When God Throws A Brick
AFRICA IS WHERE YOU FIND IT - IT MAY BE NEARER THAN YOU THINK
In the past several years -- most recently in the past month or so -- perhaps you, too, have sat and listened to fellow parishioners report on their mission trips, either to Honduras or the Gulf Coast. Perhaps you, too, have been most impressed by those missioners who've related not only what they were able to accomplish for genuinely needy and genuinely appreciative folks, but also how the doing of it, in turn, has had a profound and fundamental effect on their own lives.
If these comments from the missioners resonated with you, even in a minute way, perhaps -- just perhaps -- it was God plunking a pebble off your noggin! Such pebble-plunking derives, so I'm told, from an old saying: "Sometimes God uses a pebble to get someone's attention . . . If that doesn't work, sometimes a larger rock . . . And for those who refuse to pay attention, God resorts to a brick."
The saying, in its quoted form, became the linchpin of a sermon delivered during Lent 2008 by The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd, III, Dean of Washington National Cathedral: "When God Throws A Brick". His sermon, to include its title and the old saying, drew in some measure from a talk he had heard sometime earlier by a well-to-do Minneapolis businessman, Ward Brehm. Mr. Brehm was your basic driven-to-succeed, over-committed, eyes-on-the-(secular) prize entrepreneur . . . until his minister -- not without Mr. Brehm's considerable resistance -- talked him into undertaking a mission trip to east Africa. Dean Lloyd characterized the outcome of the trip this way: "Brehm's experience scrambled the ways he had put his life together." In Mr. Brehm's own words, "The moment I stepped onto African soil my life was altered . . . Africa was my brick."
Neither the point of Dean Lloyd's sermon, nor of this article, is about Africa, per se, or any other semi-exotic locale. Instead, Dean Lloyd concluded his sermon this way: "Our God is a relentless God. I don't know how God will get through to you -- through a trip to Africa or Honduras; in a health crisis that makes every day count . . . I do know that God's love means letting go and making room and being ready . . . God wants us to loosen our grip, open our hands and eyes, and go where God needs us to go." He again cites Mr. Brehm, "I pray that each of you will find your Africa." . . . to which Dean Lloyd adds, "whether your Africa is in Anacostia, Springfield or Silver Spring."
So . . . Are you ready to respond to the pebbles or rocks -- and, at least by inference, thereby dodge the subsequent brick -- but have reasons even God would understand for not undertaking a distant, lengthy and perhaps even somewhat costly mission trip? I can help. Just a block from St. Alban's is a group of folks who're both needy, in their own way, and are demonstratively appreciative of our weekly efforts to meet their needs. Some 30 residents at Sleepy Hollow Manor Nursing Home frequently attend either of two Sunday morning worship services which, for more than 45 years, have been conducted by a devoted cadre of lay readers and musical accompanists from St. Alban's, with support from St. Barnabas'. These services -- to include the singing of several old familiar hymns -- not only go far toward meeting the residents' spiritual needs, but also serve as a significant link to an all-important segment of their lives before moving to Sleepy Hollow: Regularly attending church services on Sunday mornings. In short, if they were able they'd be worshiping in their own churches on Sunday mornings; they're not able, so we take our worship to them.
Scheduling of volunteers is somewhat flexible and can be tailored to fit individual preferences or needs. Currently it would involve not more than 2 hours spread over 6-8 week increments. All necessary materials are provided, together with as many periods of observation / orientation as desired. Teaming, whether by couples or parents-teens, is not only permitted but welcome.
You likely have questions. No problem -- we have answers. Drop by the ministry table on Rally Day and quiz one of the volunteers. Moreover, by the time you read this, I hope to have our new page on the St. Alban's website up and running. Check us out!
David Bell, ministry coordinator
[Please note: The complete text of Dean Lloyd's sermon can be found in the Summer 2008 edition of Cathedral Age, or on the Web at: http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/worship/stl080217.html ]
