April 26, 2015

ReciproCare in Mission

Passage: Genesis 12: 1-9 & Mark 16: 14-19

Reciprocare “Is this really a word”

Yes it is  it is Latin and means to move back and forth.

Other meanings

Help each other

Interact

Interdepend

Isn’t this what mission is all about “Helping each other”
Todays sermon was written by Rev Shirley Gale.  Shirley grew up in Perth and following graduation from Presbyterian College she has served congregations in Montreal, Forest, Port Perry, Ashburn and Guelph.  She is now retired but she hasn’t stopped working.  She continues to work doing pulpit supply  and with congregations on future planning and with those preparing to receive a new minister.

 

In his book, “Disappointment with God”, Philip Yancey relates this story from his own life.  One time when Yancey and his mother were looking through a box of old photos he came across a crumpled picture of himself at 18 months. He asked her why she had kept this one.  His mother explained that Yancey’s father, at 24, had lain completely paralyzed by polio and was encased from the neck down in a huge, cylindrical breathing unit. Due to the severity of his illness his two young sons were banned from the hospital, so Yancey’s mother hung this photo from the breathing unit just above Yancey’s father’s head. The last four months of his life were spent looking at the faces he loved. Yancey said: “that crumpled photo, was one of the few links connecting me to my father. Someone I have no memory of, and who spent all day, every day loving me.”  Yancey went on to say:  “ . . .the emotions I felt when I saw that crumpled photo were the very same emotions I felt that night in my college dorm-room when I first believed in a God of love…and realized Someone is there who loves me. It was a startling feeling of hope, a feeling so new and overwhelming that it seemed fully worth risking my life on.  That photo and what it represented, had a profound impact on Philip Yancy’s life and faith. I’m sure neither his mother or father would ever have thought that God would work so powerfully through such a simple thing as a photo, nor did they likely consider themselves to be missionaries to their own son.  We serve a God who is always at work, a God whose love is unmeasurable, unconditional, and missional.

Missional? Yes, our God is a missional God, whose mission is to draw all people to God’s self in love. God pursues this mission in more ways than we can possibly imagine. One of those ways is in and through people. The primary purpose of the Church, is for its people to go into the world, near and far, serving as God’s missionaries.

Serving isn’t always easy, nor is it done in ways that we expect.  Dorothy was from small town where she attended the Presbyterian church She was a life-time member of the WMS and regularly  attended worship. She was very active in the congregation, until shortly after the birth of her daughter when she became bed-ridden with a crippling illness. Each day, for many years, her husband would carry Dorothy to a specially constructed seat in their front window where she would spend the day overlooking the town’s main street. Jean*, a young, six-year-old girl, who attended Sunday School at the same church, started visiting Dorothy twice a week. In the summer, she brought flowers from her mother’s garden. These visits continued until Dorothy’s death seven years later. During these visits, Dorothy would talk about her life, her faith, and all the wonderful things she observed from her second-floor window-seat.  Even though she didn’t know all the people that passed by her window she prayed for them. In her gentle way, Dorothy taught and mentored Jean in her faith journey and planted the seeds of her understanding of mission.

Dorothy made Jean feel that she was an acceptable, worthy person  whom God loved.

What a wonderful gift to give an extremely shy young girl who wanted nothing more than to be invisible so people wouldn’t see her!

After each visit with Dorothy, instead of walking, as usual, close to the buildings, with her head down, hoping she was unnoticed, Jean walked to school down the middle of the sidewalk with her head up, and her face decorated with a big smile. Isn’t it amazing how God used a woman who could no longer walk to help a young girl to walk with new dignity and joy?

Jean eventually answered God’s call to serve as an Ordained  Minister, which she does still today.  Dorothy was only one of many people over the years who helped shape Jean’s life and faith. Dorothy may not have realized it, but she was really a missionary - right on her door-step.

Today, there is still a great need for such a missionary-minded, nurturing community for the Church to be what God calls it to be and Jesus commanded it to be. We are to be a caring place where people seek God’s guidance to discover effective and meaningful ways to participate in God’s mission. As God’s missionaries we are called to use,  whatever gifts and means God entrusts to us.

Sometimes things stand in our way to fulfilling God’s call to serve.  Age, physical limitations, work or family obligations, not enough time, financial challenges, or our misgivings about abilities can give us a feeling of not being properly equipped to do God’s work.  It is important to trust that God has given us the gifts and means, we only have to listen and act.

We are reminded by the Apostle Paul that it is often at our own point of weakness that God does God’s greatest work. Paul pleaded with God to be relieved of his weakness – his “thorn in the flesh,” he called it). God responded to Paul saying: ”My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  It is often in times of weakness God calls us to tasks we feel unable to accomplish.

The Rev. Shirley Gale, the writer of today’s Mission Awareness Sunday service, was reminded of this call one Sunday just before worship. Knox Church in Guelph has a position called Pastoral Assistant. The position focuses on seniors within the congregation and the community, especially those who live in nursing homes and senior residences, or those unable to attend Sunday worship or other church functions.

Shirley was approached one Sunday morning to fill the position.  Shirley, now seventy-three, and retired from ministry because of Multiple Sclerosis, thought she was too old to start active ministry again. Shirley suggested  that the position needed a younger, healthier person. Shirley sat down in the pew thinking the matter over.

Well, for over two years now, Shirley has been serving as the Pastoral Assistant. For Shirley, these years have been rewarding and meaningful, even though at times physically challenging.  She is reminded every day that God does use us despite our limitations.

Through her work Shirley met Margaret, a person for more than ten years has resided in a full-care facility, bed-ridden because of severe Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. She can no longer move without assistance, nor can she feed herself. And yet, Margaret cheerfully greets each visitor with a warm, bright smile and a receptive ear. What is exceptional about Margaret is her deep faith and the way she shares it so sincerely and simply with everyone. She prays daily for the staff, her visitors, her family, her church family, and the church’s ministries.  She believes her mission is prayer and encouragement for those who do and those who don’t know the Lord. She does it humbly and faithfully.

Margaret is one of the persons who has caused Shirley to reflect anew on the nature of mission and how it is so often reciprocal—or as Shirley now calls it ReciproCare.

Shirley puts it this way: ReciproCare is simply caring for others and acknowledging that others can and do care for us in return. And, for this reason it is an integral and inseparable part of mission.

ReciproCare is giving something of ourselves and realizing that in the very act of giving our gift-of caring  the receiver actually cares for us, blesses us in return. God is present and at work in the giving and receiving of care.

The fact is, the things we do for good or ill, affect the lives of others whether we realize it or not. Jane Goodall, renowned for her work among the Tanzanian chimps, said it this way: “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world  round you.

The truth is we do make a difference, and we have to decide what kind of difference we want to make.”  Every day is a new day God has given us in which we can “have an impact on the world” around us.

A day when we can touch the lives of others with the caring love of our  God, and in the process be touched by them. Opportunities and need for mission are all around us - it can be as close as our own homes, on our doorsteps, or next door, and it is far beyond us in places where only our hearts and tangible expressions of care can reach.  We are called to care.

ReciproCare is a gift that blesses both the one who receives the caring act and the one who gives this gift because this reciprocal experience is a powerful reminder of God’s gift of constant, loving care of The Apostle Paul reminds us of the importance of the reciprocal nature of ministry in his letter to the Romans (1:11–12) “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong.” And then adds, “That is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.”

Remember that God’s love and grace equips you to be a missionary today, near and far. God’s mission is the loving redemption and renewal of all people and creation - it is this Mission we are called to live each day, or as one person has said: “To be living Gospels.”

Jesus said it this way: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”  We can do this assured that we do not journey alone for as Jesus also Said in Matthew: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

In spring our attention turns to planting and renewing our gardens and farm fields.

#1 PLANT THE SPIRITUAL SEEDS OF JESUS’S LOVE IN YOUR HEART.

#2 PLANT NEWS OF JESUS IN YOUR HEART

#3 AS IT SPROUTS AND GROWS - IT STRENGTHENS

#4 JESUS WANTS TO SEND YOU TO PLANT THE SEEDS OF HIS LOVE IN OTHERS

#5 JESUS WANTS TO SEND YOU TO SPREAD GOOD NEWS OF HIM TO OTHERS.

A satisfying life is not measured by what you have but by what you give.  You may only be someone in the world but to someone else you may be the world.
I can’t change the direction of the wind but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.  Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough and more.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us everyday.

Let us Pray:  Thank you Lord for loving and caring for us and may we reciprocare those to feeling to those around us.  In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Phyllis MacMaster