Richard Lischer has written a book about his experience serving a small church in New Cana, an economically depressed small town in Southern Illinois.  He shares this tale about Amy, a thirteen year old girl with cerebral palsy, who is debating whether she will go to St. Louis to visit a famous T.V. celebrity faith healer. He writes, "We all had a lot invested in Amy's decision.  Her illness had stimulated the most concentrated act of love in New Cana's history.  When she was four, her doctors at Shriner's hospital gave her parents, Erv and Doris Frieden, the news. They also prescribed a regimen of 'patterning' for Amy.  Every hour, eight hours a day, six and a half days a week,a team of four volunteers would stretch and manipulate Amy's neck, arms, hands, legs, and feet in an attempt to 'train' her muscles to work together.  Patterning would not improve individual muscles as much as provide a reeducation for all the muscles at the same time.
 
 The regimen of physical therapy was, of course, more than Erv and Doris or their nearest relatives could provide. The Cana church delivered the therapy...

 In the old days, neighbors might have come together for a day or two to raise a barn, roast a pig, and dance to the fiddle and accordion.  Amy's malady occasioned a different sort of barn raising.  Eight hours a day, seven days a week, people with no earthly knowledge came to the Frieden's house and quickly learned how to bend, pull, and rotate a little girl's limbs.  At first it was the wives that came, but soon their husbands joined the experience--farmers, mechanics from Buford's garage, clerks, retirees, teens, neighbors, strangers who read about Amy in their church bulletins, even a traveling salesman or two.

 The women carried in tupperware containers of homemade candy and chocolate chip cookies along with every conceivable kind of fruitbread and cake.  When Irma Retzel took her turn, she always brought a tin of her county-famous fudge.  Several of the older women brought their versions of Better-than-Sex cake.  As the summer wore into fall, the entire community flowed through the Freiden's neat little brick rancher with the home-poured ramp out front, where friends kibbitzed over Amy and ate prodigious amounts of sweets.  They say everyone gained a little weight that year.

 Stove-up farmers with callused hands and big women in calico dresses knelt on the dining room floor where Amy lay in cruciform position.  At first tentatively, but soon expertly, they synchronized the movements of her arms and legs.  Doris remembered that whenever they performed their ritual, they said 'nice' things to Amy and touched her unashamedly.  'In their way, I think they loved her,' Doris said.

 'That's where she gets her smile,' her father says, but no one really understands how or why a little one who's never danced or walked should possess the most luminous face in the county.

 New Cana continued the ritual until that Wednesday before Thanksgiving nine years before, when the doctors at Shriners said, Stop.  The exercises have done all they can do for Amy.  The human barn raising had ended, though the final product was far from complete.
 
 The patterning had been a blessing to the whole community.  It had allowed the church to practice the simple virtues of ministry without delving into the mystery of who caused Amy's condition and why.  The patterning represented the church's best religious response to Amy and the Friedens family.  Despite the congregation's prayers for God's 'sustaining presence' and 'healing grace,' it was pretty much taken for granted that there would be no miraculous cure.  In the folk theology of New Cana, the miraculous cooperation that was evoked by the patterning was interpreted as the answer to our prayers.  It was our cure."

 This is one of those "kitchen sink" Sundays, as we kick off stewardship, recognize and celebrate our choir, remember our Reformed tradition, and celebrate the sacrament of baptism.  What ties it all together?  What do all of these events share that can give us a theme for our worship this morning?  How about we are a really, really busy place? True, but hardly a deep theological statement.  The answer is community.  One of the best elements of our reformed tradition is the belief that all the members of the church are responsible for ministry, all are called by God to serve.

 When we baptize babies, the clergyperson performs the ritual with the water but it is the congregation that lives out the promise of the sacrament.  The sacrament is fulfilled by Sunday school teachers and youth group advisors who teach and play with and love these young ones on their journey to being faithful adults.
 
 When we celebrate and recognize our choir we are praising the glorious finished product of their musical offerings to God on Sunday morning.  But we are celebrating more than that as well.  We are celebrating the commitment of many individuals to show up here Thursday night after Thursday night; their willingness to rehearse two or three tricky bars of music over and over again until the entire piece is performance worthy; their commitment to each other, joining together to lift each other up and continuing a program of excellence.
 
 On this day when we kick off our stewardship pledge drive we are reminded that we all share the responsibility for funding the programs of this church.  We heard Glynda eloquently share with us the nature of stewardship and we have heard the goal for the year, a number that is well beyond any one of our checkbooks.  But a goal we can reach together, as each of us discerns what portion of that goal it is our responsibility to cover.

 So whatever happened in New Cana with Amy and her decision to visit the famous T.V. celebrity faith healer.  Amy did go and visit her but no miracle was found in the presence of this single star.  Some may have been bitter, but not Amy, she recognized that the real miracle for her was to be found in her very own loving community.
 
 In this morning's gospel lesson we heard of a group of friends working together to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus.  In order to get him close they had to lift him up onto the roof and dig right through to lower him down.  This group would not be deterred from their goal of helping their friend.  When Jesus sees the faith of this group of people he provides healing to the man's body and his soul.  Of course Jesus gets all of the press for the miracle, but it is that group of faithful friends that make it all possible.
 
 It is the shared faith of a community that creates the opportunity for miracles in our midst, whether that may be in ancient Palestine, or New Cana, Illinois, or Buffalo, New York.  The miracle of a child growing into adult faith is a gift of the community.  The miracle of awe inspiring music offered to God is a gift of the community.  As we seek to meet our financial needs for the next year, I cannot begin to imagine what new miracles our combined faithfulness will bring.

What I do know is that what makes any and all of these miracles possible is our faithfulness and commitment brought together in community.  In times of tragedy and difficulty there are two ways to respond.  We can withdraw ourselves from our community and our commitments seeking to protect who we are and what we have by bundling everything up tight.  Or we can reach out further than we ever have before.  We can learn to work in concert to be a force of healing in the world.  We can recognize that this difficult time is an opportunity for us to give more than we have in the past, because more is what is needed from all of us in this time.  As we make a decision about our commitment to stewardship this year, we need to listen carefully for the ways in which God may be seeking to "pattern" each one of us in ways beyond what we thought possible in the past.  In this time when we are hungry for miracles that will lift us past tragedy, it is our commitment together that creates God's possibilities.

Amen.