Consecration Sunday, Christ Church, Guilford, Connecticut

SERMON
Consecration Sunday
Christ Church, Guilford, Connecticut
October 28, 2012


Proper 25-B
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52

The life of a follower of Jesus must ultimately be built on a foundation of gratitude. That is to say our spiritual, psychological, emotional and even physical health must be grounded in gratitude for us fully to explore and begin to experience the depth and breadth and height of God, who is love.
This includes our relationship with our material possessions – including the financial resources at our disposal.

Oh, no! Another financial stewardship sermon!

I agree with The Rev. Bob Dannals in admitting that “[t]he word "stewardship" now has a dull ring . . . has now become a cliché, being encrusted with  years and years of being seen merely as the annual effort of churches seeking funds for program and ministries . . . taking on the drone of an annual address given to a sleepy congregation on a Sunday morning. But in terms of what it is intended to mean, it is not dull at all. Stewardship has to do with a person's calling, it is the meaningful work one does, it is the heartfelt summons to be a giver, to extend oneself for the sake of others.” (Dannals, http://www.holyinnocents.org/clergy-corner/stewardship-redeeming-a-truncated-word/ (paraphrase)
– and to do so from a grateful heart. Gratitude is the life-blood flowing through the Church, the Body of Christ, allowing it to function and grow as a strong and healthy organism. Gratitude is the essential nutrient for parish churches and for individuals.
For Christians, the reason to give is because our hearts are grateful to God for the gifts and abundance God has poured out upon us. There is not one breath we take that is not a gift from God, and the person who is truly, deeply aware of that reality cannot help but be grateful.
I have found, however, that instructing people to be grateful is of little use. Gratitude is something that grows from within. Like love, it cannot be commanded or compelled
So then, where does it come from? It comes from the place all healthy spirituality comes, it comes from a heart, from a person, who has gotten honest with herself and with God. It comes from a person, no matter how advanced he may be along the spiritual path, [a person] who says, “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief;” from the person who can say, “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid,” and who, further, can rejoice in that most intimate, even invasive, knowledge because this all-knowing, all-seeing God is deeply in love with each of us and wants only to draw ever closer to us in the very depth of our being and in our daily journey through life.
Still and all, if this gratitude and this trust in God’s love and mercy cannot be commanded or compelled, then how do we become truly grateful?
Let me tell you my own story. There was a time in my life, a time after I had been ordained for several years, when I had become grumbly, unhappy and discontent. Harrison actually knew me not only in Seminary but also in this somewhat miserable part of my life. I was discontent with those around me because I was essentially discontent with myself. I was anything but consistently grateful even though I knew intellectually that gratitude was the only proper spiritual and psychological orientation for a follower of Jesus. Nevertheless, I wasn’t such a person. Until that is, one day during this extended funk, I was walking between the church office building and the church itself (I could show you the very spot where it happened) when I stopped dead in my tracks and said (I think it was in my heart, but it may even have been out loud), “God, I am not a very grateful person, and I don’t know what to do about that. I sincerely pray, from the bottom of my heart, that you will help me become a grateful person.” I suppose I was not unlike the blind man in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus seems to have wanted him to ask for what he wanted. And he did. And I did.
Now I’d love to tell you that I was instantly transformed, but I wasn’t. In fact I may have largely forgotten about that moment on a day to day basis. But looking back, I know that was the beginning of a change in my heart. Slowly, week by week, month by month, almost imperceptibly, I was becoming what I had prayed for. Now I’m still no paragon of selfless gratitude, but now, several years later, I am a profoundly changed person. And it began that day, that moment when I stood stock still, honest with the universe, with God and myself, and asked God for what I know my heart was made to be. Grateful to God and to so many others for the richness in my life, grateful even for the hard and trying times that have made me who I am.
Generous giving will flow inevitably and naturally from such people as that.
And giving how and how much? Consecration Sunday asks each of us to consider the biblical standard of the Tithe as a benchmark. A tithe, ten-percent of whatever we choose to designate as our income.
For some this will be relatively easy to do if they will. For others it will be a struggle and a challenge. All of that is just fine. The important thing is that, with a spirit of gratitude, we sincerely ask what proportion, what percentage of our income, is God prompting us to dedicate to God’s mission, to God’s kingdom, through the local church. What proportion? It begins by asking, “What percentage am I currently giving?” and, “Am I happy with?” Is what I am currently doing fulfilling what a truly grateful heart prompts me to do? If not, then the invitation is for you and me to step up and do more. Most likely not all at once, but as time passes, allowing ourselves to become more and more generous.
  Our spiritual health is easily indicated by how much of our wealth we are cheerfully able to give away. I actually think J.R.R Tolkein was very wise about this. If you know the story, you know that there was a ring that granted its owner wealth and power, and the longer the owner clung to the ring and its benefits, the less and less the owner remained truly herself, finally becoming not the owner of the ring, but the miserable creature who had come to be owned by it. It is the same with our many possessions, if we cannot hold them loosely, willing to let them go for the good of the world and for our own spiritual health, then we must ask if we indeed own them or they now own us.
My prayer for us all is that we become the people “happy, joyous and free” that God made us to be – and will empower us to be – if we ask for and accept the gift of gratitude that God will give us. May God fill you with gratitude, and may that gratitude shine through us as a beacon and example to those around us. Each of us could audit our checkbooks to see what they reveal about how we use the treasure entrusted to us. But I am not asking you to audit your checkbook. I am asking each of us to audit our hearts. (Ibid, Dannals)

SERMON

Proper 7

June 21, 2015

Christ Church, Stratford

It's been a while since I shared anything here on the blog. This post is worthy of sharing, some have said.

Preparation for this past Sunday was difficult for me. I knew the events in Charleston must not be ignored, in fact, probably ought to be a principal motif in our corporate prayer and worship; so I scrapped earlier ideas for a sermon gathered from our excellent and wise Bible Study group who are so helpful to me in disclosing what the Scriptures are saying to us in our particular place and context.

Turning toward Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, a town I used to visit frequently and used to know rather well, I found memories of growing up in Meridian, Mississippi, crowding in on my consciousness. Memories of seeing the Klan marching in white-robed and masked anonymity in front of the Winn Dixie on 8th Street; of hearing that a bomb had been left at the front door of the synagogue and that a passenger in the bomber's car being killed in a shoot out; of the FBI agents and reporters who swarmed the town after the disappearance of three young men, "civil rights workers," who were ultimately found to have been murdered with the involvement of law enforcement officers from both Meridian and nearby Philadelphia; recognizing that those three Martyrs of Meridian must have driven past my house which was on the usual route from Meridian to Philadelphia. All of that crowded in and nearly overwhelmed. And then to think that such evil is still so alive after so many years. My denial or naivete were strong.

Anyway, here is the sermon that emerged from that emotional flood of memories. Following the sermon, as you will read, we knelt for the Litany of Penitence, and we named in the Prayers of the People those who had died at Emanuel AME Church. We also sang a powerful postcommunion hymn to which I was led by my colleague Pastor Cathy Rohrs of Grace Lutheran Church in Stratford. Here is a link to the hymn:

http://www.carolynshymns.com/they_met_to_read_the_bible.html

Here is the sermon:

1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49

Psalm 9:9-20

Psalm 133

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Mark 4:35-41

I

What a day they were having, Jesus and his friends. The crowd gathered beside the Sea of Galilee to hear Jesus had been large, so large that he had gotten into a boat from which he could keep them from pressing in on him as he talked to those gathered on the shore. His friends, Peter and James and John and the others had spent the day beside him as he taught and told those wonderful stories of his. As evening was coming, he suggested that his friends, his disciples, join him in the boat so that they could go over to the other side of the sea. It wasn’t so far, not much further than the distance from here to Port Jefferson. Maybe his friends thought Jesus was now going to spread his good news about the Kingdom of God to the pagans who lived over there on the other side of the Sea. Maybe he just needed to take a break. That was probably at least part of it, because as soon as they set sail for the other side of the Sea, he fell asleep, exhausted from so much passionate teaching and pouring out his heart to those who came to him.

But then came the storm.

Even today, I am told, storms come sweeping down through the mountains north of the Sea of Galilee and before you know it, they are on you we a fierceness that is truly terrifying and truly dangerous.

And where was Jesus? He was fast asleep.

His frightened friends roused him and said, “Master, do you not care that we are perishing?” "Do you not care?" This is the question that rings down through the ages. The question that is or has been on the lips of everyone of us -- or will be. “Master, do you not care that we are perishing?” He did care, and he rose from sleep and because he wields the power of the the Love of God, he calmed the storm. So powerful was his response that, hardly taking the time to be grateful, the disciples were afraid. He had saved their lives and they were afraid.

II

Nine children of God, some of them young, some of them old, lost their lives on Wednesday while they were participating in a Bible Study and Prayer Group. One whom they had welcomed into their place of worship and into their circle of study and prayer rose up and gunned them down. Watching the news coverage, I remember a quotation from someone in Charleston, or was it something written on a posterboard some was holding, that said, “God, if we are not safe in your house, then where?” It is just another way of saying, “Master, do you not care that we are perishing? Master, are you sleeping? Do you not care?” It was their question. It was the Disciples’ question. If it our question.

Trusting that we are not likely to hear a voice from Heaven providing a quick and easy answer, just how ARE we to respond? Yes, how are WE to respond. Because it IS our job to respond. I don’t know about you, but that thought makes me afraid. It is a very tall order and the magnitude and importance of the question makes me afraid that I am not up to the task. Fear not exactly like Jesus’s disciples were afraid, but afraid nonetheless. Afraid because WE are called to be Christ’s presence in the world. He has left the job of responding to us. It would be easier to stay asleep in the back of the boat, but times like these SHAKE US up and WAKE US up and demand that we respond to the question addressed to each of us: “Do you not care,” says the world to us, “that we are perishing?”

Where do I get this notion that the resonse is up to us? I get if from Jesus.

We must never forget that as he was preparing his friends for his departure and absence, Jesus said to them, “12Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these . . .  (John 14.12) If we believe, says Jesus, we will do the kinds of  things he did, and we will do even greater things.

So, what kind of answer can we give? Here is a powerful suggestion from Bishop Dan Edwards of The Diocese of Nevada:

[He says] It is too small a thing to condemn racism once again. It is too small a thing to condemn gun violence once again. It is unacceptable to attribute the violence against a Black congregation to a deranged lone gunman when systemic racism and systemic violence are pervasive and are being overtly acted out with increasing frequency. We must not "heal our people's wounds too lightly," as Jeremiah put it. Nothing short of the gospel can speak for us to this tragedy, a gospel not just proclaimed but acted on to usher in the Kingdom. We need a lot more Kingdom right now -- a lot more justice in the distribution of resources and opportunities, a lot less racist blaming of minorities to distract poor whites from the real forces behind their growing numbers and declining quality of life, a lot more curiosity and imagining our way into each other's situations, a lot less grudge clinging, a lot more hope for the common good, and a lot less scrambling to get our piece of the action. We need the gospel to infiltrate the real life of the

people, not just as individuals but as a people, and make the creation new right now.

In 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, there was a church bombing that killed five Little Girls who were on their way downstairs from Sunday School. Preaching at their funeral, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the  way of life and the philosophy which produced the murderers.

III

You and I share a common humanity, and we claim Jesus as our Lord. Because we have promised to follow him and to walk in his ways, we must begin and begin again continually and over and over to do all in our power to address the evils or racism and classism and the materialism, plutocracy and greed that infect our society. We must do all we can by speaking only love, by living only compassion, by praying to be freed from every mean and lowly thought. We must do that in the workplace, in the home, in the grocery store, on the commuter train, on the internet and wherever else we find ourselves

What does that look like and how does that sound?

Bethane Middleton-Brown is the sister of DePayne Middleton-Doctor, who was martyred

last Wednesday. Addressing the presume shooter she said, “I acknowledge that I am very angry,

[but] [my sister DePayne] taught me that we are the family that love built. We have no room for

hating.”

Nadine Collier is the daughter of Ethel Lance, who was martyred last Wednesday. Addressing the presumed shooter she said, “You took something very precious away from me, I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people, but God forgive[s] you, and I forgive you.

It looks and sounds just like that.

May the world see and know and feel that you and I do care that many are perishing. And may we wake from our sleep, not to fear, but to hope. And may we, with God’s help, do all in our power to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves; striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.

None of us directly caused the events of last Wednesday, and yet we are caught in the web of society and culture and practice that keep perpetuating such atrocities. It is appropriate therefore to acknowledge complicity, our dependence on God and our desire to walk in the way of Jesus. Please turn in your Prayer Books to page 267 and join me in The Litany of Penitence, offering to God Almighty our confession, our humility and our trust in his love.

The Confession and Absolution

Way back when Prayer Book revision was a hot button issue, I recall that one of the points of objection was the changing of the 1928 Prayer Book words of the Nicene Creed from “I believe” to the original, ancient “We believe.” The criticism was “I don’t know what YOU believe, so why should I say ‘We’?” The answer, of course, is what was said earlier in this series of articles: The Nicene Creed is the Church’s formal statement of belief. It is what “the Church” believes, though any one of us may at any time be more or less firm in our belief in the Creed’s particular claims. The “we” is “We the Church.”

But that’s not my point. Those objectors didn’t seem to have any trouble with the language of the confession which, time out of mind, had said, “We confess.” WE confess. It is a corporate confession as much as it is a personal confession – maybe more so. It is not a breast-beating “I am not worthy. I am a worm and no man.” (sic). It is an acknowledgment that we, as a body, have fallen short of Christ’s vision of what a community founded on love can be. C. S. Lewis once said that he felt dishonest when he said the Prayer Book words “the burden (of our sins) is intolerable.” He said he didn’t feel any intolerable load as a result of his sins. Then, he says, he realized the confession was not about his feelings. It was simply making a statement of fact. We screw things up, individually and corporately, and we can acknowledge and be appropriately sorry for that.

And what is “sin”? There is a useful distinction between “Sin” and “sin.” Capital “S” sin is the human condition. The world is broken in some way, and we inevitably feel a separation from God, from our neighbors and our true selves. This is the human condition. It is the world we are born into. This separation from God, others and self – and the fear that this inevitable separation engenders in us – causes us to act in defensive and selfish ways. Those defensive and selfish ways are “sins.” Capital “S” Sin leads us to little “s” sin. It is healthy for heart, mind and soul (and body as we are now learning) to get honest about this, by acknowledging our fear and the bad choices it leads us to. Confession is not about “I am not worthy, I am not worthy” so much as it is about “We are worth so much more than we are giving ourselves credit for.” We are God’s beloved. Immediately following this confession of the way things are, the priest or bishop PRONOUNCES God’s forgiveness. The priest does not “forgive.” God forgives (even before we ask); the priest or bishop merely assures us all of the forgiveness that God’s unconditional love offers us.

The Prayers of the People

The Book of Common Prayer directs that at each Eucharist the gathered People of God pray for the Universal Church, its members, and its mission; the Nation and all in authority; the welfare of the world; the concerns of the local community; those who suffer and those in any trouble; and the departed (with commemoration of a saint when appropriate). This part of the Eucharist has always seemed to me to be “under-rated.” I mean, here we are, the beloved People of God, gathered in God’s presence in the special way that a Eucharist provides, and, as a body, we “have God’s ear.” (Yes, we always have God’s ear, but this is corporate worship, the uniting of God’s People in attention and intention. That is a very different thing from our private prayers and petitions.)

Like the Peace, it feels to me like this moment of corporate prayer has gotten diluted. In Rite II the opportunity for members of the congregation to offer their own concerns is almost always offered. In my experience, there are sometimes a few whispered petitions – nothing wrong with that - but it feels to me like a missed opportunity. What if one were to say in a voice loud enough to be heard something like, “I pray for my friend Fred who is in the hospital for surgery,” or “Let’s pray for those Christians in Syria who are being held captive and are in danger of death,” or “Lord Jesus, please hold my daughter close as she moves out into the world and her new job”? What if? I can almost guarantee that it would draw us closer in love and concern for one another. This is so different from the monologue read from the front of the church by someone in vestments. What if the Prayers of the People were read by a member of the congregation (or a deacon located among them), making it clear that these are the prayers OF THE PEOPLE? Another thing to notice is that even if there is some vocal response from the congregation when we pray for those in distress or need, there is usually nothing said when space is made for thanksgivings. Again, what if one were audibly to say something like, “I give thanks for the safe return of my friend from Afghanistan,” or “Thank you God for gathering my family together this Christmas”? What if?

Here’s a thought: what if on Sunday each of us was responsible for praying out loud for those people and issues that concern us, and “the prayer list” was what we took home to guide our prayers during the weekdays, knowing that the clergy and others were praying that same list in church throughout the week as well?

The Nicene Creed

This creed is “the Church’s faith.” It is what we, as the whole Church, hold to be true. It is what “We believe.” This is different from The Apostles' Creed. The shorter Apostles’ Creed is derived from the earliest known rites of Holy Baptism. It was the question and answer dialogue between the bishop and the one about to be baptized: “Do you believe in God the Father?” “I believe in God the Father.” The Apostles’ Creed is a personal statement and it represents “the faith of the Apostles,” that is, what the early church held as a summary of the faith inherited from the earliest of times.

The Nicene Creed came later, around 325, and it was hammered out in a council of bishops and others whom the Emperor Constantine the Great had called together to settle conflicts brewing among various local Christian communities about what was “true.” Constantine was something of a monomaniac - he wanted one emperor in charge of one empire that had one understanding of this newly “official” Christianity. Many see this interweaving of state and church, of politics and religion as an unfortunate thing. The arguments for and against are endless and never likely to be conclusive or agreed on. At any rate, this creed became eventually, though not immediately, the official statement of the whole Church.

This creed is more than an antique statement in outmoded terms. Our challenge is to ask “What were the earliest Church leaders trying to say by the words of this creed?” What did it mean to THEM to say “he came DOWN from heaven”? What did that mean to THEM? Then we must ask how we would state that truth in today’s terms. It isn’t an easy task, but it is a necessary one. Today’s Christians are not asked to embrace an antique and superceeded cosmology (map of the universe), one that includes a physical heaven above the clouds and a literal hell under the ground, for instance; but what are we to make of these earlier claims? And how DO we understand these ideas in our own day? We don’t have to cross our fingers as we say things that use an ancient world-view, but neither are we expected to believe no longer reasonable statements from a pre-scientific world. Reciting the Creed, we stand united as one people with one basic faith – with much room for human reason and experience to guide us.

The Sermon

I am a believer that when clergy take the ordination oath, “I do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church,” they have sworn to conduct worship according to the explicit expectations of the Book of Common Prayer. There is lots of freedom and room for creative variation within what is permitted, but there are also limits. Each Eucharistic service simply says, “Sermon.” That means it isn’t optional. In general the sermon takes as its main text the Gospel reading, but there is nothing hard and fast about that. I’ve certainly preached using the Hebrew Bible as the main text, likewise The Epistle.

Sermons are peculiar critters, not a lecture,not a speech, not primarily “educational,” but “formational.” They are meant to inform us, but in the deeper meaning of that word: to form us within, to shape our inner selves. They are meant to address the “heart and soul and mind” with which we are asked to love the Lord our God. It is another way our worship seeks to help us grow more Christ-like.

Ideally the sermon explores the “there and then” aspect of the reading. That is, what was the issue? Why was this story told? What life situation did it address in its own time and its own place? What was going on in the lives of the original hearers? Then there is a turn: how is our life situation like theirs, and what does the reading have to say to us about our lives here and now. What is the Good News for us? (Thank you, Professor The Reverend Bill Hethcock.)

How long should a sermon be? Professor Hethcock’s wisdom about that is if you notice that it is too long or too short, then it probably is. A sermon should hold your attention and touch your heart in such a way that the passage of time is not noticed at all. The correct length of the sermon is the length you don’t notice.

The Gospel Reading

Whatever else is included or not included, every Eucharistic service has a reading from one of the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. It is most often the case that the other readings are chosen in relation to that Gospel reading and follow an orderly chronology of Jesus’s life, teaching and ministry. That is, over the course of the Church’s year (beginning with the First Sunday of Advent), we follow Jesus from birth to death and resurrection. The readings invite us to journey with him. It is one way we “walk the way of the cross” as we worship together.

But it isn’t exactly a strict chronology – there are profound subtleties in the choice of readings. For instance, Advent begins not with an account of the coming Nativity of Jesus to which the season of Advent is meant to lead us. Rather, every Advent begins by focusing not on the “first coming” of Jesus, but the Second Coming which we now await. The readings on that first Advent Sunday direct us beyond the birth in Bethlehem, which, after all, has already happened. We cannot await an event that has occurred in the past. We can celebrate it, give thanks for it, deepen our appreciation of what that birth means, but we can’t really “wait” for it. What we await is the Second Coming of Jesus. The readings direct our attention to and through the Nativity to the horizon of our existence and the Christ who is our future. Without the promise of our ultimate future with Christ, Christmas can be reduced to sentiment and nostalgia. The readings steer us toward a more meaningful contemplation of Christmas by placing it in the context of eternity.

Another subtlety is that in the Gospel story, once Jesus is seen by Peter, James and John radiant and transfigured on the mountain, Jesus resolutely directs his path toward Jerusalem and the fateful events that will occur there. Thus, at the end of the Epiphany season, we hear the story of that Transfiguration, and on the following Sunday we begin the season of Lent, which is our own intentional directing of our attention to the Jerusalem events of Holy Week (Last Supper, Crucifixion, Entombment) in preparation for the joy of Easter. The readings invite us into deeper relation with all those events.

I always think of this interweaving of readings and theology and psychology as a sort of symphony with many elements making one sublime music. And, like a symphony, whether or not we know much about musical composition – what IS the sonata form? When did the violins rise above the oboes and play the theme again? – we are moved and changed by experiencing the music. Our liturgy is like that – it shapes us in ways beyond words and definitions. And the more we encounter it, the more we are touched, shaped and changed by it – increasingly changed into the image and likeness of Christ, which is the reality and the goal of the spiritual journey.