Adventure

Posted on Tue, Jan 3, 2012

Diane Eubanks Hill

“Adventure” Isaiah 43:15-21

Diane Eubanks Hill Mark 8:14, 17-21

January 1, 2012 Watts Street Baptist Church

I’ve enjoyed considering the myriad of directions I could go with this meditation for New Year’s Day. Likely most of us first think about resolutions, or perhaps forgiveness for past mistakes and courage to make changes in the New Year. I wonder what direction you would have gone had this opportunity been yours. I have decided to focus on challenge and gifts, both for each of us personally and for this congregation.

The truth is that none of us has any idea about what challenges and what pleasant surprises await us in the New Year. Certainly our life, and our life together in this congregation, is an adventure. When we’re on an adventure, we’re not in control. Lots of unknowns await us. Although we’re called to respond with wisdom and love, we certainly don’t know the exact form of the outcome, nor can we snap our fingers, or click the heels of our red shoes and make everything OK.

In our Gospel lesson, the disciples face a significant challenge. They’ve surrounded by a crowd of hungry people and convinced that they don’t have the resources needed. Jesus challenges their hopelessness, reminding them that in the past He has multiplied their meager gifts, so that everyone had what was needed. Ah, but the disciples quickly forget.

Some of you face tremendous personal challenges. From the past, they continue on through the painful present, and likely will be with you in the future. Your challenges may have to do with health, or with money, or with your seeming inability to do what you need to do. Or, maybe your challenge takes the form of difficult family relationships. Maybe you’re being abused. Perhaps you face challenges related to your job, or to joblessness. Maybe you struggle against the powerful forces of an addiction. Or, perhaps depression has its hold on you. 

My hunch is that at many points in the past, God’s grace has shown itself to be sufficient. You’ve faced painful challenges, and, with God’s help and the support of your faith community, you’ve come through those challenges. Like the disciples, you may be tempted now to forget that God can take meager gifts and multiply them, so that you have what’s needed.

Individually, we stand at the start of a new year. In the life of this congregation, we also stand at a new door. We work now to wrap our minds around Mel’s upcoming retirement, and what this fact means to us as individuals and as a church. We grieve, and grief takes energy. We must give ourselves time to grieve. Each of us will do this work in our own unique way, but we’ll also come together to grieve as a congregation, just as we’ll come together to celebrate Mel and his many gifts to us and to our community.

Even while we grieve, we look on beyond our grief to the future. Our Isaiah text bears God’s reassuring promise: “I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” 

This congregation has not walked through this door of pastoral transition since 1988. Some churches may be tempted to see an interim period as wilderness days, but I don’t think this is true for Watts Street. I sense that our congregation faces this transition with confidence. Ours is a very strong congregation. We have lots of competent and committed lay people who step up to the plate when the need arises. We see transitions as opportunities for taking an honest look at who we are, and for making new commitments as well as re-commitments.

Instead of reacting, we respond thoughtfully. We’re open to the future and to challenges and opportunities that may come our way. We approach the next year and the next era in our church life with confidence, and with faith in the God who has led us to this point.

As we face this upcoming transition, may we remember that within this congregation lie the gifts needed to thrive during the coming transition. I believe we’ll see person after person step forward to help pick up the nearest edge of a great need, and carry on. I also challenge us to remember that “(N)o gift is unimportant. There are no lesser gifts. Each is crucial to the proper functioning of the Body; each contributes to the rich diversity needed by the Church for its work….” (Eighth Day of Creation by Elizabeth O’Connor) 

During the transition we are called to commit our God-given gifts to continuing the mission and ministries which God has set before us, to responding to new challenges or calls, and to taking care of the people, both within the congregation and beyond.

I believe that one of the ways I can help with this transition is by continuing to care for you wonderful folks in this congregation, and to this task I dedicate myself. I wonder if it is that herein lies a challenge for each of us: to be especially vigilant during the transition about giving high priority to caring for each other and for those beyond this congregation.

Fred Craddock, noted preacher and story teller, recounts the experience of a friend who was a missionary in China. He was under house arrest when the solders came to tell him and his family that they could return to the US. “You may take 200 pounds with you.” After many tough decisions, they had everything packed. “Did you weigh the kids?” the guards asked. “No, we didn’t.” “Weigh the kids.” And in a moment, their valued possessions were discarded. The people in this congregation and beyond are rich gifts from God. 

What gifts are you being called to invest in the New Year? Where are you being called to let your light shine?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, take our meager gifts and multiply them. Free us so that we let our light shine. Help us to live generous lives, to offer our gifts, to you and to each other, so that the miracle of your grace and love, made known to us in the baby Jesus, may fill this world with your love. Amen

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