Blessed and Blessing Others: One Year Later
Genesis 12:1-9
A year ago May our congregation began a marathon journey. It was not a leisurely walk in the park. It was not a quick sprint to an easy goal. We’ve been engaged in a long race toward a destination that was not always clearly visible. We faced some challenges as a congregation to which there were no easy answers or quick fixes. So we put our heads together. We prayed hard to know God’s leading. We laid the challenge before the congregation and the congregation responded with overwhelming faith. The Blessed and Blessing Others Campaign the biggest project we had undertaken as a congregation since the purchase of this building in the 1980’s.
Sometimes it takes having your back against the wall for you to see that God has opened up a way forward. That’s what happened to us last year. We knew that our original furnace gasping in the bowels of the boiler room was not long for this world. In fact, it would only be later when the workers were dismantling the furnace that we found out how bad it really was. Knowing that thing was firing on and off for years longer than it should is evidence that grace is real and that God is good (all the time). Some thought we just had a building problem but it turned out we had a thinking problem. Once we got it through our heads that we weren’t helpless to do something about this challenge that seemed so large and complicated, we started changing our thinking about other challenges. What would happen if we really put ourselves out there and asked the question of our 21st Century world that nobody else was asking – a question that could change the conversation that GLBTQ folks have been having with the church for decades – “Would Jesus Discriminate?” What if we didn’t just ask it of people we knew and people who were safe? What if we put it on billboards and tee-shirts and on our website and in the news media? What if we had the audacity to claim authority for knowing something about God’s grace that would be helpful for our world to hear?
For the accountants and the people who like details, here are the statistical data. We received pledges totaling $404,000 over three years. To date (one year of the three years completed) we have received over $227,000 of it. The furnace was finished in time for the cold weather. The WJD campaign was one of our most successful public awareness campaigns. We have a solid roof over the sanctuary that had not been replaced since it was built. But the greatest gift we received out of this whole experience is that more of us are finally really and truly down in the inner hidden parts of our souls grasping and claiming the idea that we are blessed.
Do you know what I’m talking about? We can get so caught up in what I call the “poor pitiful gay” attitude. This doesn’t mean that lesbians, bi’s, trannys and straight folks don’t struggle with the same attitude problems. It’s just that gay men seem to know how to make it an “art form.” You know the drill. Nobody loves me. My parents don’t accept me. The courts won’t recognize my family. I can’t find a partner. I’m starting to get wrinkles where there shouldn’t be any.
All of that may be true – and we still know we are blessed. There is no greater proof for the existence of God in my book than to see grace move people from beaten up doormats to a people who know they are blessed – and not just blessed – but blessed so that we might bless our world – blessed so that other people might get blessed.
Blessing comes in all sorts of manifestations. Kathy Barclay is an example of what this can look like. She is fortunate to be able to retire at an early age and she could do anything she wants with her life. For years she has been our Property Team leader and for the last several weeks she has been here at the church organizing construction projects, mopping floors, wiping down offices inundated by drywall dust, encouraging volunteers, corralling contractors. She has saved us thousands of dollars in the process. The improvements we are doing to this building will bless people for generations. She is using her blessing to bless her world. And there are many, many great stories like hers in this congregation.
The members of the AGC team on the Red Ribbon Ride will be presented later in our service. They ride to bless others. They go through the effort to raise money and practice and plan so that a cure may one day be found for HIV.
One of our members, Jeremy Gillitzer, is in Methodist Hospital. He is struggling with an eating disorder and will be there a while. He has asked me to tell the congregation that he would really enjoy visitors. He has only been coming to church a few months but the experience of being part of this church family gives him hope to overcome his problems. When we bless someone with our presence, we make their world a better place.
A few weeks ago Arlett Christiansen and I went over to Green Central Elementary School on 35th Street to meet the principal and see if there are ways we can partner with the school to make our neighborhood a better place. When I went to elementary school, it was just a place you had classes and then you went home. Not anymore. Today this school has a medical clinic, breakfast for children who are coming to school hungry and lots of community education programs. Ninety-seven percent of the children who attend Green Central live under the poverty line. Almost sixty percent of the children are first generation English speakers. There are several ways we thought All God’s Children could bless. We could provide tutors for kids who are struggling with their schoolwork. Some of us have the flexibility of schedule to give one hour a week. We could also make it possible for the children to have field trips. Most of the children never get to leave the inner city. They have no exposure to museums or art galleries or concerts or state parks. But the school district has no extra money any more for those kinds of things. The Principal told us it costs $200 for one busload of kids to go somewhere, just for the bus. So the school’s autism class worked out an arrangement with manufacturers that if the school gathered milk caps, box tops and soup labels from products, the school would receive money. What if all of us collected those items for the school? The autism class sorts and counts the items as a way to connect educational activities to real life results.
Most of us don’t live in this neighborhood but we have a huge investment in making this a good place for people to live and we want it to be a good place to come to church and we want it to be a safe place for children to go to school. I thought to myself, at our house we go through at least a gallon of milk a week. (I have a husband and a teenager who really like the stuff). That’s over 50 milk caps a year from our house alone and it is something we already use. So you’ll be hearing more from the Local Outreach Team as they organize this very important partnership we are developing. Sometimes it is just the little things that can make a big difference in the life of a child. Blessing comes in all sizes.
Speaking of blessings coming in all sizes, this is Amelia Isabel Lane-Outlaw born on Monday at 8:16AM to proud parents Alicia and Susan. God is good (all the time).
Abram had to leave his comfortable home and life and familiar surroundings to find his purpose in life – to discover how to bless his world. He stepped out into the unknown with nothing to guide him but his trust in God. And so do we. We are blessed. Like Abram it doesn’t mean we don’t have to work hard at things. It doesn’t mean that we are finished. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have challenges. It simply means that miracles happen in you and through you when you step out into the unknown in faith and claim the blessing God has given you.
Thousands of years ago Abram did and we’re still talking about it. I hope one day years in the future they will still be talking about that church on Park Avenue that knew they were so blessed that they risked stepping out into the unknown and blessed their world.
Sources:
www.homileticsonline.com Ultramarathon Faith, June 2008.