The Words We Do Not Want to Hear, Part 1

The following is part of the sermon I delivered at Buffalo United Methodist Church. 

The Walk to Emmaus is a leadership development program that begins with a three-day retreat experience. For me, that three-day retreat was in the fall of 2006.  After that, I continued to participate in the community – helping with other walks, and eventually becoming part of the leadership team.   During one of the meetings of that team, we spent a lot of time talking about mattresses.  The walks our community sponsors are held in a United Methodist Church, and because the three-day walks involve three nights at the Church, the community owns mattresses. They are stored in the church’s attic, and when a walk is about to happen, we have a mattress party, pull the mattresses out of the attic, and prepare the sleeping rooms for the walk.

We were spending a lot of time during this one particular meeting talking about mattresses because another un-related ministry had asked our community if they could borrow our mattresses for one of their events.  I can’t tell you how long we debated this question.  I can’t tell you because I’ve blocked it out.  It seemed to go on forever.  Until one of the pastors who was providing spiritual direction for the community said, “Jesus would want you to let them use the mattresses.”

Well, if you want to bring Jesus into the discussion.

It was an uncomfortable truth that we didn’t want to hear. We hadn’t even considered the radical question of being a faithful disciples to Christ in our discussion.  Maybe we were enjoying the power of owning the mattresses too much.  Maybe we were too lazy to think about pulling all of those mattresses out of the attic in service to someone else.  Maybe we just didn’t get it at all.