wisdom of the many expands and clarifies the wisdom of the one even if it is to hear what I don’t agree with and be forced to think through why it is I don’t and what it is I do believe.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. But there is another way to lead and to follow, a way that lends itself far better to the life of the Church.

I have called it, in the title of the sermon, “The We Way”.

It is leadership and followership that is founded upon the Christ-given mandate that whenever two or more of us gather in his name he is with us.

It is leadership and followership that is shared and accessible to all of God’s people, not only allowing but encouraging everyone to hear and respond to God’s call to them.

It is leadership and followership that is not afraid to try and to fail and to try something else, secure in the faith-filled knowledge that God will accomplish exactly what is meant to be accomplished.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people,

Now living like that has implications for our identity.

Implications for the ways in which we measure success.

Implications for the ways in which we choose what to do and what not to do and with whom we will do it.

Implications for our motives in what we do and don’t do.

Implications for our methods in what we do and don’t do.

Who are we? We are God’s people, so in the words from the movie Apollo 13, “failure is not an option”. Not because everything that we do will be a success by the world’s standards or our standards, but because everything that God wants done will be done and measured by standards of the soul and a timeline that is eternal.

Who are we? We are God’s people, so we need to choose to spend our time, our emotions and our money on the things that bring joy to God, the relationships of marriage, of parenthood and grandparenthood, the ties of family and of friends and of strangers in need and of friends yet unknown and the constant life-long nurturing of faith that God will lead us in the way and the truth and the life that we have been given. What we do and who we do it with matters greatly.

Who are we? We are God’s people, so we need to understand, clearly, our motives. We pray for others that they might receive what we already have. We give in response to what we have already gotten. We love God and our neighbors because God loved us first and best and so much that he sent his son so that we might have life eternal and abundant. If you are praying or giving or trying to love as a way to “buy” future blessings, knock it off, you don’t have to do that, that’s what the cross is all about. It has been done for you! And if you believe that, if you really believe that, you will not be able to live without praying and giving and loving. Why we do what we do matters greatly.

Who are we? We are God’s people, so we need to do things God’s way, not ours. And the only way to discover God’s way is to operate in the open, talking together, arguing at times, listening more than usual until the Holy Spirit begins to bring things into focus, giving us vision and hope and shalom and patience and justice and all of the great and wonderful gifts that God provides. How we do the things we do matters greatly.

Who are we? We are God’s people. We are God’s people.

And how did we become God’s people?

once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

The wounded become the healers.

The haters become the peacemakers.

The children become the parents.

The followers become the leaders

This is what it means to be God’s people, to walk together, to walk in the “We way” guarding and forgiving and loving one another, being guarded and forgiven and loved by one another.

Strip away all of the structure and politics and programs and policies and you will find that this is what it means to be a Church, or at least this is what it has always meant here, in this place, to be a Church. And we, who have received mercy here, are all a part of it.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.