We took the majority of Sunday's sermon time to share all the feelings, fears, and wonderings you wrote in your Sanctuary Resurrection feedback cards. We read every card unless the contributor requested their feedback be private.
You can read or watch/listen to all the responses here.
After we shared all your thoughts, Rev. Sara held it in a brief reflection. You can read the reflection below the video, as always.
As you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.
Paul is talking here to the church in Corinth about fundraising, actually. The church in Jerusalem is struggling financially, and Paul is traveling all over the known world to raise money for them. I imagine some of the Corinthian Christians were totally on board. “Yes, of course! Jerusalem is where Jesus died and did so much of his ministry. What do they need?”
But clearly others are reluctant. If they weren’t, Paul wouldn’t be praising their excellence in everything. Buttering them up, so to speak.
But Paul is also, as always, talking about the Body of Christ.
I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.
I think about this after hearing all your thoughts about our Sanctuary Resurrection, about transitioning from pews to chairs. I hear your excitement. I hear your grief. I hear your concern. I hear your hope.
Being the Body of Christ means each of us bringing who we are—our wisdom, our skills, our feelings, our bodies—to our common life while also opening ourselves to the wisdom, skills, feelings, and bodies of every other person in our community. We trust, as Paul says, that the abundance each of us embodies will meet the need of another, and the abundance that others embody will meet our own needs.
Being the Body of Christ means finding a fair balance, as Paul says, between all of our abundance and all of our needs. And, as Paul knows, that’s not always easy.
In this one chapter of Second Corinthians, Paul uses the Greek word charis six times. The primary meaning of the word charis is grace. But, as our own Bible translation shows us, grace is such a hard word to pin down. It’s translated in this one chapter as: “privilege,” “generous undertaking,” “generous act,” and “thanks.”
From what I can tell, grace is about making space for the fullness of others and the fullness of yourself. It’s about giving and receiving. It’s about trusting that our gifts and our limitations, our accomplishments and our mistakes, our abundance and our needs are all important, all essential to our mutual thriving. That’s what the Body of Christ means.
I heard the gifts, the accomplishments, the abundance of our community named in those feedback cards, and I heard the limitations and the needs. We need all of those things, together, to find the fair balance. To be the Body of Christ. So I hope most of all that this Sanctuary Resurrection project, this transition from pews to chairs, is an endeavor of grace.
Amen.
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