The theme of this year's Appalachia Service Project is "The Work of Our Hands" and so, you've seen and heard many references to hands in our service this morning. You see hands on the cover of the Order of Worship and a reference to hands in Brian's beautiful poem. We have blessed our hands in grateful prayer. We have stretched out our hands in blessing over our ASP Team and its leaders. And, in music, we have reminded ourselves that we are held, now and always, in the hands of God.

I invite you now, for a moment, to look down at your own hands. Hold them where you can see them. Give thanks for the miracle that they are. Think of the ways you've seen them change over the years. Do you see your parents' or grandparents' hands in your hands? Can you see your child's hand in yours? What future do you see in these hands?

Blessed be these hands, that have touched life, that have nurtured creativity, that have held pain, that have planted new seeds, that have reached out and been received, that hold the promise of the future. Blessed be these hands.

With our hands, and with our whole lives, we who are Christ's disciples have been entrusted with his mission in this world. The Scripture instructs us to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. Doers of the Word. Our lives are to show forth what we believe. The Christian faith is not just something we think about, or believe about. It must be something we do, something we live, to make real the love of Christ in this world.

Centuries ago in Spain, St. Teresa of Avila wrote: "Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ is to look out on a hurting world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now."

Yours are the hands of Christ. That blessing should give us pause. Are we using our hands, our feet, our eyes to show forth the love and compassion of Christ in this world right now? Are we putting them to work for the Kingdom?

Well, our ASP Team is certainly planning to do so. They and their leaders have spent months preparing, planning their trip, raising money with the fantastic support of all of you, and learning what it takes to serve Christ with their hands by building and repairing houses in Breathitt County, Kentucky, where the median household income is only $19,000 a year, and one third of the people live below the poverty line. Blessed be the work of their hands.

I happen to know that many of them don't necessarily come by carpenter skills naturally. They've had to learn about different tools, procedures, safety precautions on the work site. But as I read the story Jesus told this morning, that we hear from Matthew's Gospel, I realized that he had, indeed, grown up in the house of carpenter, Joseph. He had seen hands working with wood. He knew first-hand the joy and the vocation of a carpenter.

As the firstborn son in his family, Jesus would have been expected to learn his father's trade or craft. At the time, carpenters were considered honorable craftsmen and paid decent wages for their work. A carpenter would have been proficient at house building, as well as woodworking and furniture construction. He made and repaired doors and locks, frames, windows and roofs. He made plows and yokes. He worked with the wood of sycamore and fig, cedar, fir, juniper, olive and palm. The tools of the trade were quite similar to those used today: hammers, mallets, chisels, saws, hatchets, rulers, levels, and plumb lines. Only nails, which were very expensive, would have been used rarely.

This work was Jesus' life until he was in his mid-thirties. And so, when he tells us the story we hear today from Matthew's Gospel, he tells it as one who knows, one who honors, the work of a carpenter's hands.

Hear it again now from Eugene Peterson's contemporary paraphrase, The Message:

"These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, home owner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit-but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don't work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards. When Jesus concluded, the crowd burst into applause. They had never heard anything like this."

It might be hard for those of us who live in California, a place where houses are regularly built on sand, on sandy bluffs, on earthquake faults even, to hear clearly what Jesus is saying to us. When Jesus uses this story of the wise carpenter and the stupid carpenter to teach about making God's word central to our lives, he is showing us the difference it can make. These are foundational words, he says to us. If we put God's Word front and center in our lives, we will be building a life that is like a house with the firm foundation of solid rock.

For Jesus' own life, that meant grounding his life in the Word of God and then following God's leading. It meant building his life on God's promise and hope. And it meant reaching out to others with those carpenter's hands to heal and to lead and to bless.

Throughout the ministry of our carpenter savior, we see his hands in so many ways. We see them reaching out to the little children to welcome them into God's love. We see them reaching out to touch those whom society had cast aside. We see them eating with friends and sinners. We see them cutting the air as he taught. We see them opening the Scriptures to read. We see them healing the sick. We see them folded in prayer. We see his hands breaking the bread and lifting the cup, sanctifying his disciples with the first sacrament of communion. We see his pierced hands become the living proof of resurrection for his doubting disciples. We see his holy hands lifted in blessing as he gives them the benediction of his peace.

Yours are now the hands of Christ. Christ has no hands but yours. Yours are the hands with which Christ now blesses this world.

Mother Theresa once said that if, at the end of the day, you want to examine your conscience, just look at your hands. What have your hands done today? Whom have they served? Has the imprint of Christ's image been left on anything your hands have touched?

Team, through your hands, houses will be repaired and built. Through your hands, people will experience the love of Christ. Through your hands, families will be blessed with the beauty and security of a home. Through your hands, Christ himself will reach out again and again, to touch and heal and feed and teach and sanctify and bless.

And through this experience, you will be held in God's hands, so that through the work you do this summer, your lives will be more solidly built on the sure foundation of God's Word and God's love.

And, while you are away, our hands will be folded in prayer, as we lift you and your work up to God. And as the families of Breathitt County are blessed through the work of your hands, so may we all be blessed to claim for the church the work of ministry with which Christ has entrusted us.

Blessed be the work of our hands. And blessed be our God, forever and ever. Amen.

Notes
1. Eugene Peterson. The Message.
2. Donald Spoto. The Hidden Jesus: A New Life. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1998.
3. James C. Howell. Yours Are the Hands of Christ: The Practice of Faith. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1998.
4. U.S. Census Bureau: 2000 Census of Population and Housing

© Patricia E. Farris, 2003. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution. All other rights reserved.