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SERMON P57 FOR SEPTEMBER 13, 2105
This is a really important sermon for me. Today, I want to bring together 2
really important influences on my life and my ministry. One is the amazing
wchurch consultant, Eric Law, Episcopal priest, author, founder of the
Kaleidoscope Institute, and bringer of transformation. The other is scripture, the
stories that shape my life, the stories that sometimes baffle me, that often inspire
me, and that show me who I am and where I am going. For a few years now, I
have been working with Law’s ideas. As I opened myself to them, I found them
bringing me confidence and hope. For many years now, I have been energized
and challenged by scripture. The stories bring me to the brink of resurrection
and hope. Today, unbeknownst to him, Eric Law is dancing with scripture. These
two personal influences are beckoning me to grab my partner-you, Parkminster,
and to move to the music of new life and possibility.
The first one inviting us to move with new-life music is scripture,
specifically, the story of the Feeding of the 5000. I have no answers as to how
this literally happened. Actually, I don’t care. What I do know is that this is a
story of the impossible becoming possible, a challenge to what limits us and
keeps us on the side lines. It is a story of contrasts. On the one hand, there is this
Jesus who is acutely tuned to the new, to healing, to the promise that love
makes real. On the other hand, there is the disciples, acutely tuned to their
limits, their fear, and the challenge of walking with Jesus. With a little
imagination, we can find ourselves in this iconic scripture classic.
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Most easily, I find myself with the disciples. At this stage of the
game, they are on the sidelines. They are with Jesus, watching him as he
gathers crowds around him and teaches. They listen to what he offers others,
taking in his truth and trying to make sense of his world view, his hope for a
reimagined everyday. The disciples may well have trusted that Jesus could
have fed the crowds who came to share his wisdom. They did not, however,
believe that they had the capacity to satisfy, to comfort, to sustain.
When Jesus challenged them to find lunch for the crowd, they
missed “possibility” and instead, got hooked by “impossibility.” What ran
through their disciple heads? No money, no neighbourhood Sobeys, no
capacity to cater to so many, no way to succeed. And what runs through my
head, our heads, when we are faced with our own mission challenges? No
money, not enough resources to share with others, no capacity to extend
compassion, no way to hang on if we extend ourselves beyond ourselves.
Generosity is a scary thing if it means we might run out.
Well, we know that Jesus operated from a different economy, a holy
economy. He aimed for abundant living, love that expands when shared. And
he aimed to make expanding, generous love real, as real as a lunch of bread
and fish. As far as I can see, Jesus didn’t often say “I can’t do this.” He stands
before me and asks, “What is possible here?”
I don’t think the disciples failed because they were overwhelmed
by the hunger of thousands of people. I don’t think they failed because they
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were bamboozled by the task. I don’t think they failed because they were
afraid. I think their failure, which can be my failure as well, was that they could
not engage with the possible, only the impossible.
Jesus saw differently from his followers. He operated from a vision of
hope and possibility, of needs met, of people strengthened in spirit and in body.
He operated from a vision of humanity whole and strong. And Jesus lived into
that vision without flinching. I don’t know if he had a read on “how” good
happened. Like us, Jesus was part of the mystery. I do know that he had a read
on what should happen and why it should. He was not seduced by impossibility.
Quite the opposite.
Someone who shares Jesus’ opposite is Eric Law. The arena for the
opposite, the possibility in Law’s life, is the church. Eric Law sees possibility in us.
On the back of his book, Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional
Ministries, we find this comment: This ground breaking author… calls us to rewire
our brains…to see abundance and a flow of blessings where we usually would
see limits and scarcity. Let’s connect this to our parable. Law wants us to let go
of disciple limits and to choose Jesus’ possibility for our church and for our world.
Simply put, hunger can be satisfied.
To allow ourselves to take hold of Jesus-abundance and to let go of
disciple-scarcity, we need to expand our understanding of who church is. Take
out the insert with Law’s Cycle of Blessing. This is church. The circle is missional,
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sustainable church, generous church, vital out-reaching church, the kind of
church that can feed the 5000.
Research brought Eric Law to the cycle of blessing, missional, sustainable
community. In spite of hearing that churches were struggling because of lack of
money, he identified 5 other currencies that are key for healthy church life. You
will see these currencies in the blessing cycle: currency of time and place,
currency of gracious leadership, currency of relationship, currency of truth, and
the currency of wellness. All six help church be missional and sustainable. This
is the economy of God’s abundance, gift not scarcity. And, interestingly
enough, congregations have these 6 currencies to one extent or another.
Let’s think about each of the six in order to take hold of its meaning.
 Time and Place: Place is what it says. For Parkminster, this would be our
building, an asset for mission, a home for our ministry. Time is the gift each offers
to make things happen around here. It is what gets volunteered to make church
happen. It is the resource offered by paid accountable staff. What would
change here if we opened up our place, and if we received an influx of gifts of
time?
 Gracious Leadership is the work of us all. It is the gifts and skills that enable
Parkminster to develop meaningful connection across different cultures: us and
our neighbourhood, GBLTQ communities and straights, housed and homeless,
elder and child, new and established. How can we maximize the gift of the
congregation to establish strong, welcoming community?
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 Relationship: Every missional and sustainable community needs to stand on a
foundation of just and loving connection. When we fight, we lose. And when
divided, it is difficult to follow Jesus who loved both friend and enemy, and did
good to those who were filled with hate and fear. What healing do we need
here?
 Truth: We are called to speak our truth, to name injustice where we see it, to
own our own story as church, to look clearly at who we are, where we stand tall
and where we tremble. We cannot be whole if we do not tell the truth of who we
are and who we are with God. What truth still needs to be told?
 Wellness: Wellness is wholeness. It is what Jesus offered the broken and the
heart-broken. It is our goal within Parkminster and our goal in relationship to our
community. Wellness is what Jesus offered when he fed the hungry 5000. It is
vitality: spiritual, emotional, physical, social, financial and ecological vitality.
Jesus often asks, “Do you want to be well?” What would we reply?
 Money: We need to be sustainable, to be able to fund the mission that is ours.
Often money becomes the focus of a congregation’s work. It is trouble when
money becomes an end in itself, and not a sustainer of mission. Do we have
enough, and how much does it control us?
Eric Law gives us a picture of ourselves as church. Money, wellness, Truth,
relationship, gracious leadership, and time and place are part of the healthy
church landscape. But Law adds one important aspect to this. These 6
currencies are essential for our congregational life. But they become ineffective
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if they are not essential aspects of our outside conecctions to our community.
We, here at Parkminster, are not well if our neighbourhood is unwell. Financial
stability in house becomes elitism if our neighbours are suffering. Good
relationships with those around us are mocking if we cannot love and respect
one another here. Each currency has an inner and an outer aspect, and
missional, sustainable churches have to care both ways.
Law encourages church councils and leaders to assess their communities
and identify which of the currencies need work. That work becomes the focus
for the coming year. I hope this will happen. The Stewardship Committee has
chosen 2 currencies for its work: relationship and time and place. That is why,
today, you are invited to explore things to be involved in, to give to (time).
Stewardship is working at opportunities to get to know one another, to trust and
respect one another, and to rely on one another. And they are interested in
ways this building (place) can be part of our mission to the community. Other
committees or groups may want to do the same.
Jesus saw the disciples afraid. He watched them doubt their generosity
and ability to meet the need around them. He fed the 5000 and reminded them,
and us, that when we use whatever gifts we have, even a few loaves and fish,
we can do astounding things. It is about the giving, the flow, the release, the
freeing of what we have. And by God, that makes enough.
Law’s agenda is pretty much the same. Currencies must flow. He reminds
us that we have “choices about the resources over which we have control. We
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can choose to hold onto them and let them go rotten, or use them for divisive
and destructive purposes. Or we can choose to let them flow in life-giving,
crowd-feeding ways. Both he and Jesus ask us to choose life.
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