For the fifth and final week, we read the Gospel story of Jesus' healing of a blind man, as a way of exploring different aspects of the life of faith. As in many stories of Jesus healing people, the healing happens as Jesus allows himself to be interrupted. He and his followers are on their way to Jerusalem -- important places to be, important people to see. But then he hears a cry for mercy, and stops to answer it.
How can he be so generous with his time and attention? And what's it like to journey with him?
Why is generosity expected of churches? And of church members?
Do we self-select that way? Does church
just naturally attract generous people, and we get to be known for it just
because we are that way?
Or is that once we’re here, we learn the generosity of God as the basis
of life … we come to see generous, self-sacrificial love as the blueprint of how
the world works best, and we begin to live more and more that way ourselves?
What does it mean, though, to be generous as God is generous? For a church and church members to practice
the kind of generosity that makes the world work well, that makes Earth a
better place – the way it’s meant to be?
What kind of generosity is required of us?
Six years ago Alanna Mitchell was an invited guest speaker at the Annual
Meeting of Hamilton Conference. The
theme of the weekend was healing creation – responding to the environmental
crisis of Earth as a crisis of faith and faithfulness. Alanna had just published a book called Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis, and
on Saturday morning at a breakfast meeting she spoke about her journey towards
writing the book.
She was raised in southern Ontario and in the church. As a child in church she liked the Bible
stories, the music, and the sacraments – the way physical things like bread, wine
and water communicate to us the grace of God.
She talked of her time in CGIT – a church version of Girl Guides where
she learned to see herself as a servant of God in the world, readied to use her
gifts and talents for the good of God’s world.
With that foundation, in university she studied journalism and began covering
financial affairs and issues of economic injustice. She
won awards for some of her work. Her future
was bright and wide open.
Then she found herself drawn into exploring the crisis of Earth’s
oceans. She began telling the story –
story after story, of Earth’s water and the tipping point being reached between
life and death in many of Earth’s waterways and oceans. Earth became a living thing in her telling,
and all her faith, all her lay theology, all her training and all her heart
were poured story by story into the morning session.
At one point, in response to a question about how she saw this unfolding,
she said, “I may spend the rest of my life doing this – doing what I can to
help save Earth’s oceans.” Then she
paused. With us she stopped to consider
what she had just said, and what “the rest of my life” really means. Then she added, “And can I imagine a better way
to spend my life than that?”
To spend your life – to spend your time, talent and treasure, as much as
you can, on making at least one little part of the world, one little part of
Earth, work the way it’s meant to be.
Is that what it means to live by, live in, and live into the generosity
of God?
We’re not called to do everything.
No one of us, or even all of us together as a church, are meant to
respond to every call we hear, every need we see, every opportunity we become
aware of.
Paul Miller, Support Minister for Waterloo Presbytery of Hamilton
Conference, recently wrote:
The prevailing wisdom today says that people demand
choice and churches need to get with the program and offer people more and more
options in worship, programming, music, etc.
But [… how often] I observe congregations trying to do too much and
ending up not doing anything particularly well
…
It would be better to find one or two things that make
a real difference to people’s lives, commit to doing those things consistently
and well, and let people know that’s what you’re good at, over and over and
over again. Whether it’s hospitality,
prayer practices, young families, seniors, creative worship, ministry to a
particular population, or one specific aspect of any of these things, find
those one or two areas in which you are able to excel and make those your
priority.
And let people know about it in any way you can.
In the
story this morning, Jesus hears a cry for help – a cry for mercy, coming from someone
in the crowd around him. He responds to
it and gives it his total attention. And
healing happens, the grace of God is communicated in physical and tangible ways,
a life is changed, people around are changed, and the road on the way out of
Jericho shines with the light of the kingdom of God in this world.
Two
things about this.
It is an
interruption. There’s no getting around
this. So many of the stories of Jesus
and of healing and new life are like this.
Jesus and his followers are on their way somewhere. They know where they want to go, where they
think they have to be. They are
following God’s mission as they understand it, and they’re going in a good
direction. Then there’s a call for help,
for mercy from somewhere in the crowd, from someone who everyone else is doing
their best to ignore or to silence. But Jesus
stops, interrupts the journey that up to that moment was so important, and lets
this new thing – this new call and new need, become the one thing for him to
give himself to, and spend himself on.
And
that’s the other thing – it’s one voice, one call for mercy that he responds
to. Surely it isn’t the only cry for
help in the crowd that day. Surely all
kinds of people are calling out, trying to get his and his disciples’ attention
for all kinds of things. All kinds of
worthy causes.
Why does Jesus hear, and respond to this one? And only this one?
We’ll never know.
But do we know this – that when we do this and act this way as churches
in the community, as parents in our families and with our children, as
neighbours and colleagues in our places of work and play, that we too will find
ourselves honestly serving the good will of God in the world, making a
difference for good, sharing in the generosity of God, drawing others with us
into living the story of God’s good purpose for the Earth?
What cries for mercy and for help do we hear? What cries of sorrow and pain do we hear in
the world and the community around us?
What cries for healing and for justice?
For hope and new life? Is there
one among them that especially and really speaks to our heart?
And are we willing to let it interrupt us – make us stop whatever other
good thing we are doing, to spend all we can of our time, our talent and our
treasure, to making that one part of the world work well, make it work the way
it’s meant to be?
Is that what it means to be generous as God is generous?
Is this what it means to share in the generosity of God?
To let our lives communicate the grace of God in physical and tangible
ways?
To let our life and the life of the world shine with the light of the
kingdom of God on Earth?
No comments:
Post a Comment