Becoming the story of Christ

A sermon preached at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Quebec City

Readings: Genesis 18:1-15; Psalm 116:1, 10-17; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35—10:8

"I want to go to church."

These were not the words our tree planting crew expected to hear from our friend and crewmate—the snowboarder.

You see this friend lived a life very much unlike our own. Whereas so many of us were driven to tree planting for the sake of industry, to save up for university, our friend the snowboarder planted trees to save up just enough to let her spend the rest of the year ripping down the slopes and having a good time. She travelled from country to country, following the snow conditions. Not for Olympic glory, just because she loved it. Her life was a party.

Strangely, our tree planting crew ended up being a group of mostly leftist Christian university students, and so we would spend many of our days on the block complaining about capitalism and black flies, and talking about the church as a revolutionary community.

One day, in the midst of one of these conversations, our friend the snowboarder asked us:

"You keep talking about Jesus and this amazing community the church. I'd love to see what this church you keep talking about looks like. I want to go to church."

We looked at each other, a bit shocked, and a bit embarrassed, because the church that we talked about wasn't actually the church we expected we could find. The church we talked about was more like a principle than a group of people living in the interior of Northern British Columbia.

But our friend the snowboarder insisted we take her.

So we brought her to the very small local church we had sometimes passed on our way to the block. Quietly ambling into the back, we stuck out like sore thumbs in the 60-person congregation dressed in its Sunday best. When the worship leader began wheeling out the overhead projector with a pile of well-worn transparencies scrawled with the guitar chords for praise music, we were certain we had made a terrible mistake.

That feeling grew stronger as the preacher took to the pulpit to tell us to stop getting high on spirits, and to stick to the Holy Spirit. We shrank in our chairs.

You see, like many migratory workers, tree planters were not always welcome in these small towns. Some saw us as dirty and delinquent—we were often distrusted.

We were so certain our fieldtrip was failing miserably. We couldn't have been more wrong.

As the final chord of the last song rang through the air, like Abraham at the oaks of Mamre, two families from the church ran over to us in the summer heat, and began fighting between them who would take us home and feed us—deciding one would take us for lunch, the other for supper.

At their ranches, these families fed us with all the luxuries tree planters dreamed of: giant bowls of ice cream, barbecued burgers and even ice-cold beer. They let us use their shower, nap on their sofas, watch movies on their TV. They even gave us a pair of their horses to go for a trail ride.

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas wrote:

"Christianity is not a philosophy that can be learned separate from those who embody it. If the truth could be known 'in principle' then we would not need apostles. But the way the gospel is known is by one person being for another person the story of Christ." (Hauerwas, Matthew, 106)

These people in small town British Columbia became for us, became for our friend the snowboarder, the story of Christ.

A story like Abraham's that begins with a radical welcome. An invitation to a stranger to share a meal given in the heat of the day. It is this act of welcoming, of invitation, of feeding, that becomes the seeds of a promise of abundance that God offers to Sarah and Abraham.

When we think of evangelism, I think we have this view of uncomfortable speeches, awkward exhortations, and cheesy gimmicks. But as Abraham shows us, at the heart of God's promise to us is the invitation to a meal.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus sharpens this invitation further, directing it toward specific people: those in need of guidance and healing. Jesus surveys the crowd, sees their need for leadership and healing, and steps up to meet those needs. He has compassion on the crowd, and he heals every sickness.

But the demands of the people surpass his capacity to meet them. A community of support is needed to meet the great number of needs. And so he tells the people to pray that more labourers will take up this work, and he sends his own disciples as a response to that prayer:

"…go," he tells them, "proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons." (Matthew 10:7-8)

Do as Jesus does.

As the theologian Anna Case-Winters describes,

"The pattern Jesus set for the mission of his disciples (then and now) is attentiveness to suffering. It is by attentiveness to the suffering of others that we discover our mission." (Case-Winters, Matthew)

If evangelism begins with hospitality, then hospitality begins with attentiveness—being attentive to the needs of the suffering stranger, and being attentive to how we might be able to assist with those needs. And to know our limits when we cannot.

Like Jesus, there will be times when the needs of those who suffer go beyond our capacity, go beyond what we can offer. And that is why Jesus sends out not individuals, but a community of disciples, so that together we might be able to bring healing to the world in ways we could never do alone.

That is the revolutionary community called the church.

It is not an ideal. It is not a principle.

It is you: a gathering of real people, with real problems, in real places—people welcoming one another, people welcoming the stranger, people who find the promises of God fulfilled through that welcome, people who find their God-given mission through attentiveness to the world's suffering.

And yet, it is important to recognize: being attentive to suffering, being in solidarity with those who suffer, will lead to our own suffering. But this suffering—the suffering that comes from engaging in our apostolic witness—is a suffering that St. Paul reminds us we can boast in, because:

"suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

Suffering, in other words, is not the last word. The last word is God's love.

We are all called to be evangelists of this love. To be for another the story of Christ.

So how will you be the story of Christ for another this week? Whose suffering might you be called to attend to, and how can you help bring healing? Where are your limits? And how can you call on the wider community to help?

Maybe it's as simple as an invitation to a meal or a cup of coffee, an invitation to attend to another.

Back at the ranch:

At the end of the day, refreshed in ways we had not been since we began tree planting, in ways we had never expected to find at this church, our friend the snowboarder looked up at us and said:

"Those guys were awesome! So this is what all this Jesus stuff, this church you keep mentioning, is all about."

The ranchers had become for her the story of Christ.

May we, like them, become the story of Christ for others.