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2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10 What do you see? 6/12/16

Some of you may not know Almeda Lewis. She and her family were the first black family to move into her block of Rokeby Rd. back here behind the church in 1968. She became a member of Hunting Ridge in 1999. She was an ordained ruling elder. But in my 5 years here, she has not once set foot in this building due to her failing health. Our only contact with her has been through calls or visits to her. Almeda Lewis had a birthday one week before she died. She was 94. For the past several years she has basically been living in a bed. In a bed in a room in a care facility. In a bed because her body was wasting away. Already thin, she got thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker. The outer nature, the physical body, the “tent” she was living in for 94 years, was coming to the end of its usefulness. Her family knew it. She knew it. In recent weeks, she and they knew it was soon time to move into the house built by God. She would be moving into the permanent house that cannot be seen from here.

As we talked together this week, Almeda and I wondered about what that house might look like. She was sure it would be big. I was sure it would be comfortable. We both agreed there would be a lot of music going on. And that we will be welcomed with open arms. Living in God’s house will clearly be different from living in a tent. Like those clay pots we talked about last week, tents are temporary. The apostle Paul offers encouragement to his peeps in Corinth, telling them not to lose heart, to be confident. To be confident that there is a lot more to life than what meets the eye. To be confident that there is a house not built by human hands which is always ready for move-in day. There is a song by Audio Adrenaline in our summertime Faith Place on Friday curriculum called Big House, imagining what this house not made with human hands might be like. Maybe you know it. Here is part of it: Come and go with me to my Father’s house. It’s a big big house With lots and lots a room A big big table With lots and lots of food A big big yard Where we can play football A big big house It’s my Father’s house.

A big house means lots of room. And its a big house you don’t have to worry about cleaning or furnishing or maintaining. It’s a big house filled with people you have never met who are family you’ve always known. A big house where you fit right in. Be confident, says Paul. Whatever you are struggling with while you are housed in this body—this tent—is not going to last forever. What you see is not what you get. There is so much more to life than what you can see.

This week I had the opportunity to speak with the woman who leads the African dance ensemble which performed at the Strawberry Festival last week, Jewel Wilson. She raved about the event, the diversity of the crowd, and the joy of being a part of it. Then she said—there was a lot more going on that you could not see. She meant that perceptions were being challenged and barriers were being cracked. People from different neighborhoods laughed, jump-roped, and danced together. There was the universal attraction to the drums which she was used to seeing, I am sure. But then there was the black woman showing the white teens how she jumps rope. There was the older white guy working the grill next to the young black guy. There were brown and black and white hands serving side by side as you collected your hamburger and chips. If you were a kid living in an all black or an all white neighborhood, you saw something very different on our front lawn than what you see every day when you walk out your door. You really got a picture of life in God’s big, big house on God’s big, big lawn. There was a lot more going on than we could see.

Paul wants his readers to be reminded that this is not all there is. When we look around at the level of violence, the amount of trash on the streets, the drug deals that happen boldly in front of our eyes, police officers being tried for murder, and the number of people needing food from 40 West, (which, by the way, is in great need of food for the pantry shelves—make a mental note to bring canned or dry goods with you to church next Sunday)—when we see all that is going on around us physically, we can get depressed or angry or both. Angry is better, because then there is more chance we will do something about it. When we simply look at the world around us and see it as a lost cause, we are letting the visible control the invisible. What can be seen is temporary. It is what cannot be seen that is lasting. Paul says, we walk by faith, not by sight. That means we don’t let what we see limit our forward direction. God works in ways you can not see. God works on renewing the inner nature, the part unseen.

Let me offer a couple of examples. God has done something to the Hernan family to make them work their summer schedule around taking a return trip to serve at the Lakota Reservation in Minnesota later this summer. That includes lots of meetings, trainings and even reading a book to learn more about native American culture. God has done something to those adults who have agreed to teach this summer in our Faith Place on Fridays experiment, creating a willingness to give up Friday nights, to prepare for a lesson, and to better get to know a teaching partner. At first glance, you might think a crowd of 30 kids is just a noisy crowd. But 30 kids saw on Friday night that adults care about them, that the church is a comfortable place to play and learn and use their creative abilities.

Perhaps walking by faith means staying attuned to what is going on under the surface, recognizing that there is always a lot more going on than what you can see on the outside. Walking by faith involves a level of trust in God and God’s hand at work all around you. It is possible to breeze through life and not notice God’s hand. It is possible to think that what you see is what you get, and nothing more. I choose to walk by faith, to not only trust what I can see, but trust the One who helps me to see different possibilities, different outcomes, different gifts at work. What do you see? Amen.

Acts 2:1-4/I Cor. 12:1-13 5.15.16

Gifts given by God are meant to be used for the good of the community, that means not for self preservation or prestige, but so that we can impact the world outside of the church. Since we are at the tail end of our 50 day attempt to better care for God’s creation, let me share with you an example of using gifts for the good of the community at large: a community solar system. That is not a solar system that revolves just around one community. It is a system of solar panels, a solar panel array, built by and for a community, not just one home or one business.

Community solar is an effort to use economy of scale to make solar energy available to households for whom it otherwise would be out of reach. We have neighbors who rent their home or live in an apartment, neighbors who cannot afford to install their own solar panels, neighbors who do not have good enough credit to buy solar panels, neighbors who have too many trees or their roof faces the wrong direction. There are lots of reasons people are unable to access solar energy alone. Now there is a way to access it as a group. It is an effort to pull various community players together to do something positive for our environment and to reduce energy costs. It turns out that Hunting Ridge actually does not have enough flat space to be an effective host for a community solar system. Our roof is too steep. The cost of the project goes up if a carport has to be constructed over the parking lot, and the lot is not large enough to be effective. Hosting the solar panels for a community is not our gift. But we do pay our bills and have good credit (in general). Those gifts, or resources, put us in a place where we can potentially be an sponsoring partner with other institutions to help locate the right place to install the panels, and to work together as a team on setting the parameters of who will be able to subscribe to the project. As a subscriber to the project ourselves, our church would receive the benefits of energy credits on our monthly bill as well. Our Maryland legislature just approved a bill this spring to make it possible to create community solar projects in our state, and West Baltimore is one of the first locations for pilot projects. With the right sized solar array, we might be able to service 200 or more households, with a percentage of them being low income neighbors anywhere in the BGE service area. None of us could do this kind of project alone. In addition to physical space and good credit, the capital outlay is huge. Other gifts are needed– investors who will put the money up front in order to get the panels installed, and then subscriber families or institutions who will pay into a fund which will then give them a return on their investment. BGE is required by the State to participate, serving as the energy supplier, keeping track of the amount of solar energy provided to the grid and giving credit on the monthly energy bills of subscribers.

Conversations are just beginning. The search is on for a host for the solar panels and potential sponsoring institutions. Nothing can happen until the fall when the new law comes into effect. Hunting Ridge may or may not be a partner, but community solar is coming to West Baltimore, and is a current illustration of what Paul is trying to say to the church in Corinth.

We have been looking for several weeks at this unruly group of Christians in Corinth, Greece. Throughout this first letter, Paul is trying to rein them in alternately with words of encouragement, words of instruction, words of chastisement and words of praise. That they are a multicultural congregation we have already established. That they are having some conflicts with one another we have already noticed. At this point in his letter, chapter 12, Paul is reminding them of the source and the purpose of these gifts with which they have been blessed. These same gifts which have caused some competition and resulted in hurt feelings.

Seems like they had forgotten that a gift can never have been yours to begin with, it is always something you receive. You can’t take credit for a gift you get for your birthday or for mother’s day, even if it is what you asked for. A gift comes from someone else. Paul is speaking of the gifts given by the Holy Spirit. Again and again he repeats, emphasizing that each gift is from the same Spirit. For Paul, the purpose of the gifts are to create unity in the community, a unity of diverse members, but a unity which becomes visible to others and invites others in.

That was the purpose of the gift of the Holy Spirit on that Pentecost day, when a group of wimpy disciples huddled together in a room suddenly received the gift of being able to communicate, to speak the news about Jesus in a way they had never been able to before. People took notice that day, for sure. You took notice this morning, didn’t you, as the languages filled our sanctuary during the reading? If you read on in chapter 2 of Acts, the church was born that day because the Spirit enabled the story to be told in multiple languages, people paid attention, and at least 3000 decided to join the church. Some of the crowd were skeptical, and there always will be some of those, won’t there? If we let skeptics have their way all kinds of amazing projects would never take off.

The Spirit pours out many gifts, because many gifts are needed. Paul lists nine of them here–wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracle working, prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues and interpreting tongues. He has another list at the end of the chapter, and yet another in Romans chapter 12. Teachers, preachers, helpers, givers, leaders. And none of his lists are exhaustive. Like any good preacher, he gives you a few examples so you get the point. Perhaps recognizing our own gifts is not as important as acknowledging the gifts of one another, finding ways that our gifts can complement one another as we together make up a community of faith. More important is giving thanks for the gifts of one another, empowering one another to put those gifts into practice. You received a flame in your bulletin this morning. It describes a gift given by the Spirit. Maybe you resonate with it, maybe you don’t. My challenge to you on this Pentecost day is to identify someone you know who has exhibited this gift and pass the flame along to him or her. You might see them in person, you might send them an email, or just call them on the phone to tell them about it. Sometimes you see a gift in another person that he or she totally misses when looking in the mirror!

The gifts from the Spirit are power. We use the metaphors of wind- power and fire-power, the colors of flames and the rushing sound of a strong wind. These metaphors are taken from the images we find in the book of Acts from that birth-day. But all the metaphors point to the gifts as the awesome power of God. The gifts provide power for the recipient to keep on keeping on in the everyday work of God right here. The gifts provide power for this community, this family, to attract others. The gifts are given for the life and health of the community as a whole, not for the individual alone. If you have the gift of speaking but have no one to speak to, it is kind of useless. If you have the gift of healing, but are not a part of a community which needs healing, you have nothing to do. If you speak in ecstatic tongues and have no one to interpret them for you, it is just between you and God, with no meaning for anyone else.

Wind power is nothing special unless it is put to work. Gifts of the Spirit ignored create a powerless community, or maybe a non-community of isolated individuals who can’t see giftedness in anyone. Gifts of the Spirit are to be used and shared. So too, flames burning unattended cause damage, not heat for warmth or cooking. Gifts of the Spirit always run the risk of becoming an obsession, a weapon, a divisive tool. Gifts of the Spirit must be attended so that they are used to unite a community of believers. And, remember, gifts of the Spirit are free. Happy Birthday, church!