11:00 a.m. , MONDAY MORNING

     It’s 11:00 Monday morning, twenty-four hours after listening to my great sermon on….

     Well, do you remember what it was about? No matter. What matters is that it’s Monday morning. So, where are you? At home with the children? At school in class? At work in the office or the plant, inside or outside? On the sofa reading the paper, sipping a cup of coffee, enjoying retirement? In bed and not feeling well? Volunteering somewhere? Where are you?

     One place I know where you are not is at church, not on Monday morning at 11:00 , not Tuesday at 4:00 in the afternoon or Thursday at 7:30 in the evening. More likely than not the next time you will be at church is Sunday. Maybe you will make it to the Lenten program on Thursday or, if you sing or play in a choir, to rehearsal on Wednesday, or, well, this list goes on but it is not long. Most people are in church one day a week and for some people, two days a week, but not all day any day.

     The point of all this is that, aside from those of us who are employed by the church, most people spend most of their lives anywhere but at church. And yet, when asked what their ministry is, their response always seems to center around what they do at church. And if they do nothing other than worship or take part in church activities, they insist they have no ministry. They are as wrong as wrong can be.

     No matter who we are, what we are doing at 11:00 a.m. on Monday morning is our ministry. Whatever we are doing whenever and wherever we are, be it Tuesday at 3:00 or Saturday at 7:00 , that is our ministry, our calling, our vocation. And it is in that vocation that we live out our faith, that we fulfill our baptismal covenental responsibilities. We come to church (the building) to be refreshed, renewed, educated and supported to go back to where we live out our vocation and to live it more fully.

     In truth wherever we are is church: the place where we worship our God and live out our faith by doing whatever we are called to do at that moment as best we can. Even if what we are doing is nothing: simply relaxing, resting, sleeping – if that is what our body, mind and spirit need at that moment – that is our ministry at that moment in time. An idle mind may be the devil’s workshop, but an exhausted body is a lousy workshop. We cannot live out our faith, fulfill our vocation, if we are not rested. (That is what Sabbath Rest is all about and what it is for, remember.)

     The problem is not the failure to fulfill our ministry so much as it is an awareness that our life is our ministry. How we live out our life of faith is how we fulfill our ministry: good, bad, indifferent or somewhere in between. The more we become aware that ministry takes place daily, the more aware we will become of what kind of job we do in living out that ministry and the better will we do it. Remember, too, that no one ministry is more or less important than any other. More on that some other time.

WJP