One of my Sabbatical projects has been to try to organize some of the sermons I've preached over the past ten or twelve years. I've been preaching longer than that, of course, but earlier sermons have been lost on "floppy disks" and other media over the years. The ones saved on my computer begin around 2006. It's an interesting process, reading old sermons, because I find that I could preach some "as is" again, while others clearly captured a moment in time that won't come this way again. Some just weren't very good. And most are somewhere in between.
This sermon, preached on the Second Sunday of Easter in 2009 caught my attention. On the one hand it's quite specific to a moment in time in the life of the parish I was serving, St. Francis, Holden. On the other hand, though, it resonates with the work I am doing now as a member of the Bishop's staff - and in particular the work of congregations that are in the midst of clergy transitions and trying to clarify the work God has given them to do. Some congregations think their job is to "hire" a pastor to do the work of ministry. I would argue that their job is to clarify their mission and then find a cleric who can help them implement that vision. So I share this sermon here because it may function as a kind of "case study" that I hope readers may find it helpful as the fifty days of Easter continues to unfold.
I don’t know when our bulletins here at St. Francis first started declaring that the ministers are “every member of the congregation” but it predates my arrival here more than eleven years ago. And it is good theology, so I’m grateful to whoever started that.
More importantly, I’ve found that it is something taken seriously here. These aren’t just words on a piece of paper or some abstract theological cliché. Going back to the first days of this parish’s founding, it appears to be a core value that we are intentional about trying to live out and enflesh. You see it at work in the way we make decisions and do the work that God has given us to do. It’s an extension of the claim that ministry really is rooted not in ordination, but in Holy Baptism, which means the work we are called to do is always shared.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a role for clergy or a reason not to pay my salary! But it does mean the ordained here have an opportunity to do what The Book of Common Prayer suggests that priests are supposed to focus on: preaching, presiding at the Sacraments, and providing pastoral care and oversight that helps to build up the body of Christ.
This sermon, preached on the Second Sunday of Easter in 2009 caught my attention. On the one hand it's quite specific to a moment in time in the life of the parish I was serving, St. Francis, Holden. On the other hand, though, it resonates with the work I am doing now as a member of the Bishop's staff - and in particular the work of congregations that are in the midst of clergy transitions and trying to clarify the work God has given them to do. Some congregations think their job is to "hire" a pastor to do the work of ministry. I would argue that their job is to clarify their mission and then find a cleric who can help them implement that vision. So I share this sermon here because it may function as a kind of "case study" that I hope readers may find it helpful as the fifty days of Easter continues to unfold.
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I don’t know when our bulletins here at St. Francis first started declaring that the ministers are “every member of the congregation” but it predates my arrival here more than eleven years ago. And it is good theology, so I’m grateful to whoever started that.
More importantly, I’ve found that it is something taken seriously here. These aren’t just words on a piece of paper or some abstract theological cliché. Going back to the first days of this parish’s founding, it appears to be a core value that we are intentional about trying to live out and enflesh. You see it at work in the way we make decisions and do the work that God has given us to do. It’s an extension of the claim that ministry really is rooted not in ordination, but in Holy Baptism, which means the work we are called to do is always shared.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a role for clergy or a reason not to pay my salary! But it does mean the ordained here have an opportunity to do what The Book of Common Prayer suggests that priests are supposed to focus on: preaching, presiding at the Sacraments, and providing pastoral care and oversight that helps to build up the body of Christ.
Last fall the vestry appointed a task force with an
unimaginative but descriptive title: The
Discerning Our Future Task Force (DOFTF for short.) Membership in that group
spans the generations from high school age to a founding member of the parish. The
Rev. Paul Taylor has been helping to guide us through this process, which began
with an historical reflection night last fall organized around the publication
of Alice Carr’s memoirs. Then at the Annual Meeting we had table conversations
to try to assess some of our strengths and weaknesses as a parish.
The committee has since been interviewing community leaders
including the Town Manager of Holden, the Chief of Police, the Principal of
Wachusett High School and persons who work directly with children and youth and
seniors and the economically vulnerable. Two weeks from now members of the
committee will be leading us in something called a “norms inventory”—more about
what that means as it gets closer. Ultimately the vestry will receive a report
from the DOFTF sometime later this spring that will help us to set some
strategic goals. Our prayer is that those goals will keep us on track for the
next five years or so. Stay tuned…
Ultimately the Church is not a building or a steeple, but a people. We need buildings to fulfill our
mission and we have a responsibility to care for those buildings so that future
generations can continue to be formed here. But first and foremost we are a people
journeying together toward the Promised Land. First and foremost we are living
and breathing members of Christ’s resurrected Body, a Body called to serve the
world. (That is why those interviews with community leaders are an important part
of this process of discernment.)
On this Second Sunday of Easter, what do the readings for
this day suggest about how we might go about all of that? Psalm 133 is one of the “psalms of ascent.” (What,
you ask, is a psalm of ascent?) It was one of those psalms used by pilgrims
traveling up to the temple in Jerusalem
to pray. Here the psalmist offers two similes for healthy mission-focused
communities. First, when people dwell together in unity it’s like precious oil
running down the beard. Remember the 23rd psalm? God, the poet says,
anoints my head with oil. Here the
image is a continuation of that blessing—oil running all the way down the
beard, which the psalmist sees as a good thing. The other is a more familiar
metaphor for us: when God’s people dwell together in unity, it’s like dew on
the grass.
It’s no fun to be in a family or a congregation that is
conflicted and divided. That doesn’t mean conflict itself is bad. Sometimes I
think that in our families and in congregations we make the mistake of avoiding conflict, which only allows
things to fester and get worse. You don’t get oil running down the beard or dew
on the ground when you settle for “not rocking the boat” or hiding stuff under
the carpet.
On the other hand, though, it’s very easy to lose
perspective. If you haven’t read C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters in a while, then I commend it to you this
Easter season. Lewis is right, I think, that the Evil One takes great delight
in getting Christians to fight over petty things and making mountains out of
molehills. When we are focused only on meeting our own ego needs and getting
our own way then conflict can become corrosive and destructive, the very
opposite of oil running down the beard or dew on the grass. The larger challenge
is the point of the DOFTF: to discover our deeper shared calling so that we can keep first things first. Only then
can we find the courage to work through our differences in order to discover
and rediscover that deeper unity that is already ours in the risen Christ.
In today’s gospel reading we see how Christ’s resurrection can
bring about hope and transformation for that kind of community. The disciples have
gone into hiding after their leader is crucified. The disciples are locked in
that room, scared and paralyzed; fearing that the authorities might come
looking for them next. They are going through their own “Discerning Our Future”
process. What will happen next? Unlike
Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, where it will take fifty days before the
Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost, John has the Spirit coming as a new creation on
Easter night. The Holy Spirit is the key to that new beginning. The first step
toward that new life is to learn to put their trust in God.
As you know, the disciples didn’t do very well in Holy Week. We heard once again on Palm/Passion Sunday about their failures and about how they betrayed
and denied and abandoned Jesus. When he asked them to keep awake, they fell
asleep. Fortunately, however, discipleship isn’t contingent on our perfectionism, but
on God’s mercy. Our God is a God of second chances. And forgiveness offers a
path forward.
Whether the Spirit comes on Easter night, or fifty days
later in Acts 2, the point is that the Spirit shows them a way forward and
equips them to be signs of God’s new creation in the world. In Acts 4 and
throughout the rest of Acts, we see the disciples doing infinitely more than
they could previously ask or imagine as they continue in the work that Jesus
began: preaching and teaching and healing until they become themselves signs of
God’s reconciling love at work in the world. We are called to nothing less.
The Spirit’s work in the early Church had profound implications
for how they related to their “stuff.” I suspect this makes most of us a bit
nervous. We are accustomed to thinking of our
stuff as just that: that it is ours. The key to understanding this reading from
Acts 4 and taking it seriously, though, is to realize that Acts 4 isn’t
ultimately about arguing for one economic theory over another. It’s not like
the disciples have discovered Karl Marx. It’s that they have discovered Jesus
has been raised from the dead and they really believe that and choose to live
from that place rather than a place of fear. They are trying to live out the
prayer: “all things come of thee, O Lord;
and of thine own have we given thee.”
We live a good part of our lives not really believing those
words. Our consumer culture tells us that the wealth we accumulate is due to our hard work. And if that is our
premise then we may come to believe
that it is prudent to share some of
it with others: to those to whom much is given, much is expected, after all. We may share a very small percentage of what
has been given us or the Biblical tithe of ten percent. We may make a
sacrificial offering of our first fruits or we may cautiously wait to see if
there is anything left at the end of the month. We may share it begrudgingly (out
of sense of duty or obligation) or with a glad and generous heart. Obviously
the goal of growing in faith is to move towards a higher percentage of first
fruits offered with a happy heart, but sometimes we lapse back into
begrudgingly offering a lower percentage of what is left over. Life is a
journey.
But there is a still more radical transformation that I
think Biblical faith calls us toward. By the grace of God and through the Holy Spirit
we sometimes see as the disciples did in Acts 4 that none of it is really ours
in the first place; it is all gift.
Whether we then keep 90% or give it all away like St. Francis did the whole
approach of Easter giving is turned upside down: we begin to see that all that
we have—our time, our talents and our treasure—is on loan to us. It’s been
entrusted to us; but it is God’s not ours.
It is very hard to live out of that reality and to make our financial decisions from that place of radical trust, especially in precarious economic times. Acts 4 seems very strange and foreign to us. But what I hope we can see, even if we are not yet quite ready to live it that way, is that this witness in the early Church of their radical expression of love for both God and neighbor made them especially mindful about the most vulnerable members of the community, those whom the Bible refers to in shorthand as “widows and orphans.” Luke tells us that there was not a needy person among them. That is an extraordinary statement. The temptation during our own times of uncertainty is to share less, at a time when those who are hurting are hurting more than ever. It is a powerful witness to what the Easter life is all about to allow the Holy Spirit to unleash compassion and generosity in times like these. The larger theological point (whether times are good or bad) is that you can’t separate your faith from what you choose to do with your stuff.
Show me your checkbook and your calendar and I’ll tell you what you really believe.
It is very hard to live out of that reality and to make our financial decisions from that place of radical trust, especially in precarious economic times. Acts 4 seems very strange and foreign to us. But what I hope we can see, even if we are not yet quite ready to live it that way, is that this witness in the early Church of their radical expression of love for both God and neighbor made them especially mindful about the most vulnerable members of the community, those whom the Bible refers to in shorthand as “widows and orphans.” Luke tells us that there was not a needy person among them. That is an extraordinary statement. The temptation during our own times of uncertainty is to share less, at a time when those who are hurting are hurting more than ever. It is a powerful witness to what the Easter life is all about to allow the Holy Spirit to unleash compassion and generosity in times like these. The larger theological point (whether times are good or bad) is that you can’t separate your faith from what you choose to do with your stuff.
Show me your checkbook and your calendar and I’ll tell you what you really believe.
Finally, today’s reading from First John gives us a glimpse
at a first-century Christian community that reminds us that we are called to
declare to the world what we have been told and what we have seen with our own
eyes. We are called to testify, that is to bear witness, to who Christ is and
why Easter matters.
Now this may make Episcopalians even more nervous than the reading from Acts that asks us to share our money. (I remind you that I don’t write this stuff by the way; I am just trying to preach on it!) We Episcopalians don’t want to be confused with televangelists! But for most of us that’s not a very great danger. It is very true that too much of what passes for “evangelism” in our society is really about hocking a product by using the same tactics that the marketplace uses: fear and deception and false promises. But we need to reclaim that word: evangelical actually means “good news.”
Now this may make Episcopalians even more nervous than the reading from Acts that asks us to share our money. (I remind you that I don’t write this stuff by the way; I am just trying to preach on it!) We Episcopalians don’t want to be confused with televangelists! But for most of us that’s not a very great danger. It is very true that too much of what passes for “evangelism” in our society is really about hocking a product by using the same tactics that the marketplace uses: fear and deception and false promises. But we need to reclaim that word: evangelical actually means “good news.”
In a deeply divided world, it really is a pleasant thing to find a community where people dwell together in unity; it’s like oil running down the beard or Aaron or dew on the front lawn. It’s a pleasant thing to find a place where forgiveness unleashes missional energy and generosity and hope, and Easter is palpable.
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