Gospel Story Day

Matthew 4:12-23 

You might have heard this story before:

One day Jesus began to prepare for a new phase of ministry.  So he got out the directory and called Simon to say, “I’d really like you to consider joining the Vestry.  We do good work and you get to help shape the direction of our ministry.”

Then he got Andrew on the phone and asked him to think about teaching Sunday School. 

Later that day, he was at the Home Depot and saw James and John.  They were catching up with each other in the plumbing section, and Jesus told them about a neat outreach ministry that his congregation was starting, and invited them to come to church with him some Sunday.

Everybody then went home and thought about it.

Does it sound like the story we heard Deacon Tom read a few minutes ago? 

Or does it sound familiar in other ways?

(It might not even need to be a church story to sound familiar.)

Whether you’ve recently invited someone to teach Sunday school or lead a Calvary event – or to help with a home project, volunteer at PADS, join a book group or team or any other ongoing activity, the story might have gone like that.

In the 21^st century, we are generally busy people, tired people, and often unsure of our leadership or not quite ready to try something new – so we don’t insist that people join us,

and we go home and think about it.

So even though I’m very familiar with this story of Jesus’ call to the first disciples, it always sounds a little strange to me. 

He interrupts people in the middle of a hard and busy day’s work, offers a cryptic command,(“fish for people” sounds pretty weird to guys using all their strength to haul in a wet, sloppy, fragrant and very heavy net), and immediately they drop what they are doing and change their lives forever.

It sounded weird and inappropriate to Jesus’ contemporaries, too.  It may even have suggested to some that he wasn’t a good rabbi – because good rabbis waited for disciples to come to them.  Advertising and inviting – much less commanding followers! – just weren’t done.

But some of us may actually long for an invitation like that, an encounter with God that is so clear and compelling that it changes our lives without a moment’s hesitation, easy to instantly accept.  I know I want that, when I get busy with details and deadlines.

That’s one of the reasons I love this gospel story.  I love the direct, compelling picture we see: Jesus clear on his ministry and mission, issuing a strong invitation, getting a direct response.   A simple invitation (well, command): “Follow me,” and God’s chosen people respond immediately. 

(Sound attractive?)

I want that for us – for me, for Calvary, for the church and the Christian faith as a whole. 

I want us to be so clear in our invitation, so compelling a presence of God, and so in the right place at the right time that people find it easy to turn from what they are doing and join us.

But the life of a congregation can seem very different from those bright, clear, compelling gospel scenes.

And that’s why we’re here today.  It’s why we’ve disrupted everyone’s Sunday schedule, and haphazardly mixed 8 and 10:15 regulars into “your” pew.  It’s because today is Calvary’s Gospel Story Day.

(I know I invited you to come for the Annual Meeting, but that’s just another name for our Gospel Story Day.) 

Today the budget and bylaws and reports are the raw material of the Gospel According to Us.

Think back about 2010. 

Remember the schedule swapping? the setup and cleanup and painting?  the early mornings and late meetings, the moments of comfort, and chaos, and concern and delight?

Remember that, and listen to this story:

One year the people of Calvary went out to the neighborhood and said; “Hello!  We really appreciate how you make this community a great place to live.  Thank you!” And people immediately came to a fabulous party, and said, “No, Thank You!”

And again, the people of Calvary went out and said, “Did you know that God is here to welcome and care for you (outside the church) at the vet and on the train platform?  Really, everywhere.” And immediately the people in the neighborhood were amazed at the hospitality, and joined in worship, and said, “No one has ever done this for me before. Thank you!”

And the people of Calvary went on throughout Lombard and the region of Chicago, teaching by example, proclaiming the good news with Chili Cookoffs and Vacation Bible School, and caring for those in need or sorrow or joy.

Does that sound familiar?

Does it sound like the story of the call of the fishermen: bright and clear and almost easy?

(And did you notice –earlier – that at the end of the story Deacon Tom read, Jesus goes through Galilee teaching, and preaching, and healing – exactly the mission of our congregation every day?)

It’s a true story.  A Gospel Story. 

And it’s our story.

In the dailiness of life, and in the midst of all the work of keeping our ministries and building and worship going, it’s tempting to forget that our story is the Gospel Story. 

And tempting, on many Sunday mornings, to think the Gospel Story doesn’t sound like us.

But that is exactly what we must remember today:

Today when we choose leaders for our congregation.

Today when we affirm our ministry by careful attention to the budget and the generosity of our members.

Today when we hear reports, dot the I’s and cross the T’s, and say “Thank you!”

Today, when we eat together, and celebrate, and wipe down the tables and clean up the coffee.

We must remember that Sunday School and ECW and Coffee Hour and Vestry meetings and all the other work of our common life are how God builds the Gospel Story. 

That God’s call to follow, and to fish for people, often sounds like another meeting, another chore: a fragrant, slippery, heavy net to haul; another busy thing in a very busy world.

That’s the true story for Simon and Andrew and James and John, years ago in Galilee, and it’s true now. Meetings and work and especially cleanup are the true story of a teaching, preaching, healing, people-fishing ministry here in Lombard.  

And the true story is also the Gospel story, one that shines with clear invitation, the compelling presence of God, one that makes it easy to join in.

Does that story sound familiar?

It’s our story, after all.

Annual Meeting of the Congregation

January 23, 2011

Falling in love

Luke 2:1-20

I’ve seen a lot of birth announcements on Facebook recently.

In the old days – you know, a decade or two ago – when the baby was born you called people, using the telephone.  Grandparents, siblings, dear friends: the new baby’s family circle, got the call, and printed announcements or word of mouth took over from there. 

Today, within hours of the baby’s birth, family, dear friends, and perhaps hundreds of near strangers are informed of the baby’s arrival, stats, name, and first photos online.  An extraordinary number of unrelated people now share that intimate access to the birth day, including folks you didn’t even eat lunch with in high school. 

But it’s oddly similar to that moment two thousand years ago when the sky around Bethlehem suddenly rang with the angelic birth announcement.

To an unrelated group of shepherds minding their own business, the sudden and prodigal news of a baby’s birth, stats, name and general appearance were even less expected than a former colleague’s hospital photos. 

But the joy was real, and in this case the news was meant precisely for the hundreds, then millions of near-strangers who would eventually learn the baby’s story.

That’s the thing about Christmas.  The thing that’s oddly contemporary in a wireless, internet-connected world.  The news is for EVERYONE.  

This miracle of God, born human, living among us, is remarkably public and undiscriminating.

It’s because that baby, born in a stable, announced by angels, is our all-access pass to God.  Near-strangers, the ones who don’t even appear on the Christmas card list, that’s who gets intimate access to God, tonight.

In Luke’s story and in Matthew’s, the people who come to see this baby, to witness and celebrate the birth, are precisely the people we would never imagine in our own family nativity stories.

There are shepherds – the first century Palestinian equivalent of day laborers, widely regarded as unreliable and socially marginal. 

And there are magi. Foreigners.  They hang out with governors and kings (also not the folks who usually come to visit the baby in the hospital) but they probably had accents and funny clothes.

That scene around the manger is full of people who don’t belong there: the infant asleep in a feed trough, a mother and father far from home.  Animals.  Laborers.  Foreigners.  

That picture is God’s announcement to us that in Jesus, everything changes.  This infant is God’s gift to us of unrestricted welcome and access.

God, born human, is wide open to the unlikely, to those who seem undeserving, to strangers, to you and me, reaching out our hands to hold a baby.

For the last couple of months, Brian and Ruth Ann Pfohl brought their foster baby Easton to church, and I watched as he passed from arm to arm, cradled by people he’d barely met.  Like the infant Jesus, Easton was on loan to us, and like Jesus his love and nurture came from strangers, adoptive parents, and unexpected friends. 

Like the infant Jesus, Easton simply let us fall in love.

Other parents of this congregation have told me about watching their child pass from arm to arm, in worship and at coffee hour, held and loved by friends and near-strangers in a mutual and unplanned act of trust.

Holding a baby is an act of radical intimacy. 

And here, especially tonight, you don’t have to be a parent to hold the baby, to nurture growth and love with the ordinary physical support of your arms and body. 

You don’t have to be a family member, or even a close friend, to fall in love, to have grace and compassion kindled in your heart by the weight of an infant in your arms.

God is born – in an unlocked, temporary stable, open to all and sundry – so that you and I can never lose that intimate, nurturing, radical access to God. God is born an ordinary, extraordinary, human infant so that you and I, strangers to the family but beloved of God, can fall in love tonight. 

And over and over again.

The Christmas miracle of birth and angel news is a miracle of invitation.  You and I are invited to family intimacy with God, tonight and forever.

Of course, intimacy isn’t easy.

Once they get inside our hearts, babies grow and change and take us to unexpected places, demanding that our hearts grow with them.   It’s the same with anyone we relate to in love.  Intimacy erodes our defenses against grace and joy as well as grief and pain. 

So vulnerability is part of Christmas.  

At this season our dependence on one another for hope and happiness is more obvious than usual – around the table, under the tree, in a mall or in a candlelit church – when the world insists on brightness and cheer.

And that, too, is why God is an infant, tonight, surrounded by strangers.   A baby’s fragile body depends on the constant support of others for nourishment, cleanness, and even warmth, and God invites us to offer that care. 

Tonight, God the baby is vulnerable to us, open to the pain and the delights of human relationship.  From this time forward, every human hope and pain, every fear and every joy, is felt by God.

Once we fall in love with a baby, we belong to that baby for life.  

Through sleepless nights, new discoveries, bruised knees and hearts, abundant growth, the care and joy never end.

And that, too, is why God is born in a stable, announced with exuberant joy to strangers in the field, and visited by foreigners.  God the infant invites us to open our arms because tonight no one, no one at all, is left out of that invitation, that love, that belonging, because it doesn’t end in that stable. 

This miracle is meant to go on and on.

Day in and day out, the Christmas miracle of birth and love keeps hold of us.

Tonight, there is this infant, God made flesh, so that the unlikely, those who seem undeserving, strangers -- you and I -- can fall in love with God.

Because once we fall in love, the miracle claims our days and nights, our hearts and hopes,

and filled and surrounded by love, we belong to God for always.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010 

Listen to the Sauerkraut

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Every Thanksgiving meal is a story.

Or lots of stories.

On the Thanksgiving table of my childhood there was always a dish of sauerkraut.
It was Silver Fleece canned sauerkraut, and it wasn’t the most delicious thing on the table – at least to my taste! – but it was there every year.
That particular sauerkraut was there because my grandmother’s mother’s family had come from Germany. And that family had brought to their new American Thanksgiving table a piece of who they were, and where they had come from, every year until, in our generation, it simply wouldn’t have been Thanksgiving without that particular fragrant dish of pickled cabbage.

There are other stories at other tables.
Stories about cranberry sauce almost left on the kitchen counter in another state, and rescued at great peril of rush hour traffic. Stories about recipes, passed from mother, to daughter, to son; stories disastrous dishes of Thanksgivings past, and about why it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without that particular dish.

Funny stories, loving stories, a few sad stories. Stories that shape our lives, and reflect our relationships.

Close your eyes for a minute, and see the dinner table in your imagination.
Where do those foods come from? Why are they right for this meal? Who is in the stories that sit on your table today?

Of course, there are probably some things on your table because of “Tradition” and not because of someone specific, and those dishes tell a community story.
A story that starts with the one we learned in elementary school: about hungry, hard-working Pilgrims and generous Indians making friends and making peace over a harvest feast.
That story goes on, integrating stories of new immigrants. Hungry Poles, or Irish, or Italians, and a new generation of “natives” to teach the harvest feast. Hard working Chinese, and Mexicans, and a new kind of “Indians,” and another new generation of natives to pass the tradition on. And each new generation makes the story its own.

Like all the stories on our tables, the national story of Thanksgiving is a story about who we are, and where we come from.
And it’s a story about coming home.

So is the story that Moses teaches the people of Israel to tell on a similar occasion. When you bring your harvest to the altar, you tell a story:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….we went to Egypt as a stranger, and became many; we were oppressed, and cried for relief; God brought us out of Egypt into an abundant land.
And that’s where this food came from.

These stories are our salvation history:
the story of who we are as the story of whose we are, and why.
On days like today, we’re more aware than usual that we belong to our ancestors, for better or worse. We belong to what happened to our families. And we belong to God, who brings us home.
And that’s where this food has come from.

The stories aren’t usually perfect. To claim a shiftless Aramean as your father wasn’t something to be especially proud of, and it is hard to remember slavery, even – or especially – after you’ve been set free.

But the messy bits – from turkey disasters to broken relationships to slavery – all the sins and the griefs belong in our stories, along with the healing and joy.
The messy bits, just like the joyful bits, are our salvation story, because they are who and where we were when God called us to be God’s own. Even the messy bits that happen every year, and get cleaned up at every Thanksgiving meal.

When we hear the stories – at the altar or on the table – and remember who and whose we are, and why: That’s what makes it a holy meal.

That’s what we do here this morning. We gather around a table, and tell the story of our salvation to make holy the meal we share, and to make holy the community that shares it.

Just like it’s what we do later today: gather, tell, and eat. And eat some more.

So listen to the prayers,
and listen to the sauerkraut.
Listen to the turkey, and the yams (or the sweet potatoes) the dressing (or the stuffing), and all the other dishes on the table.

Listen for the stories, sad or funny, loudly repeated or quietly heard,
the stories that remind us of how we belong to our family, and our community, and our God.
About who we are, and whose we are,
and about coming home.

Listen especially today, but not only today
and when you hear each story, say Thank You.

Thank you.
Amen.