6th
Sunday of Easter; Yr. C, May 5, 2013
Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67;
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
I’ve
been on the SWEM board a few years now.
That board is a working board.
Almost everyone on it is an officer or a leader in one of the programs
that SWEM coordinates. We all help with
the Christmas Baskets. We’ll all be at
the CROPWalk later today. We’ve all put
in hours at the food cupboard at the Montgomery Neighborhood Center, and we’re
committed to feeding hungry people in our neighborhoods. We want to serve. For us, it’s a calling.
Recently, starting with the Foodlink
Mobile Pantry, volunteers from the neighborhood have begun to help us. One of those first volunteers has become a
regular. Within a few weeks after she
began to help on the line, she asked us to let her know if there’s anything
else she can do. “Call”, she said. “I’m happy to help.” So I told her about the senior program. About how we need volunteers to help pack the
bags, and it happens every month on the third Friday. “Wanna help?”
I asked. “Sure.” She answered.
“Just tell me when to be there.”
Now she faithfully shows up every month, and she packs senior bags too. I try to remember to remind her about the
Mobile Pantry when I see her at the senior packing, but she doesn’t need any
reminder. It’s always on her calendar. It’s one of the highlights of her month.
Karen has needed more help with the
phones in the last few months. So, one
day Karen thought to ask her if she’d like to help screen clients for emergency
food. “Once you’re trained”, Karen said,
“you can even do it from home.” This
woman jumped at the opportunity. Karen
trained her, and now she’s in the office with her at least one day a week …
answering phones, screening clients, doing the odd jobs that just seem to pile
up when life in the office gets busy. I
hear her laughing and chatting with Karen at the end of the day as they both
get ready to leave. Karen said, “She
told me she doesn’t get out much. She’d
rather come to the office and take the calls.
She doesn’t have a car, but she’s happy to take the bus, or walk. She likes getting out of the house.” I see that every day she’s here. Working with SWEM has been good for her, and
for Karen, for all of us really … but it wasn’t something that we planned
for. It just kind of happened. Like Paul encountering Lydia in Philippi.
Paul had a vision. A man pleads with him to come to Macedonia
and help the people there. Paul and his
disciples immediately pack up and leave the next day. They make it to Philippi, and I’m guessing
they think they’ll come upon the man they are supposed to help in short
order. But they’re there for some days
and as far as we know… the man never appeared.
Instead, when they go outside the gate by the river one Sabbath day to
find a quiet place to pray, women are
already there, gathered together in this place of prayer. One woman in particular stood out from the group. Lydia was a merchant, a dealer in purple
cloth. She listened to Paul and his
disciples as they talked. God opened her
heart to hear and believe. She and her
whole household were baptized. And then
in an unexpected twist, she invites Paul and the others to her house.
She offers them hospitality in her home, and lest they feel
tempted to refuse her offer she begins with a conditional statement. “If you have judged me to be faithful to the
Lord”. IF you consider me a sister in Christ. IF you consider yourself my brother in the
Lord, come and stay at my home. He has just baptized her. How can he now refuse her? How ironic it is that Paul came to “help” a man he saw in a vision, and he ends up “being helped” by a woman he
has just met. This woman’s home will
become one of the early house churches in our Christian tradition, a gathering
place for the community of Christ followers in Philippi, a place where new
disciples are formed. It’s tempting to
think that we are called to help others, and forget that it’s often those we
come to help who end up helping us. God
has a way of making that happen when we least expect it.
On Friday afternoon, Bryan Babcock
from Foodlink brought our raised beds for the Garden Project …
unassembled. I hadn’t paid enough
attention to our conversations leading up to that day, so I wasn’t sure whether
we were just getting materials or whether we were actually building raised
beds. I hadn’t made any calls to gather
helpers. About noon, I spoke to him, and
sure enough he said we’d be putting everything together and filling the beds
with rich compost that afternoon. I
confessed that I didn’t have anyone lined up to help. He said not to worry, because the beds were
easy to assemble and he’d have an Ameri-Corps volunteer with him to help.
At about 1:40, I saw Bryan outside
moving some of the materials over to our side lawn, so I went outside to talk
with him, and apologize again for not having people to help. “Not a problem”, he said again. I went back inside, but I couldn’t stay there
for long. I was excited to see how
things were going. When I went back out,
he and the volunteer were putting the beds together. She was drilling in the screws while he held
the sides together. I could tell she was
feeling a little outside her comfort zone with the task, but happily giving it
her best shot. I asked if I could help
out. So I took the drill, and we set to
work. Within thirty minutes we had all
three beds put together. We put them in
place, and staked them in the ground.
The fill wouldn’t arrive until five o’clock and it was only 3:30, so we
decided to go home and meet back at church later to finish the work. I offered to put something out on our parish
list-serv, just in case someone else might be able to help.
Hannah came back with me at
5pm. I brought two shovels and two
rakes. Bryan, his wife and daughter
arrived shortly after we did with a shovel, a wheelbarrow and a picnic dinner. They offered to share. When the dump truck arrived, Jim Fallesen appeared
with shovel in hand. Nevin and Shalain
came over from across the street. Within
a few minutes Amir and Tyrin came running over and asked to help, but by then
all the rakes and shovels had been taken.
Amir wanted to help so badly that he ran back home to get his own
shovel. Between Jim’s strategic planning
and the help of many hands, the beds were filled quickly. As we worked, the kids talked about what we
might plant in the beds. There was a lot
of excited chatter.
God has a way of bringing people
together. We had anticipated getting the
compost earlier in the day, but that didn’t happen. As we were leaving, I told Bryan that it
probably worked out better this way.
Because it came later, Jim had time to see the e-mail and answered the
call. The kids were all home from
school, and out playing on that warm sunny day.
The arrival of the dump truck brought everyone over. The whole idea of the Garden Project is to
get neighbors involved in growing some of their own food, and learning how to
cook it together. It’s about blurring
those lines between the helper and the one helped. We’re baptized into community. We’re not baptized into independence; we’re
baptized into interdependence. We help
each other in the name of Christ. That’s
what Christian community is all about.
Love one another as I have loved you and that kingdom of God that is our
promise will be revealed.
That’s how it works.
That’s how we grow in faith.
We’re called and we answer. We
talk about what we’re doing and experiencing, and others hear it and come to
believe. They are called and answer … and the cycle continues. Every time I see God working the magic, I’m
surprised by it and grateful. IF you consider me a sister in Christ. IF you consider yourself my brother in the
Lord, come and stay at my home. Let me serve with you. That’s an offer we can’t ignore. It’s an offer to good to refuse.
Amen.
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