After I
preached a sermon on Mark 12:28-34 about loving one’s neighbor, one of our
members shared with me an article she read.
In it, Mother Teresa is interviewed.
The interviewer suggests that though Mother Teresa in her ministry works
hard and does some good things, in the long run, it makes little
difference. Her efforts do not alleviate
poverty on a large scale.
Here
is Mother Teresa’s response:
“I do not agree with the big way of doing
things,” Mother Teresa replied. “To us what matters is an individual. To get to
love the person, we must come in close contact with him. If we wait till we get
the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to
show that love and respect for the person. I believe in person to person; every
person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only
one person in the world for me at that moment.”[i]
I appreciated her focus on loving
the person and not getting lost in the numbers.
We do the one and avoid the other.
We can focus on loving people, our neighbors. We can be creative and find meaningful ways
to show love to the people around us. We
can be a gathering of people willing to walk with individuals in their
struggles. We can help people see Jesus.
We can also avoid getting lost in
the numbers. In terms of active members,
our church is smaller than it has been in over 30 years. If you just counted bodies, you’d say we’re
in decline. However, when I see how many
of our people commit to neighbor love by volunteering at the food pantry twice
month, I see a small congregation doing a lot of good. When I consider the way our members support
the church through tithes and offerings, it makes me believe God wants our
church to thrive. We haven’t been this
small in a long time, but we also haven’t been this financially stable in a
long time. We have a lot going for us
and the Gospel we preach and try to embody is the same Gospel they read in
churches with thousands of people.
It’s OK for us to want a growing
children’s ministry. It’s ok to want youth,
young adults, and small group ministries that are more developed. It’s ok to acknowledge that one of the things
we probably need for these ministries is more people. It’s ok as long as we remember that God has
blessed us as we currently are, and the group that currently comprises our
church body is capable of countless manifestations of neighbor love. We dream about what will be even as we pour
energy into what are doing right now as a church.
Like Mother Teresa, we see and love
everyone who comes through our doors as if he or she were Jesus. We members of the church family go out into
the surrounding world intent on showing neighbor love. Jesus is in the neighborhood and we will see
him if we seek him. We seek him by
loving all the people we meet in the everyday places of our lives.
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