What if?

 Luke 20:27-38

What if? What if we had more people? What if we had more money? And we get caught up in a numbers game which leads no where. This is the question today. How many times and, how many brothers, and what happens after all is said and done.

Canon Whitney Rice in the Diocese of Missouri puts it this way. We get so caught up in the numbers we forget the numbers aren't the measure we are striving for. Sound familiar? They were so caught up in the numbers they forgot the really important part. Our God is a God of the living. We are asked to live faithfully.

What does it mean to live faithfully? Well, we need to stop looking at the numbers as a measure. Instead we need to look more faithfully at what we do. Risk is a part of faith. We risk when we have relationships with our neighbors. We risk when we dare to look at what we are doing presently and claim it isn't the most life-giving way we could be doing it.

How many things in the church do we do just because that's the way we've always done it? Seriously, think of the things you do just because and then think if they have to stop or if they need to be developed differently.

We want to have life, and we need to have life abundantly. We live out of our abundance, not in narrow thinking. Just like the Sadduces we hope it can be put into a formula, but this is not how faith works. Faith works out in turning aside and speaking to a burning bush. Faith works out by being honest about how the scripture is resonating within you and what difference it makes in how you live in the world. It is not a formula we can replicate because true faith lives into the communities they are planted in. 

Looking at our neighbors is just one step. Another is engaging with who we are as a community? What is the thing which brings us together in a common life? It is heartening to hear the stories of how people came to the community. It gives broad strokes of a picture you can work into to see the call of God within. It is life sustaining bread for the community and it should not be ignored. Build upon it to grow into what God has called you to be.

Living faithfully is hard work. It requires us to listen, to look around and see others, and to risk trying something new. It will deepen our relationship with one another and with God. So step out in faith and share the bread of life.