Abundance

Matthew 15:29-39

I have been thinking lately about what people need from the Church. Not people in general but people who live in our neighborhood.

Now, Lakewood UMC has done marvelously in discerning how God's abundance found in our facilities and other resources can be shared to improve our community. I talk about it all the time: we are helping the arts flourish, we are joining in the work to eradicate homelessness in Jefferson County, we are providing space to alleviate human suffering and trying to make the lives of children better in our county.

We are firing on all cylinders! Safe Parking is starting up soon. We already have artists who have grown in their career because of having access to studio space in our building move on to bigger and better things--thanks be to God! Our community garden is already connecting us to new relationships. We are seeing fruit from our labors.

But what do people in our neighborhood need from the church? What kind of community? What kind of place to cultivate their spirituality and know their belovedness? What kind of place and way to worship? What kind of place to raise their children in the faith and grow in their own understanding of God? What kind of incubator for personal and social transformation?

In Matthew 15, Jesus went to a mountain and tons of people flocked to him. People who needed healing, people who needed a vision, people who needed a voice. This was a people with missing body parts--which certainly could mean they were literally missing limbs and body parts. But I also wonder about the body of Christ that all of us are and what "parts" we are missing, too!

And this was a hungry people that visited Jesus, too. Jesus' disciples, so small in number, felt understandably intimidated by the task Jesus gave them: "I do not want to send them away hungry."

How many people in our neighborhood are sent away hungry? Not physically hungry but spiritually hungry? Not just hungry for food but also hungry for relationship, spiritual connection, and an experience of God?

I wonder if the answer to these questions are going to be found in surprising places. This story has more than one version in scripture. In Matthew, Jesus asks the disciples "how many loaves do YOU have," but in the Gospel of John the food actually came from the community itself. A boy emerged with "five barley loaves and two small fish."

What if the answer to how we can be the church our neighborhood needs won't come from church consultants, books on church growth, or even from within our own membership--but actually from the neighborhood itself? I wonder what our neighbors who are walking on the bike path, or who live in the apartment buildings across the W line from us, or who live in the eiberhood, are hungry for?

Because this is what I DO know--there weren't many disciples to feed five thousand. But with Jesus' help it was done. I think we are abundantly blessed by God's provision. May we never stop being curious about what we can do to be the church for our neighborhood!