Matthew 4:18-22; John 1:35-42; John 12:20-22
Nov. 25, 2018
A year ago, as we gathered to celebrate
our patron saint, when we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a construction
site across the street. Over the next few
months, we watched as a new structure rose out of the dirt and snow, the
outward and visible sign of what we’d been talking about since our centennial
in 2013 – Gather & Grow, an initiative to reach the people around us in new
ways. You generous people gave $3.6
million to help make that vision real, creating what our treasurer likes to
call our “bright, shiny new toy” across the street.
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| HJ's Dedication, April 15, 2018 |
April, May, and June were busy
months. We hired a new staff member,
Zach Beall, to be our coordinator of HJ’s and community connection. We promoted another staff member, Colleen
Simon, to be our engagement coordinator.
We promoted Jean Long to build ministry with children, youth, families, and
younger adults. And we called Fr. Jeff
Stevenson to help us build pastoral care and one-on-one connection.
But here’s what we didn’t know: How would you respond to all this? How would people in the community respond to
all this? We’d been talking for years about
being “church” in new ways, being more intentional about reaching out and
inviting folks in. But we didn’t really
know what would happen once the shiny new toy and the shiny new staff members
were there.
I’ll come back to that in a minute. First, I want us to remember the model we’ve
been following as we’ve walked down this road of gathering and growing.
No surprise – it starts with Jesus. In the reading this morning from Matthew, we
heard Jesus cast his vision as he sees Andrew and Peter casting their nets. They were fisherman, small-business men out
there earning a living. But Jesus holds
up their daily life before them and helps them see it in a new light. Don’t just look for fish, he says. Instead, fish for people. You have it within you to reach people in
ways you haven’t even thought about yet.
In John’s Gospel, we get a different
version of Andrew’s call to follow Jesus.
In that story, the call is much more subtle. Andrew is a follower of John the Baptist
initially, and he hears John say, “Look, there’s the Lamb of God,” the one who comes
to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
So, Andrew goes off after Jesus, and they spend the day talking. That’s all it took. Andrew’s heart tells him to share his
excitement with someone he loves – his brother, Peter – and he says to Peter, “We
have found the Messiah!” (John 1:41).
Come, and see. Andrew’s
invitation to Peter wasn’t complicated or scripted or awkward. Andrew didn’t have all the answers to the
questions Peter no doubt asked. Andrew
simply wanted to share the fact that he’d found the presence of God through a
conversation with this amazing new friend – and he wanted Peter to find it,
too.
Later in John’s Gospel, we get a couple more
Andrew stories. I think it’s significant
what these stories don’t illustrate. Andrew doesn’t pronounce deep theological
insights. He doesn’t heal anybody. He doesn’t preach to large crowds. Instead,
Andrew takes individuals seriously, even if he doesn’t know exactly how his actions
will play out.
For example, just after Palm Sunday, as
Jesus is riding high, some outsiders come and want to meet him. Now, these are people who don’t belong – described
as “Greeks” in the story (John 12:20-22), they aren’t the folks people think
Jesus has come to save. He’s the King of
the Jews, right? He’s there to gather God’s people, the people of Israel
– not the foreigners, not the outsiders, not the folks who don’t belong in
church. So, one of the other disciples
brings the curious outsiders up the chain of command, to Andrew, and asks him
what to do with them.
Remember, Jesus is at the pinnacle of his
popularity. He’s just raised Lazarus
from the dead and ridden into Jerusalem backed by a big crowd. Andrew could have been polite and said to the
outsiders, “It’s so nice to see you.
Please come back during office hours, and we’ll see if someone can help
you then.” But without hesitating, Andrew
simply brings the outsiders to see Jesus.
Why? Because he’s been there. Twelve chapters earlier, Andrew was the one
who was searching, lost and looking for direction. He knows that what these outsiders need is
for someone to take them seriously enough to open a door to a relationship. So, he takes them to Jesus and changes their
lives.
As we celebrate St. Andrew’s Sunday this
year, we’ve got a bright, shiny new toy across the street. We’ve got a bright, shiny set of improvements
on this side of the street, too, after last year’s water damage – new floors, new
lights, a renovated children’s chapel, a renovated undercroft, new drainage on
the roof, all kinds of improvements. It
would be possible to pat ourselves on the back, and give thanks for the money
that you generous souls have offered, and enjoy great parties in our new
building, and carry on with church the way we’ve always known it.
But this is Andrew’s church, a place where
his heart is honored. This is a place where you find something maybe
unexpected in a church that folks used to call “the country club at prayer.” Sometime, walk by the plaque on the wall just
to my left, off to the side of the pulpit, and you’ll see it.
From 1956 to 1958, St. Andrew’s planted a
new congregation in Red Bridge, a growing neighborhood in south Kansas City. If you’ve been there, you can’t miss the connection;
the building looks like a shrunken version of this one. In that day, under the leadership of Dr.
Earle Jewell, St. Andrew’s was thriving, the third largest Episcopal
congregation in the country; and in that day, what thriving churches did was to
plant new versions of themselves in new locations. So that’s what this congregation did, planting
what came to be called St. Peter’s church – because Andrew brought his brother
with him to let Jesus change his life. In
thankful remembrance of that, the people of St. Peter’s put up a plaque here on
our wall, honoring the people of St. Andrew’s for giving them a church
home. But the plaque recognizes more
than that. The plaque names the spiritual
gift they saw in the people here – “missionary zeal.”
Today, missionary zeal doesn’t have to
look like building a smaller version of us in some new neighborhood. For us, the spiritual descendants of St.
Andrew in a new day – when people don’t trust the institutional church very
much, and when church buildings are being turned into restaurants, and when our
sister congregations in our diocese are struggling to afford part-time clergy –
for us, in a new day, missionary zeal happens in our own backyard.
Last Friday and Saturday, in our shiny new
toy across the street, one of the most venerable of our parish groups, the
Trinity Guild, put on the Trinity Antique Treasures Sale, a two-day event featuring
antique dealers from five states, a pop-up Simply Divine Gift Shop, and
wonderful sandwiches. The event was a
risk, honestly. Trinity Guild hadn’t
done that sort of thing before. But –
led by Joey Straube, Jinny Alexander, Cindy Roth, Joanna Martin, and Donna Adam
– the members filled the building with antiques, and showed up to provide a warm
welcome, and opened the doors … and waited to see what would happen.
Here’s what happened. More than 400 people came through those doors
last Friday and Saturday. Trinity Guild
members had a great time seeing friends and welcoming guests. But here’s the thing: They didn’t stop with simply being
polite. They found the outsiders, and
they brought them to see Jesus.
I want to share an email I received from a
St. Andrew’s member who was there and who has a keen eye for noticing the kingdom
of God: “I was helping at the welcoming
table,” she wrote, “and several people came in who had no idea what was
happening. It gave us an opportunity to
share the St. Andrew’s story. One
particular woman came in and asked questions.
She said, ‘I’m Catholic, but may I still take Communion at your
church? And can I bring my 24-year-old
granddaughters? And what would they find
here?’ It didn’t take long for us to tell
her about everything going on, including the young adults’ group.” This interaction, and the Trinity Guild sale
as a whole, was a master class in being the open-hearted community we are – creating
the environment for connection, inviting people in, and bringing them to meet
Jesus. St. Andrew would be proud.
Now, it’s important to note that, on the quantitative
side, God is doing wonderful things here.
Sunday attendance is up 9 percent so far in 2018. Forty-five new households have joined the
church so far this year. Last month at
HJ’s, in what wasn’t its busiest
month, we had 21 meetings or events from outside groups, 14 meetings of St. Andrew’s
groups, and 14 worship opportunities, including Morning Prayer three days a
week and two community-oriented events combining worship and fellowship. Thus far in 2018, bookings and other revenue
from HJ’s has totaled $37,000, and we conservatively project it at $50,000 for
next year. So, the quantitative side is
good, and that matters.
But to me, and I think to St. Andrew, and I
think to Jesus – the relational side matters even more. At the end of the day, our success will be
measured one heart at a time. Whether it’s
the ladies from Trinity Guild welcoming an outsider, or Fr. Jeff talking with
someone after Morning Prayer, or an inactive member coming back to coordinate projects
at HJ’s, or a person who can’t afford wi-fi coming in for coffee and the chance
to fill out job applications, or neighbors coming for worship that’s as much
about brats and beer as it is about Scripture and prayer, or people coming for twice
as many recovery groups as we used to host – all this is part of what church
looks like now.
This new reality is not replacing our beautiful
experience here each Sunday morning; it’s coming into being alongside it. All this, together, is church; because on
both sides of the street, through all kinds of ministry, it boils down to the
old saying: that church is one beggar showing another beggar where to go to
find bread. That’s missionary zeal, St. Andrew’s style – taking each individual
seriously enough to say, “Hey, come with me, and let’s go find Jesus, together.”
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