As a young, shoe-shining boy, “that community made me believe that I was somebody,” Carvalhaes said. It gave him the metaphors and spiritual tools to see the way ahead, so that he still senses the loving, guiding hands of that church community imprinted on him.
Preaching at morning worship at the Big Tent gathering June 12, Carvalhaes— an associate professor of preaching and worship at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary — spoke of the idea of Christians being “God’s hands in the world,” the ones with the opportunity and power to show God’s love and grace to one another.
Through his sermon, images of hands — clasped, touching others, reaching out, baptizing, comforting, hands of many colors and hues and ages — were projected on screens beside him. How can God touch the world today, Carvalhaes asked, “if not through you and me?”
To be that kind of presence, to have the ability to touch others — Carvalhaes challenged Presbyterians at the Big Tent, a joint gathering in Atlanta of 10 Presbyterian groups, to make to make three specific changes.
Give what you have. The current economic crisis has shone a bright light on America’s rampant consumerism, both in the secular world and in religion as well, Carvalhaes said.
What if the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took all its money out of the investment markets; if the Presbyterian seminaries sold their buildings and cashed out their endowments; and if all that money was used to help people and to create jobs in which “everybody will receive the same salary,” whether they are pastors of big, tall-steeple churches or tiny country congregations, he ask.
It’s time to end the idea of measuring someone’s value by how much money they earn, Carvalhaes said. “Aren’t we under the same love, the same tent? Thus if we give what we have and share our resources, no one will be left out,” and people will learn to trust God more than they rely now on their buildings, endowments, and salaries.
Don’t fear your neighbor. A preacher with a flair for the dramatic, Carvalhaes slapped on latex gloves and a surgical mask and cap to make this point. Earlier, he said that “Jesus took on flesh and bones and came to live in our tent, and we reported him for stealing our jobs,” for bringing us disease, for being an illegal, “and we feared him.”
During the recent concern over swine flu, Carvalhaes visited a church that had placed “a huge container of hand sanitizer” by the front door. “That was the welcoming of the church, `We are so glad you’re here; clean yourself.’… I felt like I was a big, walking germ.”
Churches can’t become so afraid of the new arrival — of catching some terrible germ — that they can no longer share the peace of Christ or reach out a hand, Carvalhaes said.
Become a diverse church. He encouraged these Presbyterians to look around their own congregations next Sunday and pay attention to whether most of the people there look pretty much like them. If so, “we must become a more diverse church” — a Pentecost church of all races and ethnicities and ages and walks of life, Carvalhaes said. Because it may be from another’s hand, a hand that looks different from our own, that we are blessed, he said.
Carvalhaes showed a video clip from a recent New York Times photo essay about a family that had three sons, and adopted a girl from Africa. The mother said she knew her family had room for more and after her new daughter joined them and had settled in, got a tattoo of the word “Grace.” The mother she had waited a long time for grace, but always knew it would come.
“How long are we going to wait until we tattoo the word `grace’ on our bodies, the body of Christ, and write it in our hand lines?” Carvalhaes asked.
