St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Woodstock

Sunday 27 September, 2009, Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev’d Georgene Conner

SHARING THE MINISTRY

For today’s reading go to:http://bible.oremus.org

Years ago, on Saturday Night Live, there was a skit about a family called “The Whiners.” They complained, in a whiney tone of voice about everything. You can almost hear the whiney tone in the disciples’ voices in today’s gospel: “Teacher, that other person was casting out demons in your name but we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us. It wasn’t right…that person should have asked us first…done it our way… followed our rules and regulations.”

Think about what those disciples were complaining, whining about, not that the person was casting out demons – healing – doing ministry in Jesus’ name - but rather that he wasn’t following them, the disciples.

In his response to the disciples Jesus makes three things clear: God’s goodness covers more territory than theirs. God’s goodness may even take them (and us) to places that could make them uncomfortable.

Secondly, Jesus tells the disciples not to put any stumbling blocks in front of people who may be seeking God. And the third thing Jesus says is that the disciples should be like salt –that which gives flavor to a combination of things. Be salt, Jesus says, be the zest, the flavor of goodness and love within and beyond the faith community.

One of the challenges of ministry is learning how to do ministry in community. Not to pawn off a church ‘job’ on another person (years ago we used to look at recruiting Sunday School Teachers as snagging the latest ‘living person’ who walked through the door.) Not to hang on to ‘our personal ministry’ so tightly that no one else can participate. And not to put so many obstacles for people to go through that we make it entirely too difficult for someone to get engaged in the life and ministry of the church.

Doing ministry in community is to share the responsibility and the joy…to be cheerleaders for the community and others who seek to do God’s healing and reconciling work in the world.

I have recently come to believe that causing another person to doubt him or herself is creating one of those stumbling blocks.

Down in Florida, on Good Friday of this year, we invited people to come at 6:00 Pm to ‘sing a song of lament with us.’ It was a play on the hospitality phrase from New Orleans – “come pass a good time with us.”

Often we don’t have the opportunity in church to really get into our emotional feelings so we provided, through the singing of spirituals and other music – through the hearing of saxophone, cello, clarinet, violin – the minor notes which sometimes tug at the core of our hearts. One piece of music, called There is a longing in our hearts O Lor, came out of a new Episcopal Hymnal (we have four) called Voices Found.

There is a longing in our hearts O Lord
For You to reveal Yourself to us
There is a longing in our hearts for love
we only find in You, our God.

For justice, for freedom, for mercy:
hear our prayer.
In sorrow, in grief:
be near, hear our prayer, O God

A man who attended that evening was really taken with that piece of music. He wanted to know where he could get a copy of it – where did it come from – it touched him on that night. One of the musicians commented, “oh that’s just a simple tune. Anyone could play it.” The man said, “Oh now I feel really stupid because I thought it was special.”

A stumbling block had been put in front of him right at the moment his heart was opening up. Truth be told, I felt a little stupid too because I love that song. How easy it is to cause someone to stumble.

And often, I think, we like the disciples, think everything has to be done a certain way – by the ‘real’ members of the church...those in the know. We can’t imagine that someone who is non-churched or nonreligious might know more about salting the church with God’s goodness and love than we do.

The church where I worked in Michigan in the 1980’s, was way out in the suburbs and almost all of the people who went to it were middle to upper class. People with no money had no way to get there…until Samantha arrived. We didn’t’ really know where she came from …she just showed up one day. She was about six feet tall – wore a lot of black – had a ring in her nose – and wore a belt with a plexi-glass buckle that contained a dead bat. Not like the other members of the church at all. She made people nervous – or rather they made themselves nervous because they couldn’t understand – compute – accept - her being so different. The rest of us women were dressed in our Laura Ashley puffy sleeve dresses.

One evening in Lent, the then bishop of Washington, John Walker, came to Evening Prayer. It was on St. Patrick’s Day – I remember this because Samantha arrived with green hair. The bishop was our guest speaker that night at our Lenten dinner and his family was with him. They were staying at the rectory which was right next door. It so happened that the bishop and his family were of color - the congregation being whiter than white.

After Evening Prayer, we adjourned to the dining hall – it was packed. Bishop Walker came down with the clergy and his family entered through the kitchen door –having walked over from the rectory. All the seats were taken…and everyone just sat – as if frozen – as if they didn’t know how to get more chairs…so for a few minutes there was this awkward silence and stillness. Then the sound of chairs moving could be heard and we saw that Samantha, green haired – bat belted Samantha – had welcomed the bishop’s family and gotten them seated.

God’s loving goodness had been salted that night by someone we had discounted, and mostly ignored. I won’t say that after that she was accepted or that she or we changed in any radical way. But many of us learned that night that the offering of God’s radical hospitality was not reserved for just “us.”

Being followers of the way – of Jesus – is about living and working in community with others – others being defined as those not in our immediate household. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. Sometimes it is difficult. New people come into a congregation. They have ideas they want to share - different ways of doing things. Those of us who have been doing certain things our way for ages, could feel threatened… might not be needed anymore.

Even in our own denomination we sometimes hear whining – from faithful disciples – “those progressives they are not showing forth God’s love in the right way – the orthodox way.” “Those conservatives – they’re just stuck and don’t know how to move on in showing God’s radical love to others.”

We’re all human – we like to think of ourselves as being all knowing – of having the right and only answer to the big issues in life. But sisters and brothers, we are really servants of God – moral agents of God - acting as God’s hands and heart in this world – which means that we pay attention to the moment – to the people – to the situation – and always try to do our best – whoever we are – to be healers and reconcilers.

Easy in theory – but hard in practice. Perhaps when we have those moments where we feel a little whiney or too critical of others - we might remember that we’re all to salt the community and beyond with God’s goodness and love. And say to ourselves: “Pass the salt please.”