Meeting with Liz Theoharris May 5 | Red Letter Christians |
Friends,
I'm back to work full-swing, but only because my work is to sit at a desk and talk to people! No serious walking yet. It is interesting that my right foot, the one not operated on, also is recovering well--it turns out that all this rest is paying off.
-Liz
We are God's People
There is so much to do that it is easy to get caught up in the doing. The doing is important.
And yet so much of church is about being. Being the people of God, being the body of Christ. When I teach the Theology of Ministry in Small Churches I list all the things to do, and all the things to think about, to be a vital congregation. And then I circle it all with the words formation.
As Christians, our action grows out of our faith, and we find that place of action by being formed in our faith. It is not that we pause formation to move to action and it is not that we pause action to to be formed. Church is the place that we act, that we reflect, that we learn, and that we act again, over and over and over again.
Sunday School and Bible Study and book group and mentoring and sermons and discussions, all of that put together should be transforming our lives.
1 Peter 2:10 says: Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Whatever the reason you feel not enough, the work of formation reminds us that once we were not a people, but now we are God's people. The work we do is never enough, but the work of faith is accepted mercifully by our God. It is through mercy that it is enough.
This text was the theme of one of the "Witness Our Welcome" gatherings. These ecumenical gatherings of queer Christians started in 1998 or 2000. The idea that we would gather and hear 1 Peter 2:9a But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people ... It is hard to describe the feeling to hear this proclamation that we God's. Chosen. Royal. Holy.
The purpose of that call is to "proclaim the excellence of [Christ] who called you out of darkness into [God's] marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9b).
Our formation is about growing our identity as God's people. As enough. Continuing our way backwards through this lectionary text, 1 Peter 2:7-8 suggests that those who are rejected become the cornerstone of our faith. Stones cause others to stumble, but that stumbling over us does not remove us from the cornerstone position as God's.
The stone sets the boundary of our faith. We come to God, rejected by the community around us and yet chosen by God (1 Peter 2:4) and as such 1 Peter 2:5 encourages us that: like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
What are the traits of this spiritual house? Diversity. Equity. Full inclusion. We remember from Galatians that Paul insisted we are welcoming of all races (Jew or Greek), classes (slave or free), and genders male, female, and the diversity in between. We welcome all because all are made in God's image.
To form our congregation that is the body of Christ, we must seek voices from many different races, classes, and genders. We must read and study from diverse writers, make space for the diversity within us to speak and to be heard. When new to this we "ong for pure spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:2) as we develop experiences and stories we delve deeper for understanding.
The formation of our congregation does require sociological study--the work that has been done to show us the systemic oppression our culture produces. There are many things that we cannot see until we are shown them. And so we study our nation's history of racism, the west's embrace of patriarchy, capitalism's preference for prioritizing capital over workers.
But all of these sociological underpinnings are embraced as a way to understand how we are to focus on God's rule on earth as it is in heaven. It because of the gospel, and the Hebrew Prophets, that we know that God wants us to live together, to share with one another, that there should always be care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger amongst us.
We are good enough to do this work, we have been formed as God's holy people.
What is your church doing, or thinking about doing these days? How are you being here in your particular place? Just reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
RedLetter Christians article on how, if we are not careful, we are formed mostly by the culture and not by our faith. Bad theology is not just bad for other people, it hurts us when we buy into it.
The Rev. Liz Theoharris gathers with Unitarians for Social Justice on Tuesday, May 5, 2026.
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