Building the Church with Your Bare Hands
I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed Elmer’s sermon last week. Not an easy one to follow! For those of you who missed it, he used the story of Esther to illustrate a pattern that we can see in the heroes that God raises up to do His work...
God chooses someone who is just a regular person… Esther the Jewess, David the shepherd, Moses the slave… Just plain folks.
He helps them to know when to shut up, when to stand up and when to speak up.
And He does incredible work through those just plain folk. The stories are told and retold and they become heroes.
This week’s OT reading is another story like that. Amos is one of the “minor prophets.” It’s one of those books that – unless you’ve read through the Bible a couple of times- you might not be able to find without resorting to the contents page. So, let me give you the Reader’s Digest condensed version.
Amos was a shepherd and a fruit
picker when God called him to deliver messages of doom and captivity for
Amos could see that beneath
God showed Amos that He was
preparing swarms of locusts – which would bring starvation to the people of
Then He gave Amos the final
vision:
The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb
line in his hand. And the LORD asked, "What do you see, Amos?"
"A plumb line."
Then the Lord said, "Look, I
am setting a plumb line among my people
You may be asking yourself, what is a plumb line? Basically, it’s a string with a weight tied at the bottom. The idea is that gravity pulls the weight straight down, providing a reference to make sure that a vertical line is perfectly vertical. Upright. True.
When God sets His plumb line among His people, He’s looking for people who are righteous… Upright… TRUE… ? He’s told us what that looks like in Micah 6:8.
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Clearly, with that as the
vertical line,
God is saying to Amos that He is
just and that He will spare the faithful remnant. He’ll use the plumb line to find them. Even
in the midst of His wrath, God promises eventual restoration. In the final verses of Chapter 9 the Lord
tells Amos " `In that day I will restore David's fallen tent.... I will
bring back my exiled people
As I read and re-read this passage, I was fascinated with the image of the plumb line. From the fall in the garden onward, God has trying to bring us back to true. He sent prophets to His people over and over. We can see the in their stories the pattern of judgment followed by salvation. He pulls out the plumb line, sees that Creation has gone wonky again and pulls the wall back down to the remnant that is true.
Eventually, God came to that
point - and we’ve all been there – when
He must’ve thought – “When you want the job done right, you have to do it
yourself.” When God took on flesh
and came into the world, He wasn’t sending a prophet to pass judgment. He came to
us as one of us to
show us how to live. Quite simply, the teachings of Jesus are our plumb line.
Even the lawyer in our reading
from Luke this morning was able to recite what we are to do: “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
We are to love God- fully and authentically.
We are to love others- humbly and selflessly.
The question really was How do we live it?
In a hundred different ways, Jesus commands us to take the Good News of God’s love to those around us…
· By demonstrating our devotion and adoration of God.
· By taking care of people in times of need or crisis.
· By helping people learn more about who God is and how we should live.
· By spending time building one another up in love.
· By carrying God’s message of grace to people outside in our neighborhoods and beyond.
That sounds a little bit like we’re supposed to Adore, Care, Teach, Involve and Offer New Life. God’s love in Action. Now, a month ago, I’d have made that connection and looked for a nice close to the sermon. After all, we’re all about being God’s love in ACTION, right? That’s part of our name… It’s who we ARE.
But I can’t stop here. Not today. There’s more to the message God gave me today. See, I had a couple of other sermons to preach today. I thought I would talk about prayer. Or maybe even Stewardship. But when I looked up the Lectionary- the verses that folks throughout the church will be reading today, it was Amos and the Good Samaritan. Not prayer. Not stewardship.
It started with one of those “Divine Appointments” that God makes for us. It was in this very room in one off those chairs right over here. A person stopped me after the service and asked if I could chat for a few minutes. During that conversation, after we’d gotten past some introductory kinds of things, this person said to me:
I hear
Let that sink in for a moment. And please understand that this was a sincere question from the depths of this person’s heart. This was a real person, seeking real community, wanting to know how well we give and receive love from others.
I needed some time to consider this question, so I asked a couple of follow up questions and learned a little more about this person’s experiences and perceptions of us. It was a good talk, and God called several things to mind.
· I know of people who have been members of this church for 2-3 years, and they still don’t have a small group or support system.
· There are people who have been involved in our church for longer than that, but have not yet found a personal ministry. Some because they hang back, but some who have jut never been asked.
· Then there’s the fact that the first (often only) idea people have for making us a “friendlier, more welcoming church” has been to make sure our greeters and ushers are well trained. Which they are, by the way.
· There have been mornings when I’ve walked in to get ready for the late service while the early folks are still here for coffee hour – I might make eye contact with 10-15 people before someone pauses long enough to say “Hi.”
I know- these are pretty subjective observations. And, our experiences certainly vary from person to person based on what baggage we carry with us. Believe me, I sat and listed off the many ways we support and care for one another in my head, too. But the answer I came up with – and the message that I have for you is MAYBE.
Maybe we are God’s love in ACTION.
Maybe we are God’s love in theory. It depends on what day it is.
More importantly, it depends on whether we choose to stand up and speak up. It depends on whether we want to be a congregation of ACTION heroes. The choices we make will determine what kind of church we build.
I’m not talking about the buildings that we’re going to have out there. We’re going to pay people to build those. I’m talking about the church we’re building in here. The people who will worship inside the buildings. The people who will teach inside those buildings. The people who share God’s love with one another and with the neighbors as they come and go from these buildings. The engineers and architects will help us build beautiful and strong buildings. The choices we make will determine whether we build a strong and beautiful church.
You know what I’d like to do right now- because this is the way my mind works – I’d love to pull out a big giant white board and markers, and we’d spend the next little while thinking of 100 different ways each one of us could share God’s love with our neighbors. But this isn’t the time or place for strategic planning.
Instead I’m here to challenge you with a vision for building the church. And the tool isn’t a plumb line – it’s our hands. Some of our hands are big, some are smaller, but all of them are tools that God can use. They are tools for being good stewards of God’s love.
Take your hands and hold them out in front of you, palms up, reaching 6-8 inches in front of you.
Imagine a box in your hands, all wrapped up in paper and ribbons. That would make the box a …. (gift).
In that posture, are you giving or receiving that gift? (could be either)
In fact, go ahead and give the box to someone near you.
We don’t manufacture love, we receive it from God. And we give it away. He pours it out lavishly and abundantly onto us and into us. We give it back to Him in lives of worship; we give it away to our neighbors in service. And even before we realize we need more, God is at work providing more for us. If you imagine God’s love like water… it’s hard to catch enough water to keep – even when you try to cup your fingers together tightly. God can pour out enough love for you to give away and enough to keep you filled – even with your hands wide open.
A wise person once said, “You can’t out-give God” - it was in reference to being certain that when you give of your resources generously, God provides for your needs. I believe that applies even more fully to the way that God pours out His love. You can’t out-love God.
Now - hold your hands out again, but this time, I want you to close them, as if you’re already hanging onto a couple of marbles in each hand. At this point, if I tossed you a box, could you catch it? (demonstrate trying to time catching something between two fists).
You just flat can’t receive a gift – you can’t receive God’s gifts, God’s LOVE – if you won’t open your hands. And you’ve can’t give it away, either. It’s like little toddlers first starting to eat solid foods. They can’t pick up with the fingers, so they grab the little cheerios you give them like they’re wearing mittens. Inevitably, after holding them tightly in those little fists, some of those cheerios stay hung up in those foldy hands.
Sometimes we choose to hold tight to our old patterns. We might choose to love one another to the exclusion of new people we don’t know. We might choose to hold onto fear… fear of looking foolish when we mistake someone we should know for a visitor.
By the way – that’s not a Biblical excuse- there’s a verse in there about being willing to be a fool for Christ. You can look it up.
Even when we choose to keep our gifts and talents to ourselves, we are closing our hands. And when we close our hands, we choose to limit how God can use us to love others.
When we open our hands, we are opening our hearts, our souls, our minds and our strengths to the Lord’s leading. When we open our hands, we are opening our minds, our souls, our hearts and our strengths to each and every person who walks through our doors. When we open our hands, we become the people God calls us to be. We are good neighbors. We are upright. True to plumb. We are building a church with the best tools in our tool box.
Our church has the opportunity to be the heart and soul of this community. We can stand up and make a difference in the lives of everyone in this zip code and beyond. I’m so proud of the ways that we are God’s love in ACTION. And I claim them as part of who we are. I am saddened by the times we choose not to act. And I pray that we will continue to grow and do better. I don’t know if the person I spoke with will join us. I know that we would be blessed to have her and a hundred more like her. But I know that God used that conversation to challenge me. And hopefully to challenge you.
I’m more a guitar-picker than I am theologian. I don’t even START classes for another 2 weeks… But I know this. When I was called to the be the daughter of the King – just like each of you were called to be sons and daughters of the Most High… When I laid claim to those adoption papers and all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that come along with them… I had NO IDEA what sort of adventure I’d be going on. When I agreed to fill the pulpit today, I was pretty sure I’d be preaching on prayer.
But I’m standing up here today.
And I’m speaking up.
Because this is the message He gave me.
And I’m passing it on to you.
And who knows but we are all called to for such a time as this.
Amen.