January 27, 2019 | Rev. Gary Nicolosi, D. Min.
When I served as a priest in Canada, I heard a story about a young woman who was driving through a lonely area in northern British Columbia on her way to the Yukon. She spent a night in one of the rare motels in the area. The next morning in the breakfast area she was seated near two truckers. They askedwhere she was going. She said “Whitehorse.”
“In that little car?” they asked. “It’s dangerous this time of year in this kind of weather.”
The woman replied, “Well, I’m determined to try.”
“In that case,” one of the truckers said, “we’re just going to have to hug you.”
The young woman drew back and said, “You’re not going to touch me.”
The truckers laughed and said, “Not like that. We’ll put one truckin front of you and one in the rear. In that way, we’ll get you through the mountains.” And so they did.
Most of us need to be hugged along life’s pathway. We needpeople up front who can guide us on the way; and others behind, who gently encourage us, so we can pass through life’schallenges.
In my years in parish ministry, which has covered everything from small, rural churches yoked together in one parish, to large, wealthy city churches and growing suburban churches, I have learned that no Rector, however talented or faithful, can do all the work of ministry alone. The priest and people have to work together in partnership if a parish is to thrive. Ministry is always a team effort.
In our lesson from First Corinthians, St. Paul tells us that all the members of a church are important to the work of God. All of usbelong. We need one another. And that’s good to know, because sometimes we forget our reliance on others. It’s like the newspaper that carried a help wanted ad that read: “Need co- author for a book on self-help.” Don’t you think that’s a bit odd: aco-author for a book on self-help? But doesn’t that contradictiondescribe so many of us? Self-help or self-reliance is a high virtue in our culture, but I think an even greater need of ours is belonging. God made us to be incomplete on our own. That’s part of God’s design for humanity. God made us with a profound needfor God and other people. Remember the song Barbara Streisandmade famous: “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” The song should actually say, “People who admit they need people are the luckiest people in the world.”
Nobody can make it in this world by themselves. And that includes rectors of parishes and CEOs of corporations. The amazing thing is, when we have enough humility to recognize that we need one another, great things happen.
Take the world of music, for example. I love the music of Gilbert and Sullivan. My favorite is The Pirates of Penzance – you probably have yours. Gilbert and Sullivan were incredibly successful together, but they were two very different men with different personalities and talents. Gilbert was a master of lyrics and verse, Sullivan was a composer of music. Put them together and you got some of the most popular musicals of the 19th century, which still resonate with audiences even today.
One of the buzz words in business is “synergy.” According to theprinciple of synergy, when two or more people work together, the total effect of their work is greater than if they have been working independently. For example, one horse can pull about 2 tons by itself. That means two horses working separately will be able to pull 4 tons, 2 tons per horse. But when two horses are teamedtogether, we are told they can pull up to 18 tons. That’s synergy.
Synergy allows us to accomplish with the help of others much more than all of us would have accomplished working on our own. Synergy is what happens in the church when every member does their part.
Think of the ministries that make this church possible: altar guild, acolytes, coffee and fellowship ministers, choir, ushers, greeters, wardens, Sunday school teachers, and on and on. Think about the outreach ministries this church supports thanks to efforts of a whole cadre of volunteers who give their time and talent on behalf of others. Think of the counters on Sunday, or our church treasurer and those who assist him. Think of our spiritual life ministries such as contemplative prayer or Bible study groups. Think of the volunteers who assist with our youth and young adult ministries. Think of our staff, our administrative assistant, our assistant rector, our priest associate, our deacon, our music director, our Christian education director, and all the dedicated volunteers who make ministry possible. No one person could do everything but when we work together miracles happen.
Our need for one another is not weakness but strength. In fact, it is the basis for the church. St. Paul describes the perfect church as a body, something that is only strong and healthy if all the parts are closely connected and moving in the same direction. The strongest muscle or the toughest bone, when separated from the rest of the body, becomes weak and useless. This is one reason God created the church: we draw strength from one another.
On July 24, 2002, nine miners in western Pennsylvania became trapped 240 feet below ground in a flooded mine shaft. Rescue efforts began immediately, but the rescue crews knew the odds were against them saving all the men. Amazingly, however, all nine miners survived the ordeal. These men claimed that it was their decision to bond together that saved their lives. From the outset of the danger, the men watched out for one another. They tied themselves together, so that no one could float away or slip under the water. If one man got tired, his bond to the other men kept him afloat. The miners vowed that whether they lived or died, they would do so together.
That story is a perfect illustration on how we can do so much more together than we can do alone. We keep each other afloat by using our gifts to help one another. Where one member is weak, another is strong. We all have something to offer, and this keeps us humble. None of us is any more important than anyone else. Success is always a team effort – people with different gifts and talents who band together to achieve common goals. Yes, some people get more credit than others, but all of us are important.
Next Sunday is the Super Bowl. If you watched any of the NFL or AFL Division Championships last Sunday, you know that winning in football is a team effort. Yes, the quarterback is the star player– think of Tom Brady and Jared Goff, for example. But it’s thewhole team – offense and defence – working together that produce a championship. The quarterback can throw the ball but other players have to catch it, even if that means being hit hard by the defense. You need runners, linebackers, tight ends, and players able to play solid defense. Winning is a team effort. The team with the best quarterback doesn’t always win.
That’s the way it is in the church. The rector, the other clergy, themusic director, the Christian education director and the wardens can only do so much. But when all the members do their part, synergy occurs and the church begins to realize its potential. God gives each of us unique and multifaceted gifts so that together we create a dynamic, interdependent, effective community. We all have something to offer. Each of us has our gifts. Everyone is important.
Right now Nativity is at a crossroads. In 2019 Nativity will have its second rector to build on the accomplishments of our founding rector, Susan Snook Brown. Thirteen years ago we started out with nothing except a call from God and a vision of a new kind of church in north Scottsdale. Today we have a debt-free multi- million dollar campus and a budget that is larger than a majority of Episcopal churches our size around the country.
And yet, we do have our challenges. Raising enough funds for ministry is always a challenge, and so we depend on the generous contributions of our members. Committing to a multigenerational church is a challenge, but we are unwavering in our resolve to minister to members at every age and stage of life from nursery to nursing home.
We also have our growth challenges – to reach out and attract new members into the church who may not be familiar with the Episcopal Church or may not even be very familiar with theChristian story. We can’t expect people to come to us – we have to go to them in new and creative ways. The business world calls this marketing but the church calls it evangelism, and we need to do a better job of it. Yes, we need to retain the essential message of Christianity but we also need to be flexible in our methods of ministry: meeting needs, healing hurts, and accepting people where they are in life, and not where we might want them to be.That’s called unconditional love – and it’s at the heart of being aChristian.
A sign over an Italian hotel which once served as a hospital put it this way: “To heal sometimes; to comfort often; to care always.” I can’t think of a better description of the church’s mission. Nativityis an open and inclusive church, a house of prayer for all people, a church with a warm embrace of everyone, and an Episcopal church with 2,000 years of time tested truth committed to meeting needs and healing hurts with the love and compassion of Jesus.
We can meet any challenge that confronts us. In the power of the Spirit, we can reach out in selfless love and do what we thoughtwe can’t. Remember: with God nothing is impossible, absolutelynothing.
Several years ago, an Israeli airliner left Tel Aviv airport, bound for London. The flight was completely booked with passengers who, generally, fell into two categories: there were Jewish people, returning home after spending the Passover holiday in Jerusalem; and there were Christian people, on their way home after celebrating Easter in the Holy Land.
While the plane was in flight to London, it became known to the other 450 people aboard that one of the passengers was something other than a tourist. She was four-year-old Maron Kadosh, a little Israeli girl, whose liver had malfunctioned, and whose life was in serious jeopardy. When other medical efforts failed, and the doctors told her parents that the only hope of survival was to obtain a liver transplant in England, they took her aboard that flight bound for London, with no idea of how they would pay for such an expensive surgical procedure.
As word about little Maron began to circulate among passengers, an amazing thing happened. Someone began to pass the hat, and by the time all the passengers has put their gifts into that hat, more than $73,000 had been collected.
When you think of it, it was nothing less than unbelievable that such an amount could be raised so quickly, with no telethons, no pledge campaigns, no committee meetings, not even the offer of a tax deduction!
But on second thought, maybe it’s not so unbelievable after all.Those people aboard that plane had just been through a glorious religious experience: celebrating Passover or Easter in the Holy Land. They had encountered the living God who had freed his people from slavery in Egypt and the risen Christ whose death and resurrection had bestowed upon us the forgiveness of oursins and the hope of heaven. Why shouldn’t their hearts havebeen touchable, their consciences tender, to the cry of a sick little girl? For when our God becomes known to us, God turns our attention not on ourselves but upon others who need us.
With God’s help, the best days of Nativity are yet to come. There is no mission project we can’t complete or building project wecannot fund or mission venture in which we cannot succeed. So,let’s enlarge our vision, expand our territory, open our hearts and dream of what God would like to do through us for the sake of the gospel – and then do it, not by our strength alone but by God’spower.
Dr. Gary Nicolosi January 27, 2019
Text – I Corinthians 12: 12-31a Epiphany 3, C