Three years ago when we last had this gospel passage I told a true story about a friend of mine who worked for one of the bishops in California. It seems even more relevant now than it did back then. The bishop was away so he called back to the diocese. “John,” he asked, “how are things going.” John, being something of a jokester, answered, “Bishop, you wouldn’t believe it. The blind are seeing, the captives are released, the oppressed are going free and the poor have good news preached to them.” “Cut the nonsense,” said the bishop, “what is really going on.” It seems the bishop couldn’t even imagine that work of the church in the twenty-first century would have much in common with the work that Jesus laid out for himself when he gave his mission statement in his home town of Nazareth. Jesus read from Isaiah because that passage describes what he planned to do with his life. My guess is that the bishop thought of his mission statement as more in line with another saying of Jesus we call the Great Commission found at the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them (Matthew 28:19-20). These two statements are not antithetical but they are not identical either. Bringing healing, liberation and good news is not the same as incorporating, baptizing and teaching. How we understand these two different mission statements as applying to St. James takes on a certain urgency for us as we enter the Renew My Church process. We are being asked to look at how we are being church today and will be in the future. Do we judge a church as successful when it has full pews, does lots of baptisms and marriages every year and has a large religious education program? Or are we looking for a church which works hard to make everyone feel welcome, reaches out to address the needs of the neighborhood and is attentive the hurts and wounds that impact the bodies and souls of so many? Should we see the world as full of potential recruits or as people in need of care? Certainly a church can live out both these models but where do we as St. James want to come down?
An answer that might tie both these models of church together lies in the epistle for today where St. Paul gives yet another model of Church – that of a body. The Apostle’s emphasis is not so much the Church’s attitude toward the world as it is on the way we choose to operate with one another. St. Paul wants us to think in terms of giftedness. Each individual has a gift to give, a role to play in making the body that is the church come alive. If I don’t give my gift, something will be missing, some aspect of our life together will be incomplete. No one individual is expected to have every gift but every individual does have some gift. Just as in the human body, in the plan and providence of God the body which is the Church needs everyone to play their part in order to be healthy. We can see this very dramatically in a small parish like St. James. We don’t have the luxury of having I’m-just-a-Sunday-in-the-pew type Catholic here. We need everyone to give your particular gift if we are to thrive as a parish. There are no insignificant contributions since even the seemingly smallest gift makes the whole alive and well. Anyone who has ever had an ingrown toe nail can attest that little things can make a big difference. Every word of welcome we extend to one another, every prayer we say for one another, every call we make to one another, every time we listen to one another, every hour we work to help one another all contributes to make St. James what it is meant to be in the eyes of God.
Here’s the thought for today: what if we envisioned not just of our parish but of the entire Church as a body, each part having a contribution to make. What if we thought of parishes not as isolated islands each needing to be self-sufficient on their own and instead imagined local churches as an interconnected neural network. That would mean that every parish would not need to have all the gifts to live comfortably in a self-satisfied silo. Instead we would look to one another to see how each member brought their particular gift to the table. In this model each parish would bring its gift into the larger mix. Instead of competing for members like used car salesmen seeking to lure as many customers as possible into the lot, we understand that some people have gifts which fit better in one model of church than in another. The body, the church, in this vision would find ways to cooperate and collaborate so that the entire spectrum of the mission we have inherited from Jesus would be the care and responsibility of those who are gifted to fulfill it.
We live in a society which tends to operate like a zero sum game. In a zero sum game if I win, you lose, more for me means less for you, what I have you don’t have. Flip a coin and call it. Heads. You win, I lose. That kind of thinking can impact the Church when we look at other parishes as the competition. But there is another way of operating called a win-win scenario. At Christmas, say, your Auntie gave you a sweater and your brother a shirt. You really needed a shirt not a sweater and your brother really needed a sweater. You swap. Win-win. Can we as a Church think win-win? What we do at St. James benefits all the parishes in the area. What other parishes do benefits St. James. Together we make a greater impact on the neighborhood than each of us could do individually. You give your gift, I give mine and together we truly Renew My Church.
