All that remains is the doing. We’ve said our piece.  Expressed our opinions. Given voice to our anxieties.  Articulated our principles and perspectives. Our annual meeting in January had more passionate speech than any other in the six years of my tenure at Peace.  This is a good thing. We muddled through together, and I’m grateful for that. I’ve always been nervous at the lack of conversation about budgets at previous meetings.  Silence in the face of the choices and priorities embodied in a budget is not a good thing.

It can be a sign of good health when members of a community define their positions—especially when the positions aren’t universally  shared—and at the same time stay connected.  Exercising these “muscles” in this “body of Christ” can be a stretching experience.   It may leave us feeling a bit sore, but in the end it will make us stronger as long as we take care of each other during the process.  When we exercise our gifts to build up the body (rather than tearing it down), the whole body benefits; it helps to build our collective “immune system” and to strengthen us against the kind of threats that can weaken or even destroy communities.  So we keep on growing…we keep on learning…we build our resilience…we grow more capacity for the tasks ahead.

The images we saw on the screen at our meeting, the numbers on paper, the words on the pages of our annual reports, the names of the newly elected to council and task force—all these count, all these matter.  But they are—all of them—PRELUDE.  Now that the meeting is over, the show, the liturgy, the dance (abun-dance?), the mission commences. All that remains is the doing; all that remains is putting it into practice—putting our talent and energy where our heart is, and our money where our mouth is; doing “God’s work” with “our hands;” practicing what we preach.  Are you ready for that?!

When Jesus sent his apprentices off on their first mission trip they were still wet-behind-the-ears learners.  They had mastered nothing.  In fact, much of what he’d taught them they failed to understand.  But Jesus didn’t hold them back for more course work; he didn’t keep them in school until a more appropriate time.  No—he sent them out, knowing that it was in the doing that they would learn the most about themselves, their gifts and limitations, the world’s hunger for wholeness, and the unbelievable power that belongs to all who are companioned by the Spirit of God.  Jesus set basic boundaries around where his apprentices should go and what they should be about, and then he sent them off.  That’s where we are.  All that remains (all!) is the doing.

In her provocative book, Jesus Freak, Sara Miles asks, “what would it mean to live as if you—and everyone around you—were Jesus, and filled with his power?  To just take his teachings literally, go out the front door of your home, and act on them?”  “Jesus,” she writes, “does not, anywhere in the Gospels, spend too much time calling his people to have feelings, or ideas, or opinions.  He calls us to act: hear these words of mine, and act on them.”

Time to get crackin’.

Pastor Erik

Sara Miles, Jesus Freak. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010) pp. ix, xiv