Everyone Shared Everything
Everyone Shared Everything
Acts 2:43-47
I’m writing this sermon in the days before we left on work trip. I can’t imagine anything worse than tying to write a sermon while on the trip or waiting to get home, being totally exhausted, and then having the need for a sermon hanging over me. Still, by the time I share this with you, another trip will have come and gone.
Work trip 2022 has been coming for months if not years. June of 2019 was our last trip. We went to Berea, Kentucky, a totally new place for us. We came back already debating about whether we would go back to Missouri or Kentucky was our new home. We actually made tentative plans to go to Kentucky. Surely, this whole virus thing can’t last, right?
It wasn’t until last December, in the midst of losing my parents and gaining a puppy, that I wrote a note to our contact in Missouri—Marsha Dinkins—and asked, “Hey…Do you remember me?” Of course, she did. We’ve coordinated on finding work sites Miller County, Missouri for years. We rekindled our connection and I told her, “Marsha, who knows what will be going on in the world in June, but I’d really like to come back.” She jumped right in…
Marsha has always been so generous with her time. I’ve kind of said it before but you couldn’t find two people more different than Marsha and me. She knows I’m not a gun guy and she is most definitely a gun toting kind of gal, so she always makes sure to have a gun in the car when I’m riding with her, just to watch me squirm! We live in totally different universes but we agree on one thing: people who are trying to hold things together, trying to do the right thing, deserve a hand. So, when it comes to identifying work sites, she and I work seamlessly. She knows what we can do and she knows who we like to work with.
Let me pause here and begin to drive home this morning’s point. God is at work in this connection between Marsha and me. I have no doubt about this. Why do I say this? It’s pretty straightforward. When you step out and take risks in order to help someone in need, over time, you meet the right people, the people who can help get that work done. When the people that you meet are people whom you never would have met otherwise, the point just seems more obvious. We really don’t have to agree about everything we think about the world. A shared desire to help is enough. I believe that God delights when people work together and that God takes a special delight when people overcome their differences to get that work done. Wouldn’t it be odd if the God who created a world that is so diverse was rooting for us to all think the same things about everything? The God that I love gets a kick out of diversity.
Diversity is also a giant strength. I could drive around Miller County, Missouri from now until the end of time and never have anyone agree to even talk to me about whether we could help them. I’m a Chicago guy. No one is going to trust me there. These people are used to getting taken advantage of by people who look like me and talk like me. At the same time, Marsha is so trusted that she could be having tea with anyone in two seconds but what she lacks are the sheer numbers of people and the skills and resources that we can bring to the task.
So, work trip only has a chance if two people who don’t agree on much and who don’t live in the same world nevertheless trust each other and share what they have to share. Sadly, the momentum in our world is to refuse to do anything with anyone who disagrees with you about anything. When that happens, nothing gets done. Instead, we just grow to despise each other. That’s the thing…Marsha and I actually enjoy each other because we’ve perfected the fine art of knowing what to talk about and what to avoid.
This year, Marsha has extended herself farther than ever before. Our first site was a huge reach—on her end and on mine. On her end, the actual site is outside of the normal range of places that she looks. There is a personal connection through a school teacher. However, she wasn’t on her normal “turf.” Would these people trust her? On my end, the scale of the work was really ramped up. Let me explain…
The Wheelers are two grandparents raising their seven grandchildren because two of their daughters have been destroyed by drug addiction. Crystal Meth and Opiates are the scourge of this area. The Wheelers love their grandchildren. They’re trying to do the right thing. When we arrived on the site, what became obvious was that they had no running water. Imagine that! It was also obvious that they were not receiving the network of social services that they deserved. Marsha’s work life had been leading that local network so she shared her inside knowledge and began setting up appointments for the grandmother.
What did I do? I came home and told the truth to you all: “It bothers me that this family has no running water.” You responded, some by sharing the concern with others, some by organizing fundraising, some by working through the outreach committee. Though I’d thought we were going to go with water storage tanks and a gravity system, it turned out, thanks to this church family’s incredible willingness to share with others, we were actually going to drill a well and install a pump and have real, running, sustainable water. (What I didn’t know as I wrote this was that the driller’s rig was broken! Now we know that we are next on the list.)
So, Marsha and I make ourselves available, we’re willing to share what we can share, and what happens…we get in over our heads! Marsha suddenly needs to track this family through the support system. At the same time, a discussion starts among the local realtors about what they might do to help the Wheelers. Everyone knows how one person’s selfish and hurtful actions can snowball in this world. What we don’t always remember is that when we try to do something good what we’re really just getting the ball rolling.
For me, I ended up doing a crash course in how to hire someone to drill a well… and how to get the trees removed so that the well can be dug…and how to be patient while the well digger keeps trying to get his rig fixed. I just keep asking questions and people keep being supportive and connections keep being made. People share what they have to share. Good things happen.
In the meantime, we spent so much time visiting the Wheelers when we were in Missouri that we still need a second site. We roll through possibility after possibility: an elderly woman who needs a deck but then changes her mind; another elderly woman who needs a deck but just wants to fix the one that’s falling apart because her late husband made it; her son, who is on disability but somehow drives a Harley? We called pastors and priests in the area. Finally, just in the nick of time, we found the Wyatts whose need for a deck and a wheelchair ramp was exactly what we were looking for.
Still…understand this one important thing: the only way any of this actually happens is when a whole bunch of people in this church support us and then—crucially—a group of people step forward who are willing to go and actually do this work. It’s hot and sweaty. It’s exhausting. It requires a certain degree of knowledge. It demands a whole lot of patience and a willingness to spend some time with essentially no personal space. Yet, these amazing adults and kids hear all this and say, “Ya…that sounds good. Sign me up!”
Without knowing any of the details ahead of time, here’s what I guarantee happened. The people who supported the trip feel good. The people who went on the trip feel so close because they have come to know each other in the deep way that you get to know someone when you sweat and eat and pray together. There will be good stories to tell. There will be moments of frustration that will be forgotten. There will be a sense of spiritual meaning for pretty much everyone involved because doing something rather than nothing, especially doing something on the basis of what you believe, is how faith grows. It’s not that we talked about Jesus non-stop. It’s that we did something that lined up with what Jesus taught people to actually do—“help each other!”
When we do things that expand the circle of our connections—when Miller County matters to Chicagoans, when we recognize people’s needs and do something to make their lives better, when we share out time and our meals and our thoughts and our prayers with one another, good things—God filled things— happen. They always have. They always will.
Here’s the thing…in the earliest days of Christianity, this was already true. Last week, we listened as those believers all gathered in one place and the Holy Spirit shows up. God is ready to empower and encourage and work through each one of them. And the very first thing that they are empowered to do is to understand each other. (This, of course, is one of the most amazing thing that happens on every work trip. People in our own group—different ages, different backgrounds, different beliefs—understand each other. Our group and the groups of people that we meet in Missouri understand each other, despite our accents and experiences.)
This morning’s text just sheds light on what happens next. What we hear is that everyone is sharing everything with one another. People sold what they had and pooled their resources. They helped each other out. They recognized each other’s needs and did what they could to lessen those needs. In the midst of all that, those people took time to worship together.
When everyone shares everything, worship makes sense and faith deepens. On every work trip we’ve ever done, each day ends with worship, led by different youth and a different adult each night. Often the line between discussing the day's work and beginning worship blurs as we realize the amazingly spiritual lessons that one can learn on a 95 degree work site. We’re not in danger of forgetting to have worship. Instead, we realize that we’ve been worshiping all day long.
The very first days of the church were marked by inclusion and sharing, by empathy and caring action. People shared everything including their struggles. There was a place for everyone in the community and at God’s table. And the shared question was, “Where was God at work in the day we shared today?”
Two thousand years later, when we include everyone, when we share what we have, when we are openhearted enough to be moved by someone else’s challenges and we are willing to act, God shows up. We catch a glimpse of the harmony that can be there in this life. And worship seems like the most natural thing in the world to do.
Thank you all for being a part of that good work!