Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · February 7, 2010

Litany of Praise and Invocation

From Psalm 138  

We give thanks with our whole hearts.

            Not with empty prayers that sound profound

            or with false humility, or pride, or a pretend faith.

We give thanks because when we called, you answered,

in your own way and time, increasing our strength.

            Though the Lord is high and lifted up

            Every lowly one is held in his heart.

Let us pray:

            Through your love, compassion grows in our hearts.

            Through compassion, the work of our hands is made holy.

            Through the work of our hands, the world is touched with grace.  Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Jacob Thorne

Gracious God, loving God; we live among the great wonders of your creation, and today we give you praise. As we pause in your presence together, give us the courage and the knowledge to hear your great truths that are written deep within us. 

Remind us that we are not alone, that we belong to one another, that we are responsible for one another, and that we need one another. Help us see that we are most fully alive when we serve others. Open our eyes and our hearts to your presence, for we meet you, O God, in the life rising from deep winter’s sleep. We meet you in the quiet moments that renew our heart, in the acts of kindness that rebuild our hope. We meet you wherever strength is revived, where spirits are refreshed, where a community of faith is gathered.

This day, we pray for a heart of wisdom. Remind us, that in our fragility, we turn to you for strength. We trust in your eternity. Remind us, that in the wonder of who we are, we know that you, O God, are our source, our sustenance, our creator, the one whose love is steadfast and knows no end.

Hear us now as we say together the prayer that your Son taught us…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

John 21:1-17

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards’ off.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

Message

There Were So Many…

Brandon Gilvin

Associate Director of Week of Compassion

Christian Church – Disciples of Christ

Greetings from Week of Compassion. We are the relief, development, and refugee ministry of the Christian Church – Disciples of Christ. I want to emphasize when I say that I mean we are your ministry. It is a privilege to be able to partner with congregations such as your own and be the hands and feet of the Church in places like New Orleans; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; the Democratic Republic of Congo; and of course, with our neighbors to the south, Haiti. 

It is a real privilege to do this sort of work. I often tell people that I really consider myself an associate minister of every Disciples church in North America, because of the coordination of this sort of work that we do with you in partnership. In fact, I was with a church a couple weeks ago, and because of the work we do with disaster relief, I was referred to as the “Pastor of Disaster.” I’m not certain what I am going to do with that, but I will let you do with it what you will.

I bring greetings from Rev. Amy Gopp, who is the executive director of Week of Compassion, and greetings from Rev. Sharon Watkins, who is the general minister and president of The Christian Church – Disciples of Christ.

Before I begin reading the Scripture, I want to spend a little time pointing out a couple of things that I would like for you to pay attention to in this reading from John 21. Most scholars look at John as very likely the youngest of the four gospels we have in the New Testament. Most scholars say Mark was probably written around the year 70, and the other two somewhere between 80 and 90 A.D. Then John was very likely was written somewhere between 90 and 110. 

In these years – about 90 to 110 – the early Church was in the midst of sort of an identity crisis. The final separation of the early Jesus movement, the early Church, from Judaism is reaching its climax. This is the middle of a very, very ugly divorce between the two religious traditions we have. The Church is slowly on its way to becoming something different. While that is happening, the folks who are writing this gospel are struggling with two questions that are very familiar to us. Who is Jesus? And, what is the work of the Church?

Not only is the dating one of the things that puts John in a little different category than the other gospels, but the style of it is very different. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus speaks in parables – these short little quips. This is how we encounter Jesus in these three gospels. However, in John, Jesus talks on and on and on and on in long monologues. “I am the bread of life.” Then he explicates that. “I am the vine.” “I am the way.” On and on and on. Jesus never seems to stop talking in John.

Whereas in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus talks about seeing God’s presence in everyday little things – the seed, what a farmer does – in the parables he tells, in John, Jesus talks about God’s presence in his own presence. In fact, “I am the bread of life.” “I am the vine.” On and on and on.

Here in John 21, we find a story of Jesus with his disciples after the resurrection. Jesus is hanging out with the disciples during a day of fishing. The phrasing that John uses is very interesting. Jesus shows himself to his disciples. He is not just teaching. He is not just performing a miracle. He is showing the disciples the fullness of God’s love through his presence. Then, Jesus invites the Church – invites those disciples there and the disciples in our pews today – to do the same.

I invite you now to open your hearts, open your ears, open your minds, and let us struggle to hear God’s Word in these words. [Editor’s Note: Brandon now read the Scripture listed above.]

When the levees broke, there was so much water. Rhonda was in her 80s when the floodwaters came, when her daughter moved her to higher ground, when her home just west of Slidell, Louisiana, flooded. They made it. They made it out. When Rhonda first came back, the house still stood, but just barely. The floor was ruined. The walls were smashed. The mold was growing in the thick Louisiana humidity. She cried when she saw it. It was the only home she had ever known. No insurance; no hope. At 83-years-old, Rhonda began to cry. There was so much water.

Life is a fragile thing: destruction, poverty. There seems to be altogether much too much of it. We are bombarded by image after image after image: floods in the Philippines, an earthquake in Haiti, a shooting on a college campus or a military base, refugees fleeing civil war, women from Moldova who wake up discovering the jobs in western Europe they were offered were just a rue. They wake up to find themselves as trafficked sex workers. We know just how fragile life seems.

For the community that read the gospel of John, life, too, had to seem incredibly fragile. The temple that had stood as the center of Jewish life had been destroyed 20-30 years ago. It was a fall, a destruction, an act of violence that led to great conflict. People searched for answers. What exactly is the right school of Judaism to follow? Where do the followers of Jesus fit in to that world? Those were the questions of uncertainty of that day. Then, there was, always right around the corner, the threat of the Roman Empire, the same political power that had killed Jesus, the same political power that had destroyed the temple. The threat was always there.

Then there was the hope held so tightly by those who followed Jesus. It was a hope that there would be no war, but only a time when the world would look just as God had created and imagined it to be. That hope had to seem so unimaginable. So much destruction, so much division, so much to worry about.

That’s why I love this story of Jesus, Peter, and all these fish. This is the story that is told about Jesus appearing to the disciples after the resurrection. Talk about a time of uncertainty! Their friend and teacher was dead – gone. Their hopes of a world ruled by peace, not by violence, had been crushed by a violent act. Now, there were no fish to be found. But then the disciples heard a voice, a voice that had called them once before, a voice that became familiar immediately. It was a voice that said, “Of course, there are fish. Just look at it from a different way.” It was a voice that said, “Where you think there is scarcity, there is actually abundance.” It was a voice they knew that reminded them that where you think there is hopelessness, there is actually hope. Just look again on the other side.

What I love about this story is that it tells us something about Jesus. It also tells us something about the early Church. It tells us this group of early Christians, struggling along in the first century, chose to say, “Yes, there is violence, destruction, and fear in the world. But we can look again, because a life of faith is one that sees a world filled with those destructive things but also filled with so much more – generosity, hope, and healing. A life of faith sees that and then makes it so in the world.

In Connie’s family, there is so much laundry. Connie sits in the same pew every Sunday. Connie is one of Week of Compassion’s most important partners. Every year, she saves all of the change her family loses in the dryer and gives it as an offering. Every year! She averages about $100 a year. That is either a lot of laundry or a lot of carelessness. I’ll let you be the judge of that. 

That means every year, Connie is a disaster-relief respondent. Last year, she gave $50 that went for emergency food and shelter following the tsunami in the Samoan Islands. Every year, she is involved in sustainable development. She gave $25 that helped Dominican farmers develop sustainable agricultural practices. Beyond that, she gave $8 that helped settle refugees fleeing genocide in the Sudan. She gave $8 that helped send a work group from Kansas to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to help rebuild homes. 

Now, for those of you who want to get in touch with your inner accountant, let’s look at that a different way. From all of the money that is given to Week of Compassion, 50% goes to disaster relief from our Compassion Response Fund. Another 25% goes to sustainable development. Of the remaining funds, 17% goes to fund refugee and immigration ministries; to help many of our ecumenical partner organizations; help fund Disciples mission sites, such as All People’s Center in Los Angeles, Yakama Mission on the Yakama Reservation in Washington, and Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries on the border. A bit of that money also goes to work-trip grants that help churches organizing domestic or international recovery and mission trips. Six to eight percent then goes to administrative costs, which helps bring me to you to tell you of the work you have done through Week of Compassion.

Connie’s gift of $100 went pretty far. In 2005, Connie gave a little bit extra. That year, she contributed to the more than $4.4-million that Week of Compassion collected in response to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ike. Connie helped supply, house, and feed nearly 11,000 Disciples volunteers that represented over 1,100 mission groups. She partnered with volunteers who contributed over 430,000 hours in the mission of disaster recovery – hours that, if you do the math, work out to about $8.7-million worth of labor, and add up to about 173 rebuilt homes on the Gulf Coast. Connie did that, too. Wouldn’t you know, the day that first work group arrived with dry wall and 2X4s, Connie’s gift made it to Rhonda’s house.

This isn’t just Connie’s ministry. This is yours. This is what you do. When you give to Week of Compassion, you participate in a wide, global, ecumenical network. Through partners like Church World Service, you were able to be with Don Tatlock within 48 hours of the earthquake in Haiti, on the ground. Don is a Disciples layperson who works for Church World Service, who is on the front lines directing the aid effort, distributing food and hygiene kits made by churches right here in Columbia.

You are able to help fund development work in Bosnia, the Dominican Republic, and Uganda. You are even able to help fund work in North Korea, through Foods Resource Bank, a program that teams up American farmers and churches and sustainable agricultural projects in developing countries. 

You are able to partner with Micah Ministry at Independence Boulevard Christian Church in downtown Kansas City, where Darrell Cantrell has it down to a science. He can feed people for 83-cents a meal with a message of abundance in hospitality. In a central-Missouri drawl, (an accent everybody here is familiar with), Darrell says, “We are the only place in town that doesn’t make you stand in line. We feed you and serve you as if you were at a restaurant.”

You were with my friend Ashley. When Ashley received news of the earthquake in Haiti, she knew she had to do something. She had seen a posting on Facebook from Week of Compassion. That evening, after work, she stopped by Target and filled her basket with washcloths, soap, and toothpaste. She hauled it all home and put together hygiene kit after hygiene kit after hygiene kit, until her apartment overflowed with generosity, just like those nets full of fish. There were so many kits in her apartment.

Don’t tell me that one person can’t make a difference. Through the work we do, when we do it together, we are able to say, “Yes, there is so much work, but we have so much to give. Like the disciples, who thought their nets were empty, we have more to give than we expect.”

Stephanie tumbled out of the pickup truck as it pulled in front of Rhonda’s house. She quickly lit a cigarette, her face full of piercings, her dark eye make-up a little smeared, her voice just a little too loud. It was still steamy in Slidell, even though it was November. She had come to help with the rebuilding. She was part of a workgroup that wasn’t quite typical. They were hardscrabble contractors, who seemed to live on caffeine and nicotine. Their building skills were far beyond most of the church-volunteer groups that were there, but they sure didn’t look like most of the put-together-suburban-kids or the Winnebago-driving retirees. As the only woman who could keep up with any of the boys, as her crew leader liked to say, Stephanie stuck out even more. 

Over dinner she would talk – a little too loud, a little too long – about bad boyfriends, abusive parents, and about the war. On our last night, she told us about her injury, the one that sent her home the first time. Rather naively, I said, “Well, I thought women weren’t involved in direct combat.”

Her eyes hardened. She talked about the chaos of urban combat in Iraq, of being given a sniper’s gun all of a sudden, and how it was you or them, and how she would kill again because Iraqis are just dirt. The silence that met her story, to say the least, was uncomfortable. It was a classic case of post-traumatic stress. The damage the war does kept her up pacing that week, trying to read, listening to music, smoking, anything she could do. 

The next morning, the last morning of the build, we scrambled to finish our contribution to Rhonda’s house. We put a gigantic porch deck that rose up to meet the house that had been raised so that floodwaters, if they came again, would not damage the house. Stephanie was there in the middle of the action, hammering, measuring, drilling, re-measuring, shouting instructions, correcting her boyfriend’s technique, grabbing water for people. 

Then Rhonda showed up. She saw what we had done. In the same spot where she had cried, she clapped her hands and nearly screamed with joy. And Stephanie said, “I’ve been doing this contracting work ever since I got back from Iraq. But I have never done anything like this. I’ve never given like this. I didn’t know I could.”

You all did that! Maybe you didn’t raise a hammer, but you have given so much healing and so much hope. Not just to people like Rhonda, but also to people like Stephanie, to the people of New Orleans, and to the people of Haiti. 

All the while, you have proclaimed destruction, loss, death, as heart breaking as they are, they are never the final word. Just look to the other side and you will find an abundance of compassion, courage, and so much of everything else that it takes to make a difference.

Amen. 

Benediction

As you go forth today, may you leave knowing that we are the hands and feet of Christ. We are called to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. Through Christ, we all say together… Amen.