Simple ChurchI love to make gravy. Especially breakfast gravy. I suppose it is what introduced me to my love of making sauces. The idea of starting with some kind of meat juices or drippings, adding other flavorings, and then thickening it and reducing it to come up with something that sets off a piece of meat or makes a biscuit and scrambled eggs something special. My love for sauces would come later, but gravy—breakfast gravy—was my introduction to a whole other world of culinary delightfulness. My mother made the best breakfast gravy I have ever tasted. It was special. When I moved off to Mississippi to go to school, plant a church, and start a family, I started thinking about making gravy myself. I had a growing brood of children, and they loved grandmother's breakfasts. So I called her on the phone and asked her how to make it—bacon drippings, scraping the fond off the bottom, flour until it browned, milk, and stir continually. I tried it a few times, and it was a disaster. I couldn't understand her instructions because I had no categories for what happened to flour when you added milk. On a trip to Memphis, I told my mother she was going to have to show me because I couldn't get what was happening. (There were no YouTube videos then, only a living tradition!) And she did. My mother took me by the hand and said, "Look!" It was a revelation—just watching her one time turned information into knowledge and later into expertise. Paul in our passage says something he never said about any other church he planted! They were examples, models, or the pattern of what the living community of God's people ought to look like, and because of that our antennas should go up. It all starts with how Paul discipled a new group of converts who believed the gospel when he preached at the synagogue. That got them started, but where they were formed was in a man named Jason's house. There, with a small group of people, Paul took them by the hand and said, "Look!" And then he left, and while he was gone, the church just took off. It was simple but profound. We will talk about that this Sunday! Remember, Sunday School for all ages is back in swing at 9:15, as well as St. Patrick 101 for those new and interested in our vision and values.
