The church in community, collaboration, communion & solidarity - Week 1
Many of you will know that TGUC has been partnering this year with Farm-to-Plate Marketplace - a local initiative where each week, farms around the Lower Mainland list produce on a central website, where Vancouver residents can order and collect at various pick up locations - of which the church is one.
It’s an opportunity for us to support a program that’s good for farmers, the community and food security in our neighbouhood. And it’s a great way to get to know more of our neighbours.
This past Thursday duirng the FTP pick up, I was chatting with a neighbour and when I asked how she was doing, she kind of shrugged and said, so-so. I inquired further, and she told me she’d just received an eviction notice from her landlord. She’s been in her home for 17 years, and as we talked, the whole story came out: of how she's been taken advantage of over the years, and this year was asked to take a huge (45%) rent increase. She finally agreed to a 25% increase (the legal amount is under 4%). And even after agreeing to a huge increase, just a few months later, she has now been served with an eviction notice.
I offered the church's support. Our neighbour asked if we could pray for her, and I assured her that was one thing we can absolutely do - but to let us know if we could help in any other way. Of course she’s worried about finding another affordable place in Vancouver, and is also afraid she’ll be forced to move out of the neighbourhood she’s lived in for 17 years.
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The local "ecosystem"
Why am I telling you this story today?
For the past six weeks, through the church’s Season of Creation, we looked at how we are to be the church - and God’s people - in creation. We talked about how the church must be grounded in the conviction that humans are not separate or isolated from the rest of the natural world; that everything is interdependent, part of a greater whole, and our wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of all. And of course, most immediately, on the wellbeing of our local ecosystem.
Today I’d like us to focus on this idea of being connected to our “local ecosystem”. This includes the land on which we’re located, but also the people, our neighbours in the community. It includes the neighbourhood’s history as well as the present dynamics, issues and challenges.
We are the body
I was at a conference in the spring hosted by a group called The Parish Collective. It’s a movement of church leaders who believe the essential mission of the church is incarnational; that is, as Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, we are to be the body of Christ. Well actually, he doesn’t say the church is to be the body of Christ, he says to them, “You ARE the body of Christ”.
And just as God came in the body and person of Jesus into a specific time and place, we as Christ’s body have also been called together to be the body in a time and place - in this time, in this place - in this neighbourhood of Fraserhood/Dickens/Kensignton-Cedar Cottage West/edge of Mt Pleasant (yes, our neighbourhood is somewhat difficult to pin down).
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Paul - and the Parish Collective folks, among others, would tell us that since we the church are the body of Christ, we have a missional calling. Seattle pastor Tim Soerens describes it as sharing life together, in relationship with God and one another, living in the midst of, and faithfully present to the everyday realities of our “place”, our neighbourhood.
One of those realities, of which we are acutely aware, and which hit home again in hearing the story from our neighbour on Thursday evening, is the unaffordability and unavailability of safe, secure, decent housing for those who live - or want to live, in the neighbourhood.
Another reality is the isolation of many people who have a very difficult time finding community and belonging in their community, due to factors such as the cost to join community groups, the lack of inclusive and safe spaces, mental health challenges, or being new to the city or to Canada and perhaps not being able to speak English.
And again, we know this because of the stories we hear from our neighbours, whether that be at Gracie’s Thrift Store, or Graceful Noise coffeehouse, or at a film screening, or as they stop to look at our gardens, or come to pick up their produce from the Farm-to-Plate pick up. Or at Sunday worship or our Friday jazz vespers.
The Big “Why”
There’s this little book I picked up at the spring conference, titled “Everywhere You Look: Discovering the Church Right Where You Are” written by Tim Soerens, the Seattle pastor. In the book, he talks about what he calls “God’s Big Why” - why did God send Jesus? Why did God send us the spirit? What does God desire for us?
And here's how he describes the answer to that question:
“That the world might be a venue of generous neighbourliness”.
This is a dream, a vision to aspire to. And we only get there by engaging with and getting to know our neighbours. It isn’t easy, especially in the big city; especially when our community is made up of such a diverse set of neighbours. Especially when many folks have a deep suspicion of all things “church/christian”. As a church community seeking to practice “generous neighbourliness” in Christ’s name, It’s difficult work, as we have encountered over the years, but it can also be life-transforming for all of us.
Serendipity
So back to the conference: there were a number of stories shared by church leaders whose congregations are engaging with their neighbourhoods in life-giving and justice-making and revitalizing ways.
What was interesting to me was when these leaders spoke about how these community-oriented projects got started, all of them highlighted how important it was to start by finding opportunities to get to know people in the neighbourhood, They talked about how faith communities need to stay “proximate” to their neighbours in order to build relationships of understanding and trust, and to enable the kind of conversations that open up possibilities for collaboration for the common good.
One speaker made the comment: “We should be designing our cities for serendipity” - so neighbours can “run into each other”. And it occurred to me that this is what we do when we create so-called “third spaces”. This is a concept many of us at Trinity-Grace have worked with before: the idea of having spaces other than home and work, for neighbours to meet up, to participate in something, and to find community. Sometimes community centres are good for that. 411 Seniors society (a few blocks away on Fraser St.) has been doing this well since it opened. Coffee shops and libraries offer this too. And as a church, we have been trying to be that as well.
At their best, third spaces are inclusive and offer a radical hospitality that brings a diverse cross-section of people from the neighbourhood “into proximity” where they get to know each other (and to know us, and us them). And in that space, barriers get broken down, trust gets built, and stories get told - like the story I heard on Thursday.
I can’t count the number of times I have been amazed at the small world stories that often come out of these conversations, and the ideas for helping people out, and supporting others in their projects. And the sheer - well, serendipity of it all.
What if we understood one of our roles in the community - as creating spaces for serendipity? Spaces that create opportunities for the practice of “generous neighbourliness”?
Won’t You Be My Neighbour?
You know who was really good at fostering “generous neighbourliness”?
Mr. Rogers - Fred Rogers - of Mr. Rogers’ Neighbourhood.
Fred Rogers lived a remarkable life of living out his faith - and of showing us how to love our neighbour.
Some things I believe Fred taught us:
We are all neighbours
We don’t need to be afraid of our neighbours. We have more in common (our common humanity) than we image
A little care and respect and forgiveness go a long way in a neighbourhood
We can learn from our neighbours
Life is better for all of us and we can talk about and deal with tough things when we know (have authentic relationship with) and care for and trust our neighbours
Loving our neighbour means paying attention to them and honouring our shared humanity
On his long-running TV series, Fred Rogers used the format of a simple children’s show to curate a very diverse community and show millions of viewers what generous neighbourliness looks like - and how transformational it can be.
Flourishing together
In our scripture reading today, Paul tells his listeners: “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into (participates in) the exuberance (vitality).” (1 Corinthians 12)
And of course, the way God designed our bodies is not only a model for the church, but also points to the interconnectedness and interdependence of the entire human community, and the natural world. And in between body and church body - and the entire world community - is our neighbourhood. A proximate "body" / ecosystem which encompasses us and our church and the land and all our neighbours.
“You are the body, says Paul. Statement. Fact. This is our identity. We don’t have to do anything to be the body. But we do need to keep discerning how we are to love our neighbour and participate in the ecosystem, the wider body of God, our neighbourhood.
En Courage
To be clear: my goal today is encouragement. (Warning: HOCKEY analogy ahead)
Just like my favourite hockey team, who are playing quite well at the moment and the coach’s goal is simply to encourage them to keep doing what they’re doing, and continue to keep their focus on the “staples” of the game - this is what I'm encouraging us towards today.
Those “staples" for us in the game of “generous neighbourliness” are: to love, to pay attention to, and engage with our neighbours - the ones who come through our door and the ones who don’t. To notice and pay attention to what our neighbours care about, what concerns them, what they’re afraid of and worried about. What stories they have and want to tell, the hopes they have for the neighbourhood and for how we can work together for the good of all.
TGUC (and both of the congregations who came together to form it) have a long history of being committed to discerning what God is already getting up to in the community, and how to join in that. As years come and go, and people come and go, and as our neighbourhood evolves, it behooves us to take time to revisit our “big why”, to look at our network of relationships and what’s happening in our community - and hopefully affirm many of the relationships and things we are up to already, while perhaps surfacing new questions and ideas about where the spirit is moving, what the spirit is doing, and what’s needed from us to participate in that.
PRAYER:
Loving God, you have made us the body of Christ, a body in a time and a place - in a neighbourhood. Help us to live into this identify and incarnate Christ’s love and peace in our community, that your kin-dom of generous neighbourliness may indeed come.
Amen.
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