Our journey through the fruits of effective congregations continues today here at Embry Hills. We’ve considered the fruits of radical hospitality, passionate worship, and intentional faith development. This morning, we ponder what it means to practice the fruit of risk-taking mission and service.

Very simply, mission and service refers to what we do to make a difference in the lives of others because of Jesus. And, we do what we do for others whether or not they will ever darken the doors of our church, fill out a pledge card, or say nice things about us. Mission and service always focuses on the need of the other, not what we might gain from serving. And, risk-taking refers to…. Well, here again, Bishop Robert Schnase, whose book is guiding us through this discussion, drops in to unsettle us once again. Risk-taking refers, and I quote, to

the service we offer that stretches us out of our comfort zone and has us engaging people and offering ourselves to ministries that we would never have done if not for our desire to follow Christ. Risk-taking steps into great uncertainty, a higher possibility of discomfort, resistance, or sacrifice. It pushes beyond the circle of relationships that routinely define our church commitments.

This Schnase fellow is getting down-right meddlesome. Greater uncertainty, more discomfort, a higher possibility of resistance and sacrifice? But, it’s like I’ve said before, if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space. And, when it comes to the mission we are called to carry out and to the service we are called to offer, I’m pretty sure, as we’ve heard from the Scriptures today, that Jesus pushes us always to the edge.

Elizabeth lived on the edge. Big time.

She wanted to go to seminary. Her soul had been stirred and the ground of her being had been unearthed so profoundly that she didn’t know what to do, except go to seminary. But, as much as she wanted to, it just wasn’t the right time. She was a member of the church I served in Rome. She was a nurse by training. But, her career wasn’t the problem. Her husband was a tenured professor at one of the colleges there, and she had two small children at home. It’s not all that easy to commute from Rome to Emory, and it just wasn’t the right time to uproot her family and relocate. But, you heard me say that Jesus just wouldn’t leave her alone. So, she came to see me one day.

“I have an idea,” she said. “I want to start washing feet at the Salvation Army Shelter.”

Time does not permit me to recount to you all of the conversations that Elizabeth and I had. I wish it did, because anyone who converses with Elizabeth or even hears about conversations with Elizabeth is changed forever. First Methodist in Rome is right downtown. And, you can walk outside the door of the church and breathe the rarified air

of an area of down called “Between the Rivers.” Million dollar homes, old and restored. The Clock Tower. Church row, with the Baptists and the Methodists and the Episcopalians and the Christians and the Jews and the Christian Scientists. You can throw a small blanket over every one of them. But, also, just a few steps from that church is poverty and homelessness. And, that’s what caught the eye of Elizabeth’s soul. She wanted to walk across the street, just outside the church’s back door, and wash the feet of homeless people at the Salvation Army Shelter.

Of course, she was crazy. And, of course, I told her to feel free.

So, she started.

“I don’t want them to know where I’ve come from,” she said to me one day. “Is it okay if I never mention the name of the church?”

“Sure.”

So, this nurse, trained in cardiac intensive care, grabbed her bucket and her soaps and her lotions and headed over to the Salvation Army, where the people there said, “This is a really wonderful idea.”

Some people in the church thought Elizabeth had lost her mind. She began going by herself. And, all she did was kneel at the feet of her friends. She bathed and rubbed their feet. And, what’s really crazy is that she made announcements in church, inviting other people to join her, in what she called “The Foot Project.”

Have you ever washed someone else’s feet? Have you ever washed the feet of someone who has no home? Have you ever even bothered to have a conversation with someone who has no home? Can you even begin to imagine how stirred your soul would be by such as that?

Well, Elizabeth was not the only crazy person in Rome. Other crazy people wanted to walk with her out to the edge. And, they did. But, as you can appreciate, they brought questions with them. There are always questions when people ponder a move to the edge.

“What do we do? What do we say? How do we act?”

And so, Elizabeth wrote a manual for people who wanted to work with her on The Foot Project. And, all I can tell you is that what she wrote could be used in the finest seminaries, psychology departments, and social service agencies on the planet.

And, guess what? One of the explicit bits of instruction was not to mention the church. “We are not there for the church,” Elizabeth said. “We are there for them. And, we are there because of Jesus. So, just tell them that you’re doing this for them and because of him.”

But, you know, you start washing the feet of homeless people, they’re going to want to know more than that. Of course, word got out. Word got out that this crazy woman was from that church, right over there, just across the street.

Now, when the word got out, that presented a problem. Because now, some of those homeless people thought that the church really loved them. And, they wanted to show up. And, as is always the case with anything that happens in church, that was brilliant good news to some and not so spiffy news to others. Homeless people in church? We’ve never done that before. Homeless people, on Sunday morning and at dinner on Wednesday night. Not being served elsewhere, not being served out the back door. Worshiping with us, eating with us. I have to say that I took a remarkable delight in seeing the delight in many people in that church, and I took a bit of a twisted delight in

seeing some people run for physical and emotional cover when a homeless person tried to join them at dinner. Risk-taking mission and service brings out both types.

Through the months, the word about The Foot Project really got out. To the point that the dermatological physicians’ assistant wanted to help. These people need more than clean and rubbed feet. They need serious skin care and nail care and remediation. And, what if they need meds? And, what else might they need? And, how else might we serve? Robert Frost was right. Way leads on to way. And, the way that Elizabeth had pioneered had now taken on a serious life of its own.

Before I left Rome, The Foot Project had bloomed and blossomed into a full-scale Free Medical Clinic. And, you know as well as I do that it’s not far from a Free Medical Clinic to a Free Dental Clinic. And, practitioners from around the city were involved. Some went to church, some didn’t. Some went to Rome First, others went to other churches. It didn’t matter. A whole lot of people discovered what Elizabeth had led them to discover—that the air on the edge has a purity to it that’s intoxicating and that pouring yourself out in service to others fills you up like nothing else can.

And, as you well know, it’s not far from Free Clinics to dealing with the causes of poverty. And, it’s not far from dealing with the causes of poverty to pondering things like addiction and mental illness. So, the Foot Project that launched the Free Medical Clinic that launched the Free Dental Clinic that launched homeless people in church launched a recovery program and a new and close association with the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And, the story is still being written.

Some people didn’t want to wash homeless peoples’ feet. But, they did anyway. They knew that they had to, or they would be exposed. And, some never bothered. It was to much.

And, there you have it. That dreaded comfort zone that Bishop Schnase bothers to mention. Most of us never leave it. It feels too good, too much like the womb to which we’ve been trying to return ever since we left. But, to a few, the people whose hearts are holding the world together, comfort zones are highly overrated, and it’s life on the edge, for others, because of Jesus, that really makes the world go ‘round.

Elizabeth never went to seminary. Actually, she just had another baby last week. Three kids now. By the way, Elizabeth and her family live in Atlanta now. Because last summer, her husband left his tenured position on the faculty of one of the colleges in Rome, to apply to seminary. Dr. Mr. Elizabeth is the seminary student after all.

Risk-taking mission and service. It’s what Jesus did. It’s what he would have all his followers to do. And, he is waiting for our answer to the question he asked so long ago. Are you able?