Cheri had a little meltdown this week, with Kurt being totally clueless. Hardly news, we know. Cheri tries to take one day off per week, a Sabbath Day, again hardly a new concept. She tries to get away from work and take care of herself. But this week, she really needed to get out the Village weekly email, about the membership class, the new worship service, etc. One thing led to another, and she ended up working two or three hours, and getting all off center.
Cheri called her coach, Paul Nixon, who she had a coaching call with the next day and left him a message. It was supposed to be about what she needed advice on this time. And her issue was, “we’re going to have deal with me failing to take a day off”. Paul’s response, and we’re all going to get sick of this answer, is “How serious are you?”. How serious are you about taking that day off to center and care for yourself? Are you capable of letting go and doing that? Ouch, that hurt.
But, as Cheri said, people ask her all the time, how can I make this change in my life? She can now start with what Paul said, How serious are you? You can’t do this alone. But with God’s help, and serious commitment, you can do incredible things. Change, though, does not happen over night. It takes time. People think they can come to church, say a prayer, and everything in life will be fine. Growth doesn’t happen like that. Change doesn’t happen like that.
Jesus knew change took time, commitment, etc. But Jesus, yes, even the Son of God, perfect Jesus, got frustrated with how long it took and how hard it was. This week in worship we read one of those stories, Luke 9: 37-43 for those of you playing along at home. In the Message translation, Verse 41 says it all, Jesus says “what a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many things to have I have to go over these thing? How much loner do I have to put up with this?”
Why didn’t they have focus their lives? Why did they keep coming to Jesus? These were his chosen, first followers. They had a firsthand experience of Jesus. It’s because they wanted a quick fix. Know anyone looking for a quick fix? They were not taking seriously what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. He did not come to simply work miracles and give them quick fixes. He came to show them a new wave of life and to invite them into the new way.
And, so it’s like taking a class to learn a new language or becoming an apprentice or an intern to learn a new skill from a master. We do not learn a new way in a moment, we learn step by step. And we make mistakes along the way. We learn from those mistakes.
If we are frustrated that we don’t feel close to God, that we are not sure what direction God wants us to take in our lives, and that we wish we felt God’s presence more closely in our lives, maybe we need to consider how much energy we are investing in this relationship with God. How serious are we? People say they want a sign, “just show me what to do”. How often do we talk to God? To God’s people? How often do you stop and listen?
During World War II, Gordon Cosby was a young pastor, assigned as a chaplain to the 101st Airborne Division. If you don’t know about them, check out the miniseries “Band of Brothers”, which is about a part of the 101st known as Easy Company. The 101st was an important part of most of the major battles of the war in Europe. The night before D-Day, they parachuted in the dark, behind enemy lines to pave the way for the next day. They were a key part of the Battle of Bulge, they liberated concentration camps, and they were the ones who eventually took the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s private retreat.
Gordon tells the story of an incident just a day or so after D-Day. He and the members of the 101st were trying to help Allied forces who were stuck relatively close to the beaches of Normandy still. Everyone knew a dangerous and bloody battle was coming that night. They needed to advance up a dangerous stretch of hedgerows. It was going to be costly, but it had to happen or many others would die.
Gordon was doing what a chaplain on the front lines does before something like this, he was going foxhole to foxhole, to give comfort to men who knew were possibly living their last hours on Earth. Doing this he had a life changing event.
He tells the story of jumping into one foxhole, where he met up and spoke with one young man. However, he says it was a story repeated again and again. These were men who grew up in mainline churches. They had gone from baptism to adulthood to Sunday school, youth groups, etc. But, this one young man stuck with him when he said “Chaplain, I don’t know this Jesus person you all are always talking about and I want to know more about him, cause in the next few hours, I have a feeling I’m going to meet him”. And, yes, the young man, along with several others did die that night, and in the months that followed.
These young men had been in an information based religious tradition. They were terrified because they had not gotten a spiritual foundation to deal with death as a transition, not an end. They had not gotten in touch with their own brokenness; been grateful for the undeserved love of God. So when they faced certain death, their faith experience came up short. Young Chaplain Cobsy came home and said to himself, we’ve got to do better.
We’ve got to help folks do this serious work better, so that when the really tough things in life happen, the death of a child, divorce, one’s own mortality come along, we have the spiritual depth to face these things. And so, he decided to start a new church. First, though, he came home and he prayed for fifteen years.
Then, he and his wife Mary started an ecumenical (no one denomination) church, The Church of the Saviour. They focused on being grounded in prayer and being connected to hurting people. They focused on the poor, people living on the edge, people who had been oppressed in one way or another. They started in the Adams Morgan Neighborhood, think of a rough, neighborhood on the edge.
And so, as the people began to pray and open their eyes to what God was showing them, they responded to God’s call to be in ministry with the poorest of poor, and those who had no voice in the poor neighborhoods of Washington, DC.
Over the years, the Church of the Saviour grew to the size of 200 people. But they decided that was too big. They wanted to focus on hands on ministry, not growth in the size of the church. So they split the ministries they created into individual churches. Jubilee Jobs is a program that helps people get their first job as they enter or re-enter the job market. And it is it’s own faith community. Jubilee Housing rehabs houses and apartments into affordable housing, and is a church itself. So too is Christ House, which provides respite care for the homeless and ill. And the Potter’s House, a coffee house and restaurant is another one of these communities, where our friend Mary Shapiro comes from, is a community and host to other communities.
Here is what impressed a group of us the most when we visited there years ago, two things. First, these small churches had created HUGE ministries that were changing the world. And EVERYONE is grounded in a personal prayer life. Not a single person bragged about how Jubilee Jobs had helped place tens of thousands of people into their first job or first one in a while. No, they were only overly proud of one thing, their prayer lives.
One man, who was a part of a new ministry for the homeless, told the story about he approached what would be a crazy year. He was already going to a monastery one day a week to pray. He was getting very busy with his new ministry. So, he decided he better find time to have an extra prayer day there.
We all want to get like this don’t we? Things get tough, and we want to be close to God, right. We get the idea of prayer and religion. The life of trusting God is one that doesn’t just pop up. Trust in God takes time. In both Cheri and Kurt’s lives the ability to stand firm, and calm and take big risks, and speaking truth to power, comes from months and years of daily experiences of trail and error in prayer.
Cheri has been going to see her spiritual director, Sister Breta in Fremont, about once a month since 1995. That’s a long time. In fact, she’s been seeing Sister Breta longer than Kurt. She didn’t make the decision to plant a new church for new people quickly. She needed a strong spiritual foundation. And even now, we have to work hard to keep ourselves in spiritual balance.
Do you want to know what God wants for your life? Do you want to know what God is calling to be and do? Do you want to live out the purpose that God put you on Earth to live? And we firmly believe we are all called to serve. Some of us do it with our day jobs, others with our volunteer hours, and still others do it simply by being themselves. But we all want to be of use to the world and others, right? Then what are doing to live into that future?
If you’re wondering/wandering, Cheri has some ideas:
1. Pray - talk to God and LISTEN! This isn’t just praying for stuff, this is taking the time to listen.
2. Find a spiritual guide, Sister Breta and Sister Sharon will be offering spiritual direction here at the Village. This is something you have to pay for, but it’s on a sliding scale.
3. Be a part of a spiritual community that will challenge you.
4. Take some risks, leave your comfort zone.
5. Serve
If you’re not a part of a faith community already where you can do this, consider joining us. We have services on Sunday at 10:30 AM and 12:30 PM and a growing number of connection groups where you can find some other spiritual guides. If you’re already part of the Village, and you start to feel an idea of how to serve coming on, but are not sure where to go, talk to Cheri. All of the Church of the Saviour’s ministries started with a person, centered in prayer, and dreaming of a way to serve God and their fellow humans.
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