Our Cup Does Run Over

November 2015

Our Cup Does Run Over

For the last seven weeks, I have led a Christian education series at St. Paul's Lutheran Church using the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s We Believe curriculum. How we “Engage the Gospel” is not just a Reformed concern. Now we have begun a new series, on Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer; is there a Presbyterian seminarian over the past few decades who hasn’t studied Bonhoeffer to some degree?

As we watched the DVD on Bonhoeffer’s early theological studies, we heard of his spiritual awakening on Palm Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, seeing people of different race, culture, and nationality, bound together by their common faith. And I reflected on the meals provided to the homeless in our city, most visibly by host churches of various stripes like the United Church of Christ, Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran. But less visibly if no less importantly, are the multitude of believers who come and provide food, preparation, and hospitality. Their names are not on the outside of the building but on the chalkboard inside, where they can be appropriately thanked.

Like the cup of Psalm 23, the space overflows with goodness and mercy, and it is expressed in expansiveness of faith and language. The Muslim Association is on the schedule every month, and the gathered community shows its respect as a traditional blessing is offered, sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, and sometimes in both. Just yesterday I walked into the church office to see bags and boxes of food. It seems that a five-year-old girl, a Hindu, learned that not everyone has as much to eat as she does. So for her birthday she asked that instead of gifts, foodstuffs be brought, and she in turn brought these to St. Paul's. After the many trips from car to building, she and her family asked if they could pray in the church’s sanctuary. And so they did.

For some, hearing Jesus’ prayer that we would be one as he and God are one (John 17) means that our diversity is a failure. As long as we are many — Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran — and not one, Jesus’ prayer remains unfulfilled. Others suggest that the diversity of our faith traditions — do they mean only Christian, or also Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist? — is an exhibition of the diversity demonstrated in so many other ways. Diversity is the norm, so perhaps it is God’s preference. I enjoy the theological debate, but sometimes I wonder if it is a contemporary version of “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Not that there may not be some theological “truth” to be derived, but does it really matter?

Bonhoeffer would go on to write that the church is the church when it exists for others. Soon, Thanksgiving Eve services at their best will gather people from north and south and east and west, a witness to how we can come together with all of our differences. When attendance is poor, however, that witness is diluted. And what does it mean if we come together for annual worship, but no more than that?

But when we come together for the purpose of serving the other, hand in hand, side by side, our color, creed, and nationality become a witness to the God who knows the birds of the air and the hair on our head. A witness to the God who cares for us so much that as Christians we confess that he came as one of us to walk with all of us.

This week “Crossroads” opens in St. Paul's, the only day shelter for the homeless who otherwise have few options for a warm place before the night shelters open. In the years since it opened, its main purpose has been warmth and shelter. This year, however, we are seeking the community’s assistance to provide life skills training, education, and companionship. For those who wish to improve their state in life, we are hoping to provide at least a toehold. For those who feel invisible, we hope to help them be known, be seen. We are a small church, with an older population. There is no way this or the soup kitchen is possible without the many who come from contexts beyond the pale of Lutheran, Christian, Anglo, Middle-Class, Allentown. It is only the expansiveness of charity, generosity, and hospitality that make it possible for this church to exist to serve others. Perhaps our greatest gift is to be the place where others can serve.

Are we the same or are we different? Yes. Are we one, or are we many? Yes.

Originally published by the Ecumenical Office of the Presbyterian Church (USA)