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2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

In 1967 a scientist by the name of G. R. Stephenson conducted a study on some rhesus monkeys that revealed a very human-like pattern of behaviour.  What exactly the experiment was is lost to time but the popularized version goes like this.  He put five monkeys in a cage, suspended a banana from the ceiling, and put some stairs under it.  Every time one of the monkeys tried to climb the stairs to get the banana all the monkeys were sprayed with very cold water.  The monkeys soon learned to leave the banana alone.  He then replaced one of the monkeys with one that hadn’t been sprayed.  It, of course, went for the banana and as soon as it attempted to climb the stairs the other monkeys attacked it.  It learned not to go for the banana…but not why.  They then replaced a second monkey.  The same thing happened.  Surprisingly, the first “new guy” also joined in on the attack…but not knowing why.  Stephenson did this until all five monkeys were replaced.  They all repeated the attack behaviour…without knowing why.  Then, they introduced more new monkeys to the same result.  Without knowing why, the monkeys continued to prevent each other from taking the banana.

A young girl was helping her mother cook the Christmas ham.  They unpackaged the ham and the mother cut the ends off of it before putting it in the pan.  The young girl asked why she did that.  Her mother said, “That’s how my mother taught me to do it.”  When her grandmother arrived, the young girl asked her why they needed to trim the ends off the ham.  Her Grandmother said, “That’s the way my mother showed me to do it.”  Great-Grandmother arrives for Christmas dinner and the young girl, wanting to get to the root of the matter, asked her why she trimmed the ends off the ham.  Great-Grandmother says, “Oh, the pan I used was too small for a full size ham so I had to trim it down a bit. 

Well, these two stories are popular among that group of people known as congregational redevelopment experts.  They are examples of that dreaded pattern of behaviour that congregations get into called, “The way we always done it.”  The experts seem to believe that the reason congregations haven’t been growing the last four decades is that they have gotten out of step with the culture around them and need to change.  So, they go to congregations and tell such stories.  Then, predictably, they dish out the timeless definition of insanity: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again each time expecting a different result.  Then, predictably, the consultants make the threat that if a congregation doesn’t change, it will die.  Then, predictably, the congregations do nothing.

The redevelopment experts seem to think that calling a congregation insane and then threatening them with death will spark a congregation to make some changes to adapt to the world around them and thrive. Oddly, I have noticed that it’s the congregational redevelopment experts who might be insane.  They seem to keep expecting different results as they continue to do and say the same things over and over to congregations who in the end just continue to do the things they’ve always done.  The most disillusioning field of ministry to be in today has to be congregational redevelopment. 

Personally, I have been in the ministry now for 27 years  toying around in the field of congregational redevelopment for roughly 24 years with a doctorate and a couple of other pieces of paper that say “Certified In” to back me up.  But, I guess in an effort to preserve my sanity, I have come to the conclusion that “doing things the way we’ve always done them” isn’t really a bad thing just so long as no one gets hurt.  If like monkeys we pound on people, especially new people, every time they want to try something new, then there is a problem.  But, if there are things we do and ways of doing things that have become part of who we are, then that’s who we are.  They are part of what makes us to be us.  

 What’s more, I think most new people, what very few there are, who come into a congregation come expecting to learn that congregation’s traditions and ways of doing things.  One doesn’t marry into a family expecting them to do things in a way suitable to me.  It’s best to learn the way they do things.  It’s part of who they are.

The problem with people not coming to church anymore isn’t that congregations keep doing the same things the same way they’ve always done them not understanding why.  The problem is that an institutional expression of faith is not something the culture we live in has any desire for and there’s nothing we can really do about that.  For the most part, congregations and the individual Christians who make them up by doing the things they’ve always done actually continue to do a lot of good in their surrounding communities. 

For example, you folks…Three years ago when Williamsford flooded this congregation put over $15,000 towards the cause of helping people rebuild and that’s not even counting how you as individuals helped your neighbours.  You pray for each other.  You check in on each other.  You’re there for each other through the good and the bad.  If there’s a death, you’re there with arms wide open to comfort.  The dinners you put on give the community an opportunity to come together that wouldn’t be available if you weren’t here.  This congregation and each of you are assets in this community in the name of Jesus.  If this is just doing what you’ve always done, then keep doing it.  Indeed, well done!

Paul wrote to Timothy here saying, “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it.”  Timothy apparently had a pretty good knowledge of the Old Testament and how it pointed to Jesus and his kingdom and particularly the way of unconditional, sacrificial love that Jesus commanded of his disciples.  Timothy had learned a lot in that respect.  Yet, book learning isn’t exactly the type of learning Paul is talking about here.  Rather, it’s the type of learning where someone takes you under their wing so you can learn what you need to learn by seeing it embodied in your mentor…and Scripture is helpful for that.  If I were to offer a translation of what Paul said here, it would say, “Continue on in the things that you learned through discipleship and to which you are observantly loyal, keeping in mind the character of the person who discipled you.”

  What Timothy learned is the Way of Jesus.  He didn’t learn this by studying the Bible.  He learned it from his mother and some other Christian role models in the congregation he grew up in, and from Paul.  And so, Paul tells him to keep those people in mind meaning that by reflecting on their character and the Jesus way of life they modeled he would continue to grow in Christ himself and be able to teach and lead others in the Jesus way, equipping them for ministry…and of course Scripture (back then it was only the Old Testament) was helpful in that task.  

We live in a day when people “have turned from the truth and wander away to myths”.  This day and time people more than ever need us to continue being and doing the things we’ve always done.  So, continue to be not just role models but Jesus models to your families and neighbours, always ready to give an account for the love that’s in you.  Don’t be afraid to say “My mother taught me to be like Jesus, so did my Sunday School teacher sixty years ago, so that’s why I do what I do.”  Moreover, don’t be afraid to invite people to church assuming that they won’t want to come. 

Churchgrowth.org conducted a poll as to why people start attending a church.  2% said it was advertising.  6% said a minister invited them.  Another 6% said it was because of an organized visitation program (They must have been JW’s).  The rest, a whopping 86%, said it was because a friend invited them.  A personal invitation from a respected friend goes a long way.

So, continue on in doing the things you’ve always done.  Continue being disciples of Jesus in front of your families and your friends.  Keep inviting them to come.  We don’t know when the Spirit of God is going to again begin to get people to hunger for Jesus and Christian community.  But the day will come.  So, keep the light on.  Amen. 

The Power of a Seed

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Matthew 13:1-23

I think one of the greatest mysteries of all time is how a seed grows.  I'm sure biologists have this one all figured out.  You take a seed and put it in a moist environment.  The shell automatically begins to decompose and lets off gases which coupled with the moisture produce some sort of enzymatic reaction in the seed and it shoots out something called a radical which becomes a root.  Then a sprout develops and the seed as you knew it before is consumed into a plant which grows and in turn produces more seeds.  

The dandelion is one of the most fantastic examples of this mystery.  If it weren't for the lawn care industry, the dandelion would probably be the most dominant plant on earth.  The sheer power of its growth is amazing.  I remember in my former church we paved our parking lot.  The following Spring a dandelion plant miraculously pushed its way up through at least five inches of compacted gravel and probably four inches of asphalt.  If someone could find out how to tap into dandelion growth as a power source, I think the world’s need for power could be quite easily met.  

Here's some science for you.  Newton’s first law of thermodynamics is that “energy may be transformed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.”  We can’t make energy out of nothing.  It has to come from something else.  If you apply that law to dandelion seeds, it becomes mind boggling that in those tiny little seeds that parachute around throughout the spring and the summer, there lies dormant enough power to grow a plant through compacted gravel and asphalt.  Let me hear someone say “Praise the Lord!” or at least “Wow!”.  It’s mind boggling.

I think Jesus himself was quite impressed with the mystery of seeds and how they grow.  He probably sat down in many a field saying, “Father, we done well.”  When you consider the latent power in a small seed – its ability to transform and grow and become a plant, and its ability to produce an astounding number of more seeds – it is no wonder that Jesus compared the “word” of the kingdom of heaven to a small, unassumingly insignificant seed.  Let’s talk about the Kingdom.

Just a couple of preliminary remarks about the kingdom of heaven.  The kingdom is Jesus himself and his power to reign in this creation manifested in the new reality that all things are being and, in the end, will totally be made new.  The Kingdom is the power of God’s love for his creation being made manifest through Jesus God the Son become human and those, who by the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit, follow him.  Moreover, God the Son uniting with physical matter is changing things.  (Don’t short change what God is doing through Jesus Christ by thinking it only concerns human beings.  It involves the whole of physical matter, the whole of Creation.) 

Looking at this parable, Jesus wants us to know that the kingdom of Heaven or rather the incarnation of God the Son as Jesus Christ is like a seed and its energy, its power to grow.  Seeds have this latent power in them to change, grow, and reproduce.  Jesus was/is a new seed planted into the creation that has within itself the power of God’s very self and God’s incomprehensible love for his creation; a new seed has been planted in the entirety of the physical universe with the power of God to make all things new; a new seed that through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit has been and will continue to grow the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom where humanity begins to bear the image of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the seed of the new creation who by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in his followers is becoming the plant of the kingdom of heaven which is bearing the fruit of more seeds, people like you and me in whom the Spirit is living and working making us more like Jesus until in the end we are all raised from the dead and all things will be made new and be filled with the knowledge of God. 

I know that’s a deep little bit of theology for you and I’ll try to sum it up.  Jesus is the seed of the kingdom who died and was raised and who is being transformed into a new humanity filled with the Spirit of God.  By the Holy Spirit’s work among people just like you and I, we too right now are being transformed to be like Christ.  In, through, and as Jesus Christ God has reconciled all things to himself and by the continuing presence and work of the Holy Spirit God is regenerating all things to become like Christ Jesus until in the end the great harvest of the New Creation happens and all things are made new.  

That’s the seed, the word of the kingdom of heaven.  This is a new word spoken by God, a word which will come to fruition just as creation came into being.  Just as God spoke through Isaiah saying, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the Sower and bread to the eater, so shall be my word that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” 

This word of the kingdom of heaven is going on at all times in all places in all things.  And as it is a word that is spoken, so it is that we somehow hear it.  It's heard like a summons, a call to stand before God, a call to find the answer to the question of “who are you God?”.  Many people are wrestling with that question these days.  There are many church experts who say that there has been a great spiritual awakening going on globally since the mid 1960's.  Yet, oddly in Europe and North America people have been awakening with a hunger for things spiritual but have not turned to the Christian faith to find the answer to who it is that is calling to them.  There are many people outside the church who say they know there is a God who is personally present in their lives and that their lives would be incomplete without the sense of purpose that God brings to them.  They pray and have experiences of the mystical nature.  In these people, the seed of the word of the kingdom has been sown, sown by God himself.  The Holy Spirit is indeed at work in this world in people who are outside anything having to do with church and is calling them to faith.  

The question that then follows is where does the seed grow from there, from this simple uninformed and often misinformed experience of God.  If the seed that has been sown in them is indeed the work of the Holy Spirit sooner or later these people will look to Jesus to find answers.  Therefore, we in the church need to be darn sure we are giving them the right Jesus.  I think that the number one way that the evil one snatches away this seed that God has sown in so many is by using the church and Christian hypocrisy.  We have to make clear to all people that Jesus has wonderfully called them to discipleship, to come to him and learn and be changed and healed along the way.  We need to be clear that the one who calls them is fully found in the community of believers.  Jesus cannot be known apart from his body, the fellowship of his disciples who are wrestling with the Scriptures and holding one another accountable to growing and becoming more Christ-like, a true community where mutual self-giving love is the rule, a community that worships together, prays together, and ministers to one another, and together serve in charity.  The Holy Spirit calls people to meet Jesus in the midst of Christian community.  He calls us beyond our own private experiences into the place where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name and he is in their midst.

Unfortunately, this call to the kingdom can turn people away because it is costly in personal terms.  Jesus places demands on our lives.  As the Apostle Paul said we cannot continue to live according to the flesh and be Jesus’ disciples.  As Romans 8 says we must live according to the Spirit.  Christian hypocrisy, indeed the seed snatcher, becomes most evident when we in the church say we follow Jesus but we don't yield to his Spirit who is at work in us.  We don't let ourselves be changed and the result is that our Christian fellowship winds up being nothing more than a Jesus club that celebrates with joy when things are going well but as soon as we find ourselves in a situation where we must stand on faith, rocky places with shallow soil, we forget we ever knew Jesus.  

Our lifestyles are our greatest barrier to the growth of the seed in us.  In all honesty, we don't bear seed bearing fruit because we refuse to let our lifestyles come under the scrutiny and transforming power of the Holy Spirit.  Our lifestyles are shaped more by the values of our culture than by the Scriptures.  We have our thorn bushes, our cares of the world and wealth, that hinder us.  Growth in Christ occurs, fruit bearing occurs, when we yield up every corner of our lives to the refining fire of his great love and will to heal us and make us more like Him.  

Good soil for the Christian is simply not letting ourselves stand in the way of the Spirit's work in us as individual believers and as a community of disciples.  Good soil is prayer partnership.  If you look at the churches that are sincerely growing in Christ, not just in number but in Christlike-ness they will all have in common this thing of two or three or more friends in Christ getting together sharing their joys, sharing their hurts, owning up on failures, and praying together.  That kind of fellowship is good soil and from it comes forth much growth and seed bearing. 

So, I ask you folks a question.  We are four small churches.  The fellowship in each of us is quite deep, yet should we ask ourselves how good the soil really is.  So, the question is what would it take to get us together in smaller groups that we might pray and minister together.  Moreover, what is the weed that prevents it?  Amen.

 

Thankful to Whom?

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Matthew 6:25-34

So, it’s Thanksgiving Sunday here in Canada.  Happy Thanksgiving!  That out of the way and getting to the point, I think that in today’s Canada which would be best labelled secular and multicultural, having a national day for the purpose of giving thanks begs a couple of obvious questions: to whom are we thankful and for what.  A quick look at history might be helpful.

Being an insular American, it pushes my patriotic ego a bit to admit that Thanksgiving didn’t begin in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts when Puritan Pilgrims and some very helpful First Nations neighbours thankfully celebrated a harvest that would keep them alive through the coming winter.  Actually, the feasts of thanksgiving were commonplace among the First Nations peoples here on Turtle Island long before Europeans showed up. Those feasts usually happened after Winter and gratitude was expressed to the Creator for their surviving the winter and for crops to plant and game to hunt. 

The first recorded European Thanksgiving actually happened in Nunavut in 1578 celebrated by English explorer Martin Frobisher and his crew for their safe arrival.  They feasted on a meal of salted beef, biscuits, and mushy peas and gave thanks by celebrating Holy Communion.  That’s 43 years prior to Plymouth Plantation.  

The next recorded Thanksgiving celebration happened in what was New France on November 4, 1606 hosted by Samuel de Champlain.  It was a French and Mi’kmaq feast at which cranberries introduced by the Mi’kmaq played an important role.  This is why we have cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.  People didn’t know about Vitamin C and how it helped ward off scurvy which killed many European colonists, whole villages.  Yet, the Mi’kmaq knew that cranberries had something to do with preventing scurvy so Champlain listened and started having thanksgiving feasts every few weeks to get people to eat them.  The Order of Good Cheer grew out of organizing such things.

An official day for Thanksgiving wasn’t declared until 1879 when Parliament declared November 6 as the official date.  Prior to that, sporadic Thanksgiving celebrations happened around harvest time.  Also, Loyalists to the British Empire started coming up from the States after the Revolutionary War and began to change the menu considerably to be more American, inclusive of turkey, squash, and pumpkin pie.

After the World Wars, a need to move the date of Thanksgiving Day arose to prohibit Thanksgiving celebrations from occurring on the same weekend as Remembrance Day.  So, on January 31, 1957 Parliament declared that the second Monday of October would be our national day of Thanksgiving.  The body of the declaration answered our two questions very well saying that this day is to be “a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed.” 

Well, not to be a bummer, I suspect that if parliament made a Thanksgiving declaration for today’s Canada the stated purpose for the day would likely sound more like “a day of general thanksgiving for such things as the bountiful harvest, friendship, family, community, health, safety, etc.”  You will notice that any reference to a god is missing and the list of things to be thankful for has grown. Why no reference to God?  Well, we need to recognize the religious diversity of Canada today.  Why a larger list? There’s a current trend in our culture arising from “Wellness” circles noting that we’ve a lot more than the harvest to be thankful for and thankfulness plays a vital role in mental health.  So, be thankful for everything.

I wholeheartedly support the notion for an expanded list of things to be thankful for. Taking time daily to stop and note the things for which we are thankful truly does change our outlook on life benefitting overall health.  Finding things in other people to be thankful for changes relationships.  Getting spouses in a hurting marriage to stop pointing out the negatives and rather finding things to be thankful for can go a long way in healing the brokenness.  Thankfulness is good for physical, mental, emotional, and relational health.  Dwell on the good and you will see your way through the bad.  In the practice of thankfulness, there will even come a time when you can find reason to be thankful for the bad.  And of course, take some time to be thankful for the food we eat, the harvest, the land, and those who work it.

Thankfulness is essential to human well-being, but it concerns me that in so much that is written today on thankfulness God is left out.  There’s no “whom” to direct our thankfulness too.  I get it that we are a religiously diverse culture and we don’t want to offend one another’s beliefs and religious sentiments.  But I can’t help but feel that there is a bias against a Christian understanding of God that serves about the same purpose as shooting oneself in the foot.  

I do truly understand that there are legitimate reasons for this bias and topping the list is the conduct of the Church throughout Western history; primarily its lust for power, its greed, its colonializer mentality, its racism, its sexual abuse of vulnerables.  The list is long here.  It also doesn’t help when governments and nations align themselves with a deity they identify as “almighty God” and call it the Christian God.  History has taught us the power of the State undergirded by an “almighty God” is always evil.  Regardless, I will take my lumps in today’s world by saying if one wants to know what God is really like, you have to look at Jesus because Jesus is the self-revelation of God.  Jesus is the one in whom “I am” said “this is who I am”.

Looking at Jesus we find that God listens.  God becomes one of us to fully know what it is to be one of us in all our tarnished glory.  God heals.  God casts out evil spirits.  God forgives even tax collectors and adulterers.  God confronts religious and political hypocrisy.  God feeds, often miraculously.  God loves indiscriminately.  There are no favourites when it comes to God’s love.  God seeks the lost.  God is concerned about what wealth, particularly the love thereof, can do to a person.  God cries.  God grieves.  God laughs.  God parties.  God reconciles.  God raises the dead.  God touches those considered untouchable.  God does not want big business in his houses of worship.  Because God’s power is a vulnerable, wasteful love that we cannot understand, God allows himself to be betrayed, wrongly accused, spat on, beat with a stick, flogged with a leather strap that has nails in it that rips the skin from the body, then crucified all the while being mocked.  God dies.  Yet, by some great mystery that only God can explain; by his wounds we are healed, by his death sin, evil, and death are defeated, by his resurrection all things are and will be made new.  

Jesus tried to help us understand this by saying, “Very truly I tell you, unless a seed of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it becomes many seeds.”  Friends look at the bread on this table.  It comes from a seed that has passed through death and become many.  It nourishes us.  So, the seed of the grape.  From one seed comes many and our thirst is quenched.  This is Jesus.  This is the mystery of life embodied by the God who in love provides the abundance of enough to us even when we are known to starve ourselves while growing fat on seeking life elsewhere.  The first Christian Thanksgiving in Canada was celebrated by sharing this meal.  Let us give our thanks likewise.  Come to this table, the table of the Lord Jesus Christ, and live.  Here is the God who truly provides.  Amen.

A Tale of Two Meals

 Mark 6:14-46

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You folks may be familiar with the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s shelter ministry down in Toronto known as Evangel Hall.  They’ve a really amazing ministry there providing medical and dental care, temporary housing even for special needs people, clothing, help with job searching, bathing facilities, a chaplain, and that’s just getting started.  Evangel Hall also serves meals every day of the week, but for Sunday dinner they like to provide churches with the opportunity to come and serve.  This is a wonderful thing.

My last church was close enough to Toronto to go down a couple of times a year to serve the Sunday dinner.  It was a big effort for my church for we averaged only in the upper twenties on a Sunday.  We had to bring enough food for close to a hundred people and ourselves.  We had to get there in plenty of time to prepare the meal in their kitchen with enough volunteers to cook, serve, and clean up afterwards.  We were small and mighty and we did it joyfully and efficiently.  Once we had done it a couple of times everybody knew what they each had to do and we did it and it never became a labour of love but was always a joy.  I even brought along a couple of musician friends to provide a little hillbilly indigestion to accompany the meal.  When everybody was served, we served ourselves and sat and ate with the people and made friends.  After dinner, we took whoever wanted to go down to the chapel and had a little informal church service that was a really beautiful moment in time.

I don’t want to say these meals were a miracle of loaves and fishes.  It was just a group of relatively well-off white-people pulling together $400-500 and donating a Sunday afternoon and evening to provide a meal to some folks who otherwise wouldn’t have had a meal on Sunday.  The real miracle, the real gift was the sharing of lives; the building of relationships in what I would call a wilderness place, getting to hear the stories of people who for so many reasons just aren’t able to do life the way “society” expects them to do it.  I’m sure Jesus would say, “To such as these belongs the Kingdom of God.”

Now, if I may, let me share another meal experience I’ve had as a minister that for me was not so uplifting.  It was a thing called a Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast.  There was an element in the ministerial association in the community where my last church was who thought it would be good to let the mayor and other local government officials know that the local churches were praying for them.  Good idea, but…you know, I would have whole-heartedly supported the event if it had just been a thing where the Ministerial invited the Mayor and the Councillors for breakfast in the fellowship hall of one of our churches and we shared a meal and then prayed for them, but that’s not how those Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast things work.  Let me bring you up to speed.  

It was a well-catered event for which everybody had to pay, I think it was about $35 a person.  You got a little break on the deal if you could get enough people from your church to fill a whole table, about eight.  Of course, there was some status associated with being able to do that.  It’s been a while, but I think the venue wound up being either a big meeting area in the town offices or one of the local banquet halls.  The local business community was also invited as if this were a Chamber of Commerce event.  They were also given a reduced price if they could bring enough employees to fill a table.  Posters went up all over town.  There was a motivational type of speaker and a brief prayer at the end. 

Being a frugal Presbyterian with some Mennonite in my background, I had a hard time seeing the purpose in the event.  The people who attended, the mayor included, were already involved in local churches so it wasn’t outreach.  It wasn’t even a fundraiser for a special need in the community.  The caterers got the money.  There wasn’t much socializing afterwards.  Everybody had to get to work.  I questioned why we were having this breakfast.  Knowing the theological tradition from which the idea of the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast arose down in the States, at best it seems they hope that they can build a type of relationship between the Ministerial and town council that was enjoyed by Billy Graham and American Presidents.  But…, and I don’t want to sound cynical but I guess I am…, I am suspicious that these breakfasts are just a way of letting local politicians know there is a Christian voting block they need to consider next time they run for office.  Anyway, a good time was had by all, but the next year when the Ministerial decided to organize another one of those things, I just stopped participating in the Ministerial.  It just didn’t feel right.

These two meals show two different ways the church can be in the world.  We can serve others unconditionally or we can court power.  In his Gospel, Mark presents us with these two options.  First, we have Jesus miraculously serving a meal of abundance to the crowds of people who followed him everywhere because he was bringing hope and healing to them.  He also told of the feast that King Herod threw for his cronies where his young stepdaughter danced so seductively well that he promised to give her anything she wanted.  Her mother put her up to asking for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.  She found his prophetic voice concerning her having two husbands a bit too challenging.  Thus, the church can be a “meal”, so to speak, that brings in the Kingdom of God or it can be a “meal” that courts power and kills its prophetic voice.

The Ministry at Evangel Hall is a “meal” like Jesus’ Feast of Loaves and Fishes.  Presbyterians all over Canada give what amounts to a loaf or a fish to Presbyterians Sharing and it’s funnelled through to Evangel Hall to where it becomes a feast of abundance of sustenance for people in some really challenging situations and their lives are changed.  The people who come to Evangel Hall if they keep coming back and take full advantage of what’s offered there, they will get a taste of salvation now in the Kingdom of God that manifests wherever Jesus is.

This is World Communion Sunday.  Churches all over the world are sharing this meal that speaks loudly of who we are as the church of Jesus Christ and what our mission is in the world.  This bread is his body given for us.  This juice is his blood shed for the forgiveness or our sin.  This meal demonstrates the way of unconditional love, wasteful, sacrificial unconditional love.  This meal says he is with us and by the presence of the Holy Spirit he is indeed here with us.  It’s a little meal that doesn’t solve the world’s problems or sate our hunger in the present.  It points to the future when Jesus will return and put out the “feast” – put the world to rights. It’s a little bit of nourishment to our bodies that shows us how we, the Body of Christ, are to be in the world.  We are not to court power.  That will take away our prophetic voice.  We are to share this “meal” little by little, through little acts of wasteful, sacrificial unconditional love give whenever, wherever, however we can as Jesus leads us through the voice of the Holy Spirit so that Jesus may be seen and felt as his kingdom becomes visible through these small, tangible, life changing ways until he comes.  Amen.