Sermon from Sunday, Oct 16, 2016

Reading: 2 Timothy 2:8-15 

I was annoyed.

I stopped in at the store for just a few minutes – to buy a bag of potatoes.  I got back to the car, got in and buckled up, put the key in the ignition and started the engine, looked up to check for other cars before I pulled out to drive home … and there it was! 

A pink 8 ½ by 11 flyer stuck on my windshield under the windshield wiper arm.  I was in the store only a few minutes!  “What idiot thing is this?” I muttered as I unbuckled the seat belt, opened the door, got out and leaned over to pull the paper out from under the wiper arm.

What yard sale, or petition, or rant, or revival meeting is this going to be?  I just wanted to get some potatoes and get home.

“MEN’S STREET MINISTRY” I read in bold type across the top of the page as I tossed it onto the seat beside me. 

Oh great, I thought.  I guess I’m supposed to be happy about this, but I wonder what kind of outfit is doing it? 

I drove home.  And each time I stopped at a red light, I looked over at the flyer on the seat beside me, and read a little more.

“My name is Roger Boyd … I am operating a men’s ministry in the downtown core…”

“I meet in person with the homeless and less fortunate …”

“…personally hand them food and/or clothing…”

“…these men are amazing…”

“…no different than you and I…”

“…sandwiches, $2 Tim Horton’s gift cards, bottled water, homemade soup…”

“…hoodies, coats, track pants, socks, belts, shoes, rain gear, hats…”

“…drop off at this address in Ancaster.  I will also pick up items at your home.”

There was also an email address.

By the time I got home my anger was gone, as was my judgement of how unfortunate this ministry was.  Instead I felt wonder and even awe at what this man was doing. 

I left the flyer in the car, though.  And the next day when I got to church I brought it in and threw it in the waste basket beside my desk, because I have other things to focus on.  I have my own work to do here.  Our work to be focused on.

Two days later, though, I made a special trip back to church just to retrieve the flyer – to dig it out of the waste basket.

And the reason I did that is that after I threw it away – decided to let it be buried in the mountain of trash that gets thrown out every day, I began to think that if Jesus were here among us today, he might very well be out on the street with Roger Boyd.  Might even be Roger Boyd.  So I had to go resurrect it.

Or a few years later in the first wave of the Christian movement, isn’t that how Paul and other missionaries sometimes worked?  Went out to the fringe, to the outcasts and the unwanted, preaching the good news of God’s love and gathering them into communities of new life – communities that began to turn the world upside down and change it from the outside in.

So how could I not liberate that flyer from the waste basket, and bring it into worship this morning?  That annoying flyer that interrupted my day and irritated my sensibility, was like a love-note from God, a little tap on the shoulder, calling me to remember some fundamental but easily forgotten things about being a Christian and a servant of a community of faith.

Like the early church in our reading this morning – that even at that early stage, around the year 100 maybe of the Christian Era, was getting bogged down in petty and secondary concerns and needed to be reminded of what they were really to be about, and what their message and their life was to be, I probably needed to be reminded of some of that too.

And there’s three things I see in this.  One is the call to the street and to the unclean, forgotten, unhealed places of the world.  Isn’t that where Jesus went and had the most positive impact?  Where Paul often did his best work?  And where Roger Boyd somehow has been called as well?

It’s not that we don’t do this ourselves.  I think of Suzanne Boyce who years ago went to Haiti with truckloads of medical supplies.  John VanDuzer and their family who have gone several times to build homes in the Dominican.  Rosalia and Peter Bohonis who send bikes to Cuba.  Jane Franks who for years has offered palliative care to all kinds of people in our area.  Robyn Hunt who’s gone right now on a medical mission to The Galapagos, and is going in the new year to another one in Bolivia.  And there’s more.

Some of these out-on-the-street and outside-the-church ventures even make it into our official church identity and program, like Barb McMullen’s call to the City Kidz Ministry that we have “officially” taken on as a whole church.  I know we can’t do it all, but I wonder why that and not the others.  I wonder too if we’ve yet really adopted the Syrian Refugee project as a whole congregation.

A second thing that windshield flyer made me remember about mission and church, is how it’s best when it’s simple and heart-felt – when it’s an honest heart-response to some need we become aware of, that God puts on our radar, out in the world – whether it’s down the street or on the other side of the globe.  How often do we do mission by check-list – ticking off the things we do every year, rather than by heart-check  -- every now and then testing to see what God has laid on our hearts and softened us to, this year?  Or by checking the windshield of our life here – to see what new thing maybe God wants us to notice?

And a third thing about Roger Boyd and his men’s street ministry and even his homemade windshield flyers that he probably stuck on cars himself, is the unwillingness to fear failure, or to let the possibility of failure or of limited effect, stop you.  We like to do things well.  We like to have what we do turn out well, be successful, be good – not only good, but excellent.  It’s in the cultural and psychological DNA of many of us.  I wonder what it takes to get to believe what I’ve been reading recently, that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing imperfectly?

I wonder, just thinking of myself for instance, if I spend so much time and energy making the sermon and the liturgy and the worship experience as good as I can, that I don’t have as much to spend on just being with you and others who come to worship here.  We work hard to make our Sunday school as good as we can, and agonize any time it falters; do we forget that even if the Sunday school flops sometimes we can still find ways to reach out in love, with God’s love, to the children not here?  We give and do a lot to maintain this building and it’s one of our brightest and most attractive assets, and we wouldn’t want to be without it, but do we know that even if the roof should blow off or the back room crumble, we could still find ways to reach out to one another and all the world around with God’s love and make the kingdom of God happen in some other way?  God would still love us, maintain us, and use us in good and healing ways in the world.

I wonder if I will get in touch with Roger Boyd.  I have his email address, and his home address.  It will take a little bravery, because who knows where a contact like that will lead? 

But maybe it was God’s will that I stopped at that store for those exact few minutes, and mine was one of the cars that got flyer-ed. 

It makes me wonder what God is wanting to put, or maybe already has put, on the windshield of our life here?  And what we will be able to do about it?