(aka, LNPC State of the Union)
Nine years ago on Pentecost Sunday, we pulled out a big
piece of chart paper in worship, and we asked ourselves a question together, that
it was a new one for us. The question
led to a kind of a counting exercise.
In a world of measuring and comparing, churches have felt
compelled to calculate how successful they are by what some call, “butts and
bucks,” that is, they count butts in the pews and bucks in the bank. If their attendance is climbing and their
financials look good, then they must be doing well.
But Church isn’t a business we are building and it isn’t somewhere
we go. It’s who we are. So on that day nine years ago we asked ourselves a
different question, How are we being church? and we started counting people.
We began by counting the obvious – butts in the pews. Then we thought of some of the groups that
used our space and counted them. We branched out and counted the Meals on Wheels
volunteers and the people they delivered food to. We counted the place we volunteered to serve
meals and the people we serve them to. Then
we hit a kind of lull, and there was a pause.
And then someone said, “Dee has keys to all her neighbor’s
houses, she lets their dogs out and maintenance people in.” Aaah. So we counted
Dee, and her neighbors, and the kids she watched over on the bus stop corner
every morning, and then the floodgates opened. Meals for a neighbor who was
sick with cancer. Rides to treatment. Tea with a lonely neighbor. A congregation on
the other side of the country using a prayer practice we’d developed, we were
on a roll. It was a lucky month to do
this in, because General Assembly was in town with a couple thousand
Presbyterians in attendance, and our PW had sewn waterfall banners to be hung
around a labyrinth there, and our worship team had set up a prayer chapel for
the delegates to find respite in the midst of their work. So when all was said and done, we had, in one
month, well over three thousand people that we counted as “being church.”
It was an eye-opening, life-changing moment for our
congregation, because it helped us to see that God was doing something here,
right now, and we were already participating.
Comparing ourselves to bigger, more “successful” churches
with extensive children’s programs and way more butts and bucks, or looking
back longingly at the days we more closely resembled those churches, was
missing where Jesus was: Here. Now. Instead, we suddenly discovered the
gratitude, energy and calling of paying attention to who we already are, where
God is already ministering in and through us, and joining in on that ministry on
purpose.
It’s nine years later, and I want to bring you back to that
focus today.
You all are followers of Jesus, trusters of God,
participants in Love. You know that about yourselves, we remind each other of
that, we look for ways to join in. That is Church. You are Church. It’s who you
are. Today is for celebrating that.
In our scripture today, Jesus had recently called the
disciples to follow him. The time is right now, he says, the kingdom of God is here, wrap your mind
around this and trust in it. Join me and be part of it with me.
But if you were one the disciples that had walked away from
your father and fishing business and thought you were going to go adventuring
far away, you would be mistaken. Because almost the very next stop on this
journey was back home to Peter’s house.
His mother-in-law was very sick. As soon as Jesus got there
they told him about her and he went and took her by the hand and she stood up
and was healed.
Where Jesus goes, healing happens. And he begins in our ordinary
lives and our own vulnerability. It starts with sharing our own needs and
worries and joys, with seeing people and being willing to be seen.
And then the whole town arrives on the doorstep. With Jesus,
the sick and demon-possessed are not hidden away somewhere else. When Jesus shows up, the most vulnerable are
brought out of hiding to the center of the community.
And the vulnerable become ministers. When Peter’s mother in law was healed she got
up from bed and reached out to serve them. They didn’t ask her to, she just did
it; because in the Kingdom of God we all have a part to play in both receiving
and in giving.
You, Lake Nokomis, disciples of Jesus, welcome the
vulnerable to the center of the community, and you invite everyone to both
receive and give.
The
disciples are about to discover, when Jesus hustles them right out of town and
onto the next place, that they are not about to build a career right here at
home dispensing Christ’s ministry to others, just like pastors are not actually the main ministers, and
church buildings are not the main place ministry happens. The disciples are called to invite and
empower others to do it, because everyone is a minister, and our whole lives
are for ministry. We are all meant to receive and to give ministry.
This kind of receiving and giving, this life of ministry,
requires courage and vulnerability, which always go hand in hand. Brene Brown found in her research with over
2,000 people, that no experience of courage ever comes without vulnerability.
One
of the most powerful moments of courage and vulnerability I have ever witnessed
happened this year through you. Marty
had been ordained the year before to a Ministry of Dying – and in his
vulnerability became a minister to the rest of us.
The
moment I am thinking of happened at his Goodbye Service in March. Just before the service began, Marty told me
to please announce that he had been having stomach troubles during the day, and
he may need to get up and go to the bathroom during the service, so that if
that happened people could just sit tight and pause the service until he
returned.
The
courageous and deeply vulnerable act of admitting this and not hiding his
weakness, and then asking me to tell everyone,
and then when I did, feeling the whole room immediately move into that space on
the other side of courage where things that scare us become no big deal, was
astounding to me.
And
then, we all got vulnerable and brave together.
We said outloud that Marty was dying, and it felt so awful and helpless,
all of us crying through “what a wonderful world,” that I thought I might not
make it, to be honest.
We
tell ourselves that being vulnerable can kill
us. But we stuck it out. And when the song ended, we were all still
sitting there, perfectly alive, with our wadded-up tissues in our hands. We had
made it to that space on the other side of courage, and there fearlessness, humor,
joy, and even peace, filled us and held us as we shared stories of Marty’s
life.
Through
courage and vulnerability, we entered into the Kingdom of God, where love is
the biggest and truest thing, and all of the demons and ailments that keep us
from real life are rendered powerless. And
his friends came there with us! Like the whole village gathered in the doorway
that night at Peter’s house to watch what Jesus can do.
In
this community the vulnerable are ministers.
Children
are ministers. Shy people are
ministers. Artists are ministers, and
people with dementia are ministers. In this community the grieving are
ministers and the rejoicing are ministers, those who feel settled and sure, and
those in upheaval and transition are ministers. Those of us with extra time on our hands, and
those without a second to spare are all ministers. Those in the prime of their lives and those
who know their deaths are near are ministers. Because we are all vulnerable, and we can be
brave together, to bear each other’s burdens and share each other’s joys, and
go out from here into our lives to do the same in the world. That is ministry.
And we are all ministers.
On
the disciples’ first big gig, things went late into the night, with everyone
gathered around watching Jesus do his thing.
But when the disciples woke up the next morning, Jesus was gone. They hunted for him everywhere – is he in the
bathroom? Did he go for a coffee?
No
- went away to rest and pray alone.
This
is the inhale to ministry’s exhale. And
we are learning it too – we call it Sabbath.
When we practice stepping away to rest and refill, to reconnect with God
so we can reconnect with each other, we’re learning how to inhale so we can
exhale.
This
makes no sense in a world, or a church, that wants to keep exhaling all the
time, do more, help more, save more, say more.
But
Jesus never hesitated to step away.
This
is God’s show, God’s world, God’s ministry we are sharing in. Keeping it all going is not our job. The main thing here is love, and God is moving
everything in that direction. Our job is to stay human, to come back to whose
we are and who we are. And then our job
is to seek Jesus and join him in that love.
On
Saturday Evenings you come in here with your babies and your worries and you
set them down and let the music and the candlelight hold you. You let yourself pray in whatever ways you feel
led. You inhale. Meals to new parents, Prayer for the Nation,
two Sundays a month to stop and be, we have woven it into our life together – watching
for ways to inhale, and helping each other inhale too.
But
the disciples don’t quite get it yet, so they hunt him down and throw a fit at
him for disappearing right when things were going gangbusters. Everyone
is looking for you! Because, of
course, Jesus should stay put and set up shop, right? Build some pews and put
butts to count in them? Establish a successful healing and demon-casting out
business that grows bigger every year? People will come from miles around!
But
this isn’t about something you can build, compare and measure; this is about
participating in the Kingdom of God. The whole village is now filled with
ministers. So it’s time to go invite others into this reality too.
Here’s
the thing, it simply will not work to try to make Jesus stay in the last place
he brought healing and hope to continue doing the same thing in the same
way.
So
often the church looks back and says, That
was amazing! That is who we will be from now on! And then we try to
recapture the magic, and bottle the formula, and sell enough of that idea or
program to at least break even. Everyone is looking for you, Jesus, where
did you go? Come back to where we are!
But
Jesus doesn’t play that game – he’s on the move! And so we have to keep asking – Where are you now, Lord? What are you doing
in our lives right now, God? What are you doing in and through this community
right now? Where are we being called to join you in the world right now?
Already in this new year, your session has spent upwards of
15 hours in discernment together, asking those questions, seeking God’s will, nothing more, nothing less,
nothing else. And on the other side of this process came the gratitude,
energy and confidence that God is calling us this year to deeper caring,
sharing and community, in three ways:
The first is in our area of WORSHIP:
Worship returns us to trust in God, and reconnects us in
belonging to others. It turns out that this practice we’ve been doing of giving
10% of our income to other expressions of God’s ministry in the world is significant
and transformative, and can be an act of true worship. We believe God is
calling us to deepen our tithing practice - there is much more potential there
than we have realized, acknowledged, or tapped into. How can we connect more with the communities
we are giving to? How can the tithe
money be merely the “practice run” that opens us to deeper ministry with and
alongside others in the world? How can
we share more widely as a congregation the joy of choosing recipients and
giving? How might God use this act of tithing
to continue to change us and call us to generosity in our own lives, opening
our hearts more widely to trusting God and belonging to others?
The second calling is in our HOSPITALITY:
Providing a place of hospitality and a community of welcome
is central to our calling right now. Session believes God is calling us to
invest in this building as an important resource for ministry. Our building has
more groups meeting in it than ever, but the roof will need to be replaced
soon, and for decades we’ve lamented inaccessible bathrooms, and gathering room
doorways too narrow to fit a wheelchair through. More than a decade ago, the lack of an
elevator is all that kept us from housing after school tutoring program, and without
one now our space is a barrier to people and groups fully participating in
activities here. Session determined that
it is time to begin dreaming and planning for the future ministry in this
place, by beginning a capital campaign to upgrade and improve the building. How can we prepare for who God wants to bring
to this place and be ready for the ministry God will do here?
The third calling is, of course, our SABBATH calling:
God is calling us to deeper connection through Sabbath, and
particularly this year, through Sabbatical – it’s the inhale that fuels the
exhale of ministry. It’s meant to
reground us and reconnect us to God and to each other. As we ponder the three
months we have set aside for this, the question to you all is, What would make your hearts sing?
While my family and I are off inhaling and heartsinging, you
will be here with each other doing the same.
Today in our annual meeting, you will get to do some initial
brainstorming about that. What would feed this community with play, fun rest? What might deepen your relationships with
each other and grow your trust in God’s care? How can you use those three
months for renewal and joy? Really
taking this time to inhale as a congregation makes us ready for all that God
wants to do in and through us as ministers!
We are not going to do a counting exercise today, because it
turns out ministry is not an addition problem that originates with us, it’s
multiplication that begins in God, and spreads infinitely through our lives,
always inviting us to join Jesus where he is right here and now. It can only be measured in, of all things, fruit – like joy and peace and patience,
generosity and kindness. And it is
encountered in the intangible but most real things, like vulnerability and
courage, inhaling and exhaling, trust, and love. The disciples in our story
today are just are beginning to learn that, and we are learning it to.
So let’s celebrate today, Church! Let’s share the stories of
where God is already ministering in and through us, and let’s join in the
Kingdom of God on purpose once again!
(PS - Perhaps many of
you might not think of annual reports as particularly interesting, let alone
utterly delightful documents. But I will tell you, this year, our annual report
is utterly delightful. Because in addition to sharing some of the ways we are
joining Jesus in ministry, it has messages from some of the people who have
gathered in the doorway.
There is a message
from a pastor in New Zealand who came to learn from us, an author who wrote
about Sabbath and included our story, and a few of the folks who use this
building for ministry we might never see.
There are stories about our “Pentecost Practice-run” inspiring the same in
Central, and maybe even another one in England! Prayers we’ve written spread far and wide, and thank you notes came back
to us from people in the places we’ve tithed. When
you live in the way of love and trust, it draws others to be part of the
Kingdom of God too. Read the report. You'll love it.).
