Jury Duty

I had jury duty this week. It was my first time ever getting the call to serve, and mostly, it was disappointing. I was hoping for a short two day trial so I could get the full experience. Instead I spent 1-2 hours every morning sitting in a large room with people I didn’t know until we were dismissed. While I did get some nice reading done, I could imagine better uses of my time. Finally, on Wednesday, after we were given notice of our last dismissal, we were told that the judge wanted to speak with us. We all filed into the courtroom one floor below and took seats on the wood benches. We stood when the Bailiff introduced the Honorable Judge and then resumed our seats for the Judge to speak. He extended his deep thanks for our presence this week which was necessary for the resolution of 15 cases that we will never know about. The benefits of our national and state constitutions required our sacrificial presence, even if we couldn’t see what effect it was having.

His words reminded me how much jury duty can be like the church. We meet together in a large room with people we may or may not know well each Sunday. Perhaps sometimes it can feel like nothing is happening or that our presence doesn’t matter - like the church would just go on without us; like we don’t have much to contribute. Yet, Jesus says in Matthew 18 that, “where two or three or gathered in my name there I am.” Your presence in our gathering changes our experience of Jesus together. Perhaps you will never know the impact of a kind word, a shared prayer, a listening ear, a packed lunch for loaves and fishes, a Sunday School lesson taught, or a smile down our long hallway, but you may have been Jesus to someone in that moment. We are compelled to attend jury duty - they will send the sheriff out after you if you don’t show up, but there is no compulsion for church beyond the tug of the Holy Spirit. Yet your presence here matters. There are good gifts of God available to us all only when you are here. 

This Sunday, as part of our worship service, we will have our second Dawnings conversation over a potluck lunch. We will begin to map our church within the wider network of the communities that we live, work, play, and eat. The question of who God is calling Highland Hills to be and what we are called to do cannot be answered unless we know where we are and who is here. So beginning Sunday and for the next eight weeks we will listen and practice curiosity and pray for the welfare of our city and love our neighbor by learning their names again. I hope you will join us.