The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13B August 4, 2024 I’ve just started reading a book on organizational development titled Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less-and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined. In the introduction, the author, Scott Sonenshein, poses three questions: “Why do some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much? Why do we get caught up chasing what we don’t have? How is it possible to achieve more prosperous organizations, rewarding careers, and fulfilling lives with what’s already at hand?” He begins to answer these questions by identifying two different ways of being in the world or dealing with resources: stretching versus chasing. He writes, “Stretching is a learned set of attitudes and skills that comes from a simple but powerful shift from wanting more resources to embracing and acting on the possibilities of our resources already in hand.” He continues, “Chasing, and those who frequently rely on it, chasers, orient themselves around acquiring resources, overlooking how to expand what’s already in hand. Their decisions and actions might appear very reasonable on the surface, but I will expose the harmful consequences that lurk deeper and ultimately upend success and make people miserable.” i Here’s an example that Sonenshein gives. Let’s say you need to put a nail into a wall. Chasers will spend time looking for a hammer, and if they can’t find one, then they’ll go buy one to get the job done. If they can’t acquire a hammer, then the job starts to break down and they can’t complete the task. So to anticipate future challenges, the chasers will try to acquire as many tools in their tool box as possible, even when those tools don’t meet an individual need. Over time, the toolbox gets larger and larger, making it difficult to remember what’s inside. But Sonenshein writes that Stretchers “make good use of the tools around, experimenting and testing the conventional limits of what’s a hand. If a rock is the only think around, a stretcher can pick it up to bang a nail into the wall-or an available brick, can of beans, high heel, or heavy flashlight.” Both are ways that can competently get a nail into the wall but with very different consequences. [While using a hammer may appear to be a more elegant solution to hammering a nail, much time and effort may be wasted on looking for the right tool and not putting nails into the walls. And, when we see that others have better tools, we not only feel bad but also think we can’t get things done with an inferior tool box.]ii So, what does all that have to do with church or faith or the gospel? This is our fourth week out of seven as we make our way reading through the book of Ephesians as our epistle reading. Scholars believe that Ephesians probably wasn’t written to the specific community in Ephesus, but rather that it is what is known as a “circular letter” which means it was written to be circulated to a number of different early Christian communities or churches. (It has been attributed to Paul, but scholars now think that Paul probably didn’t write it because there are many inconsistencies in the style and language used from the letters we know were written by Paul, but it was most likely written by someone working with Paul.) And one of the beautiful things about Ephesians is that it is a hymn or a love song to the Church or to Christian community. Our reading for today reminds us of the importance of unity among people in Christian community, that it is unity that is modeled for us in and through God. If this passage makes you think of baptism, then you get a gold star because it makes up the opening acclamation of our baptismal liturgy. Our portion for today also talks about how within a Christian community, each person is given gifts that come from Jesus, and these gifts are spread out among a community, so that not everyone has the same gifts. And the gifts that Ephesians enumerates here are to different roles or callings withing and beyond the community—all for the sake of building up the body of Christ and bringing people into unity in the faith. Our gospel reading today gives us a reminder of how we don’t always receive the gifts that are right in front of us. The people questioning Jesus have just received the gift of food (and the miracle or sign that provided it) in the feeding of the 5,000, and they have chased Jesus down and are asking for more miracles so that they might believe. They even reference the gift of manna, which is the bread that God provides for the Children of Israel when they are wandering in the wilderness so they wouldn’t starve, and at first they are grateful, but shortly after, when manna is the only thing they had to eat, they quickly pivot from gratitude to complaining. And we get this, don’t we? There’s an old saying that “familiarity breeds contempt.” We don’t always recognize gifts, even when they are right in front of our faces. It often takes some stretching to see gifts in a different light. This is true for both individuals and for organizations, even and especially the church. Can you think of a time when something that you took for granted was revealed as a gift, or when you stretched a bit to accept a new gift or a new way of being in the world? Was there someone who helped you see that gift or helped you grow into it? So many times, it takes another person recognizing a gift in us, holding up a mirror for us, in order for us to recognize it in ourselves. What are the gifts that you have right now that you might have overlooked or which new circumstances might be calling you to stretch into? Ephesians reminds us that this nurturing of and recognition of gifts is a part of the gift given to us by the Holy Spirit at our baptism, and it is the work of the church to seek out the giftedness in each other because when a variety of gifts is offered to the community, the community thrives. I can’t help but wonder what are the gifts that we as a faith community have that we might have overlooked or what new gifts are we being called to stretch into? i Sonenshein, Scott. Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less-and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined. Harper Collins: 2017, pp xi, 7, and 8. ii. Ibid. pp10-11.