Sermon by Garrett - Jan. 24 - Practicing Abundance

I want to begin with 2 very different images to help us understand this gospel text.

When I was in high school, my best friend Madison Hall, and her family would host a retreat at their home for Ukranian orphans. Madison’s family had a great connection with an orphanage in Ukraine after they had adopted 5 kids a few years back; and they would host kids as a way of encouraging adoption in our church community.

These are children with edgy backgrounds: typically, no dad in the picture, mom could have been a prostitute or a druggie, or not around. And the kids suffered Attachment-issues, Anger, Unprocessed grief, mixed with teenage angst and confusion.

I still remember being at the Hall’s with several others from my church when they arrived. We took their bags from them and showed them to their rooms – everyone had their own bed, their own dresser. We took them around back and showed them the swimming pool. Their faces an mixture of jet-lag and pure delight. And then we led them into the holy of holies: The Hall’s walk-in pantry, and they got to scan the shelves of everything, all the food they could ever dream of: chips-a-hoy (both chewy and crunchy), Cheetos, so many cases of soft drinks, brownie mix – and some real food too. And Ms. Hall would say to them, “Kids, this is all yours – you get anything in here that you want.”

You can just imagine their faces. Shining as if they were gazing upon the ark of the covenant itself.

Hold that image.

This gospel text brings another image to mind as well.

Katie and I recently saw Ridley Scott’s new movie, The Martian. It’s a great movie, although calling it a comedy as the Golden Globes did, is stretch. Anyways, it’s the story of Mark Watney in a life and death battle to stay alive on Mars upon accidentally being left behind by his team of astronauts. Watney is nothing short of brilliant.

He determines that he only has enough food for 300 days, and he improvises a farm in his living quarters by making Martian soil fertilized with toilet waste. He then begins to grow potatoes, which he manages to water by extracting hydrogen from left over rocket fuel, only to then oxidize it by burning it.

(What any of us would have done, really.)

Anyhow, it’s a story of survival in a foreign territory, and a deep reliance on human ingenuity and resilience to stay alive until a rescue team returns.

For me, Mark Watney makes me think of the Episcopal Church.

We were formerly the crown of Christianity in America. Established and firm and confident in our place in society.

But, as folks like to remind us, that’s not quite where we are anymore. There is a declining interest in organized religion – “you don’t need to go to church, or a building to meditate, or realize the oneness of all things,” the books at the bookstores tell us.

And here we are, us here today, January 2016, faithful church-goers – we feel a bit like Mark Watney who finds himself on Mars trying everything possible to survive.

And so it’s with all this in mind that we come to this great Gospel passage. A gospel that is about Abundance. Life. The wine has run out. No more spirits at the wedding. Life is gone. The wedding party is going to die. The family will experience deep shame at their own failure of hospitality. And they will be left with deep regrets –

“If only we had bought more wine. If only everyone would have RSVP’d. If only Uncle Japheth hadn’t drank so much. If only, if only…”

Well, we know how the story ends: Jesus, the Life of the World, restores life to the party. Water is turned to wine. Scarcity to abundance. Wine spilling out of the jars.

And here we are, very tempted to say “Good for them. What does that have to do with us?”

How can we get Jesus to come bring the spirits back to Episcopal church? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?

Our text gives us one pretty solid recommendation in the voice of Mary. “Do whatever he tells you.” Sounds like a good word to me: trust Jesus. Trust him, says Mary.

I don’t know about you guys, but that is the word I need to hear. The Lord the giver of life has formed us, a community of worshippers – the Episcopal church. Trust him to keep giving us life.

To some of us that may feel like a cop out. We want strategies, and plans, and things to do. We feel like we are Mark Watney’s.

I am not going to deny that ingenuity and resilience will keep us afloat; it surely will, at least for the foreseeable future. But something tells me that’s that not what we want. And, alas, that is not what our world wants.

I think back to my Ukranian friends the first night at the Hall’s house. And the looks on their faces as they beheld the pantry, and tried to contain themselves after Ms. Hall told them that it was all for them.

It is an image of abundance. An image of people realizing the utter generosity of their host. A group of otherwise maladjusted youth, accustomed to pure survival, accustomed to being like Mark Watney, now trying to comprehend what she meant when she said, “It’s all yours.”

We the Episcopal church are Eucharistic community; another way of saying that we are a community that takes the Eucharist together. And as some of you probably know, Eucharist in Greek means “thanksgiving.” Not a bad way to think about the church: a community of people who are learning through thick and thin to say “thank you, God.”

Learning to say thank you; learning to practice abundance.

Not practicing survival, but practicing abundance.

What does this mean?

Many of us have seen a picture of corporate abundance here at St Pauls these past few weeks as we have invited a Muslim in so that we might better learn how to treat all people, including our Muslim neighbors, with dignity. We let down our defenses and seek understanding. That's corporate abundance. And that's something that I think we here at St Pauls and the Episcopal church in general is quite good at. But let's take it in another direction.

What would it mean for each of us to practice this daily? A spirituality of abundance.

Here are some things that come to mind as I was thinking about this yesterday:

we turn off the television (!!!) and we turn on a beautiful piece of music; we fast for lunch, but we invite a friend over and feast for dinner; we put down our iPads and pick up St Augustine or the Psalms; we call a friend we haven't talked to in 10 years; we savor a honey-crisp apple as if it were personally handpicked and delivered by God himself; or maybe we pray.

These are just a few small ways to begin a spirituality of abundance.

And then (and this is key) we come to church and we share our abundance with each other. Because that's who we are: we are not just survivors; no, we are a community learning to say thank you. When we talk about "Connect" here at St Paul’s, this is what we mean: we share Gods abundance with one another.

And so we heed Mary’s advice and we trust him. We practice abundance daily. And we come together weekly to better learn how to say “thank you, God.”

Gratitude, celebrating God's goodness, new wine that promises to keep the Episcopal party (and all the parties for that matter) going for good.