The things we all need to hear

St. James the Just 

(Presided over the Council of Jerusalem around 50 CE, 

where his concluding decision shaped how Gentile Christians related to Mosaic law).

 James 1:27-2:8, 2:14-17

Can you imagine growing up with Jesus as your brother? I mean, your literal, hand-me-down clothes, share the bathroom, which of us is Grandma’s favorite, brother?
On our journey through the bible, we’ve been spending the past couple of months in the letters of Paul. Today we are reading a letter, or epistle, of James.** The brother of Jesus. One of the earliest pieces of scripture we have. James was Jesus’s actual brother. 

So, Jesus’s brother, James, or as modern people like to call him, Jesus’s “half-brother”, wrote this letter. But he was not a disciple of Jesus before he died. After Jesus’s resurrection is when James became a follower of The Way, and eventually the well-known and respected leader of the first church ever, in Jerusalem.

Paul’s letters were, for the most part, written to specific communities with specific circumstances, certain people, particular scenarios. This letter is not written to a specific community. It is written to all the churches scattered around the Roman Empire. And it is not about one thing, it’s kind of about all the things. It’s a mashup of Jesus’s teachings and wisdom sayings, filled with pithy lines like the Book of Proverbs, gut punch truths and direct statements that you can’t help but remember, because they catch you off guard and call you out.
Such as:
Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Faith without works is dead.

Testing your faith produces endurance.

Every generous act of giving and every good gift is from God.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. 

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. This ought not be.

A harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 

Let your ‘Yes’ be yes and your ‘No’ be no. 

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

The wisdom nuggets James drops throughout this letter instruct, and remind, and hope to inspire and direct a wide but intimate audience, a scattered community united in calling and purpose to guide them in this new life they’re now living.  It’s like the first pope’s first encyclical. 

I spent some time this week just imagining this community. We already heard with Paul’s letters how their way of living undermined the whole structure of society, how they cared not just for the people who looked out for them but especially for those who could not. Women and slaves were leaders, children were valued, and they were a strange group of people not afraid of death who refused to be silenced or stopped in this way of love by the empire’s rewards or punishments.  

But I got pretty caught up on this being written by Jesus’ brother. And he and Paul knew each other! Paul visited James in Jerusalem, sat with him on councils, mentions him in his letter to the Galatians. Then I wondered if Paul knew Jesus’ whole family. Surely, he knew Mary, who was also a leader in the church. And while there is no historical record, sacred tradition holds that as Mary’s death approached, Paul and other disciples and church leaders gathered in Jerusalem, where undoubtedly James convened a blessing for his mother, their mother, our mother.

I won’t digress further here into my meandering wonderings about the childhood family dynamics or sibling rivalries in the household of these brothers James and Jesus (Ya'akov and Yeshua), or what elements of big brother’s origin story details were discussed with the other children, only to note that we are not told any of these things because they are not the point. Jesus had an ordinary life in an ordinary family, and that is perhaps the most extraordinary thing about God becoming human. 

All we have of God is what God has revealed to us of Godself, by coming, embodied, in Jesus Christ. And all we have of Jesus Christ is what those who knew him or knew of him wrote to each other about him, or passed on in oral tradition until someone wrote it down for the rest of us. 

Except that’s not all we have, because Jesus did not stay dead like ordinary humans. So the life he lives that cannot die is now our life, and the connection he shares with the Father that cannot be broken is now our connection, and the way he loved all people as siblings, each one a beloved child of God, is now our way, of loving, of being.  The risen Jesus lives now in and through us; we are part of his life that cannot die, caught up in grace, released from whatever might try to trap us in shame, or anger, or isolation, and held in this belonging to God and all others. The real reality of God’s eternal love brought to fulfillment in Christ is our origin, our destination, and our path.

Therefore, as Paul would say. Because that is the truth, live like it’s true. Here’s James’s therefore: Quit adopting the mindset of the world. Care for those who need help. What good is it if you say ‘I have faith in God’ but don’t help the people around you?’ They belong to God and so they belong to you, there is no faith in God apart from our neighbor! What good is it to say ‘go in peace and be warm and fed’ but give them no food or shelter? Jesus didn’t come to us in nice thoughts and kind wishes; he came in hunger and need and was fed and cared for by those he came to.  And how is it living in the real reality to decide some people are better or more worthy than others because of their outward appearance? When you forget that the poor have a special place in the God’s kingdom and kiss up to the rich instead, what fear, insecurity, or lies is your life really being guided by?

Nobody likes to feel scolded. (Martin Luther was not a fan of this letter). But there is some extra punch, I feel, to James’ words, because he is not writing them right to a certain community or situation. These messages are not directed at a certain group especially busy with bad behaviors. This letter is sent all throughout the Roman empire, church to church, house to house, family to family, wherever the people of the Way are gathered, these words apply. They are for all followers of the Way to hear.

When we read directives, we like to look around at who most needs to hear the message, then nod along and decide it pertains to those other Christians over there.  I may not be perfect all this, at least I’m not as bad as they are.

So, there is something both heartbreaking and deeply comforting to know that these specific mindsets and behaviors James is addressing are universal struggles. He is dealing with pitfalls shared by all Christians living in empire, starting with the very first church, and including us right now. No partiality or prejudice; this is wisdom every one of us needs to hear. 

James is warning us about falling back into a way of living that fractures us, from each other, from God, and from our true humanity that finds its wholeness when we are living with and for each other. We’ve called these two paradigms the way of God and the way of fear. One is true and brings freedom, the other is a very persuasive lie that enslaves. So, James sends to everyone a letter that can already guess what our temptations will be, because they’re his too, they’re all of ours. Believing and living these lies is not new to us. This is sin – back to the beginning, human beings turning from the source of life and love and and trying to somehow acquire on our own, over and against each other, what is already given—and can only be given as a gift—from the source of all life. And this lie is fed to us every day by the empire.

We need reminding that we don’t strive to advance in some board game of life or faith, stepping on others on our way up.  We are transformed from the inside out by the power of the Holy Spirit, who is the energy that flows between the God who is so wholly other than us that our imaginations cannot even begin to reach toward, and the incarnate Son, God’s own self-revelation on earth, God’s act of reaching out to us and saying, Here is who I am. This is me. I am for you.

We have been claimed by this God for this holy, ordinary life. This God, who is for us, has made us for God and for one another. This life of belonging is a life of presence and of participation. It’s a life of mistakes that are confessed to those we’re here for, and hurt that is forgiven by those we’re here with, and (as our own Marty Christensen used to say) we are here to take care of each other. In this reality, the real reality, those of us who are right now most in need are who we are most here for.  

It has meant so much to E and B (a family in our congregation going through some very challenging medical circumstances) to have us praying for them. And we are. Every day we are praying. And also, the more I say to E, we are praying for you, the more it feels like words without actions, Be well! Take care! Thoughts and prayers! A few of you shared this week how sad it felt to eat the meals you’d prepared for them and were unable to deliver. And I keep on reiterating, we are here for you, whatever you need, and being unable to really provide anything, because they’re living in such suspended liminality at the moment that what they most need is our prayers, so we keep praying. And thank God we are able to do that, both that they are letting us do that, by sharing what’s going on and not holding back, and also that God gives us this way to participate in what God doing. Prayer is an act of obedience and trust, and, as James reminds us, the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

But last night I prayed for some way to do something. And I was immediately reminded that the gathered church breaks bread together and we serve one another communion, and this is one way we practice receiving and living in this real reality, sharing each other’s place and being remembered into our belonging and our calling.  So last night I reached out to E and offered to bring communion to them after worship. Pastor Lisa and me, more people from church, just one of us, none of us, whatever would feel right to them. She checked with B and came back saying B said he would love to have communion with whoever of us wants to come. 

So later today we will put action to our words and be the prayer we’ve been praying. Here now, with you, for B.  And even though it means only a few of us can go in the ICU, and we can’t end pain or bring relief or hope, we can be with and for them, and this is how we see and know God who is with and for us in Jesus. 

We can pretend life’s long, pretend it’s easy, deny the suffering, act like we don’t need each other, choose not to see each other, hide from other people’s pain, prop up the powerful, ignore those in need, and make our lives all about ourselves, but all that pretending won’t change what’s real. 

This life is short, and it’s hard, and it’s filled with suffering, and everyone dies, and in Jesus Christ God is here, with and for us, belonging us to God and one another, siblings, all, in this human family. And inside and underneath it all we’re held in God’s love that cannot be stopped by our selfishness, altered by our fear, dampened by our suffering, broken by our pain, or ended by our death. This love is our origin and destination, and it is our path—we are here to take care of each other.  So let’s live what’s real. 

Amen.

______________________

**Here is a fun bit of biblical trivia I just learned this week: In Hebrew James was Ya'akov and Jesus was Yeshua. So, they could’ve been called Jacob and Joshua, but technically, Jacob is actually the same name as James and Joshua is the same name as Jesus. It’s just how they evolved through Greek, Latin and English.  And weirdly, wherever the name is used in the Old Testament English bibles have translated it Jacob, and in the New Testament it is translated to James, just to keep straight who is who among all our bible characters, even though Greek calls them all Iacobos.  

Here are the Linguistic Progressions Broken Down: 
JAMES: Ya'akov (Heb/Aramic) = Iakobos (Gr) = Iamobos (Lat) = Iames (Eng, pre-1500s) = James (Eng, post-1500s, after "I" and "J" became separate letters).
JESUS: Yeshua (Heb/Aramic) = Iēsous (Gr, because lacks "sh" sound and needs 's' masculine ending) = Iesus (Lat) = Jesus (Eng. post 1500s when "I" and "J" differentiated).

How it's supposed to go

Daily Devotion - April 9

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Maundy Thursday

The English word "Maundy" comes from the Latin 'mandatum,' which means "commandment." As recorded in John's gospel, on his last night before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and then gave them a new commandment to love one another as he had loved them (John 13:34). This is why services on this night generally include the washing of feet or other acts of physical care as an integral part of the celebration.

Today Jesus gathers with his disciples for the Passover meal in the upper room. It's tense. Lazarus is a week out of the tomb. The palm parade is four days past and the fallout is real - the authorities are after Jesus.  Gathered in that room, their nerves must have been positively vibrating with anticipation and dread.

This meal they've come to share remembers God delivering the people out of slavery.  But instead of claiming his power and pronouncing his intention to do the same, this One they expect to overturn the order and lead the people to freedom stands from the table and strips down to his skivvies, ties a towel around himself, gets on his hands and knees like a slave, and washes the filth off their feet.

"This is not how this is supposed to go!" Peter protests.  

But Jesus insists it is. 

Then he tells them to do the same for each other.

Right now the world feels turned upside down. We are all filled with anticipation and dread. Our nerves are frayed.  Perhaps we're feeling annoyed at our increased dependence on others, eager to get back to our independent, self-sufficient kind of life. We're connected but cut off; isolated and helpless, unsure what any of this will come to mean. We'd like to be delivered from this ASAP.

Every fiber of us may be saying, "This is not how it's supposed to go!"  

But Jesus insists it is.

And now we are having our feet washed in ways we can't have anticipated.  And we are also washing each other's feet.  Kind words.  Forwarded messages of inspiration.  Holding those in our own homes when the tears come. Gifts, letters and phone calls. Offers to help. Checking in. Cheering on. Grieving together, apart. Laughing together, apart.  All over the world and in our own neighborhoods and homes, we are tenderly lifting the parts of one another that are bruised and tired and caring for each other.

We are ministers; this is ministry.

This is how it's supposed to go.

We have all our powerful, compelling idea of how our freedom ought to look, and then we have reality in front of us.  And we have a God who comes not to fulfill our ideas, but to share our reality.  Right inside this thing. Right alongside us.  Not judging, critiquing and instructing us how we should be acting or thinking, but getting down and washing the dirt and ache off of our feet. 

And telling us to do likewise.

God brings a different freedom than we think we should have.  

We are not made free from each other, but free for each other.

We are ministers; this is ministry.

This is how it's supposed to go.

How are your feet being washed this week?

Whose feet are you washing?

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pause, reflect, and pray in this way, and so join our hearts:

May I receive the blessings you gave me this day
through the hands and words and acts of others,
blessings like...

May I receive the blessings you gave me this day
in the moments you used me to bless others,
moments like...

Thank you for the freedom I discover in giving.
Thank you for the freedom I embrace when I receive.
Thank you that in all things, and no matter what, I
belong to you, God, and to all others.
Amen.

Don't be afraid

Luke 1:26-38

Mary

This is the famous scene, the angel’s pronouncement, which the church has called, “The Annunciation.” 

Denise Levertov’s poem, Annunciation, asks,

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

        Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments,
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

The suggestion that we all have moments of divine invitation to be part of something more feels like a stretch sometimes. In a week where I have spent more time than I care to admit being, as my kids call me, a “Karen,” (which apparently means someone who always asks to speak to a manager), in my case, trying to sort out delivery issues for a bed that has twice been in a truck on its way to my house but still has not arrived, between fighting a head cold, scraping my windshield and shoveling my driveway, juggling work, and parenting, and making dinner, and Christmas shopping, and ending most evenings watching the news in open-mouthed horror, this week it feels a bit farfetched for me to imagine being invited by the divine into something extraordinary.  

But imagine this is true. Imagine that we are. (Because it is. We are). 

Imagine for a moment how we might greet these annunciations.

Lots of people, this poem suggests, do great and valuable things in life without any awareness of or appreciation for it. They go through life unaffected, oblivious to the conspiracy of redemption unfolding around, and indeed even sometimes through, their own lives.

Others come to their annunciation moments with definite awareness, and so also fear and trembling at the terrible toll that risking will likely take on their equilibrium.  They back slowly away from the moment of change and choice, turn away and sit back down in their perpetual risklessness, preferring the delusion of safety, the illusion of inertia, to reckless trust.  And those people don’t get to be part of the marvelous things beckoning them to life.

But Mary.  She was open and ready when God’s Yes came. 

God said, I am about to do the unfathomable.  You, Mary, will be in this with me. And she met the moment with her heart open. She saw it for what it was, and she heard the Angel Gabriel when he told her, “Do not be afraid.” 

What is it to say Yes to God’s yes? 

To meet your annunciations when they come? 

To allow yourself to take them in - to be taken in - with bewilderment, curiosity, willingness, and courage?

How can this be? Mary asks, explaining to her celestial visitor the biological impossibility of the thing he is announcing.  It is impossible.

But impossibility is how God always chooses to come. 

So the angel tells her about Elizabeth. 

He could have told her about any of the barren wombs or stuttering spokespeople, dead seas or impenetrable walls, invincible armies or lions’ dens, enormous giants, weak-minded monarchs, messed up protagonists, or hopeless, impossible situations through which God had been bringing salvation and hope to the world since the world began. But he doesn’t look back for his stories.  Instead, he says, Right now, even while we are speaking, God is doing this impossible thing. 

And then the angel tells her about old Elizabeth, whose prayers had dried up, who is even now already bearing this great in-breaking of salvation.  

Nothing is impossible for God, Gabriel answers Mary.

And Mary says Yes. She says Yes to becoming the Mother of God.

There’s a saying in NVC – non-violent communication, that we’ve studied a bit around here – that every No is a Yes to something else. When someone tells you No, they are saying yes to another thing – whether they are needing space, or autonomy, or agency or have made other plans with someone else - there is always a Yes somewhere inside the No.  

I want to suggest the opposite is true as well, for us finite creatures.  There is always a No inside our Yeses. When we say Yes to something, we are saying No to other things – every other option, in fact.  Yes to chicken means we’re not having chili. Yes to marrying this person means No more living life completely on my own terms.  

When we say Yes, especially to God, we are called to renounce something. We must let something go. That’s how love works.  Something we’ve thought our life would be or already was, some illusions about control and invincibility, we must sacrifice something of ourselves, something must die. 

Most often what dies was not really giving us life to begin with, we only thought it was. But sometimes we are called to let go of good things. Things that are giving us a good life, making us happy and stable.  

Mary was engaged to a kind and decent man, about to start her life. A good life. A happy, ordinary, stable life. And when she says Yes to God, all that disappears. Like Elizabeth whose retirement will be invaded by a fiery prophet child, like Hannah long before them, who gave up her own child to God and Samuel became the prophet who lead God’s people, Mary is being pulled into God’s redemption of the world, and it means she is no longer going to be who she was. The Annunciation could very well be called The Renunciation. Gone is the life she had embraced for herself, the path so neatly laid out before her, she renounces it here.  

Jan Richardson’s poem, Gabriel’s Annunciation, begins with these words, 
For a moment,
I hesitated,
on the threshold,
For the space
of a breath
I paused
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step,
would cleave her life,
that this day,
would slice her story
in two
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come

How vulnerable it is to let go of all that gave your life meaning and purpose and order and jump into the unknown like this!  But she does, she lets all of it go in order to participate with God in something bigger. 

Hannah went in eyes wide open and offered her renunciation before even the gift arrived.  But Mary, perhaps she didn’t fully grasp all that she was letting go of, the predictable and most likely mostly pleasant life she would never live from then on out.  

She traded it away without knowing, because how can we know what our Yeses will mean until we’ve already been changed by them?  What she traded it for was a life fully alive, she traded it to see God, to be disciple of Jesus.  Mary and his brothers were there among the disciples and followers of Christ, listening to him tell about God’s salvation, watching people be healed, seeing the power of God at work in the world.  Mary watched her child die a terrible death, and she spoke to the angels sitting aside an empty tomb. She was in the room when the Holy Spirit came, and she was a leader in the early church.

Don’t be afraid, the angel says. Not because suddenly everything will be steady and safe. It’s decidedly not safe, and it’s most certainly not steady. It’s absolutely risky and will for sure change everything.  Don’t be afraid because the one who calls you is God.  You are held in God’s love, joined in God’s purposes. 

But Mary is not the only one vulnerable here.  Imagine also the vulnerability of God, not only to come into the human experience, weak and helpless, at the mercy and in the hands of those you’ve created, preparing to live, and die as they do.  But God also takes on the vulnerability inherent in love, the possibility of rejection. Mary could have said No. 

We’re at something of a deficit here, when it comes to our own annunciations. Before we even get to the question of renunciation and trust, we must first accept that God is real, that God is doing something greater, and that God might interrupt our lives and call us into it.

So perhaps the word for you this week is simply this, What would it be to go through your week assuming God is alive and active in the world?  

What if you lived this week like this is true?  

And certainly, this is enough for any of us, because most of us, most of the time, either deny, ignore, or forget that God is real. What if this week you sought to consciously remember?

But let’s go one step farther, if you’re willing, and say, not only is God alive and active in the world, God is inviting you – specifically you – to participate in God’s schemes.  You don’t know when or how the invitation will come, but your annunciation, that is, your belovedness and chosenness in God for a purpose, is as real for you as it was for Mary.  Greetings favored one; the Lord is with you!

You won’t be called to carry the actual Christ-child; that role has been taken. But to live a God-bearing life? That is a role you share with Mary.  There will be specific callings just for you within that role.  People who come across your path, a phone call, a question, an opportunity you will recognize, a vulnerability you’re invited to share.  

More than Mary, even, we are drawn into the very life of Christ – we are invited to life in Christ, a life, C.S. Lewis reminds us, that is “begotten, not made, that has always existed and always will exist.”  We will be drawn into life that doesn't end, life inside the love and connection between Jesus and the Father; and life with the Holy Spirit interfering and leading.  The God-bearing life is Jesus’ life lived through ours, our hands and feet and voice, our words and actions.

Will your moments be lived be grudgingly or unaware? Will you recognize the cost and back away from the invitation? Or will you open your heart and life and join in what God is wanting to do through you?  

Most likely, and most often, it will be to see another person in their humanity and minister to them, or to receive ministry from another person. This is who God is and how God comes, as a minister, and as one in need of ministry, and so it is how we experience God in our lives as well. We bear each other’s burdens and share each others joys, knowing that when we do so, we are joining in what God is already doing – we are where God is.

Immediately after the Angel’s annunciation to Mary, she goes to Elizabeth. When Mary hears that Elizabeth too is pregnant with an impossibility, she makes a beeline for the one person who will understand and can share this with her. And when Elizabeth sees Mary, little fetus John the Prophet in her womb does joyful summersaults, and Elizabeth just knows, without Mary saying a thing, what it means. So Elizabeth prophesies, saying, “Who am I that the Mother of God should come to me?” 

 And then Mary, having been seen, having had this whole crazy thing confirmed right to her face, breaks out in a prophesy of her own, that has come to be known as the Magnificat,which we sang earlier, about what God is doing to set the world right. 

It is not until they share this mystery with each other that they can live into it fully themselves, and I think that’s what it means to be Church.  

We do not say Yes to God alone – we are given each other, given to each other, and there we find God – in words and acts of healing and hope that pull us out of ourselves and the minutia of our self-absorbed worlds, or out of our fear about the general state of things, and into action, along with the God who is already always acting.

So, perhaps your call this week is to imagine God is alive and active. 

Or perhaps it is to anticipate annunciation and say Yes when it comes.  Or maybe, it is to step into your own renunciations and let go of what keeps you from Yes.  In any case, you are held in God’s love, joined in God’s purposes. 

Just a few months after the annunciation, when she delivers this baby and brings God into the world as a tiny, needy, human child – before priests from a far off land come to meet the baby, before she and Joseph flee to Egypt with the baby, before the potty-training, and the talkback, and the teen years – that night, lying in the hay with Joseph by her side, just after placing the sleeping child into the manger, the stable, already crowded with animals, is suddenly invaded by a group of shepherds from a nearby hillside. 

They tell Mary about their own annunciation.  They tell her about a sky full of music and light, about the Angel’s pronouncement that God has come into the human story; God’s Yes to the world is embodied, “Do not be afraid!” the angel had told them, “This is good news of great joy for all people!” 

They tell her this when they’ve said Yes to God themselves, and set out to find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And then, when they share their story and are received, together they all bear this mystery, they are Church.

And Mary, we are told, treasures their words, and ponders them in her heart.  Their words become for her another annunciation, just like Elizabeth’s before them.  Mary continues, her whole life long, to open her heart to God’s pronouncements of love and invitations to involvement.  And the rest of her life she keeps agreeing to be in this with God.  And for the rest of her life, she is.

The God who does impossible things is even now, right this moment, doing impossible things in the world.  This God wants to do impossible things through you.  It’s absolutely risky and will for sure change everything. You will be vulnerable, and you will have to let things go that you thought you needed.  

But, Don’t be afraid, because the one who calls you is God. And what you’re saying Yes to is to see God, to be disciple of Jesus, to live a life fully alive. And this mystery is lived by sharing it, so you wont be asked to do it alone. 

Amen.

This is part of a series, journeying with some of our Biblical ancestors: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John, Samuel, David*, The Samaritan Woman, 

(*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty)

Time to Celebrate: Vulnerability & Ministry

(aka, LNPC State of the Union)

Mark 1:29-39

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.).

LNPC 2017 ANNUAL REPORT