Serving Wealth

Sometimes all it takes is the persistence of a few friends.

Jim and I were hiking over in the red river gorge of Kentucky a few years ago. We were slowly climbing to the top of this natural bridge in the area. The path was not easy going up or coming down. There were a gazillion stairs, a super muddy section, a fat man’s squeeze area between two rocks, and at one point a wooden bridge was out. Nevertheless, we made it. I was seated on top of the natural bridge and gazing out over the area when I heard several gasps. I look over to see this older woman hoisted in the are in her wheelchair, being carried on all sides by different people. She was grinning from ear to ear with eyes that screamed “we made it.” Remember how I just described the path? “How on earth?” I thought. They walked her over to the center of the bridge and slowly sat her down. I watched her sit there and absorb the view just as I had, realizing her path to this point had been much different than mine. Her friends had carried her all this way. Through the mud, over root and rock. All to usher her to this one spot at the top. All because of her friends, barriers were broken down on the trail and she was exactly where she hoped to be.

Have you ever had really persistent friends? Not just mere aquaintances. These aren’t the ones that are here one minute but who run when trouble comes. These are the ride-or-die, there through thick and thin, will drop everything and stop at nothing to help kinda friends. We encounter friends like these in today’s passage. There is a man who is paralyzed. Jesus is teaching in the area. Maybe they had all heard about the things he could do. But it was no use for this man. He was bed-bound. There was no way he was making it to Jesus. Not from here anyways. No use getting your hopes up. But then there’s this knock at the door and all of your friends are pouring through the door grinning. Hope you’re ready. We are going to see Jesus today. But how? How will they get there? His friends hoist him onto a mat and begin to carry him out and through the crowded streets. You can say that again. Once they reach where Jesus is teaching, it is absolutely packed. Wall-to-wall people. How is this going to happen? It isn’t like they can raise him up over everyone’s heads. If people would squeeze maybe they could shimming through the middle? Ugh! That’s not gonna work either. Jesus will be finished before they even get their chance. So they start hatching a plan, considering all the options until someone says “why don’t we try going up?” To the roof? Yeah, and like, make a hole and lower him down. It seemed crazy, but just crazy enough that it might work. Just crazy enough that it might get their friend in front of Jesus.

A word about this roof. This was before architectural shingles. Willaim Barclay describes Palestinian roofs as “flat and having only the slightest tilt, sufficient to make the rain water run off. It was composed of beams laid from wall to wall and quite a short distance apart. The space between the beams was filled with closely packed twigs, compacted together with mortar and then marled over. It was the easiest thing in the world to take out the packing between two beams. In fact coffins were very often taken in and out of a house via the roof.”

Even so, can you just imagine being in a room and suddenly stuff starts falling in from the ceiling? Then a man is being lifted down? Your raising your arms up as this man is being lowered above your head. And then there is Jesus, who when he saw their faith said to the man on the mat, “friend, your sins have been forgiven.”

Sometimes all it takes is the persistence, the faith, of a few friends. Their persistence helped draw their friend near to Jesus. This is what happens when we are faithful stewards of our relationships. Perhaps when it comes to serving in the church, you aren’t connecting stewardship with relationships. But think about it. Dr. Susan Betts says “if you broaden the definition of stewardship, you are given an amazing word that is most clearly identified with a gift, something being entrusted to us, something that must be nurtured. Stewardship is not the same as love; it is more. And it is not implemented towards something casually found or given but something so important that we must take care of the bond we have with the gift. It is about the relationship between you and the entity you are to steward.”Todd Outcalt says “without a strong sense of connection, people tend to live on the margins of faith. When it comes to stewardship (time, talent, and treasure), relationships will be the most definitive factor in a person’s commitment.”

That means when you are inviting others friends to church, there is a relationship there that you are caring for and welcoming in. When you are ushering, you are stewarding those who come in. When you are teaching children and youth in Sunday school or art class, you are stewarding young minds. When you are out at Indywood or at Parks, you are stewarding compassion for older adults. When you are preparing food and set it on the table, you are stewarding hospitality around the table. When you pass the peace, hang out together, pray for each other, and check on each other, you are stewarding the relationships you have with each other. Farida Gatwiri reminds us that “every relationship is an opportunity to manage well what God has placed in your hands.” When you go out of your way to remove barriers so that others can get through and draw near to the heart of God, you are stewarding relationships. What are the barriers that keep people from drawing near to Jesus right now in the church? Where barriers individually and collectively need to remove and break through so that our friends can be brought before the heart of God? Barriers of being judged. Barriers of accessibility. Barriers of division and hatred. Barriers of not knowing all the rituals. Barriers of not having enough. Barriers of not exclusion and not feeling welcome. I also have friends right now who serve a Hispanic congregation whose members are afraid because of ICE. Or maybe we have our own internal barriers to remove, barriers of how we see or think or treat others that bar us from loving as Christ. What might happen if we became barrier-breaking freinds?

Years ago, I remember there was a young boy with special needs. He was nonverbal but loved being around other kids. The children’s Sunday school room wasn’t handicap accessible. Each Sunday, a member would lift him out of his chair and carry him upstairs to be with the others. When I was in Iuka, there was a teenage boy who had autism. The amount of love and barriers crossed so that he felt welcome, loved, and known was so rich. His birthday felt like a churchwide events, complete with blowing up red balloons. When my own husband walked into my home church years ago, he didn’t know a soul. He looked down and saw an older woman who had worked with him at the bank. Her name was Mrs. Virginia and she said “you can sit by me.” And so he did, Sunday after Sunday. When I was in my junior year of high school and my friend had died and I’d suffered from a grand mal seizure, I remember the friends who transported me to and from literally everything, who physically held me up during the memorial service, those who wrote me cards, and teachers who let me write me heart out and reminded me it was ok to not be ok. I remember friends who tore down the barriers of my own self-esteem and lowered me before Jesus to remind me I was loved. I have watched how you here have taken others under your wing, have cared for one another, who have kept giving each other a soft place to land, and who have chosen love over and over again. I have watched you hold one another up, like flying buttresses in a giant cathedral. I stared at them all this past week inside the chapel. These massive arches one after another, holding everything up, and holding us all in. Kate Bowler reflects on this in her Blessing for Friends Who Hold Us Up:

“The walls would collapse without them there, but strengthened, they create something beautiful.

God, when I am no longer quite so tall and strong, give me those who hold me up

and remind me of who I am and that I’m loved.

Yes, I’ll get back up again today.

Yes, I’ll get those kids cereal

and help my parents with an errand.

Yes, I’ll go to work or come up with something better to do with retirement hours.

I will try again.

I know I will,

because someone else’s absurd faith in me

is fortifying

So, blessed are our flying buttresses.

For they hold us up

when everything seems ready to come apart, allowing us to face today—

not because we’re doing it alone—

but precisely because we aren’t.”

Charles LeFond says “friendship is the great stewardship of our time. So much would go well if we did friendship well…The stewardship of our time demands that we ask ourselves if our lives are in balance between getting done those things we must do to live, and getting done those things which enrich that life.” The faith of the friends led to Jesus saying “because of their faith, your sins have been forgiven.” Oh my friends, don’t underestimate the power that can come from the faithfulness of caring deeply for others. I often say I am the product of many people who kept choosing to love me. May God’s grace flow through every roof broken and upon every mat lowered and every persistent and stubborn and faithful friend.