Matthew 4:12-23
I’d like to invite you this morning to
hear our Gospel reading through the ears of our patron, St. Andrew. I’d also like you to imagine the reading not
as a piece of journalism, not a report by a detached observer, but as part of
Andrew’s story, which he’s telling years later.
Andrew is telling this story as he’s hanging out in the ancient
equivalent of a coffee shop, talking with someone who’s become a friend. Andrew is trying to share something about what
matters most in his life.
So he sips his latte and gives a little
background. “This guy named Jesus,”
Andrew says, “he was from my region, and he came to settle in my own village. I’d been hearing things about him – that what
he had to say made people listen, that it brought people hope. And it made me think about how people have
been finding hope for centuries when God manages to take the hardest things in
life and help you find blessing in them instead. Well, my brother and I were working one day, out
fishing, and this guy Jesus came up near us on the beach. For no good reason, he asked us to come along
and see what he was up to. And, well, we
did. You know, I was dealing with my own
problems, and I needed a little light in my life. So, we started talking with Jesus, and he
said, “Hey, come along with me, and I’ll teach you to fish for people instead.” I wasn’t sure quite what he meant, but we
went along; and he invited other guys to come along, too. And, you know, we saw and heard the most
amazing things as we traveled with him.
We heard him teaching about how life could actually mean something, and
we watched him heal people and give them a new lease on life. You know, I didn’t realize how badly I needed
that hope and healing until then. But
it’s made all the difference to me.”
There’s the Gospel of St. Andrew, over a
latte with a friend in an ancient coffee shop.
It’s a story of hope and healing – not just for Andrew but for the guy
across the table, too.
So what I’ve just described to you is an
example of what I see as our greatest need in this church family, as we begin a
new year together. We need stories and
storytellers – as the old saying goes, stories told by one beggar to another
beggar about where to find bread.
Why do we need stories and
storytellers? To make love real. To give it flesh and bones. That person you have coffee with, or exercise
with, or work with – God loves that person more than anything. And God uses us to show it. Nothing communicates love like love
stories. So God needs stories and
storytellers. And so does our parish
family.
When I look at our congregation, here’s
what I see. I see a lot that’s
good. I see hundreds of people serving
God and loving the people around them, week in and week out. At the parish meeting downstairs, you’ll get
a copy of the annual report, and the ministry it describes is really pretty
stunning – people giving their time and talent and treasure to serve in
worship, and take care of the building, and raise more than $100,000 for people
in need, in addition to the giving that comes from the operating budget. People who teach children, and manage
finances, and visit others who are sick or alone. When you pull back and look at the ministry
that happens week in and week out, the ways people share hope and love, the
news is truly good.
When I look at our congregation, I also
see people who love this place and all that it represents. We were founded 104 years ago when our bishop
at that time, the Rt. Rev. Sidney Partridge, said, “Our own city – right here –
is our greatest and most crying mission field.”1 Since then, St. Andrew’s has been an
outpost of God’s mission of love in this community, and we’ve touched hundreds
of thousands of people. I see a
congregation that still believes in that mission and wants to ensure we have
the wherewithal to help God accomplish it.
One way I’ve seen this belief is in your
response to the Christmas appeal to help us replace the air conditioner in the
children’s wing and the undercroft. A
generous parishioner offered a match of $90,000, and we asked you to give
toward meeting that match. Long story
short: You gave enough not just to meet the match but another $80,000 beyond
it. As I said in a letter this week,
we’ll use those gifts to address water damage in the lower levels of the church,
and redirect the way water drains off the roof, and fix the elevator. It’s a stunning example of your love for this
place and for its work to bring hope to real, live people.
When I look at the numbers, I also see some
signs of hope. Pledging is up – $35,000
more pledged than last year, 134 increased pledges, and 39 brand new
pledges. That’s a testimony to the fact
we’re improving the way we tell and live the stewardship story. Good job, Stewardship Commission and the
Vestry callers!
And … when I look at our congregation, I see
challenges, too. Sunday attendance
dropped this year, and membership is flat.
Pledge payments dropped even as pledges rose. All this has something to do with challenges
of the moment – the nave’s air conditioner dying and us worshiping in the
undercroft certainly didn’t help attendance or giving. But the challenges run deeper, too. When I was growing up, attending church
regularly meant going every week,
unless you were sick in bed. Today,
attending church regularly means once a month, or less. And along with that come demographic
challenges to attendance and giving. If
you look out across the congregation this morning, you see a lot of gray hair –
including my own, increasingly. And the
people with that gray hair do most of the serving and the giving in this place. Forty-six percent of our pledges last year
came from people over 75. Forty-eight
percent came from people between 48 and 74.
So six percent came from people younger than 48. We have real work to do – increasing
attendance, incorporating new members, encouraging people to fulfill their
pledges, and broadening the base of pledge support. These will be among the Vestry’s top
priorities this year.
Those concerns are real, but they don’t
tell our full story. When I look at our
congregation, and the 2017 budget, I see a church family seeking to love more
and love better, both within and beyond our congregation. We’ve received an incredibly generous gift to
fund a full-time positon to help us build engagement – with newcomers, with
people who use our church during the week, and with people on the periphery of
our membership, the folks we don’t see very often. We’re also bringing on someone part-time to
help us start a ministry of planned giving, following up on the incredible work
that Charlie Horner has put into stewarding our endowment. We’re adding hours in formation of children,
youth, and adults to help us do more to serve people within the congregation
and to reach people in the community around us.
We’re planning a series of spiritual conversations in a coffee shop and
more participation in community celebrations and events. As of this week, we’ll have a new staff
member leading communications, a woman named Shelby Lemon, who will help us share
the Good News of God’s love among ourselves and beyond ourselves. Even Mtr. Anne’s coming sabbatical is an
investment in love, as she develops resources to help “care for the caregivers,”
a role many of us know.
Several of those investments in love fall
into the category we’ve called “Gather & Grow ministries,” which is
shorthand for reaching people around us in new ways. The Gather & Grow initiative has always
been about reaching people and developing our physical resources to enable that
work. As you know, plans for work on
HJ’s hit a major roadblock last spring, when construction estimates came back
much higher than we were initially told.
It led the Vestry to some soul-searching over the summer and fall,
discerning whether to come back to you asking for more funding. We discerned God was asking us instead to see
that what you had given is enough – and to move forward accordingly. So we’ve been working with an owner’s rep,
Pete Lacy, who grew up in this church, to help us get the best facility we can
across the street within the resources you’ve provided. The Vestry will use part of its upcoming retreat
to decide whether to renovate the existing building or build a new, more
efficient one. But in either case, the
point is to enable ministry. The point is not to build a building but to
connect with people around us in new ways.
And doing that doesn’t have to wait for a new building, which is why
we’re working to build those ministries now.
These ministries are about going fishing for people – following Andrew
as he followed Jesus and sharing our stories along the way.
To do that, I see something else we need
as a congregation. We need to read the
Bible. Now, I know that’s not a shocking
thing to hear a preacher say, though it may feel a little shocking coming from
an Episcopalian preacher. But in order
to tell people Good News about the presence of God in our lives and the value
that a relationship with Christ gives us, we have to know two stories: God’s story
and our own. We have to know what God
has done and is doing in the world, and we have to be able to link that love story
with the love we know when we feel the Sprit moving in our own hearts. So, we’re going to offer an opportunity to
read the Bible together. And better yet,
it’s sort of a condensed version of the Bible, navigating around some of the
more distant material from a very distant time.
The resource we’ll use is called The
Path, and it’s just that – a manageable journey through God’s story. Here’s how it will work: We’ll suggest people read certain chapters
each week, and we’ll have a weekly time, after coffee hour, for teaching and discussion. Our youth will be doing the same thing, by
the way, also gathering after church; so parents and youth can both take part;
and the younger kids will be using a kids’ version at the same time. In addition, it’s a great resource for small
groups or book discussions. You’ll get
more information about it in the next few weeks, and you can sign up at the
annual meeting to find out more.
I firmly believe that this will make a
difference for our congregation, if we will commit the time and energy to turn
toward God every week. When we know
God’s story and feel it connecting with the grace and love God has shown toward
each of us – when our heads and our hearts are aligned with the knowledge and
love of God – then we receive the power to speak and act as participants in
that divine love story. We receive the
power to serve as Christ calls us each to serve. We receive the power to give sacrificially
and to trust that it will bring us blessing.
We receive the power to reach out to people on the margins of this
congregation and draw them deeper into this family. We receive the power to share our story with
someone else and invite him or her to experience what we’ve experienced.
That’s what our patron, St. Andrew, was
doing in his conversation with a friend in that ancient coffee shop. He wasn’t hawking a product or promoting an
institution. He just identified someone
he knew who needed to hear that life has meaning and that hope is real. Andrew had thought about how his own
experience with Jesus fit into the bigger picture of how God has been loving
the world from the beginning. And he
thought about how he might tell his story in a way that made sense to the guy
across the table.
As I look at our congregation this year,
here’s what I see. Our greatest need is
for stories and storytellers. To say it
in church-speak, we need to build a culture of evangelism. To say it in the language of real people, we
need to know who God is, know who we are, and put that into words.
So, I began this with my take on our
patron saint’s story, based on today’s Gospel reading. Let me end with my own story. It’s not beautiful or stunning or
theologically deep, which is what I used to think it took to offer “a
witness.” Because I didn’t think my
story was compelling or dramatic, I didn’t think I had a story. Now, I know
better.
I grew up in a family that went to church
but didn’t talk much about what we believed.
I knew prayers, but I didn’t know the God to whom I was praying. As a young man, I was working as a writer and
editor; and that was OK, but it didn’t mean anything. I had a wife and a little kid; and when we
moved back to Kansas City, and I thought I ought to find us a church because
good parents do that sort of thing. Over
the next couple of years, mostly through conversations with two people at work
and the priest at my church, I realized that something I thought was impossible
might actually be true: that God wanted what I had to offer. At the same time, Ann and I came to one of
those periods couples experience when your relationship goes south, and I had
to ask some hard questions about where my life’s meaning really lay. I started reading the Bible … what a
concept. There, I found a God who is all
about new life. I found a God who loved us enough to come and
be one of us, and experience all the ugliness I experienced, and in the end,
live resurrection. Remarkably (or not),
at the same time, I also found our marriage resurrecting, too.
It seems like a story worth telling. So now I’m telling it. And if I’m telling my story, you can tell
yours. As Jesus said to one of the people
whose life he made whole, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the
Lord has done for you and what mercy he has shown you” (Mark 5:19). You don’t have to tell your story to
everyone. You just have to tell it to
the one who needs to hear it.
1.
The Silver Jubilee
of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City, Missouri. Commemorative
booklet from the parish’s 25th anniversary, Oct. 9 and 10, 1938, held
in St. Andrew’s archives. Page 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment