Sermon 9/30/2021 “Better together”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: The Fountains at Washington House, Alexandria, Virginia
Text: Mark 9:50
Day: 18Pentecost, Proper 21, Year B
There’s a free image that comes with a popular word processing program of anonymous-looking people, each carrying a jigsaw puzzle piece. The people were trying to come together to put the pieces together. I think it is supposed to represent teamwork.
I thought of this image—of people each bringing a “who they are” and “what they got” when then come together to do God’s will. God has given each of us skills, abilities, and life experiences. God also has given us things: money and the things money buys. In my thinking, these things God has given us are all puzzle pieces. And, what God wants us to do with the pieces he has given us is to use them with others to bring the vision represented by the whole puzzle into reality.
We sort through all the pieces God has given us when we prayerfully determine what to give back to God. We do not always know why God urges us at a particular time to use a particular gift in a particular way. Only God knows, often, what image is on the completed puzzle, what purpose is accomplished when the puzzle is all put together. Our individual contribution is just a piece, but each piece is vital in completing the whole.
You may have heard me say, “God always provides everything needed to do what God calls us to do.” Using my metaphor of the puzzle, God provides the pieces of the puzzle, but he spreads them out over many people. So, when people begin showing up bearing puzzle pieces, so to speak, we need to figure out how God intends us to use those pieces.
Sometimes, these events happen in a different order. Sometimes we get such a clear vision of a new reality that we then feel compelled to bring that vision to life in our world. And then we sort through our pieces to determine what pieces we have we can offer to complete the vision we see so clearly that needs to be done.
This is why we are “better together.” None of us has all the puzzle pieces. We need each other and what they bring, what they return to God, to do what God has given us to do.
Sometimes the vision is relatively easy to bring to life. Resurrection’s food pantry, for example, will be five years old on October 24. Looking back, creating and operating the food pantry seems relatively easy, given how many people contributed pieces of what God has given them to provide nutritious food to now almost 28,000 hungry people.
- A hard heart would have said, “If people are hungry, let them get a job.”
- Fear would have said, “We don’t have enough money, time, interest, whatever to do this mission.”
- Self-centered-ness would have said, “Let someone else do it.”
Instead, people said, “Here’s how I can help. Here’s the piece I can contribute.” And thank God they did, just in time to feed a LOT of people during the pandemic.
Unlike the food pantry, though, sometimes the vision is very difficult to bring to life. In our redevelopment project, God blessed us with a most challenging vision. And sometimes the challenge is to figure out what we can do together, even now in our lives, that God might be calling us to do.
What all this have to do with today’s gospel lesson? The apostle John told Jesus he and the other disciples had seen someone they didn’t know working on his own God-puzzle. THAT PERSON was unauthorized! THAT PERSON was not one of us! THAT PERSON had successfully done deeds of power IN JESUS’ NAME that Jesus’ disciples were performing.
Loosely paraphrased, John said to Jesus, “Make him help us put OUR God-puzzle together!” And did you notice John’s reason? “HE wasn’t following US.” Not, “he wasn’t following YOU.” Let me paraphrase THAT for you. John’s reason for trying to stop this other person for successfully doing Jesus’ mission in Jesus’ name was that THIS PERSON wasn’t following JOHN. He wasn’t an authorized disciple because JOHN didn’t know the man.
Jesus told John, “I know this person. And he knows me. By name. Because he’s doing my work. That’s all he needs: my mission, my name.”
Jesus’ bottom line, after explaining how to not get in the way of others doing his work in his name, was this: “Be at peace with one another.” In other words, “We are better together!”
If we are all working on behalf of the same vision—Christ Jesus’ vision—we’re better when we collaborate. We are each stronger and more successful when we reject the competitive models the world teaches us. We are better together than apart.
You know what collaboration is, don’t you? Collaboration in the name of Jesus is sharing our puzzle pieces where needed with people who are working on other parts of the same puzzle. Even if they are working on another God work that we ourselves thought of.
Aren’t we all “better together” than we are apart? Feed people? That collaboration in Alexandria is called “ALIVE!” ALIVE! is the organization that folds all Alexandria congregations’ mission efforts together to do more than we each could alone.
What can you do with others, here at The Fountains at Washington House? Perhaps your “mission” is to encourage those who care for you here, so that they can continue in the work God has given them to do. Perhaps your “mission” is to encourage each other when they are down.
What puzzle piece do we have today to give back to God what God has so generously given us?
