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One of the most poignant moments in Rachel Held Evan’s book, Searching for Sunday, comes after she and her husband meet with the pastor of their church and explain that because of theological differences, they would not be attending any longer. They return to their car and she bursts into tears with “I know this is the right decision, but now who is going to bring us a casserole when we have our first baby?”

As God’s creation, I believe humans were made for relationship. We were created for connection, and we are not meant to be without community. A church can provide that community; however, those relationships and connections occur in somewhat contradictory ways.

For one, church is a place where you can be yourself, and so can everyone else. That freedom means you might kneel down in prayer next to someone who votes for a different political party from you. That opportunity to be ourselves means that you will sit next to someone who is a different generation, or a different economic class from you, a different racial identity from you. And it is right for you both to be there.

At the same time, church community asks us to change as we live into being God’s children. Our baptismal covenant asks us to promise to worship with others, to repent when we fall into sin, and to love and serve others with dignity. Sometimes, we might need to change our behaviors to live into those promises.

And finally, church is the place where you can fall apart. We are called into community to be faithful, not successful. Which means that everyone else is allowed the space to fall apart, not have it all together, and to fail as well. A connected community is one in which we allow ourselves to be vulnerable when things go wrong, to accept the casserole when offered and not just be the one to provide the casserole.

It takes a whole lot of prayer, a healthy dose of the Holy Spirit, and the enduing and ever-present love of Jesus to create such a complicated, contradictory, connected community. It takes our hearts and our souls, as well as our resources – time and financial – to create such a community. Most of all it takes grace. Community means accepting the grace of God and extending grace to one another.

On Sunday, we will celebrate the commitment to our community in blessing the 2020 financial pledges. If you haven’t pledged yet, I hope you will bring your pledge card with you on Sunday to be blessed or make your pledge here today.

Last Friday at the Raleigh Climate Strike event, we had the opportunity to build a bigger table, quite literally. Emily and Carl and I were setting up our table to promote Zero Waste Church, our ministry to help other churches care for creation, and a representative from the InterFaith Food Shuttle came by. “Could we share your spot?” He asked. Long story short, there was not a specific assigned spot for them, so they asked to share with us.

In the meantime, as we were setting up the Zero Waste Church table, we noticed that many of the other groups had set up tents or a shade covering their tables. Hmmm, we thought. That would have been smart. We should have brought a tent. Oh well.

We had plenty of room, so we scooted our table down and the Food Shuttle folks set their table up right next to ours. Our tables space doubled. They set out a large basket of fresh produce. Several young people brought posters around and asked if they could hang them at our site. One poster in particular was perfect for the shuttle. We chose a poster with a large heart for Zero Waste Church. That seemed appropriate since our message is about sharing the love of God as we love creation.

Behold, as we continued the set-up, our food shuttle friends had brought a large tent! The tent provided plenty of shade for them, and for us. Hmm, we thought. We didn’t need to bring a tent after all. In building the longer table, we received a tent as well.

Hmm. Call it providential or call it a sign of God’s love. Either way, we had shade, shared companionship, and a wonderful day telling others about caring for creation and caring for the people of the world.

This Sunday, the reading from the letter to Timothy contains the often mis-quoted line about the love of money as a root of all kinds of evil, but before that bit, we have this sentence:

There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 1 Timothy 6:6

Perhaps contentment does not lead to complacency as we often fear, but contentment might lead to seeing possibilities of longer tables and bigger tents. May you be content with your world, and may you build longer tables and be invited into larger tents.

What does it mean to be faithful? I feel like people wrestle with the idea of having enough faith all the time, myself included. What is the proper measure of faithfulness?

In the gospel appointed for this Sunday, Luke 16:1-13, Jesus says, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” It is puzzling, until I remember the story of having faith the size of the mustard seed and remember that Jesus’ measure of faithfulness is very different than my own. Perhaps faithfulness is not something to be measured or held to a standard. Perhaps faith is something for which to be grateful, something to be shared, and something to be treasured, rather than judged as “not enough.”

If the good news of the gospel means that there is rejoicing when lost sheep are found, lost coins turn up, and lost sons come back home, maybe my standards of faithfulness are not about how often I get it “right,” but how often I return to God. Maybe it is shrewd, and even commendable to have just a little faith from time to time because it opens up opportunity to see faith and encounter God in a new way.

What a strange kingdom to call the Kingdom of God if we don’t need to be perfect to be part of it, if we don’t have to prove our worthiness again and again, or if we don’t have to meet the proper measure of some kind of standard. Instead we have a God whose faith in us never wavers, and rejoices again and again when we return. The God who hangs out with tax collectors and sinners, and welcomes us to the table too.

The gospel reading for Sunday is the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. You can read it here. This week, I lost hope that trying to care for the earth and reverse the effects of climate change were making any kind of difference, and that by continuing to talk about it and try to DO something about it, I was being foolish. I lost my hope, and I lost faith that God was at work still in this world.

What led to this crisis, you ask? It must have been something really terrible to set in motion such an existential questioning of motives! Nope. It was an opinion piece in the New Yorker, not even written by a scientist, but one of their contributing writers. He has lost all hope that human beings will change their behavior to stop the planet from warming at its current destructive rate. Nothing scientific, just his own model in his own head. His solution is to stay put in his comfortably air conditioned home and eat locally sourced kale grown by homeless people.

For some reason, this article sent me into despair. Why bother, I wondered? What difference can I make, can one church make? Am I just contributing to an already too noisy world bent on division and differences?

I am grateful to say I didn’t remain lost in despair for very long. I found my hope again, and I found it in several places. One, I re-found hope in my identity as a beloved child of God who has been saved by the good news of Jesus. The good news that God loved the world enough to die to save us all. That God loved this WORLD enough to save the people in it; that God didn’t give up on the human community. Second, that good news tells me to love my neighbor as God loves me, and there is much hope to be found in that.

There are many examples of what might happen if we love our neighbor, but one stood out to me this week as I lost and re-found my hope for this fragile earth, our island home. A picture posted on our Facebook page:

The caption read:

In 2019 Nativity Community Gardeners have delivered a total of 266 lbs. of organically grown fresh produce to senior citizens at Windsor Spring, with whom we have developed a warm relationship. In the coming weeks the gardeners will restore and prepare their garden beds for cool season planting.

We love our neighbors. We grow vegetables for them, feeding the soil, moving carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground where it needs to be. We plant new things when it is time. We get to know our neighbors, and they share with us in return. I don’t know if it will stop climate change and save the world, but that’s okay, God has taken care of that. In the meantime, we can enjoy the heaven that is a freshly harvested tomato. May you find hope where you exist, and if not, may God find you in your despair and bring you back home again.