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The business of faith

Annual meeting day is usually about how we come together as the body of Christ.  The business of the church is holy business.  I’ve heard some folks feel weird talking about business stuff in the sanctuary, as though things like council elections and budgets belong somewhere else, and the sanctuary is the place for only worshiping God, with the expectation that worship looks like exactly this, singing hymns, chanting psalms, celebrating Sacraments, and hearing the Scripture read aloud and proclaimed in preaching. 

 

Or perhaps this is the only place for worshiping God, as if God’s not right outside the doors of the sanctuary too.  As if there’s anywhere God cannot go, as if God can’t be worshiped at all times and in all places.   

 

Today’s readings, if you pay attention to the locations, give us all the places where God is present and where worship can properly happen: in the reading from Nehemiah, the people of God gather where to hear the Scriptures read aloud?  In the square before the Water Gate—outside in the public space, perhaps appreciating what wouldn’t have been possible while the people of God were in exile.  The psalm says the heavens are telling the glory of God, over all the lands—you can hardly put limits around the sky.  Paul writes a letter to encourage the community in Corinth, rejoicing in God from a distance, perhaps in Ephesus, not that his letters were limited to times when he was free, since Paul also sometimes wrote letters from inside a prison cell.  And in the gospel lesson, Jesus gathered for worship and teaching with his fellow Jewish believers in the local synagogue in the town where he grew up.  

 

People probably thought they knew what to expect when a local kid gets up to read Scripture.  Perhaps the worshipers who were gathered that day in Nazareth thought they knew God well enough that they didn’t have anything new to learn, maybe God could not surprise them.  And then Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah, and his entire comment on that Scripture is this: today this has been fulfilled in your hearing, right now. 

 

This is when Jesus goes too far—is he really equating himself with God?  Read ahead in this story and the people of the town try to throw Jesus off a cliff.  When prophets speak, their good news is not good news for everyone.  Prophets speak words of hope for people who are vulnerable, hope for people who are afraid. 

 

That means change will happen.  It feels unstable and unsettling for the folks who are getting by just fine, and a message of hope is threatening for people whose power depends upon keeping life unstable.  But prophetic messages don’t exist to reinforce the world’s systems of power; the hope belongs to the people who cannot keep going in the systems of the world-as-it-is. 

 

A prophetic message can come from a pulpit, inside a building dedicated for a particular way of worshiping God.  A prophetic message of hope can be as simple as a plea for mercy when the worshiping assembly includes someone with great power in this world.  That is, apparently, just as upsetting as Jesus in Nazareth, claiming the Spirit of God upon himself. 

 

But don’t think that just because you’re not a preacher, you’re exempt from prophetic proclamation or prophetic action—nope!  Hello, fellow members of the body of Christ!  I’m talking to YOU!  We’re all in this together! 

 

I read in Sojourners magazine a quote from a Jesuit priest and anti-war activist, Daniel Berrigan, who wrote a book of commentary on the prophet Isaiah.  Berrigan acknowledges the challenges of speaking as a prophet in a world that thrives on outrage and war.  He wrote, “Just as despair is the ignoble stock-in-trade of the world’s systems, hope is the noble stock-in-trade of the prophet.”[1] 

 

This is to say: hope is our business.  This is the business of the church.  What we’re selling is hope, and the supply is limitless because our supplier is God.  Our dividends are not in money because we’re collecting nothing in return for all this hope except for the grace that God heaps upon us. 

 

This is how we manifest God’s purpose.  Maybe you’ve heard people use the word manifesting, as though it means “if I want this thing enough, it will magically appear.”  Like manifesting is about your goals or the things you want in life, so you put it on your vision board with the expectation that the thing will manifest and show up in your life: the job or the wealth or the car or the handbag or the partner of your dreams. 

 

And I’m not saying it’s bad to have goals or a vision board, but what we’re manifesting as people of faith is not material goods. 

 

The word manifest just means that a thing is made obvious, “readily perceived by the senses.”[2]

God is the one who is manifesting.  God is showing up—God is manifesting—in the world through ordinary people, like every one of us.  God is manifesting through ordinary situations like our daily lives.  God is manifesting through material things all the time.  It’s like God made a vision board and you are on it. 

 

And what is God’s vision for the world? 

Isn’t it all the stuff Jesus was naming when he read from the prophet Isaiah? 

Isn’t it God’s vision to bring good news to the poor, to those people who are jobless, who are hungry, who are unhoused, who are drowning in medical debt? 

Isn’t it God’s vision to release the captives, the ones who are unjustly imprisoned, the ones who are held captive by addictions or by depression? 

Isn’t it God’s vision to restore sight to those who cannot see, those who cannot see their neighbors in need, those who cannot see the power they have, those who cannot see the good news right in front of them? 

Isn’t it God’s vision to set free the ones who are oppressed, those who are not honored for their personhood, those who are forced into rigid gender binaries that seek to limit who God made them to be? 

 

God’s vision is what drives this congregation’s business.  God’s vision of hope for all people, God’s mercy to those who are cast aside.  God is manifesting this vision through us, through ordinary human beings, just as God has always done.  We submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit to form us into the Body of Christ—each individual part is necessary.  We all have a story to tell, and anyone could be called upon to deliver a prophetic message.  You might be the one manifesting, making God’s mercy obvious to anyone. 

 

Prophetic speech and prophetic action—it doesn’t have to be complicated or fearful or boring.  We could put the fest in manifest.  We could manifest God’s vision by living lives of hope, trusting in the mercy of God that is our foundation.  On this Sunday when we recall our connections as a Reconciling in Christ congregation, we can celebrate the diversity of all God’s children, all the colors of the rainbow, all the genders of the spectrum, all the creation of God. 

You can refuse to let someone other than God tell you who you are. 

 

We are in the business of hope.  We are fulfilling God’s vision by proclaiming hope in God, the hope we know in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, acknowledging that death and pain and sin are real, and abundant life is really real. 

 

We worship God and welcome all to nurture a community of harmony, healing, and justice—where have you heard that before?  It’s our congregation’s purpose statement.  We worship God with our love, with our lives, with our welcome—it’s our purpose.  Hope is our business. 


Amen. 


Pastor Cheryl

 


[1] From Daniel Berrigan’s Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, seen in Sojourners Magazine’s “Living the Word” column for January 2025, by Celeste Kennel-Shank, Issue Jan/Feb 2025, page 46. 

[2] Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/manifest



 


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