Saint Benedict Episcopal Church

Being mechanically inclined is not my gift. If you ever saw me swing a hammer or try to assemble something, you’d know this in two seconds flat. Most times, I end up hitting my fingers or forcing the wrong tab into the wrong slot.

God truly has a sense of humor.

Several years ago, before entering seminary, I worked at a children’s museum of science technology and industry where I was assigned to write a curriculum on building and inventing. When I first was tasked with this project, I thought I’d never be able to do the job— I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around how I might teach children something that I don’t even pretend to understand or know. However, with time and consideration, I began to realize my job was to pull together the people who lived for mechanical sciences—people who were passionate about this work and wanted to share it with children. My work was to dream, gather and facilitate their learning with the help of those who were so gifted in this area. I was blessed to have several gifted engineers who volunteered to lead and teach in the class. My work was to call them to transform the life of the children who were coming to this spring break science camp.

One of my favorite volunteers from the museum told me something that has been echoing in my head over the past few weeks. He said that the real gift of mechanical thinking was not in taking things apart, the imagination and gift came in putting things back together once you have taken it apart.

I believe his wisdom is sticking in my mind for many reasons. Right now, I feel like so many things in our church are in a place of having been disassembled or undone- and undone for good and necessary reasons. We have a new strategic plan and vision to guide us, we are in the process of searching for two new staff persons, we have new faces visiting us on Sunday morning and we long for new people to be invited into discipleship and leadership, but how do we go about integrating them into our life so that they not only feel welcomed, but find a place at the table amongst us as disciples. We are trying new things with announcements, we have a new slate of Bishop’s Committee Members, we have taken a much needed break from the Edinburgh Fair, and from our Worship Committee, however we have a need for community building, fundraising and liturgical leadership.

Man oh man, hearing all that brings to mind a picture of a car engine disassembled on a sheet and a guy, saying, uh-uh now what?  Or I think of one of those very challenging 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. There is much that needs to be put together.

So, how can we go about putting this puzzle together? The key answer is in the WE of this statement and it is something for all of us to reflect on.

For me, it is easy to get overwhelmed, to take on too much responsibility and to rush to find answers or to fill in the void. Since my time as Museum Educator, I haven’t changed all that much—I still wonder how am I going to all of this? When really, it isn’t all mine to do—it is ours to do together.  Together all of us with our variety of gifts assemble the church in ways that make it work and when we do so, it transforms us. I remember at the museum, being overwhelmed for days as I read mechanical principles wondering how I might teach them until finally, my executive director said, “we didn’t hire you for your mechanical skills—we hired you for your imagination and ability to inspire people.”  OH… I thought.  You mean I don’t have to do EVERYTHING?

My Lenten journey this year focused on my own sinful nature of being overly responsible for everything. More than anything else in my life, I secretly in my heart of hearts believe that if I work hard enough, I’ll be saved. So, I take on lots of things and do too much.  Then somewhere along the line, my old friend, the Holy Spirit comes along with a two by four and whaps me up-side the head. In my case, the whap this time was one heck of a case of Bronchitis.

I could feel myself asking for weeks, how will I do this? How will I do this? How will I do this? How ironic that I focused Lent on letting go of my overly active sense of responsibility only to be overwhelmed by it!

So, together we assemble this Body of Christ together with our gifts and our skills, not just some of us or one of us on our behalf—the whole community working together makes the Body of Christ—all of us, we the baptized.

As we get into Easter and Pentecost, my hope is that your Bishop’s Committee will begin to choose some priorities of our Strategic Plan and will begin to present them to our community and talk about how all of this will create and do the ministry of the church together in a way that uses many hands and many gifts. The word we use to describe worship—liturgy means the work of the people or the public works. All of the work of our church is the work of all of us.

This place of being undone—is not an easy place for us, but it is not a new place for us to find ourselves in. I can’t imagine how undone those earliest disciples must have felt in the wake of Christ’s death and resurrection. Imagine the terror and grief of losing that teacher and friend. Imagine the joy of finding that Rabbi once again in new places and in ways and visions, but imagine how terribly different that resurrection was for these followers of Christ. 

Everything was undone and made new by resurrection. If you have any doubt at the wide range of feelings and actions after the resurrection, I invite you to read the book of Acts that book the chronicles the building up of the church. The disciples put together the church in the wake of the resurrection, in the wake of new life, in the wake of everything they knew being undone.

And so it is for us as well in this Eastertide to fearlessly know that God invites us ALL of us to assemble and re-member the body of Christ by our presence in the Eucharist and by our ministry to others within and outside the church. All of us do this work of remembering the body of Christ that we call the Church.

As a favorite hymn of mine says it best:

“The church of Christ in every age beset by change but spirit led, Must claim and test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead.”  (Fredrich Pratt: 1903)

May all of us be called and transformed to fearlessly transform and build the body of Christ…

Yes, some assembly is required.