Rise Up with Detroit - Sermon for Pentecost 9 2015

Sermon:

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Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who calls us to rise up.

            We heard this a couple of times when we were in Detroit, Why Detroit? The organizers were asked, if New Orleans was dangerous, Detroit is much more so it feels. So, why Detroit?  And the answer they had to give was, because they felt like God was calling them there.

            And I didn’t feel the danger at all, had it just been Cody, Jacob and myself all by ourselves? Yeah, but when we were with 30,000 others all filling the down town streets it didn’t feel dangerous. When we went out for our service day we went to a neighborhood of little brick houses like this, this house was across from a closed school and 4 blocks from the houses our group was working on. It felt like a wonderful neighborhood and just unfortunate that there were so many empty homes around, some boarded up, some burnt down, occasionally an empty lot. But, it didn’t feel dangerous to us, just emptier. So, when we got back on the bus to get back to downtown and someone mentioned they heard that it was in the most crime ridden district of Detroit I was a little surprised. It didn’t feel that way, it felt like a neighborhood that was run down, but still had some life to it, there was grass and trees, it wasn’t covered in trash or with gangs of people walking around. Besides the empty houses it was nice.

[Ephesians 3:18]

            Why Detroit? I look at our lesson from Ephesians, verse 18, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

            Why Detroit? Because maybe no one else would go. And it took God calling to the organizers of this trip to bring people to the city. In this trip, we truly comprehended the love of Christ and were filled with the fullness of God.

            Ephesians then goes on to say, “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

            Just as much as we comprehended God's love and fullness, God at work through us was even more powerful. It wasn’t that we did all that great of things while there. I painted a fence, Cody and Jacob helped with some hedge trimming and weeding. Others cleaned up some trash and pruned some trees, others elsewhere painted a house, we put murals over the top of boarded up windows and doors. People played in a field with neighbor hood kids, others cleaned up tire piles. But, together we reached out to people in a city who are often overlooked. Sure, I just painted the fence, and Cody and Jacob did pruning and weeding, but through us and all 30,000 who were there God did so much more.

            From an article by Micah Meyer in the Huffington Post: “As a volunteer at the event, I couldn't seem to go anywhere without encountering this zeal [of hopefulness]. Every walk through downtown or along Detroit's riverfront greeted me with a multitude of teenagers raising their hands for a high-five or cheering in elation.

Even beyond the event's participants, local residents expressed a similar jubilee:

"Thank you for coming to Detroit!" passersby would smile and shout on the streets outside the General Motors Renaissance Center.

"We are so happy you're here sharing Jesus!" waiters would smile as we entered Greektown's popular restaurants.

And from downtown's convention center to suburban hotels, employees, cops and panhandlers would raise their hand in the air, catching the infectious high-five trend, and say, "You are bringing so much joy to this city!"

            The theme of the whole gathering was “Rise Up Together” and it has a multitude of meanings. Yes, together as  30,000 youth and adults we Rose Up Together in our gathering and worship every evening, and we rose up together in going out to do service to the people of Detroit, but even more so, and even more importantly, we rose up together with the people of Detroit saying that, God has not abandoned us and them.

            I don’t know about others, but I came back full of hope for not just Detroit, but the Church as I witnessed so many  young people doing exactly what Christ calls us to do, to go out to the least and not just give them stuff, but accompany them in the midst of their lives. I heard from our leader on our service day, the neighborhood we were working was just blocks from his own house. One of the other groups had the families who still lived in the area come out to help them. A little girl around 5 side by side with high-schoolers working to pull weeds from the sidewalk. You can’t help but be changed by that.

            It recalls our Gospel lesson for today. We see 5000 people being fed by Christ, and the easy comparison is to show a picture like this one of 30,000 youth having Holy Communion in Ford Field, but a much more powerful image is one of the whole people of Detroit being fed not with physical bread, but with the bread of life, as we fed them spiritually through our actions. They may have felt empty, but I pray that they are now full, or are beginning to see that God is with them.

            I want to close with one more reflection from our Gospel, we here see Jesus walking on water out to the disciples. I certainly can’t walk on water, nor can any of us. But, I can walk to my neighbor. Christ doesn't call us to walk on water, that’s what he does, Christ builds the bridge we need to walk to those in need. All we do is go there to show that Christ is present. All we do is go to share the love of God, and then we let God work through us.

            Amen.