One of my favorite parts of the Muppet Show was during the theme song where you’d see a few of them entering this colorful gallery. They are all singing and just full of joy. Then it pans out and you see more and more and more of them. This is my vision for community. In a recent sermon, I talked about the Muppet Show as a model for the church. On our own we are just crazy, radical, outcasts with our private dreams, our unshared gifts, our untapped potential. Jesus tells us and the apostles later will repeat often, we are meant to be together; that, while on our own our dream might seem small or unrealistic, together we can do so much more. A slogan I pull from Jim Henson’s creativity is that we are always better together.
I got the honor of giving the pastoral charge to my best friend Jason Emberger who is beginning his work in a brand new place… just like I am. After charging him to never forget his first ministry (the ministry to his own family) and also telling him he didn’t need a charge, he should just keep being himself… I finally actually gave him a charge. It can easily be a charge to the whole Church and for us here at New Hanover Pres. to seek out the wanderers and the wonderers, the searchers and the doubters, those who never fit in at church and those who are too righteous for their own good, those carrying hard questions of faith and those who can walk on water.
There are people right here in Hanover County who are so hungry but, they might be more hungry for grace than they are certainty, they might be more hungry for a hand stuck out than they are a liturgical litany, they might be more hungry to see results than they are hungry to hear about righteousness, they might be looking for a neighbor more than they are some savior. The most important thing to know is they are looking for everything that Jesus offers, and that means they only are looking for things we should be able to provide and we can provide more the more we walk on this path with our Savior.
My charge to Jason ended with some things I already knew he’d be up to: laughing with strangers, opening the table wider so everyone could squeeze in, to love widely, and to welcome all. I told him to be the church and to surround yourself with all least likely people who might be the church with him. A charge to a pastor or a church is like an add on to the idea that we are meant to make disciples, it is like someone else noticing something in you and about the way you do God’s work. Those of us who follow all follow in a myriad of different ways, the same way the Muppets entertain people in so many different ways.
The Muppet Show is always about outsiders finding belonging in the least likely of friends. Fozzy and Kermit, Honeydew and Beeker, Miss Piggy and Gonzo, Statler and Waldorf, Animal and well… anyone! And don’t be fooled, if you are following Jesus you are an outsider. If you’ve decided to stop taking short cuts and attempt to follow our teacher, our Savior, our Messiah, then you my friend are one of the few, the remnant. You are a rebel, a radical, and an outcast but you are in good company: with “the dreamers, the lovers and me”.