Pastor Darren: So I start with a movie review.
Pastor Darren: Have you seen Disclosure Day yet?
Pastor Darren: I heard a couple of yeses out there.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: I won't spoil it too much, but I will give a thumbs up.
Pastor Darren: I did enjoy it.
Pastor Darren: Steven Spielberg knows how to tell a tale as well as anybody in the film industry.
Pastor Darren: It was an interesting story.
Pastor Darren: He's back into the alien world again and dealing with that kind of stuff.
Pastor Darren: And again, I don't want to ruin it for you, but there was one statement that was made that I really appreciated.
Pastor Darren: What are you guys laughing at?
Pastor Darren: Am I tingy?
Pastor Darren: What am I doing?
unknown: Don't spoil it.
Pastor Darren: That's impossible.
Pastor Darren: She's all don't sweat it.
Pastor Darren: I'm in front of a bunch of people.
unknown: Don't spoil it.
Pastor Darren: Oh, don't spoil it.
Pastor Darren: I will not.
Pastor Darren: I get you now.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, you're plugging your.
Pastor Darren: I will not spoil.
Pastor Darren: But there was one statement that I really appreciated.
Pastor Darren: I'm not spoiling the story.
Pastor Darren: I told you.
Pastor Darren: I am being honest.
Pastor Darren: I'm not going to spoil the story.
Pastor Darren: But there was a poignant statement made in it.
Pastor Darren: And the statement was, what if empathy is an evolutionary advantage?
Pastor Darren: What if empathy was an evolutionary advantage?
Pastor Darren: Isn't that a curious thing to say?
Pastor Darren: Because it goes counterintuitive to what we think.
Pastor Darren: Empathy is the thing.
Pastor Darren: Oh, that opens me up to vulnerability, right?
Pastor Darren: That get makes me weaker or that makes me uh more uh uh able of being conquered.
Pastor Darren: And so to flip it, it was really, really interesting.
Pastor Darren: So, bottom line, without spoiling, I enjoyed it.
Pastor Darren: I would send you to disclosure day as not only a good story, uh uh, but some interesting thoughts going around.
Pastor Darren: Uh now, Romans 15.
Pastor Darren: Did you all read it before you got here?
Pastor Darren: Oh, come on now.
Pastor Darren: You're not doing any homework?
Pastor Darren: Good glory.
Pastor Darren: All right, I'm gonna sum it up for you really quickly here.
Pastor Darren: Uh, the bottom line of Romans 15, 1 to 7, Jesus came for others.
Pastor Darren: Shouldn't we?
Pastor Darren: Shouldn't we be here for others?
Pastor Darren: Isn't that sort of the point?
Pastor Darren: What's modeled by Jesus?
Pastor Darren: Listen to the way Eugene Peterson says it.
Pastor Darren: He is a pastor uh who did an interpretation of Scripture uh as opposed to a translation, so he took a little more liberties in the way that he uh um interpreted what was going on, but I really like the way he says it.
Pastor Darren: Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us.
Pastor Darren: Strength is for service, not status.
Pastor Darren: Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, how can I help?
Pastor Darren: That's exactly what Jesus did.
Pastor Darren: He didn't make it easy for himself by avoiding people's troubles, but waited right in and helped out.
Pastor Darren: I took on the troubles of the troubled, is the way Scripture puts it.
Pastor Darren: Isn't that a nice way to restate that scripture?
Pastor Darren: I really, really appreciate it.
Pastor Darren: Uh you know, when you talk about interpretations of Scripture, and you have to be a little more careful scholarly because they're taking more liberties.
Pastor Darren: Uh, but sometimes you find an interpretation you really like, and it says it like you would reread it, and uh all the more better.
Pastor Darren: I really like that one.
Pastor Darren: It really encapsulates that idea of, hey, this is what Jesus was here for.
Pastor Darren: Why aren't we just doing it?
Pastor Darren: And here in Romans 16, Paul does another interesting thing.
Pastor Darren: He invites everyone in this letter to this church in Rome to welcome the women in leadership.
Pastor Darren: He even mentions three specific women into leadership.
Pastor Darren: Now, Paul often gets accused of being not quite as uh uh affirming of women and and uh um uh not uh being a little bit misogynistic in that way, uh, but we sometimes fail to recognize the context for that.
Pastor Darren: He lives in a time where there was clear hierarchy between the genders, and for him to say this was really quite provocative, very provocative to say you should listen to these women and let them run some things, let them run the church.
Pastor Darren: So all of this gives way to an overall invitation from Paul for us to be welcoming to all Gentiles.
Pastor Darren: And for those of you who don't know, Gentiles are non-Jews.
Pastor Darren: So basically everybody.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: There's this obvious implication, the larger call is inclusion of others, not just neighbors, like he said in Romans 15, and not just women, like he says in Romans 16, but all.
Pastor Darren: Now, here's where it gets a little interesting too.
Pastor Darren: Paul's language for these passages uh for this inclusion, the language he uses is circumcision.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: That is the language that he uses.
Pastor Darren: Now, the first five books of our Old Testament, they are full of laws that were to be followed.
Pastor Darren: And if you were living out the faith, that's what it meant to follow, to live out the faith, was to follow these rules.
Pastor Darren: But for some reason, Paul picks out the one law and uses that to encompass all that it means to follow Judaism, circumcision.
Pastor Darren: If you know men, you probably know why Paul picks that one out to be the thing he sums it all up in.
Pastor Darren: You know he's got in his ear a bunch of guys going, hey, is that part, you know, really necessary?
Pastor Darren: Do we really need to, you know, so he's got to reinforce that a lot.
Pastor Darren: Yes, yes.
Pastor Darren: Oh, I shouldn't have done that move.
Pastor Darren: We gotta reinforce.
Pastor Darren: We got to reinforce that the importance of that, right?
Pastor Darren: Now, if you are a woman, I'm assuming you know any man at all in this world.
Pastor Darren: And so you understand why Paul picked circumcision as the way to define Judaism as well, because that's the one that's making us guys go, oh, okay, that's the big test that's going on here.
Pastor Darren: Um anyway, I'm having a little bit of fun.
Pastor Darren: Uh, but that was the way Paul would often describe being a non-Jew, and he was inviting us, encouraging us, feeling like God was commanding us to include people who were not Jewish, meaning the circumcised, right?
Pastor Darren: For him, though, it was symbolic language.
Pastor Darren: And it was referring to or making the argument that we're supposed to include Jews, but also Gentiles, but also Christians.
Pastor Darren: Remember, Paul's right at the beginning of this Christian movement.
Pastor Darren: He's trying to help shape everything, and we've got people who have lived the Jewish faith, who have followed all that law, including the big law we just talked about.
Pastor Darren: But then you've got other people who didn't have to go through that door to get in.
Pastor Darren: And so there was bickering and dickering, I'm sure, about whether or not that was important.
Pastor Darren: But the result was he's talking about everybody, those who are Jews, those who are not Jews.
Pastor Darren: In other words, a message of inclusion, including everybody.
Pastor Darren: This is from Paul 2,000 years ago.
Pastor Darren: We still wrestle with inclusion, right?
Pastor Darren: It's still a challenge, especially for people of faith, because we feel like, well, all right, so there's a certain understanding of what the faith is, and I'm trying to do this, and if people aren't doing it, am I supposed to welcome in?
Pastor Darren: And other people saying, well, wait a minute, where are we making these rules?
Pastor Darren: Jesus himself said there are higher rules, love God, love neighbor, but we so we wrestle with that.
Pastor Darren: Our denomination just recently, somewhat recently, wrestled with inclusion over the LGTBQ issue.
Pastor Darren: We had a conflict and it resulted in 25% of our churches and people left the United Methodist denomination.
Pastor Darren: We're still wrestling with that.
Pastor Darren: This particular congregation might be almost an exact model for what happened with the rest of the denomination.
Pastor Darren: 25%, we lost some folks as well.
Pastor Darren: You know, we still wrestle with inclusion, and I'm not even gonna enter into our wrestling with the immigration issues and the challenges around immigration and what we feel like we owe folks.
Pastor Darren: But that's coming in August.
Pastor Darren: Social concerns is gonna be putting it in front of us, and we're gonna be learning a little bit about that.
Pastor Darren: But this idea of inclusion is something that was important to Paul.
Pastor Darren: He's trying to grow the church, and yet we still wrestle with it, all being all.
Pastor Darren: Sometimes I think we struggle even with the simplest inclusions, just the idea of being willing to share our faith with somebody else.
Pastor Darren: Anybody get a little bit nervous with that term evangelism?
Pastor Darren: Are all y'all comfortable talking about your faith with other people?
Pastor Darren: All right, I want some confidence out here and some honesty.
Pastor Darren: If I told you to go be uh evangelical, would you let that roll off your back?
Pastor Darren: Raise your hands.
Pastor Darren: Confession time.
Pastor Darren: Oh, okay, I got two honest people in the room.
Pastor Darren: The rest of you oh, oh boy.
Pastor Darren: It feels a little weird, potentially because of the way it's been done in our society, people being a little bit more oppressive and making it feel like it was some sort of imperative.
Pastor Darren: And yet, talking about our faith, were any of you oppressed by my movie review I started with?
Pastor Darren: Anybody feel uncomfortable or or put in a weird spot?
Pastor Darren: No, we're we're usually pretty comfortable with that.
Pastor Darren: Isn't it weird that I can do a movie review and talk about how I really like this movie?
Pastor Darren: But if I talk about my faith, hmm, that's a little more weird.
Pastor Darren: Cactus patch there, briar patch.
Pastor Darren: Why is it that we are more comfortable talking about things like that, and yet faith is something that uh something that enriches our lives, and yet we're hesitant to be comfortable sharing it.
Pastor Darren: You know, it might be a pastor thing, but I believe that our vibrancy in our individual faith and our communal faith comes from sharing it.
Pastor Darren: I think that is a key part of living the life of faith.
Pastor Darren: That's why the United Methodist Denomination added that last one little bit, right?
Pastor Darren: Uh promised to support with my prayers, my presence, my gifts, my service, and all right, me and Nancy are the only Methodists in this room.
Pastor Darren: Prayers, presence, gifts, service, witness, okay.
Pastor Darren: Some of you are all right.
Pastor Darren: Witness that was added later.
Pastor Darren: What is it, 20 years ago?
Pastor Darren: Pastor Lanny, when they add that 20-ish, right?
Pastor Darren: That we said, you know what, it's important for us to share it too, to witness to our faith, right?
Pastor Darren: Uh uh and I tell you what, I think vibrancy comes from that, not just because we're engaging with our faith and thinking about it, but it sharpens our understanding of our own faith.
Pastor Darren: When you have to craft why it is that you come here and put it into words that might make sense to somebody else, that's a real sharpening of your own faith.
Pastor Darren: You might shape that conversation.
Pastor Darren: It shouldn't be imperative, it shouldn't be judgmental.
Pastor Darren: You wouldn't want to leave somebody thinking you were fearing for their soul.
Pastor Darren: Not good evangelism, at least not Methodist evangelism.
Pastor Darren: We're not sharing that sort of understanding.
Pastor Darren: We're sharing something that's uh a little more meaningful, at least in the way we understand it.
Pastor Darren: What we're sharing is that we uh realize that we have found a way of living that enriches our life.
Pastor Darren: We found a guideline for helping us make meaning in our life, not just through like loving relationships, but also an opportunity to be in service to other people, to be able to show God's love to other people.
Pastor Darren: Not only that, but we also get a context for understanding the more difficult parts of living in this world.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Our tough times, they become a little bit more manageable because we can more easily see the love that is all around us because we've practiced at it.
Pastor Darren: We've trained ourselves through regular uh uh gatherings here where we look for that love and think about that love and understand how that love comes.
Pastor Darren: And having that understanding, having difficulties be more manageable, it's a little easier to work our way through it.
Pastor Darren: That conversation about your faith doesn't have to be much more difficult than that.
Pastor Darren: And isn't it awesome to think about the way faith and church might bless others?
Pastor Darren: To know what that might do in their life.
Pastor Darren: And not only that, but isn't it kind of nice and cool to think about the way the church might be blessed by those people you invite?
Pastor Darren: What gifts are they bringing?
Pastor Darren: What has God put inside of them that's gonna add some fruit to our journey?
Pastor Darren: Yeah, that's my encouragement coming from Paul to go share that faith.
Pastor Darren: You know, one more thing I'll say about sharing.
Pastor Darren: I think sometimes our difficulties about being inclusive are not always about our intent.
Pastor Darren: There are times when we want to be inclusive, we just don't know how.
Pastor Darren: Have we done things and we put it together exactly the way it was done for us?
Pastor Darren: What brought us into the faith or made us feel like we were most comfortable?
Pastor Darren: And others didn't seem to be into it?
Pastor Darren: A couple of churches ago there was a uh a woman in the church, and I tell you what, she was a pillar for this church.
Pastor Darren: And one of the things that she would do for all the special events was a pimento cheese sandwich.
Pastor Darren: Pimento cheese sandwiches.
Pastor Darren: Now, I know y'all don't like to raise your hands very much, but we'll see if this one you have the confidence.
Pastor Darren: Tell me how many of y'all like a good pimento cheese sandwich?
Pastor Darren: Okay, okay.
Pastor Darren: Whoa.
Pastor Darren: We only got Tom over here.
Pastor Darren: The rest of you are like, oh, who pimento, oh Maria, pimento cheese sandwich.
Pastor Darren: Nancy is what, right, right?
Pastor Darren: All right, y'all with your hands up, you're not gonna like anything I'm gonna say now.
Pastor Darren: Just letting you know early on, I think there was a time where pimento cheese sandwich was a new thing.
Pastor Darren: And it was like, oh my goodness, this is great and so flavorful and oh, and so easily cut into the triangles, right?
Pastor Darren: And they're out there at all the big events, and oh, it's so special.
Pastor Darren: And so my friend would make these pimento cheese sandwiches, and they were known traditionally in this church as being the thing that came out at the special events.
Pastor Darren: And you know what?
Pastor Darren: If you were 40 and younger, you had no desire to eat a pimento cheese sandwich.
Pastor Darren: Squeeze cheese with something red in it.
Pastor Darren: Is that the pimento?
Pastor Darren: That's all they would see, right?
Pastor Darren: And well, squeeze cheese, it's not the healthiest for you.
Pastor Darren: I don't know.
Pastor Darren: I don't want to step on any toes.
Pastor Darren: Sorry, I told you you weren't gonna like me after I talk about a pimento cheese sandwich.
Pastor Darren: What I'm getting at is that there was this miss that was going on.
Pastor Darren: There was this culture of church and this woman who's had her heart in exactly the right place making these pimento cheese sandwiches.
Pastor Darren: And the people that she kind of wanted to reach the most were these young families to build up the church.
Pastor Darren: Well, that pimento cheese sandwich didn't mean to them what it meant to her and to the rest of that church.
Pastor Darren: Oh, that's uh kind of a processed thing that comes on the white bread.
Pastor Darren: Do you know what they do with white bread?
Pastor Darren: Oh right?
Pastor Darren: You can you see the miss that was happening?
Pastor Darren: A room full of good intentions that just didn't happen.
Pastor Darren: I think sometimes some of our sharing, our inclusiveness, gets stopped just because we don't a hundred percent know how to best share our faith.
Pastor Darren: We haven't figured out how to put it together in a way that somebody else might go, ooh.
Pastor Darren: You know, I like to think that uh um our best step to show people uh the love of God is to figure out some sort of need that they have and to fill it.
Pastor Darren: And to fill it without any requests back, just to fill it because you love them and you want them to know a greater way.
Pastor Darren: You want them to know that there's a God of love and it's coming through me, and I want to share it with you.
Pastor Darren: And it takes sometimes us doing the work to figure out what that need is and then to fill it in the best way we can.
Pastor Darren: I'm gonna round third here because we're getting close to the end.
Pastor Darren: I want you to know I'll be the first to admit as we talk about inclusion and we talk about inviting people to our faith, our church is not for everyone.
Pastor Darren: We wouldn't want to set ourselves up in that way, that any invitation that doesn't come through means we have failed in some big way.
Pastor Darren: No, we are a church here on the corner of Hampshire slash Agoura and Westlake Boulevard who has specific gifts from God that we can share with the world, but they're not all the gifts, and so we need to find the people who would identify with our particular journey.
Pastor Darren: So we might not be for everybody, but you cannot convince me that there aren't people in this community who wouldn't be blessed by a journey with this community of people in this room.
Pastor Darren: We found a directory from 1976 this week.
Pastor Darren: 1976.
Pastor Darren: You may not know this, but the world was black and white in 76.
Pastor Darren: We were just figuring out how to give color to it.
Pastor Darren: It's 1976.
Pastor Darren: You would be shocked how many of those people are still here.
Pastor Darren: Shall we do it?
Pastor Darren: We'll let you there are a lot in the prayer group, so I brought it to them.
Pastor Darren: Go ahead, raise your hands if you were here in 1976.
Pastor Darren: There we go.
Pastor Darren: All right, this is officially the 1976 section on Polly.
Pastor Darren: You're gonna have to move next week.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: Hey, if we're talking about has this church blessed anybody, talk to the people who have been here for 50 years because they've been blessed.
Pastor Darren: They wouldn't have stayed that long otherwise.
Pastor Darren: They've been blessed, and there are others who would be blessed.
Pastor Darren: So let's not be afraid to ask the question: who is missing from our table here?
Pastor Darren: Who is it that needs what we have to offer?
Pastor Darren: Our special form and shape of the love of God that is ready to touch their hearts and enhance their lives.
Pastor Darren: And let's make sure to invite them.
Pastor Darren: Amen.