08495
July 10, 2008
Worth the risk
Support of community essential to faithful living, Montreat youth told
The Rev. Bridgett Green MONTREAT, NC — Being a Christian is risky business and most of us cannot do it alone, the Rev. Bridgett Green told 1,300 high schoolers at the 2008 Montreat Youth Conferences here Wednesday evening (July 9).
“There’s an old African adage: ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’” she said. “Well, it also takes a village to raise a Christian.”
Preaching from Mark 2: 1-12 — the story of the paralytic lowered through the roof to get closer to Jesus healing touch — Green said Jesus was not just moved by the faith of the paralytic. “He was just as impressed with the faith and effort of his friends,” she said.
When the friends arrived at the house, Green said, “people were everywhere, blocking all the doors and windows, and I’m sure the sight was overwhelming. But these friends were not going to let down their friend.”
So it is with Christians, Green said, recalling friends and neighbors who took her to church as a child when her parents were unable to. And the Presbyterian baptismal vow, in which the community pledges to nurture the baptized one into a mature faith.
“God has given us the Holy Spirit and the faith of the whole community to help us,” she said. “But do we dare to take the risk?” Faced with such obstacles as institutional racism and sexism, peer pressure, materialism and a host of personal temptations, saying “yes” is not easy, Green said.
"That’s precisely why God has called Christians into communities of faith “to pray for each other, to support each other, to encourage each other,” she said. “It is these friends who teach us and help us to take the risk … to open ourselves up to the power of God, to go against the culture, over and over again acting in love, faith and hope whether it’s cool or uncool, to open the door to Jesus Christ, to the love of God.
“Do we dare to take the risk?” she asked and was greeted with a thunderous affirmative. | 
