Texts: Psalm 136; John 11: 17- 44

It was back in January, the Sunday after I returned from a week of study leave, that I spoke of a book [1] I read that week, that gave me a glimpse … actually it was more powerful than that … to be more precise, it reinvigorated my sense of call to this particular congregation in this particular neighbourhood.

It must be about 8 years ago, before I ever laid eyes on this congregation and this neighbourhood, that I was at a Presbytery meeting (that gathering of representatives of local United Churches) when we were asked to entertain a motion to reduce the staff time at James Bay United Church. That’s generally a sign of a congregation losing ground, dying. And I remember --in the way it happens, how a whole number of things can flash through your mind in split seconds-- I remember thinking, “wait a minute! Surely there’s more to be had and done there!” The church is located smack in the middle of the neighbourhood … when most of our United Church buildings are tucked away off the beaten track, hard to find. Not knowing much at all about the neighbourhood I had a sense of the diversity of people, the reputation of this neighbourhood as being community-minded. With those few things coming to mind, it occurred to me, why would we be letting this congregation go? … why wouldn’t we be investing more not less, for surely there’s potential there for the United Church in particular to connect with the neighbourhood, and thrive.

I had no inkling at the time, and certainly no intention of coming to this place myself, and yet somehow, from that moment, the possibilities, the dream really, of James Bay United Church coming alive in that neighbourhood never left me. 3 years later I found myself sitting for the first time in the hall downstairs, meeting with the Board, talking about the possibility of us embarking on a journey of renewal, together. That was 5 years ago!

So back to that book that I took with me last January on my study leave…I really knew nothing about it but I ‘just happened’ to get into it that week. It’s core message: how important it is that a church be vitally engaged in the realities of life in the neighbourhood where it exists, AND the importance of the church appreciating that before it ever shows up, God is already there in the neighbourhood, at work in the lives and hopes and endeavours of people living there.

I remember bringing to you that Sunday in January one story from the book, the story of Howard Lawrence [2] a minister in Edmonton. Howard had started coaching his son’s soccer team. It being a neighbourhood team, there he was surrounded by his own local neighbours -- parents and kids, many of whom he hadn’t met before. He began discovering all kinds of things about them … who they are, what they’re up to, what they care about. Coupled with this, Howard read a book called Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighbourhoods [3], by John McKnight, a community organizer who’s been involved in community development for years.  His approach to community development is powerfully illustrated as he holds up a glass of water that’s half full. Most institutions and service organizations, he says, look at a neighbourhood and ask, what are the needs? -- in other words, they look at the empty half of the glass. What he and a colleague began to do was ask instead, what’s already here? --in other words, they looked at the full half of the glass.

What they discovered is that something very powerful happens when you uncover, unearth, and make visible the wealth of what is there … and you connect those people with those gifts and capacities with each other. As connections grow, care for each other deepens. As people put their gifts together, so much more is possible. People of the neighbourhood, rather than being recipients or even victims of what’s going on, become the active shapers of the quality of life in their neighbourhood.

With the inspiration and guidance of John McKnight, Howard Lawrence mobilized this Abundant Community Initiative in his own neighbourhood in Edmonton. Among other things, it involved what he calls block connectors, individuals from each block in the neighbourhood, going door to door, talking to their neighbours, basically interviewing them according to a set of questions designed to get at people’s interests, abilities, dreams. Once the initiative got underway, and this kind of information began to be shared, Howard tells of so many people describing how they’d been longing for something like this … to be more connected with one another. People of other neighbourhoods, hearing about it, began calling in, wondering how can they be about a venture like this where they are. In the meantime something like 10 more neighbourhoods in the city of Edmonton have undertaken this initiative.

It’s this kind of initiative that we are about to be launching in our neighbourhood right here, in part thanks to Ryan’s arrival among us … because an initiative like this, while it’s undertaken by people of the neighbourhood, it requires a coordinator … someone with a passion for connecting people with each other; someone to recruit and train those block connectors (which might well include a number of us). There are other aspects too that require the shepherding of a coordinator.

I want to share with you a story close to home from the last few weeks --before this initiative has even gotten under way-- that beautifully illustrates the promise and power of what can happen when people in the neighbourhood connect with each other … get to know something about each other, and bring their gifts and experience together to help make something happen.

A few months ago I drafted a grant proposal in order for us to apply for funds to support this initiative in our neighbourhood. At our Board meeting in September when we discussed the proposal and agreed to submit it, Marg suggested we ask Kate Kerr if she would write a letter in support of our application. Not only is Kate a resident of this neighbourhood, but in a conversation with her some months ago, I discovered she’s working on her Masters in Community Development. So I sent our proposal along to Kate, with the Board’s request, and wouldn’t you know it, she writes back: I’d be glad to write a supporting letter … “the work of John McKnight has been the cornerstone of much of our studies.” AND “just yesterday afternoon,” she writes, “I was at one of my classmate’s defence of her thesis. She is a block connector in Edmonton and her master's project was on the experience of block connectors in that program. Howard Lawrence himself was skyped in to the defence. My classmate,” Kate says, “can be a valuable resource for us as well.” Not only that, it turns out, Kate herself is serving as the Vice-chair of the James Bay Community School Society-- something we hadn’t realized in approaching her. This organization, she says “has been looking at ways of better gauging and serving our community, and the information and connections from this project will be of great value. I feel our school and community centre would benefit greatly from working with James Bay United Church on this project.”

See what can happen when we enquire and connect with each other!
As you might guess, Kate was able to write a strong supporting letter to accompany our application. This morning, I’m delighted to tell you that last week we got word our application has been approved, to the tune of $20,000!

So we’re about to launch this initiative.
Imagine James Bay United Church, an organizing agent of a venture that could well have beautiful, far reaching implications for the quality of individual people’s lives and the spirit of this neighbourhood as a whole. Part of me thinks, who are we to get up to something like this? And yet … as I review the pieces that have led to this moment … all that I’ve described so far, in addition to that part of our story from some 40 years ago, when James Bay United Church was the organizing agent behind the birth of the New Horizon’s Centre, the James Bay Community Project and the fore-runner of the Beacon newspaper (to name some of the initiatives of that time!) … all this at a time when the congregation saw itself as anything but robust. So while part of me thinks, who are we to get up to something so potentially life-giving? I can’t help but wonder, who are we not to?! Not by our own strength … but, as before, by the wonder of the Spirit’s guidance and provision among us. Not by our own strength but, as before, through the persistent outpouring of God’s love for this place and the people of this place.
I don’t know about you … but when I look at all this, I can’t help but see a rather miraculous coming together of so many pieces bringing us to where we are right here and now.

Last week I came upon these words of Wendell Berry:
“To preserve our places and to be at home in them, it is necessary to fill them with imagination. To imagine as well as see what is in them. Not to fill them with the junk of fantasy and unconsciousness, for that is no more than the industrial economy would do, but to see them first clearly with the eyes, and then to see them with the imagination in their sanctity, as belonging to the Creation.” [4]
To see with our imagination such that we see this place, these people as holy, filled with the presence of God … that’s what we’re being invited to do. To imagine this neighbourhood as a place where God is alive and at work. To imagine this neighbourhood --the streets and parks, homes and cafes, courtyards and shops, schools and centres, and all the people in them -- to imagine this neighbourhood as a place that God is in love with! … that’s what we’re invited to do.

To imagine -- it’s not about making it up. In the community of faith to imagine means rather, to receive, to entertain, to host images of reality that lie beneath the radar of the dominant version of reality … images that are Spirit-given and for which the Spirit gives us eyes to see.

So that Psalm we sang this morning -- it offers us this image of God’s faithfulness going on forever! It’s not an image that’s made up. It’s given, as the writer specifically recalls event after event after event in which God is present, creating, delivering, releasing, redeeming. It’s an image that is given to us now that we might imagine that God is at work even now, even in this part of God’s creation in new-making, life-giving ways. This image of God entering into the thick of life with enduring faithfulness allows us to trust that it’s not all up to us, this abundant community initiative, or anything else; but rather that God is in our midst, doing more than we could even dare to dream.

For all that the story of the raising of Lazarus might stir in us today, the thing that caught my attention this time is the gathering of neighbours. It’s not just a family story … it’s a neighbourhood story. Many people, we’re told, came to be with Mary and Martha upon hearing of the death of their brother -- to console them. At first they’re with the sisters in their home; and then when Mary goes out to meet Jesus, they all go out with her. When Jesus asks where the body of Lazarus has been laid, it’s they who tell him, “come and see,” and they all go with him to the tomb. When Jesus calls for the stone to be rolled away, together they remove it. And then when Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb, and there he appears wrapped, bound in grave clothes, it’s to the neighbours Jesus turns and urges them “unbind him! and let him go!”

Not any one of them could have imagined the raising of Lazarus any more than they could have imagined having a hand in his release -- not even Martha, who was bold enough to suggest God would grant Jesus whatever he asks. Not anyone of them could dare dream there could be life when something as powerful as death had had its way.

And yet this is the gospel, the staggering good news that we are given, that we might not only see our lives and our neighbourhood with our eyes, but see it with our imagination, in it’s sanctity, as belonging to the Creator … who gives and gives and gives yet more life … and who summons us --all of us neighbours-- to be part of the action, to be agents in the raising, the releasing, the flourishing of life.

And so as we embark on this initiative in our neighbourhood hardly knowing what will come of it …what will come of us or be asked of us, be given to us …
We give thanks unto you, O God of might ~
for your love is never ending.
We give thanks unto you O God of All ~
for your love is never ending!

[1] Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, and Dwight J. Friesen, The New Parish, Downers Grove, Il,: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

[2] Good Day, Neighbour!

[3] John McKnight and Peter Block, Abundant Communities- Awakening the Power of Families and Neighbourhoods, San Francisco: Berrett-Kochler, 2012.

[4] Wendell Berry, "Notes:  Unspecializing Poetry," cited in Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2009.