Every parent and every grandparent knows – or should know – how wrong it is to have a favorite child or grandchild. Of course, it is normal to recognize that one child or grandchild may have higher intelligence, greater abilities, or a more pleasing personality than the others. Yet our love for each one of them should be equal. We owe it to all of them to appreciate and applaud the unique person each of them is. You know that, don’t you?

Yet, when it comes to pastors and the churches they have served during their careers, the situation is a little different. In my case I have served twelve different churches in various parts of the country as a full-time or part-time pastor. When I was with them I loved them all. While I may have thought it, I never suggested to any of them that I believed they were better or worse than one of the other churches I had served.

Now things are different. Pilgrim will be the last church I will serve as pastor. Though the other churches will never know it, I love and appreciate this church more than any of them. Having served so many churches over more than fifty years, I think I have earned the right to say that in many ways Pilgrim is the best of them. This church, you its people, are special. I learned these seven years when I became your pastor. Before I had the opportunity to preach my first sermon, I fell down the stairs in our new home and spent a number of weeks in Erlanger and Siskin. As I said to Barbara, I felt like a defective refrigerator from Sears.  When that happens we send it back and get a new one. I could have understood if you had felt the same about me and regretfully let me go as you searched for a new pastor. But you didn’t do that. You “hung in there” with me and I will never cease to be grateful for such loving support. Over these seven years I have never heard the slightest suggestion that you resented doing that and that I should be very grateful for your keeping me on. That is one of the marks of a truly loving church. We fully support one another not only in good times but also in bad.

Having experienced that kind of love I believe I am well qualified to appreciate the experience of the Apostle Paul as he writes to the church at Philippi. That church was dearer to Paul than any of the others he had founded. A decade before this letter (to the Philippians) was written, Paul had won over to the Christian faith a woman named Lydia, a wealthy woman who dealt in purple dyes. The church began its life meeting in her home. After Paul was forced to leave town, the seed of faith he had sown began to yield a splendid harvest. They grew into a deeply caring Christ-like community.

When word reached the Philippians that Paul had been arrested and taken to Rome to be tried by the Roman Emperor, the members immediately decided to pass the hat in order to send some money to Paul to ease his life in prison. The collection was taken to Rome by Epaphroditus, one of their members. He not only gave Paul the gift of money, but he also volunteered to stay there in prison with Paul and be his servant. Unfortunately, not long afterwards Epaphroditus became seriously ill. When he had partially recovered, Paul felt it would be best if Epaphroditus returned to Philippi. But before he left, Paul wrote this letter, from which our scripture lesson this morning was taken. He decided that it should be sent to the Philippians by means of Epaphroditus. In it, Paul expresses his thanks several times to the church for their gift of money and their genuine concern for his well-being. That concern was very different than the story I once heard of a minister who took ill and had to be hospitalized. He received a get-well card from his church board which read: “We voted to wish you a speedy recovery by a vote of eight to five!” Sadly, though, I have to tell you that the Philippians and Paul himself did not know something we know. Paul would never leave Rome alive. He was probably executed during the reign of Emperor Nero. This letter is part of Paul’s precious legacy both to the first and to the twenty-first centuries.

For Christians then and now caring, accepting, forgiving love should be the great governing principle for any church. Today when some people say that they are spiritual but not religious, I think they are expressing a legitimate criticism. They haven’t seen much love in many churches. When they hear of pastors blithely condemning to eternal torment those who disagree with them in matters of faith or life, even going so far as to tell their congregants that homosexuals should be killed, is it any wonder that a third of Americans in religious surveys say “None of the Above?”

My Dad had a lover’s quarrel with the church. He deplored its lack of intellectual integrity as well as its failure to motivate its members to a truly Christian life. Still, he had a deep belief in the teachings of Christianity. Sometimes he would say of someone he admired: “He’s a real Christian.” I know what he meant and I believe you do, too. To be a real Christian does not mean to be otherworldly or outwardly pious. It means living this life in such a way as to embody the forgiving love of God that we see in Jesus the Christ. To be a real church  means to express this forgiving love together. I believe we ought to deserve the compliment paid to the early church by a pagan: “See those Christians, how they love one another!”

Yet here is the problem: It takes no great effort to love those who are like us. A recent column in the Times Free Press pointed out that while many Americans have grown more tolerant in recent years, this has been accompanied by those holding differing religious, cultural and political views retreating into groups and communities where everyone is pretty much of one mind. Nowhere is that more true than in Christian churches. Collectively and individually churches gather as liberals with liberals and conservatives with conservatives. I believe Paul would say the same thing to us as he said to the Ephesians: “That is not the way you learned Christ.” (Ephesians 4:20) I’m not sure how we should try to bridge the gap, but I do believe with all my heart that we have to take the risk of trying to be in dialogue with those who see the world in different ways than we do.

Let me leave you with the profound message of Edwin Markham’s poem:

“He drew a circle that shut me out –

 Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

 But Love and I had the wit to win:

 We drew a circle that took him in”

Let us commit ourselves to be people and a church that will draw those larger circles!