St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, November 18, 2007

Rolling up our Sleeves with Jesus – Rev. David Mundy

Isaiah 65:17-25 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13

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Before I left for New Mexico three weeks ago, I discovered that a monastery whose website I have been visiting for years was just up the road from the conference centre where I would be spending time. The term “just up the road” isn’t entirely accurate. The turn-off to the monastery is just two kilometres from Ghost Ranch. The dirt road into Christ in the Desert is twenty-two kilometres long and it travels through nowhere, nowhere and then on to nowhere! I wanted to take in the spectacular scenery but I kept my eyes on the road which became narrower and narrower and at points hugged a cliff perched high above one of the few rivers in the state.

I finally arrived, disappointing one elderly monk who thought I was the guy coming to fix his computer. Ah yes, technology is everywhere. Even though the brothers live “off the grid” they have solar panels to keep the electricity and satellite phones going. I eventually found the guest master for this community of thirty-three monks and he kindly took me on a tour of the monastery.

There is a beautiful chapel with a crucifix that the guest master explained to me. He said that it was quite a valuable work of art, although the one we were looking at was not the original. There were concerns that it might be stolen so a copy had been made to hang in its place. This surprised me given that we were not exactly on the beaten path and he shrugged his own disappointment. He felt that if someone wanted the original that much maybe they needed it more than they did.

Then he told me a story. During the second world war, a small village in Italy was bombed and the parish church was damaged. So was the life-size crucifix which hung in the church. Much to the villagers dismay, the arms and the legs of the Christ figure were severed. Even though many homes suffered damage a fund was established to repair the crucifix and before long enough money was raised for the restoration.

One Sunday the priest who had encouraged his flock to give stood in front of the congregation and suggested that they not use the money for the purpose for which it was raised. During the months of the fundraising he sat before the broken Christ praying many times and he came to a realization. This was the way it was meant to be. As followers of the crucified and risen Christ we are his hands and feet in the world. By leaving it alone the reminder would constantly be before them. In the end the congregation ended up using the money for the mission work. in Africa. The sentiment of this story reflects the words of one of the great Christian mystics, St Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body now but yours No hands, no feet on earth but yours Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

This morning we listened to two passages of scripture which offer quite a contrast to one another. The prophet Isaiah offered a message of encouragement with a vision of a new heaven and a new earth where even the creatures of the fields and forests will learn to live in harmony and peace. Who wouldn’t look forward to this?!

Our New Testament passage is an “in the meantime” exhortation. This is the second letter by the apostle Paul to the church he had established in Thessalonika, an important town for commerce and trade in Macedonia. It sounds as though Paul is giving members of the congregation a bit of a scolding for not contributing to the life and work of what was probably a small Christian community. He was certainly ready and willing to “lay it on the line” with people when he felt it was necessary. We know that some of the early followers of Christ were convinced that he was going to return to earth during their lifetime so the temptation was to just hang around and wait, expecting that others were going to take care of them.

Paul is blunt: “if you want to eat, you have to work.” When I read this passage it brings to mind the bumper sticker which says “Jesus is coming, look busy.” Paul doesn’t want people to just look busy, they should be active in their community, looking for the opportunities to make a difference and to do good. Paul certainly believed in the new heaven and new earth which Christ both inaugurated and would fulfill. Their hands and their feet would be Christ in their place and their time.

What does it mean to roll up our sleeves with Jesus and for Jesus? It’s tempting not to answer this question. Instead we want to jump on what we may think is Paul’s bandwagon and become annoyed and resentful.

In congregations we often grumble that a small number of the people do most of the work. Often the percentage split that is given is 30% to 70% – thirty per cent of the people do seventy per cent of the liftin’ and totin’ and givin’ and prayin’. The same percentages are sometimes employed when it comes to the monetary contributions to the life and work of a congregation.

Those who are older can end up grumbling that the young folk just aren’t pulling their weight. I must confess that there have been plenty of times through the years where I could barely contain myself when folk have showed up from nowhere saying that they “belonged” to the congregation because their name was on a list somewhere, not because they were active in any way, shape or form.

The comment is often made that we have become a generation of takers rather than givers, and that the question of our time is “what’s in it for me?” rather than “what can I contribute?”

The problem with resentment is that it gets us nowhere. What happens is that we lose the joy of making a contribution because we take our eyes off Christ and give begrudgingly rather than willingly. We lose sight of the words of Paul which say “brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.”

Somehow we have to find our way into this passage from Thessalonians in a positive light, to celebrate that we are Christ’s hands and feet in our community. Many years ago a stewardship consultant came from the United States to speak to Toronto Conference of the United Church. He had been the pastor of large congregations in the years before his retirement. While he was getting older, he was brimming with enthusiasm for what the church could be and he made an interesting claim. He was convinced that the only way for a Christian to experience the fullness of faith was to find some place of service and contribution. It didn’t matter whether that person was in church every Sunday morning, without service their Christian life would be incomplete.

So he told us with absolute conviction that his goal in every congregation he served was to get to the place where there were more people who wanted to offer their gifts and skills than there were jobs to do. And the same applied to the finances of the church. The goal was to have more money every year than they had budgeted and they would have to figure out what to do with the excess. Now you can imagine that his audience of battle-weary United Church ministers and lay leaders were a trifle incredulous about this. But our speaker claimed that because this had been their unrelenting goal in his congregations and so they achieved it.

As I have already said, he was enthusiastic and obviously a “cup half full” sort of person. But he made a comment that has stayed with me through more than twenty years: “don’t try to build a congregation on uncommitted people.” Isn’t that what Paul is saying? Being a Christian isn’t “pie in the sky when we die.” Following Christ is not a hobby. We jump in with heart and mind and soul as we wait for God’s glorious fulfilment of creation.

What will our holy work be in this congregation at the corner of Silver and Church streets, in the meantime?

Our work will be the stuff of the day-to-day, much of it rather mundane and yet deeply meaningful. I overheard a conversation the other day about an eleven-year-old girl in the congregation who is looking forward to the roast beef dinner because she will have the opportunity to serve tables. Last year she did this for the first time and was thrilled by her sense of contribution. About a week ago I heard laughter from our church kitchen, which is very common, and poked my head in to see what was going on. A group of women were making sandwiches for an Alzheimer’s day program. They hadn’t been asked to do this, but they heard about the need and they offered. We may not think of paint brushes and leaf rakes and lawn mowers as holy objects, but they can be in our hands, if we appreciate that our hands are the hands of Christ in the world.

Every prayer we offer on behalf of someone else, every phone call of support, every financial contribution is holy work if we are willing to dedicate it to Christ, and Christ’s purposes.

In artwork Jesus is sometimes portrayed working as a shepherd or a carpenter, because tradition holds that his earthly father, Joseph, was a carpenter. We might do well to come up with some other images While walking through the kitchen of the monastery in the desert I noticed a ceramic wall-hanging which showed Jesus in a way that it is unique, at least to me. He is standing in a kitchen, wearing an apron, with a spatula in one hand and a bowl in the other. Jesus is the bread of life, but it appears that he is also the breadmaker of life, or stirring up some other recipe.

Please, please, please ask yourself this question this morning: “How are my hands and feet living out the love of Christ in my world?”

There is a hymn in our new More Voices music resource called Christ Has No Body Now But Yours and it is a setting of the words of Catherine of Siena. The last verse offers this assurance and blessing:

Through every gift, give back to those in need:

as Christ has blessed, so now be his blessing,

with every gift a benediction, to the people of God.

Together we will roll up our sleeves with Jesus.