Finding and Accepting Provision for Ministry

   Easter 5 2013

Acts 11:1-18; Ps 148; Rev 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

Father Adam Trambley

April 28, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

If something matters, God will provide.  We may not expect it.  We may not know about it.  We may not even want it.  But if it matters to God, we will get what we need.

In today’s reading from Acts, Peter has been out and about, going from one place to the next, heeding whatever messages people have sent him to come see them.  Finally, after raising someone from the dead and witnessing some Gentiles get the Holy Spirit, Peter is returning to Jerusalem to check in with other leaders of the church.  Suffice it to say, they are not impressed.  “So you went over to uncircumcised folk’s for dinner,” they ask.  Such interfaith house parties were no-no’s in those days.  “Well,” Peter says, and then he goes on to tell them all the ways that God led him to being at a Gentile’s house and eventually even baptizing the family Christian. 

In this important event in the early Church, we can see how God stepped in and provided to make it happen. 

Peter is praying when God provides him a vision of this sheet filled with unclean animals and tells him to kill and eat.  When Peter resists, God provides him greater clarity and direction, so that God’s preference is unmistakable.  Meanwhile, God provides an angel to Cornelius telling him to send for Peter, and God provides directions, as well, since even a Roman Centurion in the first century couldn’t get a good GPS.  When Peter goes with the messengers to Caesarea with six other Christians, he begins to preach to them.  Then, God provides the Holy Spirit, in the midst of Peter’s sermon. The Holy Spirit comes upon the Gentiles, just like when it descended upon the disciples at Pentecost.   Finally, God provided Peter with a memory of Jesus teaching about being baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Now this provision of God to Peter that leads the church into an entire new direction of evangelizing the Gentiles may not seem like a big deal.  Sure, God gave dreams and messages, but that doesn’t seem so hard.  Even giving the Holy Spirit may seem to us a pretty straightforward kind of gift for God.  We may not be able to do it, but we can easily take for granted God’s provision of the Holy Spirit with all the love, joy, peace and all the gifts and fruit of the Spirit that accompany it. 

When we stop and think, however, it seems to me that those are some pretty heavy duty provisions.  Clear guidance from God, tailor made to overcome all our objections, and a transforming experience of God’s Spirit falling upon us are no minor gift.  Certainly the same God who can provide Peter what he received can provide all the other resources we get so anxious about whether or not we have before we are willing to do what God wants us to do.

·         Do we think God who gave Peter clear directions in a dream is unable to lead us to people who need our ministry?

·         Do we think that God who sent messengers from another city for Peter is unable to give us whatever financial resources we need to make a difference for his people?

·         Do we think that God who sent the Holy Spirit is unable to change people’s lives in our presence if we go where we are called?

·         Do we think that God who brought Peter back to the church in Jerusalem is going to leave us without the wide variety of gifts we need to keep his work going?

Of course God can provide whatever we need, and we can trust that he will if we are doing what he wants.   Peter’s actions show us how find and accept God’s provision.  Peter prays. Peter is open to what comes his way.  Peter does what comes naturally until God shows us.  Peter shares his experiences with his brothers and sisters.

First, Peter prays.  If Peter isn’t on the roof praying during the middle of the afternoon, none of the rest of the story happens.  If we aren’t spending time with God, not only won’t we receive the direct guidance and direction that can come, but when God’s provision comes, we probably won’t recognize it.  No prayer, no dream.  No dream, and Peter probably sends away the Gentiles from Cornelius.  Notice, too, how Peter prays.  He brings all of himself to God.  He’s not sure what he is hearing, and he tells God that it doesn’t make sense.  He isn’t disobedient, even though he sounds a bit that way, but he needs God to overcome all his objections. So he voices his objections.  Telling God our fears and hesitations is a much better idea than to say, “Yes, Lord,” then going out and not doing what we are told because we can’t really allow ourselves to go where God is leading.  Instead, like Peter we make the time to pray and bring all of ourselves to God so we can hear him.

 

Second, Peter is open to what comes.  When the people come from Cornelius, he goes with them.  Think about this a minute – Peter has just had this triple vision saying “kill and eat.”  He could have kept all the messengers standing on front porch while he went out to find a bird of prey and a lizard and a pig to make his first ham and hawk and iguana non-kosher sandwich. But he didn’t take himself that seriously.  Instead, he assumed that these people asking for him were coming from God in some way, and he dropped everything and went.  Often the most powerful ministry we do continues to be when we stop living out our own plans and pay attention to what God has put right under our nose.  We can try too hard and wrap ourselves in knots when God has something pretty straightforward in store.  The consultants for our Seeing Through New Eyes process had a motto: Be who you are, see what you have, do what matters. Look at what God has put around you, whether messengers from Caesarea or other people or opportunities, and do something helpful.  If we are praying, we can trust that what comes to us is part of God’s answer, so we can go with it, however unusual the situation may seem.      

Third, Peter does what is natural.  When Peter gets to Cornelius’s house, he starts preaching.  Why?  Why not?  He is a fisherman turned preacher and Cornelius doesn’t live on a boat.  So Peter preaches until God shows up, and God does show up.  Sometimes in our lives, things are also that straightforward.  We don’t have to help people by doing what is difficult for us.  If we just do what we are a natural at, we open the door for God to be at work.  Some people are great at feeding people, and when there is a crisis they keep everyone fed until God brings the next thing.  Some people can tell stories, others play music and sing, still others may say prayers, and others organize everything.  These effective activities we naturally do are a way of describing our spiritual gifts, and they are ways that God works through us build up the Kingdom of God.  When we use those God given propensities, we can expect to find the Holy Spirit and other elements of God’s gracious provision show up.

Finally, Peter shares his experiences with his brothers and sisters.  This element may not seem so important, but actually this step is critical.  God is doing something amazing, and Peter has been privileged to be a part of it.  But only after he goes to Jerusalem and shares it can the next steps be taken. Only by honestly talking to people who see things differently can he deal with the friction and the conclusions jumped to prematurely.  We can imagine what those Jerusalem folks were saying about him, or at least thinking about him, until they heard the whole story.  But more than that, Peter needs the rest of the church to be with him, or else this great ministry to the Gentiles isn’t going to go forward.  Remember, Peter is not the primary person who carries it out, Paul is.  And Paul takes other people with him.  Peter also needs to hear the wisdom of the church.  Just because he’s convinced he had a divine dream doesn’t mean he’s right.  He may just have been really hungry and saw all sorts of animals ready to eat. 

We need to share our experiences with one another, as well, especially as we stretch ourselves following God.  Whenever God is up to something with us, we are always tempted to keep to ourselves.  But we need the honest discernment from other people.  We need to be on the same page with others lest we get mired down in wrong assumptions or misunderstandings. And we need others to help whatever we are being called to do thrive.  Other people may also help us recognize the provision God is placing around us, or they may be the provision themselves.  

Like Peter, each and every one of us has an important purpose God has made us for.  Like Peter, God is preparing everything we need to make a difference in the lives of people around us who need us.  All we need to do is prepare ourselves to recognize and accept God’s provision.  Part of how we do that is by praying, by being open to what comes to us, by doing what comes naturally to us, and by talking with our brothers and sisters.  We may not become the first Pope or open salvation to the Gentiles, but if we live into these four steps, we will be used by God to touch lives.    

Who's on Your New Member Prospect List?

Easter 3 2013

Acts 9:1-6; Ps 30; Rev 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

Father Adam Trambley

April 7, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

"Who's on Your New Member Prospect List?"

Ok.  So you’re on the vestry outreach and evangelism task force to target new church members.  (Well, we don’t really have such a committee, but pretend that we do and you have just been assigned to it.  These kinds of appointments happen when you don’t show up for meetings when volunteers are requested.)  So you are sitting around a table in the lounge with your Diet Coke, some brownies, a half-dozen other folks who also don’t really know what they are doing, and a stack of papers with prospective member information.  Just when the conversation is about to move on to PennDot road closings and potholes, you come across the following form.

Name: Saul of Tarsus.

Strengths:

·         Well-educated. 

·         Pius. 

·         Good citizen. 

·         World traveler. 

·         Good Bible knowledge. 

·         Famous.

·         Likes to write letters.

Weaknesses:

·         Hot-headed

·         Breathes threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

·         Has church members arrested and put in jail.

·         Votes to have Christians tortured and killed. 

·         Seemly uninterested in joining a church.

So what do you do?  You put him in the “No” pile, right?  He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that we’d want to have in the congregation.  He’s definitely carrying some baggage.  And he doesn’t seem very nice.  It would take a miracle for him to become the kind of member we want, and even with a miracle, he’d likely still be difficult.  So Saul of Tarsus gets set aside.  If somebody really wants to contact him, they can, but the church task force isn’t going to waste their time on him.

Pretty straightforward.  Except we know that it isn’t.  We know that God wanted him.  We know that a miracle did happen, and he was still difficult, but that he was necessary to carrying out God’s plan of salvation.  We know that God did a miracle in his life, he responded, and the church took him in.  They had reservations, of course.  God tells Ananias to go get him, and Ananias asks God if he’s taken the time to read the prospective new member report on Saul yet.  But Ananias goes, and Saul is converted, changes his name to Paul, brings the gospel to the Gentiles which includes most of us, and writes important parts of the Bible.  That’s the kind of new member we’d want our task force to bring in. 

Seriously, though, the question is whether Paul’s conversion is a rare miraculous act of God or if we can count on regularly having people’s lives transformed?  To me, the answer is that we have to expect God to be changing people’s lives, and that some part of the Body of Christ has to be willing to work with people that sensible church people have written off. 

Here is what John writes in today’s reading from Revelation:

I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them singing,

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.”

He heard every creature.  The Bible doesn’t say he heard most creatures, or every good creature, or every creature that could sing in key, or even every creature that he in his saintly wisdom expected to hear singing to God and to Jesus Christ.  So if “every” means “every”, and if we look around at how far away some people seem to be from singing in a universal choir, we can safely assume that God is about to do some miracles in the lives of people that we would not otherwise expect to become members of the Altar Guild.  If, in the end, every creature is praising God, then, just like in the case of Saul of Tarsus, Jesus Christ is going to show up to people and we are going to have the awesome, terrifying call of bringing them into the fullness of the body of Christ after their conversion.  Scripture says that beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, and our feet might have farther to travel then we previously thought. 

Few churches, however, are counting on these transformations.  At our recent clergy conference, the Bishop was talking about a church researcher he met on an airplane who had numbers showing that almost nobody in the United States is reaching non-Christians.  Mainline churches don’t do a good job of discipline unbelievers, but that may not shock us.  What is more surprising, though, is that evangelical churches aren’t doing a good job of evangelizing either.  Even the mega-churches that seem to have everything a newcomer would wan,t fill their auditoriums with a very small percentage of new Christians.  Most are what a friend of mine calls “recycled” Christians. 

Now there is nothing wrong with bringing people who have left other churches back into an active church community.  Many people need a healthy church environment and a place to use their gifts for ministry.  We at St. John’s have benefitted greatly from good people returning to church in this parish.  In fact, most of you who have come to us from other places are truly answers to prayer.  Your gifts are helping us carry out the mission and ministry God has given us to do.  But if we only catch fish that have already been trained somewhere else to swim into church nets, we are not going to be as useful to God as we could be.  Instead, our goal should be to allow current Christians joining us to help us bridge the gap from where we have already been to the world of people desperately in need of God’s good news.  Welcoming Christians can help us learn skills to reach non-Christians. 

I know some church planters that say “bad people make good soil.”  From their experience, not only do we have an obligation to reach out beyond the expected prospects because everyone is going to eventually be singing God’s praises, but doing so actually makes sense for those of us trying to build up the kingdom of God. 

Their experience is that when they meet people who may be scary on some level, and they pray for them, and sometimes with them, and get to know them, and show them God’s love, and let them hear the good news as they are able, God shows up and things start to happen.  One thing that happens when people whose lives would not be testimony to the goodness of God have an encounter with God is that they actually change.  They repent.  They turn away from old behaviors. They want to learn how to pray and how to live the right way and how to become a disciple.  They are grateful for what God has done in their lives and talk about it.  Another thing that happens is that people notice.  Their family and former friends notice, and maybe decide that they want what this new believer has.  Other people notice, and give glory to God for the transformation, because they know that no human effort could have accomplished such a conversion.  Then the new Christians who were very much in the world bring their connections in the world, and their skills from the world, and their old lives of the world and lay them before the altar so that God and his Church can reach much more deeply into the world than would be possible with only good cradle Episcopalians.  That good soil of bad people quickly yields thirty, or sixty or a hundred fold.  Souls are saved.   Churches grow.  The heaven choir increases.

   

So, brothers and sisters, who do we want to put on our prospective membership lists?

Of course, we want to reach our family members and friends, and we are meant to do so.  Those are the connections God has given us in our own households to reach.

Of course, we are going to welcome with great rejoicing Christians who join us to find God in this place and use their gifts alongside of us to worship God, care for people and grow as Christians.

And, of course, we are going to accept the transfer letters of tithing tenors that love to teach Sunday school and repair slate roofs in their spare time.   

But beyond that,

Who are we going to intentionally pray for, even when we don’t really expect God’s answer to be “yes”?

Who are we going to offer to pray with, even when it is uncomfortable to offer?

Who are we going to spend time getting to know, even when there is much about them we would rather not know?

Who are we going to share God’s love with, even when we would never imagine being able to love them by ourselves?

Who are we going to proclaim the good news to, even when we aren’t sure if the seed can possibly take root?

Who are we willing to wait on God to work a miracle with, hoping to have an opportunity to lift up some serious glory in the highest when we see the Almighty at work?

Who are we expecting to see singing with us and every other creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, even if the rest of the world can’t believe it?

Who are we willing to watch come in here like Saul of Tarsus and turn our lives upside down in a way that changes the world?

Brothers and sisters, we are all on the task force for targeting new members for the Kingdom of God.  Some churches might be happy to reach only comfortable people.  But St. John’s is gifted and equipped and called to do some of the difficult work for the glory of God.  So let us make up our prospecting lists boldly, fully expecting to see God to work miracles until every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth and in the sea is ready to join us as we sing praises to the one seated on the throne and to Jesus Christ, the Lamb.

The Body of Christ is Real

Easter 2 2013, First Communion

Acts 5:27-32; Ps 118; Rev 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

Father Adam Trambley

April 7, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

The Body of Christ Is Real

The Body of Christ is Real.

It’s Sunday night.  The disciples are gathered in the upper room where Jesus had shared his final meal with them three days earlier.  The doors are locked because, well, the Psalm says the Lord is our Shepherd, but, you never know. 

Jesus shows up.  In the midst of these scared sheep that had been scattered, the Good Shepherd greets them: “Peace be with you!” Then the resurrected Lord shows them his hands and his side.   He wants the disciples to know that the person standing in front of them is really him.  Nobody is playing some sort of bizarre joke.  Even beyond that, Jesus is proving to the disciples he is not a ghost.  His body is real.  Shortly after this passage, he demonstrates that point again by eating fish with them.  Jesus takes the time to point out how this resurrected body remains his real body.  Then, after his point is made, Jesus gives the disciples the Holy Spirit and bestows upon them the power to forgive sins.

Of course, Thomas is not with the other disciples that night.   Maybe he hadn’t found his way back from wherever he fled to on Friday afternoon.  Maybe he was the only one brave enough to go pick up some more hummus.  Maybe he had a better place to spend the evening than a crowded upper room.  We don’t know.  But we do know that by the time he returns, Jesus is gone.  Interestingly enough, when Thomas is told what happens, he asks for the same proof the other disciples received.  He wants to see Jesus’ hands and side and make sure the body is real. 

So a week later, Jesus shows up again in the same place to his disciples, and Thomas is there with them.  Again, Jesus says “Peace be with you!” and then he invites Thomas to touch the nail holes in his hands and the spear hole in his side.  “Look, I’m real!” he’s saying.  But Thomas doesn’t need to do anything.  The invitation and the experience are enough.  Jesus is risen!

The Body of Christ is real.

This morning we have a group of young people about to receive their first holy communion.  They have been studying with Mrs. Tamber.  They have practiced at the altar rail so they know how to take the bottom of the chalice with one hand and help the Eucharistic Minister guide it to their lips and tilt it so they are able to get a sip of the wine.  In a few minutes, they will receive the invitation and have the experience of the Body of Christ.  In their communion, they too will come to know that the Body of Christ is real in at least two very important ways.

First, the Body of Christ is real in the bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ.  On the night before he died, in the same room where he appeared to his disciples and to Thomas, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his friends, saying, “This is my body.”  After supper, he took the cup, saying, “This is my blood.”  He told us to do this in memory of him, and we do.  We gather together and do what he did, sure that he is present to us in the bread and wine that have become his body and blood because he told us he would be.  We don’t really know how it happens.  We don’t really know when it happens.  We only know that it does happen.   Part of how we know it happens is because we have received the invitation from Jesus to receive his body as we come to his table.  We also know because when we have received communion, we experience his presence in a real way.  Like Thomas the Sunday after Easter, Jesus invites us to share in his body and then gives us the experience of doing so. 

The reality of the Body of Christ in the bread and wine means that as we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, we are united to Jesus Christ as the head of the Body.  As part of the Body of Christ, we get the neural signals of what to do according to the divine will for our lives. As part of the Body of Christ, we receive the strengthening nutrients from the divine breath of the Spirit pumped by the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  As part of the Body of Christ, we are not just going about our own temporal business, but are an integrated member of the body whose actions resonate throughout all eternity.  The reality of the Body of Christ in the bread and the wine means that every time we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are letting go of our individual, isolated existence in favor of a deeper integration into eternal life with God.

The Body of Christ is real.

The second important way that the Body of Christ is real for us as we gather around this, the Lord’s table, is that the Body of Christ is real in our brothers and sisters around the table with us. Everyone who partakes of the Eucharist is part of the same mystical body of Christ that we are, united with our head, Jesus Christ.  We are not just joined to those who receive communion today or at this altar.  We are joined to men and women everywhere of whatever time, in whatever church: whether they kneel down or stand; whether they use wine or grape juice; whether they speak English or Spanish or Greek or Latin or Chinese or Swahili or are some kind of weird mime church; whether they believe in transubstantiation or consubstantiation or receptionism or a remembering meal; whether they Catholic or Protestant or Evangelical or Charismatic or Free-Church or some other brand of Jesus followers; whether they are conservative or liberal, Bible-thumping or social justice types, into saving souls or into feeding people or into serving tea with the proper number of spoons – we are all part of the real Body of Christ and none can say to the other, “we have no need of you.”   Today, my young brothers and sisters, we are bringing you into a real Body of Christ that connects you with people that you cannot even imagine from around the world spanning all eternity, and that Body of Christ is a very good place to be.

Now because the Body of Christ is real and we are members of it with others, our lives are linked.  When one part of the body rejoices, we all rejoice.  When one part suffers, we all suffer.  So we have some obligations to one another, obligations to those we know that are members of the Body of Christ in our own parish, obligations to those we can come to know in the surrounding community, and obligations to those we might never meet personally, but that we are still connected to throughout the world.   

These obligations aren’t hard to figure out, and sometimes we do a pretty decent job living into them.  If we believe the body of Christ is real, we will treat our brothers and sisters in our parish as important parts of our lives.  We will talk over a cup of coffee or a meal.  We will know enough about each other to celebrate the good things in our lives and be able to encourage one another through the difficult times.  Everyone who comes here will ideally have a number of folks in this limb of the body of Christ that they can call upon for help and use their gifts to support.  Some of this work is being structured by Deacon Randy, but most of it just happens as we take time to be with each other.

Within the wider community, seeing other Christians as part of the real Body of Christ with us might mean a couple of things.  We can meet their basic needs, whatever church they are a part of.  We can join in efforts with other churches that advance the mission and ministry of the kingdom.  We may at some point even be able to send “community missionaries” to each other’s churches.  For example, if a church is starting an outreach program and we have people with that experience, we might share those folks for the good of the overall body.  We are starting to think about these issues as a Diocese that wants to be One Church, but I think God wants all the churches in the Shenango Valley to be one, and our witness to the community is much more powerful when we work together.

Being part of a worldwide Body of Christ touches us, as well.  Wealthier American churches certainly have an obligation to share resources with those churches where our brothers and sisters lack clean water, adequate food or other basic necessities.  Praying and working for peace in war-torn regions and stability in places awash in government corruption are vitally important.  We also have a particular responsibility to hold up in prayer and in any other way we can those churches that face persecution and oppression.  Voice of the Martyrs is one organization dedicated to distributing information about and supporting the worldwide persecuted church.  In many ways, Christians suffering for their faith are the most vulnerable members of the Body of Christ, and they need our help.

The Body of Christ is real.

We are invited by Jesus to become part of his body.  When we accept that invitation to join the real Body of Christ, we take him as our head, and our brothers and sisters as members alongside of us.  We live into the eternal life of God, loving our brothers and sisters more deeply as they become fully part of our lives.  We come to know and live our lives based on the truth that …

…the Body of Christ is real