(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on July 28, 2019, Proper 12)
The Harvest Is Plentiful
Not once in his life
Does Jesus try to get people inside a building.
Instead he sends his followers out—
Out into the community.
His concern, after all,
Is not the health of an institution
But the health of the world.
In today’s scripture,
Jesus insists that there is a plentiful harvest
All round.
It is a striking metaphor,
Suggesting a God whose aim
Is growth, life, abundance;
A God whose gardening is done
Not inside a religious plot of soil
But in all the world;
A green thumb God
Who is constantly at work,
Who tills the hearts of men and women,
Who sows and waters and prunes,
Who tends to the garden
‘Til the day of its harvest.
And Jesus calls his followers
To share in the harvest.
He calls them
Not to stay inside
And to welcome all comers,
But to go outside
And to find the ripening of life
And to share in the work
Of God’s harvest.
Receiving Is Part of
the Harvesting
Two Sundays from now,
We will go out—
Out into the community
To share the morning
With Rhonda Sneed and her friends,
Many of whom are homeless and hungry.
We will go
As the followers of Jesus went:
Not as saviors,
But as guests.
“Eat what is set before you,”
Jesus instructs his followers—
Which is a way of saying,
“Receive what your hosts
Have to give you,”
Which is not just food, of course,
But words, stories, life.
Somehow
Receiving is also part
Of the harvesting.
I’d like to leave
That thought dangling
For a minute.
And as it dangles,
I’d like to invite Lu
To share with us a glimpse
Of the community
We will be visiting.
This time in our worship gathering
Is traditionally reserved for the Word,
For scripture through which God is revealed.
I’d invite us to look at the pictures Lu shows
With the same reverence
That we show the Word.
For Jesus reminds us
That among our neighbors,
And especially in the least of these,
God is revealed.
Eat, Heal, Proclaim
the Kingdom:
Three Events or One?
On a few of Lu’s slides,
You saw how the homeless
Gave generously:
One man teaching the youth guitar,
Another man helping a wearied volunteer.
This returns me to the question:
How is receiving
Part of the harvesting?
Listen again to Jesus’ words:
“Eat what is set before you;
Cure the sick who are there,
And say to them, ‘the kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
When I first heard these words,
I heard three separate actions:
Receive what is set before you;
Heal;
And announce the kingdom.
But recently I heard a story
From a pastor in Seattle.
He serves a church
That had thrived in the 20th century,
Only to flounder in the new millennium,
As the city became increasingly “secularized.”
He said the church found renewal
Through the simplest of means—
And it’s one that should be no surprise
To us Disciples of Christ—
The table.
They called it dinner church,
And would offer multiple dinners
Through the week.
It was a simple affair:
Dinner,
A bit of scripture,
Stories shared,
And prayers offered.
Not in a rigidly formalized way,
But among tables and individuals.
Anyway, one day he was talking
To a friend who had been coming
To dinner church.
The friend revealed in passing
That he had recovered from a heroin addiction
The year before.
The pastor expressed surprise.
He didn’t know his friend
Was an addict.
He didn’t know
He had recovered.
His friend’s response was even more surprising.
“Oh, yeah. You guys did
it.
Dinner is how I recovered.”
He went on to explain
That the heroin voice went away
Whenever he was at dinner.
And when the heroin voice returned,
He knew that all he had to do
Was to hang on until another dinner.
A year of this passed,
And he had stayed clean—
He’d kicked the habit.
When I heard this story,
I thought back to Jesus’ instructions—
Receive; heal; announce the kingdom—
And suddenly what had seemed
Like three separate events,
Became one.
For wasn’t it at the table,
Where the church received the addicted man
And heard his stories
And cared for him as a child of God—
Wasn’t it also there that he was healed?
Wasn’t it there that the kingdom of God
Came unbelievably near?
I offer that thought for us
As we prepare to sojourn one Sunday
With the homeless and hungry folks
Of our community.
We are not going as saviors,
But as guests.
We are going
Where God has already been gardening.
And perhaps simply by hearing
What our brothers and sisters in Christ
Have to share with us,
We will share in a moment of God’s healing—
Which is to say,
In God’s kingdom harvest.
The Picture in
Scripture
A number of folks have asked
What our gathering will look like
On that Sunday outside the Coliseum.
I have to be honest:
I don’t know exactly.
What I do know is that
It will not be a worship service
But more like what we see in our scripture:
Eating and conversing.
As we share the food that we bring,
We will also have the opportunity
To hear from the homeless and
hungry folks of our city.
It’s an oft-overlooked point of the gospels
That in large crowds,
Jesus did not silence the interruptions
But directed his attention to them.
He heard the voices of the margin.
And so often from that hearing resulted healing, wholeness.
So as we share food,
We might also ask our friends,
“Tell us your story, if you would.”
And we might show we care by praying.
In fact, we’ll have a small table
Where we will offer quiet, personal prayer
For any requests that are shared.
If that’s something you’d be willing to do,
Please let me know.
And in this hearing and praying,
I trust there may be an unseen moment of healing—
As much for us, perhaps, as for our hosts.
And so it is that we will end our time
With celebration—
By proclaiming the nearness of God’s kingdom
In bread broken,
In cup outpoured,
In the love and welcome of God shared with all.
Hearing, Healing, Hallelujah.
That’s the picture I see in our scripture today,
And that, I hope, will be the picture of our gathering.
Prayer
Lord of the
harvest,
Whose love
takes root
All over our
world—
So often the
corners of our community
That are ripe
for life
Are left
unheard
And uncared
for.
Draw us ever out,
And give us
ears to hear,
That we might
know your healing
And your
kingdom come near.
Amen.
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