In her update, Amy talks about the incredible response of Disciples in the aftermath of Katrina. Through partnerships with Week of Compassion and other church agencies, more than 11,000 volunteers have put in 437,000 hours of labor to help rebuild homes and churches. I think it’s an incredible honor to be part of a church that responds so quickly and so effectively…. But Amy says it better than I can: Read her report here.

Then there was Mr. Stoker, my high school English teacher and softball coach, who knew that I was much better at reading and writing than I was at playing softball, but who let me on the team anyway. I’m not sure which of us was more relieved when finally, after two years of floundering on the JV team, I mustered up the courage to tell him I didn’t want to play anymore. He inspired me to write, and to love good stories. Mr. Bowman and Mrs. Ross taught me American history and helped me find my place in it, and Mrs. Balser taught me to love math, even though I didn’t know why.

So I begin this back-to-school day with a prayer of thanksgiving for those teachers, and so many others: teachers who stay up late grading papers, and pay for supplies out of their own pockets, teachers who put in extra time after school to teach kids to read, who find room on the team for mediocre athletes, who teach us about blue jays and ginkgo trees, and who inspire our lives.

Thanks, teachers. Have a great school year!

God of summer heat and long days of sunlight, God of gentle rain and powerful thunder, we lift our prayers to you.

As this busy summer winds down, we look back and give thanks for giving us such good work to do, for sending us off to far away places and bringing us home safely, for connecting us with people here in Greensboro letting us help.

We pray today not just in thanksgiving for the work we did, but also for the people we met along the way:

For the people who will eat at Martha’s table in Washington, DC;

For the artisans who made the crafts to sold be SERRV;

For the children of the Dominican Republic and the staff of Orphanage Outreach;

For the families who care for loved ones at Beacon Place Hospice Center;

For the people caught in tornadoes, earthquakes or floods, who will need the hygiene kits we prepared;

For those in our community who will share the bounty of our garden;

For the church members who enjoyed meals cooked especially for them;

For the children who will go back to school with new pencils, paper, and backpacks;

For refugee families new to this country who are rebuilding their lives;

For the disabled children who ride horses at Kopper Top farm;

For the people who will receive furniture and home goods from the Barnabas Network;

… And for so many others who have inspired and challenged us and touched our lives. Thank you, holy God, for sharing this good work with us.

With glad hearts we pray. Amen.

This is not a major catastrophe, I realize. Vegging out in front of the television is a luxury most of the world does not have. Plus, with computers and cell phones and radios, we are hardly cut off from the outside world, and we didn’t really watch that all that much TV anyway. But I’ll admit that my first instinct was that we had to get it repaired as soon as possible.

I’ve been re-reading a book called Longing for Enough in a Culture of More, by Paul L. Escamilla, in preparation for a class I’ll be leading this fall. It’s got me wondering about this impulse to repair or replace everything right away, this pull to accumulate more and more stuff. Why is it so hard to imagine living without a TV? Escamilla suggests that what we need is a “slowly dawning awareness… that the prospect of ‘more,’ though awakening appetites that run fairly deep within us, is not ultimately satisfying. ‘Enough,’ while rather more lacking in curb appeal, has proven over countless generations to be a trustworthy tool for gauging what we really need.”

We’ll get the television fixed eventually – or in this crazy throw-away world, we’ll probably have to buy a new one – but for awhile maybe it will be enough to do without. Maybe I’ll reach for a book instead of the remote when I’m ready to decompress at the end of the night. Maybe I’ll dig out my old Indigo Girls CD’s and listen to music again. Maybe my family will play a game together instead of watching a movie. For the time being, and while the summer light still lingers in the evening, maybe we’ll listen to the crickets instead of the talking heads, and we’ll give thanks that we have enough.

One afternoon, as we were walking through downtown, we realized that we were standing right in front of the Old State House, across from which is a small circle of cobblestones that commemorates the site of the Boston Massacre. The odd thing about this particular memorial is that it is situated right in the middle of a traffic island, with cars and pedestrians zooming past it. If it weren’t for the occasional tour guide in dressed in colonial garb, you probably wouldn’t know it was there. The circle of stones and the Old State House itself are dwarfed by huge skyscrapers filled with modern offices, and I watched as workers on their lunch break walked across the memorial, seemingly oblivious to the history just underneath their feet.

When I got back to the church this morning, I realized that even here, we do our share of tripping over history without even knowing it. All over our building are small reminders that we are not the first to worship and work here (though none, as far as I know, has anything to do with Paul Revere). There are two paintings on my office wall that were painted by a beloved saint of the church. The globe I’ve used for children’s moments was given to the church in memory of a church member’s daughter, who died far too young. Even the pews in the sanctuary sing the songs of the generations who have gathered there.

That’s what I love about the faith we practice. It’s full of history, and you can’t help tripping over it. Let’s talk more about this on Sunday: Read Hebrews 11:1-3 and 8-16, and then join us for worship.

In the book, Miller explores what makes a good story, something he had to think about a lot when he was approached by a team of filmmakers who wanted to make a movie out of his memoir. To make a good movie, though, they had to change some things around in order to make his life a better story, which led Miller to the realization that the elements of a really good story are also the elements of a really good life. If you want to live a better life, he suggests, you have to live a better story.

I’m intrigued by this, though I have my reservations (usually, a really good story ends with a riding-off-into-the-sunset fairy tale ending, while life – even a really good one – rarely does). I do like the notion that we get to decide what we do with our lives, and that we ought to seek out the story we want to be living.

The scriptures for Sunday seem to encourage this kind of reflection, too. The letter to the Colossians (3:1-11), challenges us to set our minds on things above, living on earth while being mindful of heaven. In Luke 12:13-21, Jesus tells a parable about a rich farmer who has an unusually abundant crop and decides to hoard it all for himself. Jesus reminds us that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” So, what does your life consist of?

What kind of story are you living?

She is still a little too young and grabby to really be helpful in the garden. I have to steer her away from the not-quite-ripe tomatoes, and when I try to get her to pull weeds, she pulls a few too many plants instead. The other gardeners are gracious – they are good-hearted, patient church folks who know that there are things more important than perfect gardening – and one of them invites her over to look at a caterpillar.

The beans have come in, and the squash and zucchini have gone berserk, doubling in size over night so that we’ve had to line up volunteers to harvest every day. Tomatoes will be here before we know it, and rows of corn at the far end of the garden are already higher than my daughter’s head. Cantaloupe the size of softballs lay in waiting, with pumpkins promised before fall.

It’s the second summer for our community garden, and it feels good to be here on this sunny morning, working together. Like most good projects, it’s been championed by a small handful of hard-working and faithful people, and supported by many others who come when they can. We don’t have individual plots; everybody pitches in and does what’s needed. The harvest gets shared with anybody who works in the garden, and with anybody at church who wants some, and with the local food pantry. On Sunday mornings, folks bring in extras from their own gardens and add it to the bounty near our front doors. We don’t keep track of who brought what, or who took what, or who worked the hardest. If you can help, you help. If you need some, you take some.

On this morning, after the beans have been picked and we’ve made a dent in the weeds, we gather in the shade for a blessing. One of our most regular gardeners talks about how important this project has been for her. “I sit at a desk all day long,” she says, “and then I get to come out here and play in the dirt, and it’s wonderful.” We ask God’s blessing on the ground and on the harvest, and pray for the people this food will feed. Someone has brought a guitar so we sing a little bit, which feels just right. The breeze sweeps through us just then, a welcome freshness on the hot morning, and I am pretty sure it is the breath of God.

“I was glad when they said to me,” writes the author of Psalm 122, “‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”

I know the church isn’t about buildings. I know you can commune with God in nature, you can find the Holy Spirit on a hike through the mountains or in the roar of waves on the beach.

But have you ever sat in a room where the light falls just right, where the prayers of the church have been raised for generations, where songs of praise soak the walls and rise up from the carpet, where the people of God gather, where the spirit of ancient words fill the air?

If you think the afternoon sun is breathtaking, you should see the light shine in here on Sunday mornings.

I feel similarly breathless after a run through chapter 10 of Luke’s gospel. Last week, the Good Samaritan story left us with a command to go and do. This week, Jesus visits Martha and Mary’s home, and chastises Martha for doing too much. So, which is it? Up or down? Are we supposed to be up and running off to serve our neighbor? Or down on the floor at Jesus’s feet, listening for the word of God?

What do you want from us, Jesus?

The answer, I think, is: both. Sometimes we have to get up and act – especially when there’s something happening right in front of us that we can do something about. Sometimes we have to sit down and rest – especially if our work has us so distracted that we’ve lost sight of the Christ sitting in our own living room. It means paying attention, every day, to see if God is calling us to go and do, or come and sit. This is a think-on-your-feet kind of faith we practice, one that demands a different response to whatever situation we’re in, one that requires agility and patience and grace. It’s enough to leave you breathless at the wonder of it all.