Considering how we serve
All Saints’ vision is “To be a church that loves like God loves.”
My pilgrimage on The Way of St. Francis wound up and down the Apennine Mountains, mostly in remote places, sometimes in small villages. Each night, I was dependent on the hospitality of others for a place to rest and food to eat. Sometimes I was a paying guest, other times, I was received as pilgrim at a “donativa” and encouraged to give what I could to support the ministry.
One evening (having walked twenty miles up and down mountains in 90+ degree heat), I arrived at a 15th-century monastery donativa that had been converted to receive pilgrims. Volunteers served as staff, making meals, and cleaning the dormitories. They also washed the feet of each pilgrim before dinner, a ritual inspired by Jesus’ own washing of his disciples’ feet the night before he was crucified and his commandment to love and serve one another.
As I experienced this ritual and the meal that followed, I was surprised to note that I did not actually feel cared for. It wasn’t foot washing or the dinner, but the way the volunteer staff treated one another. They were not kind to each other. I saw bickering and posturing in setting up water basins. Territoriality and competing alliances in the kitchen overshadowed the clear intention of welcome and service at dinner.
A church that loves like God loves …
Scripture shows us the tender love of God the Father in the first chapters of Genesis: God makes clothes for Adam and Eve when their disobedience means they can no longer remain in the garden. God the Holy Spirit prompts Paul to ask people in churches he started to send money to the church in Jerusalem, to feed people they have never met. God incarnate in Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, commanding them to “Love one another as I have loved you,” to serve each other in basic, and often humbling ways.
All Saints’ is a busy place. God is sending many new people. We are not just open for Sunday services, and that means we are being good stewards of the resources given to us. Throughout the week there are many activities that overlap, or even happen at the same time. We have a child care center that shares our space and also must meet its own state requirements.
Clothing, feeding, serving, and caring for those we know and those we may never meet are a few ways we seek to love like God loves. My experience in the monastery reminded me that how we go about this work matters. To be a church that loves like God loves is not only about what we are doing, but how we order our life together in this place. Are we intentionally looking for Christ in the face of people we share this building with, with whom we have to negotiate for space, who may be strangers to “the way we do things” here?
+Nancy