Building Community with Diverse People

I wonder if this has ever happened to you – Have you ever had the experience of doing something over and over again, so many times, that after awhile you do it all by rote memory and you miss half the experience? Maybe it’s driving a route that’s so familiar that you don’t even pay attention to where you are going and all of a sudden you’ve missed the exit you wanted to take. Or walking down a familiar trail in the woods every morning and not even noticing what’s going on in creation all around you, as the season changes.

Or maybe it’s picking up the familiar worship bulletin on your way into the sanctuary on a Sunday morning without fully paying attention to all the information it contains (more about that in a minute).

It’s easy to overlook – and not pay attention to – the details and meaning of something that is familiar to us; something that we are so used to seeing or hearing or doing in a particular way that we might miss something new buried in the familiar experience.

I had this experience this week as I was pondering this morning’s familiar gospel story (or, more accurately, stories). I’ve read this passage from the gospel of Matthew many times before. In my mind, it’s a call story (Jesus says to Matthew – Follow me) and it’s a healing story of two unnamed people who are identified as female. The calling and the healings are two examples of what it might mean to follow Jesus. That’s what I typically notice about this passage, that informs how I understand the meaning of the text.

This week, though, my attention was drawn to something new – something I had not considered before. I noticed a connection between these gospel words and the purpose statement that this community of faith known as Holy Trinity Lutheran Church adopted last fall.

The purpose statement is written out on the top of the first page of the bulletin – God calls us to follow the example of Jesus, acting boldly to build community with diverse people and to nurture creation. You may recall that this purpose statement was developed over the course of many months through a process of discernment – that is, people gathered together to listen to God through scripture and prayer and listen to each other through open, honest and direct conversation.

Much meaning is packed into the words of this one sentence; so much meaning that it might be easy to overlook – and not pay attention to – the ways you might live out this purpose in real time, in real life, in the real world that God creates and Jesus redeems and the Holy Spirit sustains.

Today Jesus shows you how to do that. Notice what Jesus does one day as he is walking along the path of life..

He invites a tax collector (Matthew) to follow him. Then he sits down and eats with the tax collector and his friends. This is significant because tax collectors were Jewish people working for the Roman Empire to collect high taxes from their neighbors, making life more difficult and oppressive for them.

He teaches the religious authorities what is important to God – I desire mercy (steadfast love), not sacrifice; relationship with people; not strict adherence to religious ritual.

He responds, immediately and without hesitation, to Jairus, the distraught father, a leader from the synagogue, who comes to Jesus pleading for help for his daughter.

He heals (makes well) the unnamed woman, unclean from 12 years of uncontrollable bleeding, who in great faith touches the fringe of his coat (making Jesus also unclean).

He gives new life to the unnamed girl.

All of the things that Jesus is doing in this passage – inviting; teaching; responding to need; healing and making well; giving new life — offer a new way of living together to all those people who are burdened and weighed down by the cares of this world. This is the way Jesus walks through life – noticing and paying attention to all the people around him.

Here’s where I noticed something new in this text – the connection between these gospel words and your purpose statement.

Everything that Jesus does is about building relationship – building community – with diverse people. Jesus paid attention to the people who were right in front of him. He paid no attention to economic status (the tax collector), gender (woman with a flow of blood), religious status (leader of the synagogue), age (the daughter). Jesus made no distinction between sinners and saints; people considered clean or unclean.

Jesus’ intent was to build community with diverse people – to build up the kin-dom of God on earth with people of all nations and tribes and languages and cultures and skin color and abilities and genders and economic status – until that glorious day when all people are made well by faith and rise up to new life in Christ.

This is still God’s intent today. Building community with diverse people is the work that God calls Holy Trinity to do, following the example of Jesus to notice and pay attention to all the people around you. What might that work look like? How might Holy Trinity be part of Jesus’ invitation to bring healing and new life to the world? Here are some examples…

This year Holy Trinity celebrates the 10th anniversary of becoming a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) congregation—a public commitment to celebrating the diversity of God’s created world and recognizing all people as beloved children of God.

This year Holy Trinity is an event sponsor of Easton Pride 2026 and will have a booth at the event coming up on Saturday, June 13, 10am – 2pm. This is a public witness to God’s love for all people.

Three people from Holy Trinity participated in the New England Synod Assembly in Worcester this weekend. The theme of the Assembly was “And the Word became flesh…Living the Story of Jesus”. We heard inspiring stories of faith, received reports from our ministry partners, worshiped together, and greeted old and new friends.

What I noticed this year was the wide diversity of people that the Holy Spirt gathered together as Christ’s church – the body of Christ – at this Assembly – young and old and in between; people of all genders and skin colors and languages and nationalities. Worship was enlivened by the multiplicity of sights and sounds of all these LUTHERAN people, in their various expressions of what that means, coming to praise God and to feast at the table God provides.

The Assembly passed a resolution supporting the boycott of companies complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people and supporting settlement expansion and occupation in Gaza and the West Bank and also committed to active participation in the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action.

All of these actions are done to the glory of God, to bring healing and new life to the world.

The Good News for today is that this is the work that God calls you to do – to pay attention to what Jesus is doing…inviting, healing, giving new life – and to pay attention with whom he is doing it – as you go about the work of building community…developing relationships and connecting…with diverse people…sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ…telling the story of Jesus, who is the life that is the light of all people. (John 1:4-5).

The Good News for today is that you can do this work that God has given you to do through the power of the Word spoken by Jesus – the Word that calls you to invite; to teach; to respond to need; to heal; and to bring to new life.

You can do this work by the power of the Holy Spirit who breathes new life and healing and joy into you.

You can do this work for the sake of the whole world that God so dearly loves.