The Pieces Left Over

This past week we held a celebration of the life and connection of our church in my backyard.
We made plans for food, games, seating.
We invited our friends, neighbors, and community to celebrate with us.
I spent a good amount of time preparing our home for the gathering, making sure that we could have a good flow of people in and out of the house if necessary, ensuring the bathrooms were clean and well stocked, and prepping the lawn for a big tent
and tables
and chairs
and feet.

What I hadn't anticipated was that the weather would drop 30 degrees the night before and everybody would have to bring out their jackets and blankets. But even still, our turn out was good, there was more than enough food for everyone and after all of the cleanup I still had time to put my feet up before passing out for the night.

I have found that I am eternally grateful for the responsiveness of dedicated people. When I first came in to this church I put this event on our calendar to usher in a new season. I knew that as I put it on the calendar the church had gathered for their church picnic only a month prior. I was worried that we would suffer from an over abundance of cookout related events and that there wouldn't be any enthusiasm for more.

What I found instead was a church willing to go back to it again. And as I prepared coffee in the kitchen, I looked out the window and saw a familiar sight:

Jesus said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” They did so and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.

The sharing of a meal is a sign to the world of who is included and who isn't. Meals play a huge role in the Gospel of Luke, they reveal to us the willingness of Christ to bring all people together to the table. So fitting it was to see some old friends, those who once broke bread together under the same roof, reunite and join together with new faces, new lives to be touched, transformed and loved.

Jan Richardson says that "It is part of the miracle: how Jesus, with such intention, cares for the fragments following the feast. He sees the abundance that persists, the feast that remains within the fragments."

When I looked out my window I saw long standing church members sitting down on property that they help maintain, that they labored over, that they helped build brick by brick, that they prepared for my wife and I before we came. They were joined by neighbors, some new, some that they remembered from way back when, some that had walked away long ago.

When I believed there was scarcity in our preparation, God found abundance. Where I believed that this was simply a community gathering, God saw the broken pieces that we leave through our lives and began to pick them up. Our churches share deep roots with their communities. Some of those roots will lead to greater growth through careful nurturing. Others may have been damaged along the way and are in need of Christ's patience to collect the broken pieces for replanting. But all are invited, all are gathered in, and all may find welcome rest here among the family of God.

Building What?

Hebrews 11:1-3

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

This week I've been thinking a lot about buildings. Over the weekend Mallory and I went on a free architecture tour of some of the downtown skyscrapers in Detroit. I've driven or walked past many of those buildings before, been in a few of them, but many of the little details I've never noticed before and the history I barely knew. It is so hard to hear of all of the grand ideals that led to the construction of many buildings, the hope that by planting another skyscraper business would boom and people would come pouring in, knowing the painful truth that the ideal never made it to reality.
I've caught myself thinking back to some of the earlier posts I've written, especially this post from the summer of 2010, and all of the pieces of wood I've laid down, all of the nails hammered, all of the shingles put in place, all of the electrical work and all of the concrete that's been poured.

All of this has got me thinking: What is it that makes a place meaningful to us?
Is it the brick and mortar?
Is it the business that is conducted inside?
Is it how well worn the building is? or how well maintained?
Is it the history of a place? How long its been around?

There was an exercise that we did with the groups who came in for Motown Mission when I worked there in 2010. We made this big puzzle out of blank pieces of paper that when they were all assembled would make a house. On each piece of paper we asked our groups to write prayers they had at the end of their week.

Some folks would write how they were thankful to meet someone new. Others wrote about the new experiences they had shared. One person wrote this prayer:

"Lord, a house is broken, a house is in disrepair, a house is ugly. Your love, Your servants changed a house that's fixed, a house repaired, a house that is beautiful. Your love changed our hearts, your love changed the hearts of those with the house, Your love made a garden grow without weeds, your love made people happy and gave them hope."

In the opening verse of Hebrews chapter 11, the author of Hebrews says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen." The words "not seen" do not necessarily connote a lack of vision, but rather a vision that has yet to be realized. There is some debate in biblical scholarship as to whether or not the "assurance" that is talked about is objective or subjective, whether the assurance is something immediately tangible or something felt by the individual. Alan Mitchell suggests that it is both, in that the assurance of things hoped for is not something we can produce, it exists as something that transcends the individual.1 

This is true as well for the work we do with our hands. 

Buildings are not simply a collection of things, assembled by the will of one person, but the result of a collective vision built in the hope that that vision may one day be realized.

In our faith life we continually strive toward a vision of what the world could be. We have biblical text, a history of faithful people, and the Holy Spirit to guide us in our endeavor. All of those resources point to one unifying factor: community.

A biblical text formed over thousands of years by many hands.

A history of faithful people, trying to live into their relationship with God.

The Holy Spirit, a member of the community of the Trinity, God as three in one, whose mission is giving life to the body of Christ.

Community is what makes a house a home, a building a reality, a vision not yet realized faith.

We need one another, a body, working together in the hope that the Kingdom of God would be made on earth as it is in heaven.

I enjoy the prayer I shared here so much because that prayer acknowledges that it is not the work of one person, or the vision of an individual by which the Kingdom comes, but through the power of God, driving the community to live into the new creation.

Community is what makes a place real, what transforms a building into something more, time spent here on earth into life, and broken people into the people of God.

1. Alan Mitchell, Sacra Pagina: Hebrews