John 1:1-5 on September 7th, 2025
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
Below is transcript pulled from the video and formatted by artificial intelligence. There may be inconsistencies or errors.
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Each year at St. Philip, we walk through the whole story of the Bible. In the fall months, we are in the Old Testament following the story of Israel hitting key moments from their history. Come November, we will move to prophets who speak of God's coming justice. Then at Christmas, we switch to one of the Gospel stories and we follow that from birth, life, death, and resurrection all the way until Easter. And then in the season of Pentecost, we listen to the early church in Acts and from Paul's letters as the good news spreads out into the world. We get to hear the whole narrative of God's story to us. Here, how God has been active in our world from the first days to now to the days yet to come.
And today, we start again literally where it all began. In the beginning, God created. God separated. God gathered. God spoke. God brought order to the chaos. This creation story is meant to tell us about who and why. God's spirit, breath, wind, comes over the waters and we follow with the familiar rhythm, the command to let there be. And it was so. And God said it was good. Then it was evening and it was morning.
Day six, however, does get a bit of embellishment emphasizing the climax of creation and the important role of human beings. We weren't just created, but created in the image of God, something that no other creature can claim. There's something sacred about human beings. Our ability to speak as God spoke to create art and beauty and memories, much as God creates. But notice that that creation doesn't end there. God commands all living things to be fruitful and multiply. Creation was never a one-time event. It's an ongoing reality. God is committed to life, to renewal, to re-creation. God has made us partners in that work.
Now, of course, sometimes we bend our creativity toward selfish or destructive ends, yet the capacity to begin again, to be re-created is also woven into us. Individually in our relationships as communities, God gives us the gift of starting a new. For us at St. Philip, we don't need to look too far to see this. While we have a new beginning by starting at the beginning today, soon-ish, this community will find itself in a whole new space, with new ways, new perspectives and new opportunities for worship and welcome. We are re-creating the worship space so that we can better live into the community that God calls us to be, who God created us to be.
The buildings are just a piece of that process. A deeper re-creation takes naming, speaking, saying who we are now and who we strive to be. For the past year, our crossing thresholds team has been working to do just that. As a congregation who is growing, who has so much good happening, who wants to share the love of God and Christ Jesus with the grand strand and the world, what do we need to re-create? What do we need to create a new? And what about who we are must never change?
Our Linton season this past year was filled with much of that conversation. Through table discussions and large group sharing, we gathered insights and reflections. Those ideas, those stories, those concerns informed our crossing thresholds team helping to craft answers to those big questions. And the first step for us was to find a way to tell our story, who we are and what we're about in a way that is short, memorable and true. That's usually what we call a mission statement. And alongside that, we worked on naming our core values, the things that matter most to us as a community of faith, the qualities that we hope to live out in our worship, in our relationships, in the way that we serve others.
Now, I'm going to be a big tease here because I'm not going to tell you what those are just yet. We're saving that for the big reveal for later. However, I can say that both the mission statement and the core values came to us rather quickly, which is not normally the case. It says though that the spirit just came in and swept over us, guiding us to simply name what God had already planted in us. We weren't creating something new. We were speaking into creation what God had already created us to be. The mission statement and the core values reflect who we are now and who we are becoming as we continue to expand God's table. That might be a little foretaste.
And with those, as the dry land beneath us, we asked, where is God leading us next? And we identified six areas of focus to tie into the creation story. Think of them as our lit their bees, ways that we are called to live out God's ongoing creation. And they fall into two groups. Group one contains those things that we need to create to continue to grow well and live out our mission and our core values more fully.
We plan to launch small groups to form deeper relationships, faith formation and belonging in a growing congregation. These will be new groups and they will rotate per season. So there will always be something new and new people to meet. As the church grows, we will work to care for one another with the creation of a pastoral care team. Trained lay leaders and I will work together, strengthening how we care for one another so that no one feels alone. As we enter into a new space, we will work harder to engage new people with Christian hospitality. From first impressions to long lasting relationships, we want to create a culture where every person feels welcomed, noticed and valued.
The second group is less of a new creation kind of stuff and instead just continually working to recreate what we do so that we keep moving things forward. We want to engage the community by reaching out to people who may not yet be involved but are searching for meaning, for hope, for community. Our goal is to create new ways to listen, connect and extend invitations so that our neighbors might encounter Christ love through St. Philip. We believe that children and youth are vital, not just to the future of the church but to the church right now. To help all ages grow in faith, we are recommitting to their spiritual formation through strong leadership, meaningful programs and ongoing support for families. Christ calls us to love and serve our neighbors. At St. Philip, we are discerning how best to take the faithful next steps in our service and feeding ministries to strengthen and deepen the work that we do in the community.
Over the coming weeks, more information on all of this will be shared, so be on the lookout. The mission statements, the core values, these goals, that they are all meant to share our who and why. While this sermon today was a little more informational instead of inspirational, the good news for us today is that God has never stopped creating. In Jesus, the word made flesh God stepped into creation again to recreate us in amazing life-giving ways. And in communion, Christ meets us, feeding us, forgiving us, nourishing us so that we can live as people made new, filled with the spirit's breath and power.
And what we are doing together at St. Philip is part of that very same good news. This is our faithful response to the God who made each and every one of us in God's own image and gifted us with the capacity to imagine, restore and renew. So just as God said, let there be, we too step out in faith, saying let there be in this congregation. Let there be welcome. Let there be care. Let there be service. Let there be new life for children and youth. Let there be love for neighbors. Let there be a community alive with Christ spirit. And in all of this, may God look upon it and say, it is good. Amen.