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“More Than We Can Ask or Imagine,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 7/26/15

“More Than We Can Ask or Imagine”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

July 26, 2015

 The Disciples journeyed to Columbus from cities and towns, from churches that have been around for over a hundred years and ones that have only been in existence a few years. Young and old, male and female, gay and straight, cisgender and transgender, 5^th generation and new Disciple, life-long Christian and recent convert, first-time General Assembly attendee and 25^th -time General Assembly attendee.

All seeking to follow after Jesus.

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee (some call it Tiberias). A huge crowd followed him, attracted by the miracles they had seen him do among the sick. When he got to the other side, he climbed a hill and sat down, surrounded by his disciples. It was nearly time for the Feast of Passover, kept annually by the Jews. 

We Disciples came hungry – for worship, for dialogue, for learning, for inspiration, for hope, for time together at the table, for each other. 

When Jesus looked out and saw that a large crowd had arrived, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy bread to feed these people?” He said this to stretch Philip’s faith. He already knew what he was going to do. 

Philip answered, “Two hundred silver pieces [six months’ wages] wouldn’t be enough to buy bread for each person to get a piece.”

There’s always a bean counter, isn’t there? Attendance at General Assembly was down this year – 3,750 participants, the lowest in the history of the Assembly. The implications and indications of this was the scuttlebutt going into the Assembly, which convenes once every two years and is open to all who register. 

One of the disciples—it was Andrew, brother to Simon Peter—said, “There’s a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But that’s a drop in the bucket for a crowd like this.”

There are a couple different kinds of resolutions presented at General Assembly – some are Items for Reflection and Research; others are Operational, Policy and Organizational; most are Sense of the Assembly. Sense of the Assembly resolutions are not rules or doctrine; when one passes we’re not binding local churches to any particular practice, policy, or belief. It’s more like a pulse-check on those present (i.e. those with the interest and the resources to attend a biennial assembly).

During Wednesday’s business session, the last of the 2015 Assembly, Resolution 1526, “Resolution to Celebrate and Reaffirm Our Commitment Towards the Vision of Planting 1,000 New Congregations by 2020,” was presented. It was essentially follow up on a commitment we made some years ago as a denomination; more or less a reminder to us all that starting new churches is “beautiful and essential work.” 

As you might imagine, these types of resolutions don’t generate the kind of back-and-forth that more controversial resolutions do; the one on gun violence, for example.

And yet, at their best, they do inspire a response.

Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” There was a nice carpet of green grass in this place. They sat down, about five thousand of them. 

After the creators of the resolution gave their spiel, the microphone was open (subject to our fabulous parliamentarian protocols that approximately 3 out of every 3,750 people get excited about). 

Katie Hays was at Microphone One.

I first heard about Katie through Linda Harding, a Priscilla of our congregation. She went to visit Galileo Church in Fort Worth, Texas, where Katie is the planter-pastor, on a trip to pick up her daughter, Beth.

Katie offered her thanks to the congregations of the Trinity Brazos Area of the Southwest Region of the Christian Church, which granted Galileo extremely generous start-up funds for our first two years of life. She went on to explain how Galileo Church has made good use of those funds by welcoming people to the heart of God in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit.

Then things got real:

“However,” said Katie, “I need to tell the whole truth about that. Two years is not enough. Galileo Church has legs, but it can’t walk on its own yet. Our start-up funds have run out. And the truth we should acknowledge is that new church starts very often fail for lack of money. Not for lack of interest from the community; not for lack of the minister’s good work; not for lack of the gospel’s power to transform lives. It takes money, real money, to make this ministry possible. And while Galileo is progressing toward sustainability, we have not achieved it yet.

“I will vote ‘yes’ on Resolution 1526, but I just want to say that it’s not enough. We already have the prayers and encouragement of our sister churches. I already have the friendship and commiseration of my colleagues. What we don’t have, what we really need, is more money to extend our life to the time when we can fund our life together.

“I’m hoping that established, traditional, aging congregations that are holding tightly with clenched fists to the resources that are slowing their inevitable decline will find the courage to open their hands and release some of those resources in service of the church’s future.

I’m hoping that we’ll find a way to share with new congregations all across the country that are struggling to stay alive because their pastors are working full-time jobs and planting churches in their spare time.

“I will vote yes on this resolution. But it’s not enough. Thank you.”

Now, we’re not allowed to applaud during the business sessions, the proclamation of which always generates a little bit of applause itself – oops! – but, man, it was hard to hold back in that moment.

But it was what happened next that makes it worth signing into the Twitter account every two years.

Not long after returning to her seat, Katie tweeted, “Ya’ll. (I mentioned her church is in Fort Worth, right?) A sister just came over here and knelt down on the floor and wrote @Galileo_Church a check. I busted out the #uglycry.”

That tweet doesn’t tell the whole story, though.

It turns out, a woman Katie had never seen before came over and crouched down next to her in the assembly hall. Katie, who had her eyes closed and was trying re-center after putting her heart and soul on the line on the big screen, didn’t see or hear her come up, but there she was, kneeling on the concrete floor beside her chair. She said to Katie, “I don’t have very much money. But I want to share with Galileo. This is such good work. Can I write a check?”

Katie was speechless, but the woman started to scribble, her checkbook on her bent knees. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but that didn’t matter. The real gift was her presence. She ripped out the check and handed it to Katie with a smile. “Take heart,” she says. “It will come.” 

Then Jesus took the bread and, having given thanks, gave it to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish. All ate as much as they wanted. 

Katie didn’t see that woman again for the rest of the assembly. “It’s hard for me to believe she even exists outside of that moment,” Katie said.

And that’s not all. Over the next two days, notifications came in from Paypal that donations had arrived from other pastors; one had even set up a recurrent donations. A friend wrote to Katie to offer her considerable administrative talents to help the church realize its plan for long-term sustainability.

Another pastor called, saying that her church had voted to include Galileo in their outreach budget; the check would be mailed before she got home from the assembly. The next morning, a journalist who heard somehow about Galileo emailed offering free publicity in a metroplex magazine.[i]

“There’s a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But that’s a drop in the bucket for a crowd like this.”

Meanwhile, outside the convention center:

Sandra Bland.

Carson Holmquist. David Wyatt. Skip Wells. Thomas J. Sullivan.

Mayci Breaux. Jillian Johnson.

Maybe we don’t have the energy to tackle all. the. things. All the heartbreak. All the injustice. Maybe we do the math Philip did, and we discover that there are just too many problems, too much brokenness and too little time, too little money.

We could get stuck in that kind of contrived calculus.

Or we could focus on what Jesus did: What DO we have?

What are we willing to offer for the sake of others?

Are we afraid it’s not enough?

When the people had eaten their fill, [Jesus] said to his disciples, “Gather the leftovers so nothing is wasted.” They went to work and filled twelve large baskets with leftovers from the five barley loaves.[ii]

I don’t think the issue is not having enough. Enough to make a difference. Enough to speak up. Enough to offer. The issue is NOT not having enough. The issue is we can’t afford for any of our abundance to be wasted.

That was Paul’s prayer for the early church:

That the church would experience the divine power at work within them that is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3).

That was God’s hope for the 5,000:

[That] the people [would] realize that God was at work among them in what Jesus had just done (John 6).

That was John the Baptizer’s truth before anyone even knew Jesus’ name:

From his fullness we all have received, grace upon grace (John 1:16).

[i] As told by Katie Hays, What Had Happened Was, www.galileochurch.org. Posted July 24, 2015. Read full post here.

[ii] John 6:1-15, The Message.