"It Is Not for You to Know" (Acts 1:6-9)

(Homily for Second Baptist Church's Worship on May 26, 2019, Easter VI)

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Not Because of Our Best-Laid Plans, but in Spite of Them

I would wager that many of our best memories are of moments unplanned and unexpected. 

When I was in ninth grade, my family planned a trip to San Francisco.  We planned to visit Alcatraz, ride the legendary cable cars up and down the city’s steep streets, and take a hike among the towering redwoods in nearby Muir Woods.  My mom’s birthday is in July when we would be visiting, so there was no question that we would also tour the headquarters of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.  (Not that we needed any extra motivation—I think we would have done that even if it hadn’t been her birthday!)

The trip was everything we planned for and more.  The sights were as spectacular as we imagined, the history as engaging as you would expect, the tastes as rich as we had hoped.  But when I think about San Francisco today, my first memory is none of these things.  My first memory is my brother discovering that the Golden Gate Bridge was over a mile long and spontaneously suggesting that we take a detour from our plans in the city and go for a run.  I remember the slow, steady vibration of the enormous suspended bridge under our feet and the cars rushing past and the bay wind whipping in our faces and the gentle ripple of green-blue water beneath us.  We still run together to this day, and have run countless trails all over the country, but no run of ours can compare to that one.  Another distinctive memory from the trip is my family walking up a steep sidewalk in the dusk after a full day.  Originally the plan had been to eat back at where we were staying, but hunger was beginning to strike now.  So we dropped our plans and stopped at the first café and sandwich shop we saw, which is where for the first time in my life I had a taste of sourdough bread.  It would not be the last time.

Maybe you can recall similar moments from your own life—moments when you took a spontaneous detour from the path or got lost but ended up discovering something new, moments when an unexpected interruption to your day made a lasting and life-giving difference.  I have a hunch that if we listen deeply to our lives we will discover that such moments are the rule and not the exception—moments where a wonderful memory is made not because our own best-laid plans but in spite of them.

We call these moments by different names.  Some call them “serendipity.”  Bob Ross called them “happy accidents.”  Some folks just call them “chance.”

I think Luke, who wrote our scripture today, would look upon these moments with a suspicious eye and a suspecting grin.  I think he would see in these moments the trace of the divine.  I think he would detect in these moments a ripple left by the Spirit.  Because as Luke suggests in today’s scripture, it is precisely when we are not in control that the Spirit has the space to act.

“What’s Going to Happen Next?”

Right before Jesus ascended into heaven, his disciples asked him what is essentially a question that we are always asking, “What’s going to happen next?”  We ask this question not simply out of curiosity.  We ask it because we want to plan ahead.  Which is really to say, we want to be in control.  “What’s going to happen next?” is a question that has designs on the future.  We want to be in control.

Jesus responds with what is essentially the answer God always gives us, “It is not for you to know what is going to happen next.”  But Jesus doesn’t stop there.  What he says next is basically what he says at the end of the four gospels.  According to these five books, his last word to his disciples is: “Go.”  Share the good news.  Feed my sheep.  Make learners of all nations.  Or as Jesus says in this particular passage, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8).

To paraphrase Jesus’ words, then: “It’s not for you to know what’s going to happen next.  Now go.  And show.  Show the world the good news of God’s love; show them this new way of life; show them the kingdom that is coming.”

Power or Possibility?

To help the disciples in their adventure of not knowing and going and showing, Jesus promises “power” from the incoming Holy Spirit (1:8).  I have to confess, I have a problem with this word.  When I hear the word “power,” I generally think of force: that is, the power to get your way, to enforce your will, to achieve your desire.  In other words, I think of power as being in control. 

But I don’t see that kind of power in Jesus, who forgives instead of flexing his retributive muscles, who does not lord it over others but seeks instead to serve them, who does good with no ulterior motive, no manipulative intent.  Paul went even further and called a spade a spade: he said Jesus looks like “weakness” to the world.  His is not the power we know.

But there’s something interesting about this word “power.”  In the Greek, the word for “powerful” is the same as the word for “possible.”  Could it be that the power of Jesus, and likewise the power of the Holy Spirit, has less to do with control and more to do with possibility?  How different the same scripture sounds with that slight tweak in translation.  “But you will receive possibility when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (1:8).

Possibility in the Going, Not the Knowing

I wonder if it’s more than coincidence that Jesus mentions this possibility of the Holy Spirit in the same breath that he says, “It’s not for you to know” and “Go!”  For is it not precisely in those moments when we “go,” when we leave behind the security of our best-laid plans, when we enter into the unknown, that we enter into the realm of possibility—which is to say, the realm of the Holy Spirit?

That certainly was the case for the early church.  In today’s scripture, we find them huddled together in Jerusalem.  The story really takes off, however, about eight chapters later, when persecution drives the church beyond the comfort of home base into new and unknown territory in Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth.  Only then do we see a series of healings, resurrections, and perhaps most surprising of all the church, which was Jewish until then, welcoming gentiles.  That was a possibility that no one could have seen coming.  That could only be the work of the Holy Spirit.

In an era where thousands of churches are closing every year, it is tempting for the church to circle the wagons and try to plan out every last detail in a bid to control its own destiny and prosper its own institution.  That may be good business, but it’s not church.  If the early church in Acts is any indication, church is not about knowing but about going.  Only when the church goes, does it encounter the possibility of the Holy Spirit, which is a possibility that hides on every road, in every stranger, in every conversation, in every difficulty and trial.  It was in those places that the early church came to life.  That is where the Holy Spirit did more than the church could ever have anticipated.

The Gospel Is Full of the Unknown

On the day that Jesus left them, the disciples looked out onto the great unknown.  It’s an experience we all know.  We knew it as children when our parents dropped us off at school for the first time.  We know it as a church when the pastor leaves and we are without a leader.  Naturally we want resolution.  I imagine that when the disciples asked Jesus about the restoration of the kingdom, they were already flipping ahead in their calendars, looking to mark the date of Jesus’ return—as though one day there would be no more of this unknown.

But in truth, even with Jesus they had been looking out onto the unknown.  Or I should say “especially with Jesus”—because the gospel of Jesus Christ is full of the unknown.  To forgive someone is to step into the unknown of their response: maybe there will be repentance and reconciliation, maybe not.  It’s a possibility.  To show a stranger hospitality is to open your doors to the unknown: maybe you will see God in them and they in you, maybe not.  It’s a possibility.  To love the enemy is to expose yourself to the unknown: maybe they will become a friend, maybe not.  It’s a possibility.  It’s space enough for the Holy Spirit to enter, to do more than we could imagine.

Perhaps, then, the challenge for us followers of Christ is to retain a sense of this unknown even when equilibrium has been reestablished, even when things have returned to normal, even when a leader is in place and new plans are being drawn up and everyone feels a bit more secure.  Because the truth of the gospel remains the same: the Holy Spirit is not only within our calculations, but even more so outside them in the happy accidents, the serendipities, the chance moments that only come about—that only “grace” us—when we move beyond the limits of our knowledge.  When we go and show.

When people wonder about the strange flukes or coincidences that grace their lives, such as those that I encountered long ago in my family’s trip to San Francisco, I have to smile a little bit.  The Spirit of God is wonderfully alive in our world.  What else is the possibility of the unknown but the Holy Spirit’s playground?  And where else will we find that possibility but out there—beyond the limits of our plans and our control, among strangers and enemies and only God knows what else?

Prayer

God of possibility,

Whose power is not

Knowledge or control

But rather leaving these things behind

For the sake of others:

Grant us eyes to see

Your Spirit

In risk and vulnerability.

Draw us ever out of ourselves

And into your love.

In Christ, whose weakness is our strength: Amen.

The Repentance That Leads to Life (Acts 11:1-18)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 19, 2019, Easter V)

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Conversion

Growing up, I learned at church that conversion was the most important moment in your life.  It was the moment when you finally surrendered to God.  It was the moment you gave up your struggle against sin and turned your life over completely to God.  Usually you did this by saying a prayer.  An adult—maybe the pastor, or maybe a camp counselor if you were at summer camp—would give you the words to say.  I still remember a Sunday School teacher telling me that the day you were converted was like a birthday, that you should cherish it and always remember it.

I wonder if Peter cherished the day of his conversion.  If he did, I wonder which day he cherished.  Perhaps more than any other character in the Bible, Peter complicates the conversation about conversion—because it is not clear when he is converted.  Was Peter’s conversion the day when he left his fishing nets at the Lake of Gennesaret and began to follow to Jesus (Luke 5:11)?  If this were his conversion, I’m not sure it really took, because he and the disciples demonstrate a distinct lack of trust and the occasional misunderstanding in their gospel adventures.  Maybe his conversion was later.  Maybe it was the day when he confessed that Jesus was “the Christ of God” (Luke 9:20).  But again, I’m not sure how effective this conversion was, because later Peter denies Jesus not just once, but three times (Luke 22:61).  Maybe, then, his conversion was the moment in today’s scripture when he receives the Spirit’s enlightenment regarding the question of who and what are clean and unclean (Acts 10:1-11:18).

I could go on with even more examples, but the point to be made is clear by now.  Peter is the founder of the church, the first and foremost among the church’s leaders.  And he is continually converted, continually changed, continually wrong and continually reformed.  There is no single moment of conversion in his life.  Rather his entire life is a story of conversion.

If that is the case for the leader of the church, the Christian par excellence in the early church, then how much more so might it be the case for you and me?

A Seismic Shift

Today’s scripture ends with the joyous proclamation, “God has given even to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life” (11:18).  Generally readers have focused on the gentile of the story, the Roman centurion Cornelius, as a model for conversion.  But as I’ve already suggested, there is another conversion in today’s scripture, another example of repentance.  And in my mind, it’s just as significant if not more so.  It’s a seismic conversion.

For centuries, the Jewish people have kept a safe distance from the gentiles, the people outside the Jewish faith.  On the surface, this separation was simply the result of the Jewish law.  Certain foods, such as pork and shellfish, were prohibited.  To mingle with gentiles would be to risk the possibility that they might eat forbidden food.  But on a deeper level, this separation was a matter of cultural survival.

Imagine that you are a Jewish person living in first century Palestine.  Roman soldiers patrol your streets daily.  More and more, you’re hearing people speak the common language, Greek, instead of the sacred tongue, Hebrew, or its cousin, Aramaic.  It’s not hard to see where all this is going.  Living as a minority in the empire of Rome, the Jewish people face the slow decay of their identity.  If you are not careful to protect the boundaries between “us” and “them,” then one day you will wake up and everyone will have become “them.”  Your eating at separate tables and keeping a distance from the gentiles is nothing personal.  It’s simply a matter of preserving your identity, your rich heritage as a Jewish person.

Now it’s important to remember that the earliest followers of Christ were Jewish followers of Christ.  They maintained their Jewish identity even as they proclaimed that Jesus was the messiah.  Peter was no different.  So you can imagine his surprise when he has this dream where God tells him—not once, but three times (hmm…that’s beginning to feel like a theme in Peter’s life)—that what Peter calls unclean, God considers clean.  If that’s true, that’s a potential deathblow to Peter’s heritage.  The table had been one of the last strongholds of Jewish identity: one of the places where the Jewish people could clearly distinguish between “us” and “them.”  Now, though, there’s nothing to prevent mixing at the table.  There is no forbidden food.  But that’s not all.  After Peter has his dream, he visits with the family of a Roman centurion, Cornelius, and there he discovers that this “clean” and “unclean” business does not pertain only to food.  It pertains to people too.  For the first time in his life, he sees the Holy Spirit in a gentile.  He’s flabbergasted.  He’s overwhelmed.  The fault lines of his soul have shifted.  He is converted.  He repents.  As he says to the church in Jerusalem, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (11:17).

All of which is to say: Cornelius, the Roman soldier, is not the only character who changes in today’s scripture.  Peter and the church also change, as they come to welcome gentiles into their gathering as equals.  Without that change, you and I (who are gentiles) would not be gathered here today.

Accepted Just As They Were

What’s perhaps most revolutionary about the change in Peter and the early church is that they do not require their newfound gentile brothers and sisters to adopt their way of doing church.  They could have said, “We see, friends, that the Holy Spirit is with you.  But in order to break bread with us, you will have to adopt a few more practices: you can’t eat pork, you have to observe the Jewish high holy days, and sorry, guys, but circumcision is a must.” 

Instead, Peter and the early church saw that God had already accepted the gentiles just as they were.  They didn’t need to do anything else to belong.

It’s sort of like what happened up in Alexandria, Virginia, a little over a decade ago at Fair-Park Baptist Church.  Fair-Park had merged ten years before with another Baptist church as both congregations diminished.  After ten years of their merged existence, however, they were declining once more.  So they began to explore the idea of a church re-start.  What emerged was a bold proposal: how about a church that partnered intentionally with the local arts community?  And not only that—they wouldn’t require that the artists adopt their way of doing church.  In other words, this wouldn’t simply be church with an artistic flourish.  This would be artists doing church in a new way.  They wouldn’t have to use the same formulaic, paint-by-numbers liturgy that the church had used for years on end.  They wouldn’t have to wear their Sunday best in order to attend.  They wouldn’t even necessarily worship on Sunday. 

Like the gentiles in the early Christian community, the artists did not have to adopt the present blueprint of church in order to be included.  Why not?  Because Fair-Park recognized that the Holy Spirit was already moving among the arts community.  “Artists engage the transcendent and the prophetic on a daily basis,” they observed.[1]  They are always finding fresh, insightful ways to express ancient truths.  Perhaps their gifts were just what Fair-Park needed in a time when it had more and more trouble connecting with the community around it.  What resulted from the convergence of this church and these artists, looks very much like what we see at the end of today's scripture.  It was a repentance that led to life—for the church and for the artists.

Sunday Sojourns

If the early church is any indication, we as a church are always being called to conversion, to repentance.  The Spirit is always one step ahead of us, somewhere beyond us, drawing us into new ways of being the church.   And the good news is that our conversion, our repentance, leads to life—not only for us, the church, but for others in the world too.

I wonder how our church might be called to conversion today.  I wonder if there is a community outside these walls where the Spirit is moving.  I wonder if there might be a way to welcome them into our community without all the conditions: Sunday worship, a certain unspoken attire, gathering in only one building.  I wonder if there might be a way for us to gather with them around a table somewhere, somehow, to break bread and bear witness to the body of Christ.

In a little over month, we’ll sojourn for a Sunday with the memory care unit and other residents at Symphony Manor.  And a month after that, we’ll sojourn with the homeless and the hungry downtown by the Coliseum.  These are folks who would be unlikely to join us on a Sunday, to do church our way.  But I have a holy hunch we might find the Spirit moving among them.  Them for whom “daily bread” is a daily, real-life prayer; them who are unencumbered by possession and its enslaving effects; them for whom trust is a way of life, even though for many of them it has been regularly betrayed. 

Perhaps in them we will encounter the beginning of our own conversion, our own repentance that leads to life.

Prayer

Uncontainable God,

Whose embrace is bigger than we imagine,

Whose table is not a boundary or a border

But a banquet of unconditional welcome—

Lead us on the next leg

Of our journey of conversion.

Draw us out of ourselves

And into the community,

Where your Spirit is already moving.

Draw us into the repentance

That leads to life.

In Christ, who reconciles us to one another: Amen.

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[1] https://ourconvergence.org/about/history, accessed May 14, 2019.

More Life Now (Acts 9:36-43)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 12, 2019, Easter IV)

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Cats’ Nine Lives

They say that cats have nine lives.  Already, I think, my brother’s cat Sydney is on his second.  Sydney is about a year old and the friendliest, most outgoing cat I know.  He’s the opposite of the proverbial “scaredy cat.”  He greets every stranger with a leg rub.  When the vacuum cleaner emerges from the closet and turns on, Sydney’s brother scampers under the bed.  But Sydney saunters over to the vacuum cleaner to sniff it, as if to say, “Welcome back to the house, old friend.”  When the coffee grinder begins grinding, Sydney hops up onto the counter and watches with curiosity.

Sydney regularly lounges at the highest elevation he can find: countertops, bookshelves, window ledges.  It was probably from one of these places that he had his mysterious fall.  One morning my brother and sister-in-law woke up to find that Sydney could barely walk.  He was hobbling around gingerly, barely using one of his back paws.  For a few days, it appeared that Sydney’s jumping and climbing days were over.  One could even argue that his life wouldn’t even really be life anymore, as he was restricted from doing all the things he loved to do.

But we should have known better.  Cats have nine lives.  Sydney had only expended his first.  Within a couple weeks, he was traipsing about the house again: rushing to the door to greet strangers, hopping onto whatever height he could find.  Contrary to our grim expectations, life was far from over for Sydney.

Widows in Jerusalem

In ancient Palestine, life was practically over for you if you were a widow.  In a society run by men, widows quickly fell through the cracks.  They had no man to support them or to protect them.  You may remember from our reading of the gospel of Mark how Jesus singles out the widows as a particularly vulnerable group in Jerusalem.  In particular, he criticizes the religious leaders for failing to take care of the widows in Jerusalem: rather than support them, he says, they demand taxes from them.  They rob them of their households.

Imagine that for all your life a man had provided for you: first your father, then your husband.  They made sure there was food on the table.  They made sure there were clothes enough to wear through the year.  And then one day they’re all gone.  What do you do in this world where men buy and sell and provide and negotiate?  You’re a nothing, a nobody in that world.  There’s no way you could break into their world of business.  There’s no way you could manage.

But against all the odds, life was not over for the widows in Jerusalem—because there was a disciple of Jesus named Tabitha who devoted her ministry to the widows and made sure that they had what they needed.   When the weather turned cool and they had no coat, there was Tabitha with thick, tight-knit tunics that she had made herself for them to wear.  The book of Acts doesn’t say this, but I imagine it was same thing whenever the widows went hungry.  There would be Tabitha, ready to give thanks for whatever bread she had, and to break it and share it with every last person in her company.  I like to think of Tabitha as a Rhonda Sneed on the streets of Jerusalem.  Because of her, the widows were not at a dead-end.  For them, life was far from over.

A Resurrection into This Life

All of this brings us to today’s scripture.  Not only does Tabitha die.  The widows of Jerusalem have died a little too.  Their life is a dead-end again.  As Peter ascends the stairs to the room where Tabitha’s body lies, I imagine he can hear muffled weeping from within the room.  And as he enters, our scripture tells us, he sees the widows grieving together, sharing with each other the loving handiwork of Tabitha, and memories too no doubt.  They must be wondering, “How will we go on now?  Who will be there to help us when we can’t help ourselves?” 

I’m always fascinated with the resurrection stories of persons other than Jesus.  They are miracles, for sure.  But they are not the final miracle.  These resurrections are not the final resurrection, beyond which there is no more death, no more grief, no more pain.  No, these are little resurrections.  Tabitha, in other words, will die again one day.  Her body has not escaped an eventual burial.  How then are we to describe this resurrection?  Hers is not resurrection into an afterlife later.    Hers is resurrection into this life now.  This resurrection means more life now.  Not only for Tabitha, but also for the widows to whom she ministers.

Notabout Something Later

More life now.  It’s like the second or third or ninth life of a cat, when you think life is surely over but it’s not.  That is the good news according to Acts.  Reading through the first part of the book, I am struck by how often Peter tells the story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.  Each time he concludes telling the story, he does not offer the hope of an afterlife.  He proclaims the possibility of more life now, better life now, abundant life now.  He refers to this life differently: sometimes he talks about the Holy Spirit, which is a way of saying that we can live in harmony with God; at another time, he says that following Christ will bring about “times of refreshing” (3:20).  And on another occasion, he addresses a crippled beggar not with money but with a loving touch and a trusting heart, which not only raise the crippled beggar up but also welcome him into community, bringing him more healing than money ever could.  More life now.

The good news that animates the early church is not about something later.  It’s about something now.  It’s about more life when you thought you had reached a dead-end.  It’s about more life when you thought you were in a stalemate.  It’s about more life for all of the people who have reached an impasse—the crippled beggar, the widows of Jerusalem, and Tabitha lying motionless in the upper room.  All of them receive more life now.  Is it magic?  Or is that the power of love, the power of a community whose hands not only give but touch, whose hearts do not give up but ever trust?

Dead-Ends Into New Beginnings

Is this not the power that we bear witness to as Christ-followers?  Is it not the same power that we have experienced today in our own lives?  When in moments of illness, we find healing and a way forward among hands that hold onto us and hearts that won’t let go of us?  When in moments of great change and uncertainty, we discover new opportunities by trusting in the love of God and in the relationships into which it draws us?

We certainly see this power in the trailer next door, in what might be the greatest ministry that happens on this corner of Ridgefield, where people who have reached the dead-end of addiction discover that their life is not in fact over, but that in their shared cry of helplessness and their shared desperation for grace there is more life now.

I want to conclude by sharing a story I heard this past week of an old church in Seattle that was dying.  It had thrived for most of the twentieth century, when it could be taken for granted that most residents of the city were Christian and participated in a community of faith.  But a couple of decades ago, it began to stall.  Shortly after that, it realized that it was entering into a sharp decline.  The city had been changing, but the church had not.  It did a wonderful job of welcoming the already-churched, but it had no way to communicate or relate to the increasing number of unchurched among its city’s population.  It had reached a dead-end.  It appeared that its life was over. 

Its next move was a simple one, inspired by the same book we’re reading today.  Observing that the early church met in houses and around tables, it started what it called “dinner church” on a Thursday night.  For the first time in years, the church began to welcome seekers, non-Christians, and other curious folks who could appreciate a meal, a story, and the strange power of this community’s love and fellowship.

What had looked like the end, became a beginning.  Not through the power of money, not through the power of an extensive program or plan, but through the power of love.  Call it the Holy Spirit, call it resurrection, call it more life now.  Call it whatever you want.  It’s the good news that we proclaim, the good news in which we put our faith.

Prayer

Christ of resurrection,

Whose love transforms

Dead-ends into new beginnings,

Whose good news is more life now—

Where we are motionless,

Raise us to something new.

And where the needful around us

Have hit an impasse,

Empower us like Tabitha and Peter

To hold their hand

And share our faith

In the possibility of more life now.

Amen.

A Paddle for Everyone (Acts 2:42-47)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 5, 2019, Easter III)

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Of Canoes and Paddles

My initiation into the youth group at Second Baptist Church was a trip to “the Rivah.”  It was the summer before I entered sixth grade.  The day is memorable for many reasons.  For one, I was not under the supervision of my parents, and so when offered sunscreen by one of the chaperones, I nonchalantly declined.  And paid a horrible price.  I also remember the little canoes that we could paddle in the cove.  A few of my friends and I jumped into one.  At first I paddled it by myself, and it was rather slow going.  But when my friends joined me, the canoe practically took off.  It was a big difference.

Everyone Had a Paddle

When the earliest followers of Christ gathered together in community, they did not have a church building.  They did not have paid staff or professional pastors.  They did not have programs purposefully designed to raise their profile in the public eye.

What they had was much simpler: each other.  In our passage today, which paints the first portrait of the early church, we see a community who gather regularly around tables to break bread and to pray; who come together in small groups to share and to study; and who distribute all that they have among the needful.  Perhaps it’s no wonder that these are the three things they do, for these are the three places where Jesus promises we will always find him: around tables where bread is broken in remembrance of him; in groups as small as two or three who gather in his name; and among the least of these.

There’s one word that’s repeated more than any other in this portrait of the early church.  It’s a word that captures quite well the Spirit of that community.  It’s the word “all.” [1] 

In other words, there were no passengers in the early church.  Everyone had a paddle.

I’m Not Thinking of Sunday

I confess that I regularly confuse the church for a building or a Sunday worship service.  When I hear about a new church, I ask, “Where is it located?  What’s its Sunday worship like?”

Today’s scripture sets me straight.  There’s no mention of a building or a service.  There’s only people—breaking bread, sharing and studying together, and touching the need of the world.

This confusion about church—is it a building and a Sunday service, or is it something else?—helps to explain the two different answers I give when people ask me how Gayton Road Christian Church is doing.  There’s the easy response and then there’s the honest response.  The easy response is that Gayton Road is like many other churches in the western world.  It’s growing smaller, some would say “dying.”

But the honest response is that the church that calls itself Gayton Road Christian Church has nothing to do with this building or the membership roll or the words recited and rituals rehearsed on Sunday morning. 

The church has to do with broken bread that makes us whole.  And as much as I find that here in this building, I also find it across the street with our memory care friends, where the brokenness is very real and the wholeness that much more precious.  The church has to do with two or three or more hearts who have caught a glimpse of God and together seek more.  And as much as I find that here on a Sunday morning, I also find it in hole-in-the-wall diners where God haunts conversations fueled by scripture and coffee.  The church has to do with befriending the needful.  And as much as these offerings plates might promise to do that, I find that flesh-and-blood encounters with the sick or the hurting bring me even closer to the wounded Christ.

So when people ask me how Gayton Road Christian Church is doing, and I give the honest response, I say, “We’re doing great.”  But when I say that, I’m not thinking of Sunday.  I’m thinking of Lu conspiring with Rhonda Sneed and seeking help for the homeless.  I’m thinking of Carl and Marion and Jeff and others whose hunger is for more than tacos.  I’m thinking of Ivan sharing his careful scrapbooking of transgender concerns, and Dolores sharing her ceramic painting of the three wise men at Christmas, and Carol tirelessly changing our worship décor, and Amanda and Anna crafting a summer’s week of love and learning for our children, and Cinda and Teresa tending to our kitchen and our tables, making sure they’re covered with food and alive with fellowship.  I could go on and on and talk about every single one of you.  Because everyone here carries a paddle—and that is the church.

Wonders and Signs

Our scripture tells us that in that earliest community of Christ-followers, “awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles” (2:43).  “Wonders and signs”—what a great way to talk about what church really is.  Not a building, not a service, but the wonderful and significant ways that we encounter Christ at tables, in small groups, and among the needful.

At Gayton Road, our ministry is organized according to these three sites of encounter with the risen Christ.  And like the early church, we are a community where all are a part of the body.  Everyone has a paddle.  Today an elder from each team will share with you one of the “wonders and signs” that is transpiring in their team.  Perhaps in the months to come you’ll be inspired to pick up a different paddle, or to paddle in a new way.  If you have any interest in the activities of any of the teams, the elders will be in the narthex after church and would be happy to share more with you.

Prayer

Spirit of God,

Who dwells not only in this building,

Who reigns not only in this hour of the week:

Inspire us

Each according to our gifts,

Each according to the needs around us.

Equip us with the paddle you would choose

And empower us together to be the body of Christ

In our communities.

Amen.

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[1] This statistic excludes the definite article, pronouns, prepositions, and the conjunction “and.”