Daniel Crews, the province's archivist wrote a very readable 47 page book titled “The Story of the 13 th of August 1727 : The Spiritual Birthday of the Renewed Moravian Church .” According to this account on that August 13 th everyone living in the tiny village of Herrnhut assembled for worship in the Lutheran Church at Berthelsdorf. The folks living in Herrnhut were refugees who fled nearby Catholic countries seeking the freedom to worship God and be the kind of Christian they understood scripture calling them to be. Few of us realize that prior to the Thirty Years War, large sections of the Czech Republic , Hungary and Poland were Protestant. Many of these refugees were experiencing religious freedom for the first time in their lives, and so they practiced their Christian faith in a community with many differing ideas of what that meant. Herrnhut was far from a village of Brotherly love and unity. Count Zinzendorf =, on whose land he village was located, was so disturbed by the refugees level of conflict, that he drafted and insisted they each sign The Brotherly Agreement , the fore runner of our Moravian Covenant for Christian Living.

The folks who sought religious freedom in Herrnhut hotly disagreed over doctrinal issues such as predestination and double predestination. Words I wonder if any of us here to day even know what they mean. They disagreed over the interrelationship of right belief and right living. And they differed on issues such as whether communion wafers should be plain or embossed with a lamb or cross. Fortunately they didn't have to argue over the lovefeast coffee recipe or what and how to serve Lovefeasts because that day was the first time they had a lovefeast so there was no one to complain, “We've never done it that way before!”

But as they came to church on that first August 13 th to worship and share the Lord's Supper together, they came open to receive the blessing the Holy Spirit poured out upon them during worship. Bishop Edward Rondthaler writes:

"Zinzendorf, who gives us the deepest and most vivid account of this wonderful occurrence, says it was "a sense of the nearness of Christ" bestowed, in a single moment, upon all the members that were present; and it was so unanimous that two members, at work twenty miles away, unaware that the meeting was being held, became at the same time, deeply conscious of the same blessing."

"These members were all laity, though at a later time, ministers and missionaries, deacons, presbyters and bishops arose out of the wonderfully blessed assemblage.

The Holy Spirit became a powerful, tangible reality What was before that day just a name many of their ancestors had called themselves, Unitas Fratrum , the Unity of the Brethren, became true unity. What had been an ideal became reality.

As we look back on that day—which we can do in great detail because record keeping is the 11 th commandment for Moravians-- we know that what happened on that day was not that they miraculously all suddenly agreed with one another. Some still left the community. Rather, what the Holy Spirit accomplished that day was to change everyone's focus away from what divided them and on who united them, Jesus Christ. Discerning God's will for them as a community of faith became more important than being right or getting my way.

This newly united “Unity of the Brethren,” then began in earnest to discern why was it? That God has called them together in this place and time together? From that discernment grew a world wide ministry that sent 200 of that 600 member community to 100 countries to spread the Gospel. Instead of arguing over what kind of wafers to serve at Holy Communion, they became united in their desire to take Holy Communion to people who had never heard the name of Jesus Christ. Newly united in Christ, they reached out in love, risking their lives and their fortunes to change lives by spreading the good news of the gospel in word and deed.

Today we celebrate and remember the renewal of our church nearly 300 years ago gathered, like our spiritual ancestors, around the communion table. Let each of us be as open to the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our congregation as our brothers and sisters were on that day so long ago in Herrnhut, Germany. Open to the Holy Spirit renewing First Moravian Greensboro's mission of being united in Christ, reaching out with love, changing lives.

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