Isaiah 58: 6-12

Matthew 5: 13-16

Glowing in the Dark

April 29^th 2007

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

Recently someone asked me why church matters any more. Surely, this person said, we are obsolete. “We” meaning all churches, and “we” meaning this church.

There are so many things we are not, this person said. So why bother?

I listen when people ask questions like that. I listen because they are asking out loud what many people ask in the quiet of their hearts.

Today on this Mission and Outreach Sunday and every day we have much to celebrate about how it is we lift high the light of God’s love from this lamp stand of a church. We speak and savor the ways we reach into the world and into each other’s hearts with the testimony that God is in this place,. Today, we mark that we have a story worth sharing: The ways we laugh and pray and eat and make justice and music and mourn and hope together have such power.

Today is about sharing the stories of what it means to be community in Christ together in this church. We are hiding under no bushel. We’re celebrating.

It begins with the littlest ones.

Caring for Children is the Day Care center run by our church. It has a staff of 12 (which includes a recently hired director, thanks be to God) who are employees of this church, and 45 children who come to this place Monday through Friday. They come in as newborns and leave for kindergarten and they are profoundly shaped by the care they receive here forty hours a week.

Recently they decided to take on a mission project as a center. They decided they wanted to put together kits and cards to send to service people serving on our behalf in Iraq. As the Preschool group was working on the cards together, they had a lot of questions that they asked their teachers:

Who were the people who would get these cards? Why were they so far from home? What was war, and why were the soldiers a part of it?

Kathy, one of their teachers and a superb minister of the gospel, shared with the children that the soldiers were over in Iraq trying to make the country safe for children and that war wasn’t only about killing people. It was also about helping people. And she talked about the fact that many of the soldiers who were serving there had left children behind here and that was hard for them and for their children.

But, she said, the cards they got from our children would cheer them up. And, she said, the CFC children could pray for them when they got done making the cards.

One of the boys, Franklin by name, a deep-souled towhead, said “Kathy, I think we should pray for those soldier now.”

So the eight children and two teachers put down their scissors and glue and held hands in a circle and Franklin led them off in a prayer for the soldiers in Iraq. That they would come home safe. That they would come home soon to the children that were missing their mommies and daddies. That the children of Iraq would be safe. And each child in turn around the circle took their turn raising their voice in prayer.

By the time it got to be Kathy’s turn to pray, she couldn’t. She had tears pouring down her face. And one of the girls wanted to know why she was crying.

“I’m ok”, Kathy told them. “I just love you guys so much.”

“That’s ok”, said the five year old as she put her arm around her teacher in order to pat her back. “You just let it out now.”

Brothers and sisters, here in your church, children are being taught that God listens to the voices of children and God intercedes and God is more powerful than despair. And God works through children who pray and pat backs.

Here. In your church.

For thirty hours Friday and Saturday the youth learned about hunger and the ways it gnaws into bodies and souls across our world. They told you some of what they learned. _____ of them stood shoulder to shoulder unloading trucks at Minneharvest with seniors and adults from two United Methodist churches and they canvassed this neighborhood to do a grocery pick up to bring to VEAP and they learned that as a people of Jesus the Christ the multiplying of five loaves into the abundance of God is THEIR work. It is our work.

And they learned that here. In their church.

For nearly two months we had a volunteer here at church. She helped out at God’s Hands thrift store. She helped Betty in the kitchen on Wednesday nights and she was here every day to wash dishes and serve food to the day care kids. She came to worship on Sunday. She was living in the Aqua City motel with her son. They were from Los Vegas, looking for an easier and better life and somehow they landed in our back yard.

Because she was greeted as guest by the God’s Hand’s staff, Dottie became a part of the community here at RUMC. And she told any who would listen that she had never encountered church like this before. In most places, for sure in most churches, she explained in a voice that bore witness to cartons of cigarettes, she wasn’t treated like a human being. Here, at this church, she was treated like a friend. And she wanted to give back some of what she had encountered in the way of hospitality from this church. And she did.

Dottie experienced a people of God willing to keep open house, people willing to be generous with their lives. And she learned that not all of God’s people are pinched and judgmental.

She learned that here, in her church.

Women in India. Unable to make a living sufficient to feed their families. Women who have skills and interest and a conviction that their artistry ought to translate into rice for their children. Those women are able to create pieces of clothing on a knitting machine donated through this church. Ruth Nave and others from this church wrote for a mission grant and because of the light this church is willing to shine, women in India are able to operate a business. They are not dependant upon others. They are emancipated from the bonds of oppression called poverty.

They are creating lives for themselves because of this, God’s church.

The work of rebuilding the world, of kindling enough lamps that the glow of hope can overcome the shroud of despair, goes on when any of us responds with our hearts and with our bodies and with our imaginations and with our steadfast refusal to accept the edict that the Word, the gospel of Jesus the Christ, cannot be made flesh in our midst.

It can. That work goes on, says poet Marge Piercy.

The work of justice building and healing and light shining…

“goes on one at a time,

it starts when you care

to act, it starts when you do

it again after they said no,

it starts when you say We

and know who you mean, and each

day you mean one more.”

So there it is. And here we are. Look around you. In this sanctuary we have:

The president of Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People

Board members of TRUST - a South Side coalition of churches working for healing

Mission Team members from Calais Maine, New Orleans and Sager Brown

Meal preparers and servers for the Wesley Meals

Drivers for Meals on Wheels

Knitters and quilters and crafters for Common Threads

Board members and committee leaders and volunteers at Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People

Prayer chain volunteers who pray for this church and for the world.

Card recyclers and UMW Circles and Weekend Outreach Warriors and the list keeps growing, thanks be to God.

Next month, on May 26th, we will begin a ministry we are calling Rich Harvest. Rich Harvest is a story of light being shared and a house of God being opened in order that people will open to God.

At men’s Bible study about a year ago, a conversation began about how it is one of our sister churches, Minnehaha UMC, was carrying on an outreach ministry involving food give-away. It is held on the fourth Saturday of the month, when assistance checks are past spent for some.

The question was asked: Was this a ministry RUMC might want to explore?

So we did. A number of our guys - Don Bodger, John Darling, Ralph Tarvin, Bob Olson and others attended Minneharvest to see how this all worked.

And they came away with a call to ministry that has spread throughout this congregation. Nearly 100 members of our church have gone to Minnehaha UMC on a Saturday morning to participate in offering this ministry and to learn how to make this hands-on ministry unfold.

And each one left the time far more blessed than any of the people walking away with grocery bags in their hands.

Listen. We will be welcoming 200 people into this, your church. Every month. They will gather in this sanctuary and they will come to know us as more than a nice looking building. They will be greeted as brothers and sisters and Christ. They will become people who know that in this church on Lyndale Ave, compassion can be found and grace can be savored and they will know, even if my questioning friend does not quite believe it, that the message of Jesus the Christ has the power to change and save lives.

And they will help us to know that this church, long grounded in grace, is growing in witness. We’re stepping up onto the light stand.

Dear God, help us shine!

Amen