 In the Gospel of John in the first chapter long beyond where I was reading earlier, up to the 14th verse, there is this story in which John the Baptist, in my judgment, is making the right handoff when he says to folks that have been following him, behold the Lamb of God. And you all know that reading it. So a couple of the disciples begin to follow Jesus physically. I don't know if they suspect that he doesn't know that they are behind him, but the visual I have is that he turns around and he asks them, what are you looking for? To which the text says Jesus responds by saying, Rabbi show us where you live. And so when I think about this part of the liturgy, do you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, put your whole trust in him, etc., etc. I think about myself and I hope about you that together we are those who are constantly inquiring of Jesus and say master, rabbi, teacher, friend, compatriot, show us where you live. The text goes on to comment as you well know from the times that you have studied it and preached it, that they went and they stayed with him the rest of the day. And in one sense you could say the rest is history and whatever that timeframe was that they were with him, they were modeling that if we are going to continue to follow Jesus and put our trust in him, we've got to spend time with him. And the picture of this liturgy, the question that is raised here is the reminder that we are not that you've got to get saved every week. I don't want to be one of those kind of Christians or churches, but that we are in a constant process of yielding over what Howard Thurman would refer to as the nerve center of our lives into the hands of Jesus Christ, into the hands of God. So that God can make us and shape us into the people that God wants us to be. And in that same question where we respond to the question that we put our whole trust in him, do we confess him as Lord his Savior and do we have a conviction that the church, the community of the followers of Jesus is a community that has been opened to all people? Of every description, I like the old liturgy that says all sorts and descriptions of people. By race, by gender, by other identifiers that we value and how we understand ourselves and how we understand ourselves in terms of one another. That we've got to keep spending time with Jesus. And one of the ways that we do that is to keep spending time with one another, trying to become the community that is centered around Jesus. I do not think that there's any vision in the New Testament in particular. And for that matter, the Hebrew Bible, that ever envisioned the people of God, people of faith being a monolithic community, particularly with regard to race, ethnicity, national origin and language. And you say, well, preacher, where do you get that from? Well, I remember in the call of Sarah and Abraham that when God called, God said, come and follow me and I will make of you a great nation. And watch this, the intentionality was always in order that all of the other nations will be blessed. So God's vision from the beginning has been for community and it has been for people to be blessings to one another individually and corporately. Personally and socially. And that while these demarcations between our national boundaries, between our languages, between our cultures, between our racial and ethnic identities, which I don't suggest don't need to be claimed, but they don't need to paraphrase the words of Philippians clutched too tightly in such a way that they keep us from relationship with one another, or that we begin to narrate and script to ourselves that, oh, we're the only ones here. I mean, this idea of there being precincts in heaven in some people's ecclesiology has always been a mystery to me. I don't want to offend anybody, but segregated seminaries by religion, cemeteries, excuse me, by religion. That really was Freudian. I wasn't even trying to make a joke. Segregated cemeteries. Seriously? I mean, you're dead. Get away from my belief that there will be, I don't need to describe it and know what it's going to be like, and I don't have to understand the physics and the chemistry of it to believe that there will be a great gift in the morning, y'all. Fairly well, fairly well. Segregated cemeteries. It's not sickened to death. You just look at our track record, or religiously segregated cemeteries. So-called consecrated ground to bury the dead. I mean, have we forgotten the one who said to let the dead bear? Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man have nowhere to lay his head, and what we put our emphasis on, I'm not always persuaded is in alignment with Jesus' vision for us. And so, my point being, the vision of God and seeing through Jesus Christ and the church when it's been at its best has been clear identity, but not a hostile identity in relationship to others. So we are saying when we put our trust in Jesus Christ that we actually believe that God's grace and mercy that has been extended toward us was not just for us. But it was for everybody, and that God in Christ has called me to be in some unlikely relationships. And even if my preference and my comfort zone is to be around folks that are like me and the likeness may have to do with race, gender, may have to do with economic status and education, et cetera, et cetera. God's vision is that all of those differences are lessened in their importance than how I engage the work of the reign of God in the here and the now. And that we begin to bring to pass God's vision of this togetherness in which we are not trying to be homogenized or amalgamated, but we are trying to present a picture to the world, literally and incarnationally, that this thing is for everybody and that your race or your zip code is not a barrier to you being a part. Of what God has for you. And so we're always in the process of becoming in that regard. Now, I believe our hope, now this will get into a little bit of conference politics. I don't know anything about your conference politics, but I'm going to say it anyway. I actually find more hope in starting new congregations that are intentionally multi-racial, multi-nationally, multi-cultural than I have hope in the redemption of some old school congregations, where making the turn is just hard. I mean, I get it. I ain't mad at them. Disappointed, sad, but I'd rather go start three new multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-lingual congregations than I would spend time on turning one around. Now, I actually do both because we're saying to congregations in West Ohio that if you're ready to make the turn to accept your context and to love all of your neighbors and not just to come to the soup kitchen or to the childcare center, which is an alleged ministry of the church, an economic engine for the church. Oh, hello, somebody. That's all right. I got a ticket. I'm on a plane this afternoon, so it's all right. But it's a ministry of the church where it's another place where people enter and are welcomed and are received, but you're also welcomed here when we gather for other parts of our common life. This is a place for you. There is a place for you. It's just hard to make that turn. It can be made. So we have some emphasis on that, but we're putting more emphasis on starting intentionally from the ground up, multi-ethic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual congregations. And where people are coming together, you end up inevitably starting smaller, but the power thereof grows and the witness in the community is far more powerful than walking by the church where people have a history of saying, you know, there was a time when I couldn't go in there. So we just got to start some new stuff because we've confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, and we believe that the church not only is open. See, it's one thing to say in our liturgy, in our confession that we're open. It's another thing to say I'm going to work at making sure that the whole world knows this church is open to everybody. You know, following, I don't want to get too much. You might put me out, Bishop, but following St. Louis, I'm not going to get stuck here. I can't tell you the innumerable number of congregations in West Ohio that put up signs, this church welcomes everybody. All means all. This may have happened here too. Now, they never had those signs before. So, theologically and ecclesiologically and sociologically and anthropologically, I want to say, well, what in the heaven were you doing before? I'm not mad why your trigger got tripped, but when you look at all of the things that are perceived barriers, you're a little late to the game. 2019 St. Louis tripped your trigger, and people have been driving up and down, walking up and down this street with all sorts of identities, and the signs was never there. Backtracked not doing it. I am asking you to see the breath and the stole of what it means to say that the church by God's grace and the blood, sweat, and tears of Jesus has been open to all people, all places of all races, of all tribes, of all identities. And I want to say to you affirmedly, this is out in the climate in United Methodism and the climate in America where we're at each other, and things are said from the highest bully pulpit in this nation that's scandalized, excoriated, and demeaned all sorts and conditions of people. So, I said we're always in the process of becoming so, two things. Everybody that knows me well knows that when I meet my time to see King Jesus, get put in the ground where I'm going to rock, and in some way that I can conceive await that great getting up morning. Everybody knows that somebody needs to stand up. They may not have to preach from it, but they need to go to I, John, 1 John. If nothing else, the second and the third verses, that say, see with what great love the Father have loved us, that we should even be called the children of God. And then the text says, and thus we are. And then this notation, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. You see today that you're not all you ought to be on this subject. Don't worry about it because I want you to know I'm cheering for you because I already know that it doesn't yet appear what you shall be. And because it's true for me, it's true for you, and because even though we're an imperfect church, and that would be the church by any shade and description, but it doesn't yet appear what we shall be because he's bringing us along a road. Paul said to the Philippians, the one who began a good work in you is going to complete that work by the day of Jesus Christ. So it occurs to me, some days, you know, God, I know you're completing your work in me. Today I've not been terribly cooperative. So let me tell you on this race thing. We can live his work now, finish his new creation to quote Charles Wesley. Don't you hear me today? Operative. And say, God, come on and do some more of that work in us. Hear what we shall be anyhow because in spite of all of the ways in which we have segmented and segregated ourselves, after a while, we're going to be together. C.S. Lewis says it's going to be an unlikely thing because, you know, it's going to be some people there and you thought we're going to be there. But after a while, all these identifiers, we're going to be together. Well, how do you know that preach? Well, I flipped over there. I'm going to go to the revelation on patents. Have a little eschatology in your theology. And I'm no longer afraid of the apocalyptic because I got some exegesis on that terminology. And it wasn't necessarily from so-called charismatic Christians. I went down in the Caribbean and I started trying to understand the Calypso. It's a lot easier for me to understand it than to talk to my charismatic friends. It's sort of like in Calypso and in other forms of music. It's the music within the music. Am I in the house today? It's the sound, theme-like, against each other. But if you can get in the right position, it all grooves together. That's why we love jazz in America, the only indigenous art form created on these shores. But you don't have enough time to hear that. But you've got plenty of teachers over here and the musicians in your church understand. So I flipped over in John's revelation and it said that the master was on the throne and folk were making their way to the throne and it was this ethereal conversation that said, who are these? To which the response was these are they after the 12 tribes. So all the folks that we think are going to be in, which if you go literally, this is why you need careful Bible study, there's just going to be 144,000 folks safe. Now I know there's a wideness in his mercy and it's like a wideness in the sea. I don't have to be in the first 144,000 but I would like to be 144 and 1,000. But anyway, he said after the tribes come, he says, well, who are the rest of these folks? They look a little tattered and torn. I added that in, that's not in the Bible. And he said, well, because he said, I see a number that nobody can look at. All sorts and descriptions of hard tribes and they've come up through tribulation and they've had their clothes washed, their robes washed in the blood of the lame. No, we're not going to heaven today but just a point is the vision is always large. 144,000, behind the tribes, behind the demographic that may be your primary demographic, behind the audience that you say is your primary audience, there's always... And as was said in the Gospel of John, I got some other sheep in none of this whole. And I know I can hear it. I can hear it. It's not in the written text, but I can hear it saying, yet. And the Master says, I must bring them also. So God's vision is not just that we would profess and confess, but that in putting our trust in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we would actually begin to work at and to work on. Being the church now, on terra firma in real time, has always been envisioned and is already open to all people without regard to their station, their status, their race, their ethnicity. God is doing that work in North Texas as we speak. Align yourself with that work. And you'll be amazed the blessings that God has in store. Let me give you a sound bite. God asks us... It's not original to me. I'm not that smart. God asks us to live in front of the world what God intends for the whole world.