The World is Our Parish

At worship yesterday as I was standing in the chapel of Broadway I look write at a stained glass window of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, that proclaims his oft repeated comment "The World is My Parish." As I heard those words again I thought of Conor in Spain, Rachel having just left New Zealand. I thought of the three people we would be sending forth that morning -- Laura Chisler heading off to Malawi to work in the Methodist Mission there for two weeks and Chris Whitsel and Eric Espinoza to Tajikistan (I hope I didn't mispell the country). Chris is doing his graduate work on Tajikistan as he attempts to understand and help their fledgling education program connect to the lives of young people of that country (not many are involved in the schools there). Next Sunday Chandra and BJ will be sent out as they prepare for a two year stint in China - teaching English as part of the Peace Corps. I guess you could say that the people of Broadway certainly live that "the world is our parish" idea!

I think of those who are going particularly to the third world – to Africa and the former Soviet Union and to China – where the poor truly are poor – that Broadway will be filled upon their return with overflowing stories of God’s grace and abundance bursting forth in unusual places.

I’m reading a book called The Shadow of the Sun by a Polish journalist named Ryszard Kapuscinskiwho is writing about his over 40 year history of reporting on Africa. In it he tells of an experience in Somalia back in the 1990’s of traveling on a bus and stopping at a restaurant for dinner. He says that the travelers on the bus divided themselves into groups of six or eight and sat together on the floor. The waiter, a young boy in each case, would put a pot of rice and brown spicy sauce in the middle of the circle. Each person, in turn, would put their right hand in the pot and get a handful of the rice and squeeze the spicy sauce out of it and then put that dumpling into their mouth and eat. And so it went around the circle – no one going out of turn. And so they ate until all was finished.

The Gospel lesson Sunday morning was from Mark 4 about the sower sowing the seed and "knowing not how it grew" and the story of the mustard seed -- the tiniest of all seeds that grows into a bush or a tree (depending on which gospel the story appears in) into which all the birds of the air nest. It is this wonderful reminder of the mysterious power and presence of God's realm in the world around us. It is a reminder that it is in the little places of this world - on the edges, in the places that no one sees, in the midst of war and poverty and injustice and what others call "disability" that God is present in the what others don't even notice -- the small, the simple. It is from such "little places" that we can see the wonder and glory and extravagance of the Gospel at work. I think of the layers our culture and society puts up between us in this country -- all our things and all our busyness with television and the internet (amusing ourselves to death?) that keep us from truly seeing each other. Everything has to be "big" - heck "big" is to small any more -- now if you aren't "mega" you aren't even in the game.

I look forward to hearing the stories from Chris and Eric and Chandra and BJ and Laura and Conor and Rachel -- stories that I trust will help me know even more clearly the mystery and power of God in our lives and in the life of the world. Perhaps we can do that sitting around a dish of food - taking turns not only with a bite of the food - but with a story, as well.