Mark 7: 24-37
Rev. Bryan Travis Hooper

Today we are sharing with you a vision that has come to some of us – not as easily as we might have hoped, but nevertheless a vision that has come that we hope can guide us as we look to our church’s future.  The church council has worked faithfully for several months trying to put into words a vision for our church and John Swanson has been kind enough to offer some of his artistic skills to express our vision in a visual way.  And so, now you have heard a little bit from Bert about this vision.   Today, we are casting this vision – it has not been adopted by any official body.  It is not yet finished, really.  It is simply an offering to you, for you to consider, as you think about your church and the visions you have had for your church.

The vision that we offer you today is really not a static vision.  It’s not a photograph – it’s more like a movie.  It’s a living vision, a vision of an organic, dynamic, transforming community.  When we were talking about our vision, the visual images that seemed to have the most resonance with our church leadership were images of trees and gardens – images of organic, living things that are growing, changing, evolving.  We thought of ourselves as branches of this tree, or plants in this garden – each one of us reached toward the sun in our own ways, all of us grounded in the same rich, nurturing soil.

The biggest challenge, however, was to figure out how to express that in words.  What we wanted to capture was the process of discipleship that each of us is invested in at varying levels, and the process that we wish to invite the people of Greater Hartford to join us in.  It occurred to us that the process of discipleship is really about roots, growing, and bearing fruit.

We want to invite you to be rooted in God’s love – that is to become more deeply aware of God’s essential nature as the source of love, and to understand personally that God loves you.  That is really the starting place of discipleship, but it is also a profound truth that takes a lifetime to fully appreciate and understand.  By God’s grace, we grow me deeply in our faith over time, as we deepen our discipleship through worship, prayer and education.  And as we grow, we are called to ministries of justice and peace that extend our transformation to all of the world.

John Wesley described the process of discipleship as a house with a porch.  The first step is to come to the porch.  The porch is God’s prevenient grace, which invites us all to a life of discipleship.  It is the call to come and be rooted in God’s love.  Then one must enter through the door.  This is justifying grace – the grace that is acknowledged at our baptism, as we publicly accept God’s grace and profess our faith.  But once you have walked through the door, you now enter the house – that’s the safe place where you can grow and build your own sense of ministry.  Wesley called this sanctifying grace, because it was the grace of God that leads all of us to eventually become saints.  It was what we are calling growing in grace and bearing fruits of justice and peace.

It is important to see that our vision is of a community of people on a journey of transformation – transformation for themselves, and transformation for the sake of the world.  We are trying to create a certain type of person: a disciple of Jesus who engages in transformational ministries.  Our vision is to be a community that fosters an environment that naturally and organically produces faithful disciples.  If you think about a garden, you don’t really have to do anything to make stuff grow.  In fact, if you are a gardener, you may notice that most of your work is really designed to prevent things from growing that you don’t want in your garden.  Our earth, especially here in Connecticut, is a perfect environment for growing green things.  It just happens – because the rain, and the soil, and the temperature is all just right to create the perfect situation for growth.

If we are faithful to this vision, our church will begin to align all of our resources to support this process of discipleship.  We will begin to create a healthy, thriving environment where disciples can’t help but grow.  We will wonder where all the disciples came from, as they will seem to appear spontaneously in our soil.   But we will remember Jesus’ parable: God scatted seeds – some fell on the rocks, some fell on shallow soil, but some fell on good soil.  It is up to us to provide the good, fertile, deep soil that can nurture disciples.  Then, when God starts casting seeds, we will watch the disciples grow.  In that parable, the seeds are all the same.  It is the environment in which the seeds land that makes the difference.

I want to take a moment now and look at the story that the lectionary brings us today.  It is the story of a woman in need of healing for her daughter.  Though she wasn’t a Jew, she decided to approach Jesus, perhaps because of Jesus’ growing reputation as an effective healer.  She was a seed, that God had cast.  And she came to Jesus – good soil indeed.  Jesus, however, is reluctant at first to heal her.  She is not a Jew – she is not like him and his other followers.  He responds to her coldly – let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.

But this woman is persistent.  She rejects Jesus’ rejection.  Even the dogs get the food that falls under the table.  And Jesus heals her daughter.

As we invite others to come and join us on this vision, we must realize that they will not be like us.  They will not think like us.  They will not dress like us.  They will not talk like us.  They will not want the same things we want.   They will not value the exact same things we value.  But if God casts the seed, we are called to provide the soil.  As we cast our vision, I hope you will vigorously, excitedly, happily, throw this vision to the dogs, the cats, the rats, the scoundrels, the sinners, the fools, the broken-down and the down and out.  I hope you will through this vision out and let it fall on the ears of all the hurting people, all the broken lives, even the bugs and the birds and the flowers and the trees.  I hope you will see this vision extending beyond our comfort zone, and out to all the living creatures of God’s earth, especially those here in Hartford.

Almost every church I’ve ever known has claimed to welcome all people.  But if you visit churches from time to time, you will soon discover that most churches say one thing and do another.  It’s not easy to call people to join you in your vision.  It’s not easy to welcome people you don’t know when they come in your door.  It’s not easy to create fertile soil for growing disciples.  It requires us to be radically open to other people, to be open to constant change and new things, to be open to God’s Spirit blowing around us in the chaotic, transformational ways that God’s Spirit blows.  Most of all, it requires trust: trust that the God who called us in to the church is the same God that is calling people into the church today.  Trust that the same Spirit that inspires us with our worship and our traditions is the same Spirit that inspires others to come and respond in their own creative ways.  Trust that all God’s children need to be rooted in God’s love, to grow in grace and bear fruits of justice and peace, even though each one of us will do those things in our own unique way.

Friends, we have a vision now for our church.  It is simple, clear, concise.   I think it’s a good vision.  Our task now is to create the kind of soil that will nurture the seeds that come our way.  May we be trusting enough to move beyond our comfort levels.  May we be faithful enough to risk everything for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  May we dare to be rooted in God’s love, grow in grace, and bear fruits of justice and peace.   Amen.