Hope Community Presbyterian Church

Mark 5:21-43

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

I have to confess that I’m a public radio junkie, so today’s sermon begins with a segment from The Splendid Table. The segment is “Stump the Cook,” when host Lynne Rosetto Kasper takes five ingredients from a listener’s refrigerator and comes up with a dish (preferably an edible one) including those ingredients and just a few others. Give the March 24, 2007 segment a listen (stream or download it – “Stump the Cook” starts at about 27:00), then hold it in your mind. We’ll come back to it.

What happened there is something similar to what Paul says to the Corinthians in today’s reading. He’s writing to encourage them to follow through with an offering they’ve promised to take for the Jerusalem church. Paul doesn’t question the Corinthians’ commitment to giving money for the Jerusalem church – he knows the commitment is there. He also knows that the gift got hung up somewhere, that apparently the church members had trouble pulling the funds together. They had trouble coming up with “enough,” and they probably worried that what they could come up with wouldn’t quite do it.

I think that worry is a lot of why I’m not supposed to talk about money in church. Sure, we have any number of other reasons to object. We’d prefer to keep money matters private, we want to reserve church for “spiritual” topics, and heaven knows we don’t have any appetite for another “sales pitch.” That all may be true, but I think the deeper reason we object to talking about money in church is that we worry about being judged. We worry that what we come up with won’t be good enough. We know that the earth and all in it belong to God, so we worry that we haven’t given enough until we’ve given everything we have. And that’s hard to do, considering that most of us have mortgages, dental bills, and transportation needs to fund.

But notice how Paul approaches money here. There’s no question of whether people have given enough, just the invitation to give what you can. He makes no challenge to the church’s faith; instead he cites faith, knowledge, and eagerness to help as the church’s riches. He doesn’t attempt to convince the Corinthians that they should want to give – they do, and they have for a long time. As Paul points out, even the resources to share are already there, and if they eagerly give what they have, God will bless it.

That’s an approach churches don’t take often enough. God doesn’t ask us to do what we can’t, She doesn’t weigh us against each other, She simply receives what we can give. God takes what we offer with just as much enthusiasm as we put into it, and transforms it into something beyond itself.

So go back to the audio clip I asked you to think about. Lynne takes five ingredients the caller chooses, plus three more she asks for, and creates a completely unexpected dish. She almost never does what I would have done with those five things, but she almost always comes up with something I’d at least try and probably enjoy.

The beauty of the segment is in its improvisation. It lets us in the audience listen to a very smart cook think aloud. We can hear as she sees possibilities, tries out combinations, and occasionally changes her mind. This is similar to what happens in many of our kitchens on the night before grocery-shopping day after we’ve opened the fridge to see just what’s actually in there. The abundance is sparked by the constraint of few ingredients, but constraint is not the point. It’s not about what we lack. Working in this tight spot invites us to think about things differently, until something comes out that we never expected.

Something new comes out because we don’t look at what’s not there. We look at what we have, and we imagine that it’s plenty. That’s how Paul wanted the Corinthians to look at their Jerusalem relief fund and know that it was plenty. It was plenty – it is plenty – because God is with us. The same God who looked at the chaotic void and decided that it could become a universe is with us.

God has this miraculous way of taking what looks like little and making it full beyond our ability to see. He only needs what we have, not what we don’t. God doesn’t want to burden us, but to use our riches for more. And one of the things God will do with our riches is to show them to us, to let us see just how blessed we are. Our abundance may be measured in dollars, or hours, or dozens of eggs, but it will be revealed because God found it plenty.

That’s where we find our real riches: when we find five random ingredients in the fridge and imagining a gourmet dinner. When we wait for God’s creativity to rearrange what we have in our bank to make something new. We find our riches by looking at what’s there, at how much we have, not at how much we don’t have. God knows, and I know, that we already want to share with others. The trick is finding our abundance, because with that, we’re all rich.

Amen.

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Mark 4:35-41

At more or less this exact moment, my brother is preaching his candidate sermon at the First Congregational Church in Anamosa, Iowa. So, in the next hour or so, he’ll be asked to leave the room while the congregation votes on him, then return to find out whether they’ve been led to call him as their pastor. I can assure you, that’s not an experience one usually expects to enjoy. So, it’s no surprise that Michael called me yesterday afternoon to share his nerves – and I assume he also called our dad. Not that there was much either of us could tell him. He knows what he needs to know, and he has the gifts and presence of the Spirit he needs to have.

We might see some of that situation in Jesus’ response to the disciples (and he’d be extra cranky, having been awakened from his nap: “well, what did you need me for? Sure, I can calm the storm, but you’re all good sailors. You could have weathered it if you put yourselves to it.” (more…)

Mark 4:26-34

1 Samuel 16:1, 6-13

With all of Jesse’s sons standing before him, the Lord tells Samuel, “I don’t judge as people judge.” God sees things very differently than we do, according to plans we don’t know. God started seeing this way long before this passage from 1 Samuel. Just before this passage, this part of the story starts with the Lord rejecting Saul as king, feeling sorry he’d done it. That’s not how we picture God, changing the divine mind as if this was a mistake all along, repenting as we do. But as the story goes, God chose for Saul to fail as king, to prove a point. The people asked for a king, and God gave the people the king they asked for.

Saul gets the short end of this story, because this is a story about David, about God’s faithfulness to Israel through him. This is the first part of David’s story: God chooses him to be king, using a kind of judgment humans don’t have. God sees more deeply into us, farther into our future, and more broadly into the world around us, than we can. That’s what make this makes moment of anointing – of David in our story, of the baptism we celebrated this morning, of all our baptisms – so big. We see here the sign of God doing something bigger than we can see in full. We see just a hint of a God who judges in ways that we can’t. (more…)

John 16:12-15

Romans 12:1-13

This is the third in a series of sermons on “my dream church.” Two weeks ago, I talked about being a church rooted in the past and carrying on the past traditions we’ve inherited. Last week, I talked about the church becoming something new. So we have two responsibilities: to maintain the heritage of our past and share it with the future, and to let go of the preconceptions and baggage of our past when it’s necessary for us to become something new. We have to live both faithfully to the past and with openness to a developing future.

I wanted to think of what this would look like, and I was thinking about my vestments (now that we’re in the robe-free summer). The practice of putting robes on pastors goes way back. Tradition holds that Jesus dressed like this. Really, as tradition holds, servants would dress like this, and I would wear a robe because the pastor is the servant of God’s people. But, servants don’t dress like that today. Today, they wear an apron. So as I put on an apron now, consider this liturgical wear when I serve at the table. This is a way to be rooted in the meaning of our past tradition, in a way that’s made new today. (more…)

Hope is building in West Eveleth this summer! We’re pitching in on the newest Habitat for Humanity home on June 26, and we want your help. A group of volunteers is traveling through the area that week, but they could use 8-10 Presbyterians (and their closest friends) to join them on Friday, the 26th. Nathan will kick off the day with devotions at 8:00, then we’ll get down to work.

We need 8-10 builders (16 or older) to make the day a success, but there’s room for as many people as would like to be involved: running supplies, providing lunch, or just cheering on the workers. There are plenty of ways to be involved, whether you’re up to the construction work or not. Contact Sylvia in the office to get on our list of builders, lunch-providers, or other assorted volunteers.

To find out more about the house, visit North St Louis County Habitat for Humanity and click on Current Projects. We’re working on the Angela Curry home, 212 15th Ave West, Eveleth.

During the month of May, I’ve enjoyed seeing the buds and flowers of spring as they work their way through our part of the world. It seems that God must want to draw out spring as long as possible, because different plants in our gardens, yards, and forests bloom and grow leaves at different times of this season. Some plants – annuals especially – have to develop their leaves first and only later produce flowers and fruit. Others, like bulbs or fruit trees, bloom early and worry about growing leaves later.

We might wish everything were tulips or dogwoods, with flowers that burst out even before the leaves show up, but much of life is more like a hosta. Not only do hostas fail to bloom right away, they can still look like a pile of dead leaves for quite a while after the daffodils have had their day in the sun. The trick, as if I had to tell you, is to notice and celebrate each new stage of growth.

Eventually, all these plants come back to life, flower, and set fruit. Flowers can come whenever they like, but it usually takes all summer to store up energy in fruit. This year’s flowers and leaves can come from last year’s energy, at least in perennials, but the plants have to look less grand while the fruit forms or bulbs grow to store energy for next year. Healthy growth is different during different seasons of the year.

In this newsletter, you will find a note from the Session about the season in which our church finds itself. It describes our current financial situation and explains that we have some difficult choices to make regarding our budget. There is no single set of right answers to the questions we face, and we’re wise enough not to look for simple solutions. Instead, I ask you to think and pray with the session and me about how we are called to make faithful use of the resources entrusted to us.

Remember, different parts of a garden grow in different seasons, and a change in our growth doesn’t mean that we’re dying. Even if it feels that our bloom is off, that’s still good news. It means that now is the time to set fruit, deepen our roots, and focus our energies on the next great step in our ministry together. Our church is not just one thing. The church includes many kinds of “plants,” and some might be getting ready to bloom now. If you have the energy to bloom in a new way, go for it. If you still need to absorb some new light from above, do that for now. It is Pentecost, after all – there’s no better time to soak in the goodness of God that energizes us to bear fruit.

As much as we love flowers, they serve a purpose bigger than themselves. Fruit typically develops only after the visible display of flowers ends. It’s during this nondescript growing season that our roots deepen because of the energy we receive from above. May the light and warmth of summer fill you with all the goodness and energy you can hold, and may our church continue to bear great fruit in our community!

In Christ’s peace,

Nathan