the community we were made to be

Ephesians 4:1-6
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy
of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and
gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making
every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one
hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

This Sunday, we'll conclude our "Apostle's Creed" sermon series using Ephesians
4:1-6, which talks about unity in the body of Christ. We'll emphasize how the work of the Spirit brings about unity, and about how being filled with the spirit naturally binds us together as the body of Christ.

As we celebrate the 4th of July, possibly gathering with family and friends, and listen to patriotic music, I for one have always felt connected to soldiers, veterans, and everybody who has stood for the "red white and blue" throughout time.
Watching fireworks together as a community, hotdog cookouts, all of
these help make the 4th of July one of those great community holidays.

We as a church have an opportunity and a calling to create a sense of
community that runs even deeper than the one we'll celebrate this
weekend. Our country was founded on humanist ideals that can be
accomplished in their truest sense not through a particular party
being in office, but rather through the church being more fully itself
in the midst of society and transforming it from the bottom up.
Liberty and justice for all? We can show the world what that's really
about, if we'll get down to the business of working together to serve
Christ. We'll experience some degree of unity as we celebrate the 4th
and we'll talk about unity on Sunday. I pray that the Spirit will
help bring us into unity so that we can become the community we were made to be.