On that day, these young people said that when the history of their generation was written, they wanted to make sure they were not silent on the African AIDS epidemic. On that day, these young people said to each other that right here in Birmingham, Michigan, they could make a difference in the lives of others half a world way. It was on that afternoon that our youth group stood on the beach of suffering and heard God call to them, “Follow me…” It was on that afternoon that the Penny Project was born—a project to collect a single penny for every person on the continent of Africa infected with HIV/AIDS, a project that would raise money and awareness about what is happening to our African brothers and sisters. On that afternoon, these young people invited me, and now on their behalf, I am inviting you into this God-sized project. 

There are a couple of things about God-sized projects that I think we need to understand. At first glance, God-sized projects seem absolutely ridiculous. Think about Noah for a moment, called into perhaps the craziest of all God-sized projects. Remember how Bill Cosby tells the story of Noah? 

“Noah!”
“Somebody call?”
“Noah!”
“Who is that?”
“It’s the Lord, Noah.”
“Right!” 

“Where are you? What do you want? I’ve been good.”
“I want you to build an ark.”
“Right! What’s an ark?”
“Get some wood and build it 300 cubits by 80 cubits by 40 cubits.”
“Right! What’s a cubit?”
“Let’s see, a cubit...I used to know what a cubit is. Well, don’t worry about that, Noah. When you get that done, go out into the world and collect all of the animals in the world by twos, male and female, and put them into the ark.”

“Right! Who is this, really? What’s going on? How come you want me to do all these weird things?”
“I’m going to destroy the world.”
“Right! Am I on Candid Camera?” 

The Penny Project. Twenty-three million pennies. These pennies would cover the entire gym floor of the CLC, would weigh 72 tons, and at the rate of a million pennies a year, will take nearly a quarter of a century to collect. 

After we had collected nearly 40,000 pennies from the Vacation Bible School kids—more pennies than any of them had ever seen at one moment and yet only a drop in the bucket to the goal they had set—one of our youth stood there with a hand full of pennies and exclaimed: “This is ridiculous! The number is just too huge! We will need it to rain pennies from heaven if this is really going to happen.” God-sized projects appear to be ridiculous projects. 

Another thing we need to know about God-sized projects is that you can’t do them alone.  Throughout our scriptures, when God called someone to take on a seemingly impossible task, God quickly provided others to help them. Moses, called to liberate his people from bondage in Egypt, quickly realized he couldn’t do it all by himself. God raised others to share the load— Aaron and Miriam would lend needed leadership, Joshua would get the torch passed to him to finish the project. The Book of Numbers tells of this one time when Moses was completely overwhelmed and felt all alone in this huge endeavor, of a day when he was ready to “pack it in” and quit.  Here is what God tells Moses to do: 

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Summon before me seventy of the leaders of Israel. Bring them to the Tabernacle to stand there with you. I will come down and talk to you there. I will take some of the Spirit that is upon you, and I will put the Spirit upon them also. They will bear the burden of the people along with you, so you will not have to carry it alone.” 

God tells Moses that if you are going to take on a God-sized project, you’ll need to get some help. Our youth are quickly realizing that they cannot do this project alone. They have already employed the help of youth groups in Clawson, Highland, Westland and down the road at the Birmingham First Baptist Church. They are realizing that God has called them to share the burden and the joy of this project with others. Today they ask all of us to join them, as well. They invite us to save our pennies, write a check, tell our friends, sponsor a dinner at our home or work or clubs where some of our young people can talk about what God has called them to do.  When it becomes clear we cannot accomplish the project alone, we know it’s a God-sized project. 

Another important thing to know about God-sized projects is that the insurmountably big can only happen by paying attention to the infinitely small. Herein lies the true power of the Penny Project—the insurmountable big (an AIDS epidemic that is touching the lives of 23 million people) can be addressed by paying attention to the infinitely small (a single penny).  

That afternoon when this project was born and these young people started doing the theology, I knew it was truly a divine moment. They started to say things like, “The penny. It doesn’t seem to have much value when you first look at. It is easy to forget a penny, easy to step over one on the street, to leave it sitting on your dresser. You can’t buy anything with it. Sometimes the penny seems more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe that’s the problem with the way we see the AIDS crisis in Africa. If every penny equals one person, how can we ever look at a penny the same way again?” How can they get involved in such a big, big problem? By getting involved one person at a time. 

Jesus told us a story like that. In fact, he said the Kingdom of God is like a woman who once realized she had lost a single coin. This woman went about the entire house trying to find it. She swept out every corner, looked under every nook and cranny, flipped up the cushions in the couch, turned over the easy chairs, looked under the bed, checked the washing machine, looked in the ashtray of the car. And when she found it, it was reason to celebrate. This tiny coin, which could have easily been forgotten, was somehow worthy of an exhaustive search. It is the same way God looks for each of us when we, too, become lost.  

You know, in the economy of the world with its 6,497,185,908 people (the correct population count as of midnight last night), each of our lives can seem small, insignificant, of little or no value. But Jesus reminds us that in God’s economy, every one of our lives is valuable, every life worth saving, and every life worth remembering. Jesus suggests that God has a penny project, as well, where every life is worth finding, saving and cherishing. When the insurmountably big can only happen by paying attention to the infinitely small, we know it’s a God-sized project. 

And finally, you know you’ve stumbled onto a God-sized project when, in attempting to change the world, you get changed as well. These young people have discovered that this project will change them. They are being called to think differently about money and missions. They now know where to find places like Botswana, Uganda, Guinea, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and Sierra Leon. This project is expanding their horizons, giving them a bigger heart for the world, teaching them the power of love, the importance of justice and the indescribable magnitude of mercy. Their lives will be forever changed by this endeavor, in ways both big and small. And ours will be, too, if we join them. 

So what’s it going to be? Are we going to walk by our youth as they stand on the beach, on the street, in their classrooms, in their churches, in the parking lots of supermarkets, movie theaters and restaurants picking up one penny at a time? Or are we going to join the woman in Jesus’ story, searching high and low for each and every penny we can find, and join these courageous young people in this God-sized project they have been called to undertake?    

 

 

 

Notes: I have to admit, I was hesitant to use the starfish story. It is a great story, but I was afraid that it was one of those stories that has been a bit over done. Doing some research on the origins of the story, I was surprised to learn it was based on a real life experience from author and sociologist Lauren Eiseley. Eiseley, who died in 1977, was one of the rare people who could walk in the worlds of both science and spirituality without feeling the need to choose sides. In works like The Immense Journey, The Firmament of Time and the Unexpected Universe, Eiseley explored the evolutionary progression of the natural world with the mind of both a scientist and a theologian. Into the long-time debate between science and religion, where many only saw division, Eiseley saw unity.   

In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated person [sic] who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snail’s eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one’s head about. 

The Bill Cosby routine comes from his famous comic album, The Best of Bill Cosby. I still own the worn cassette tape of Cosby’s classic early material. One word: hilarious! 

On Sunday evening, February 12, 2006, the youth of First Church held the First Annual Penne Pasta Dinner to raise money and awareness about this project. That evening, well over 400 people attended and brought in nearly 500,000 pennies. Thank you to all who helped make this such a huge success.

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[i] State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/007/y5650e/y5650e00.htm
[ii] Human Development Report 2005, United Nations Development Programme.
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_complete.pdf
[iii] James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998, quoted from The Reality of Aid 2000, (Earthscan Publications, 2000), p.10
[iv] The State of the World’s Children, 1999, UNICEF
[v] The number comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  http://aspe.hhs.gov/homeless/index.shtml
[vi] These statistics are estimates at the end of 2003 published by UNAIDS in their 'Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, July 2004'.
[vii] Stanecki, K.A. (2002) “The AIDS Pandemic in the 21^st Century,” Draft Report, July 2002, XIV International Conference on AIDS, Barcelona, US Census Bureau