Sermon for Chrism Mass and the Clergy Renewal of Vows
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Bangor, Maine
April 10, 2012
John 12:20-36
As we were saying earlier, hope requires the experience of God who is present with us: palpable, authentic, life-changing. Most of us here, I imagine, have experiences of God in other people, in events, that sustain us as we go about the work of ministry. But for many people God’s presence is not so clear – and what they get in church is not a substitute for experience.
I’ve just finished reading Diana Butler Bass’ new book, Christianity after Religion, which examines the matter of religious experience closely. It’s her best writing and research to date, and I commend it to you.
Butler Bass roots her book in an extended analysis of “spirituality” and “religion” and the ways these two words intersect and overlap both historically and in contemporary culture. Spirituality, she writes, is about connection with the God and neighbor. Whether we’re speaking of animism or Buddhism or Christianity, spirituality is the seeking after direct experience of the divine, reaching out to touch God. There is a great hunger for such experience in our time, and most people describe themselves as either “only spiritual” or “spiritual and religious.” Very few people describe themselves as “only religious.”
Religion, originally understood as re-ligio, meaning “to bind together” God and humanity or “to reconnect,” has always had as a primary purpose the provision of opportunities and practices for apprehending God. But over time, as a religions and denominations have tried to establish themselves over against one another, religion has also come to be characterized by an emphasis on right belief. As each religious body has emphasized its own right belief, then religion has become increasingly concerned with membership: who belongs, who doesn’t. In our time, such concerns have been folded into institutional and survival concerns, so that for many contemporary folk, religion means people fighting over who has the right beliefs and trying to get others to give money to save their institutions.
Robert Putnam, sociologist and author of Bowling Alone and now American Grace, writes that for young people who came of age in the 80’s and 90’s during a time of resurgence in American evangelicalism, Christianity is, rightly or wrongly, associated almost exclusively with rules and regulations about sex and with conservative politics. According to the latest Pew Research studies, 70% of adults under 30 have no contemporary experience of the church.
But most of them hunger for an experience of God. “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Indeed.
The question for all of us is: Where is he? Where is Jesus? Where is God?
Jesus’ response to the question is a simple as it is unexpected: up here, on the cross. That’s where Jesus is found. That’s where God is found. And that is the key, I believe, to helping all those spiritual seekers. We, along with Jesus, need to invite them to the places where Jesus is: where there is suffering, where there is loss, where there is death, where there is new life. Jesus is in the places where need and compassion meet. He’s in relationships as people come together to share deeply the joys and sorrows of their lives and work together to bring life and love to their communities.
Bob Honeychurch, the Episcopal Church staff person for church growth, is doing an in-depth study of Episcopal Churches who have evidenced growth in each of the last five years. There are just 42 such churches out of 6800 in the Episcopal Church. The study is of 12 of them. Bob was here in Maine two weeks ago to interview the people of St. Ann’s, Windham, one of the 12. I got a chance to sit down with Bob, and I asked him what he had already learned about growing churches. He noted several factors:
1. Dynamic clergy leadership – meaning clergy who are energetic about their ministries and are fully engaged in creating significant relationships with congregants and the community.
2. Long term, stable lay leadership – meaning people who are identified as leaders by the congregation and who are loyal and supportive of the congregation through thick and thin, who are steadfast as clergy leaders come and go.
3. Dynamic worship – meaning worship where people expect something to happen, where people expect they might be changed.
4. Integration with the larger community – meaning that the walls between church and community are porous and that there is a belief that the community is our community.
In each of these aspects there is a sense of seeking after depth: deep relationships, enduring commitment, life-changing worship, integration with the surrounding community. There is a willingness to face pain and suffering, to share joys and sorrows, to make a significant commitment to change. There is, in the life of the church, a desire to imitate the dying and rising of Christ.
Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The key to meeting the spiritual hunger of our age, for people both in the church and the many more who are outside the church, is to stand at the foot of the cross, to be where he is: for real life to meet a real God.
As we renew our vows this morning, may we embrace our dying and rising friend and savior. God grant us grace not to hold back, but to pull out all the stops, to be where Jesus is, so that others may find him.
Amen.
Sermon for Palm Sunday by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Rockland, Maine
April 1, 2012
Mark 11:1-1; Mark 14:1-15:47
When Pontius Pilate, the Roman Prefect, or Governor of the Roman Province of Judea, entered the city of Jerusalem, he most likely did so mounted on a warhorse surrounded by a company of mounted bodyguards and, perhaps, accompanied by a small phalanx of foot soldiers who roughly cleared path for him through the crowded streets. Or if the occasion demanded a slightly grander entrance, Pilate might have been a passenger in a chariot. Unless it was a special, ceremonial occasion, there would have been no crowds lined up to watch, only the residents of the city going about their daily tasks. And, in Palestine, there certainly would have been no cheering. The Roman occupiers were despised by the people.
A Roman Prefect was a minor Roman authority, a military functionary empowered to collect taxes and to keep the peace. If there were major trouble or a major occasion, the Prefect would give way to his superior, in Pilate’s case, the Legate of Syria. The Legate of Syria is the one who appointed Caiaphas as High Priest. Roman public pomp being what it was, Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem was a mere shadow of the pomp that would attend the Legate or the Emperor.
Pilate ordinarily lived in Caesarea, but his duties took him throughout the Province of Judea. He was undoubtedly in Jerusalem for the Passover because the Romans had learned through hard experience that Jewish festivals were often the occasion for popular unrest. Pilate no doubt wanted to make sure that things stayed quiet in Jerusalem. It’s estimated Pilate had about 3,000 soldiers under his command, and he probably arrived in Jerusalem with a beefed-up force for the Passover.
So Jesus’ “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem on a colt was a significant piece of street theater. This royal personage, this Jesus, arrived without fanfare, without bodyguards or a phalanx of soldiers. But as he arrived, crowds of people – we should read – a couple hundred folks probably mostly street people and children, gathered as he rode along strewing the street with green branches and their outer garments. As they walked along the crowds chanted, “Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”
Each of these exclamations means a different thing. The word “Hosanna” is actually the prayer of an oppressed people: “Save, now, please, O God.” “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” is clearly an expression of messianic hope, although it is similar to language used about the Roman emperor. And the final phrase, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David” seems to locate the messianic hope in the restoration of the throne of the great King David. So the hope expressed altogether is one for the overthrow of the Roman oppressor and restoration of the royal throne of Israel.
So Jesus’ simple parody of a royal Roman procession was filled with tension and irony. It was a mockery of Roman pomp and circumstance. It was the occasion for the display of Jewish messianic hopes – the very thing Pilate wanted to avoid. And, finally, it was an ironic statement about who Jesus is and what he has come to do. He is the Messiah, yes, indeed. But he is a Messiah who has come to die. He is a Messiah who means to conquer not just Rome, but the human heart.
So we see in this little bit of street theater all of the elements, all of the tension and misunderstanding, all of the hopes and fears, and all of the realities of the Jesus’ suffering and his resurrection that will characterize the week to come. Like the young man who escapes the Roman guard by pulling out of his linen garment and running away naked, so is every emotion, every hope, laid bare by Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
And what do we think? What do we think of this little bit of theater? How do we perceive what Jesus is doing? Who do we think he is? Is he a lunatic impostor, a pretender of to the throne of David? Is he a megalomaniac rabbi who has manipulated the hopes of the poor to build himself up? Is he, as he says to the high priest, “I AM” – taking the name of God – and therefore claiming divinity for himself?
What do we think of his method, this challenge of the Roman warhorse with a colt? Is God in the warhorse or the colt? How is power overcome by love? How is death banished by death? Are the events of the coming week simply a sad charade – a wish dream of the poor and the oppressed? Or are they signs of the true nature of reality, evidence of an inexhaustible love that powers the universe?
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of colt, there were only two possibilities: he was either the author of an incredibly brave, but ultimately deluded, act of defiance against the oppressive authority of church and state, or he was the author of a new heaven and a new earth. As we enter into Holy Week and our journey to Golgatha, I invite you into your own journey of prayer and reflection. Who is this Jesus for you?
Amen.
Sermon for Lent 5 by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church, Bar Harbor
March 25, 2012
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33
Some Greeks, meaning some Gentiles, some non-Jews, came to Philip, and said: “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Indeed. Don’t we all. Is this not the experience that every person of faith – and even many who have no faith – ardently desires? To see Jesus face to face. To know him. To follow him.
Jesus’ disciples bring the question to Jesus, and his response is a seeming non sequitur. “The hour has come,” he said, “for the Son of Man to be lifted up.” “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant also be.”
Is Jesus simply ignoring the question? Is he simply moving on to talk about what’s important to him? Or is he answering the question with such profundity that it transforms the question from a simple inquiry to a matter of cosmic importance? We would see Jesus… but where is he?
The Jews, you recall, were expecting a Messiah, a Messiah connected with the throne of the late, great King David, who would rally a mighty army, overthrow the Roman oppressor, and restore Israel to days of glory. The Jews were expecting a great reversal, one that would make them the rulers of Palestine. But Jesus was not raising a mighty army. His ragtag army of followers consisted mostly of poor people, and women, and the disabled, and Gentiles.
There was a great hunger for freedom in Jesus’ day. The people were taxed quite literally into starvation. The peace of Rome was maintained by the brutal authority of the Roman legions. The road into Jerusalem was lined with crosses as a grotesque reminder of Roman power. King Herod and the Temple authorities preserved their own power by collaborating with the enemy. Every Jew, every Palestinian, yearned to be set free. But Jesus did not seem intent on changing the social order.
Yet he did have power – unmistakably. He healed the sick and cured the lame. He touched the lepers. He opened blind eyes. He challenged conventional wisdom and conventional teaching. He didn’t seem afraid of anyone or anything. And he was willing to engage everyone who came to see him: well/sick, male/female, child/adult, Jew/Greek, believer/unbeliever. We would see Jesus. But where do we find him?
It’s a question for our time as well. Where in the midst of everything that’s happening, do we find Jesus? The news has been particularly troubling in the last month or so. Early and very deadly tornadoes. Sixteen Afghan civilians murdered by a US soldier. Brutal attacks on a French Jewish school. A Florida teenage shot by a neighborhood watchman. Ongoing human rights abuses in Syria. And on and on. Where is Jesus?
Jesus’ response to his disciples answers the question – but it may not be the answer we want. Jesus says, I’m up there – on the cross. And when I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself.
Where is Jesus? In the twisted ruins in southern Indiana. In the Afghan village. In the sergeant’s prison cell. Among the victims and families in France and Florida. Among the terrorized citizens of Syria. That’s where he is.
Moreover, Jesus says, if you want to see me, follow me. Come with me, be where I am. Join me in my work. The challenge of our lessons today is that there is a deep connection between seeing and following. Indeed, following may allow us to see, may open our eyes to Jesus’ presence.
We are invited this morning to consider where we have seen Jesus at work, where we have been moved to follow. Have we allowed ourselves to be in the places where Jesus is – where there is suffering, where there is grief, where there is oppression? Have allowed our hearts to be moved with compassion by the needs of others? Have we shared what we have for the welfare of others? Have we spoken a word of kindness, a word of blessing, a word of hope?
That’s what Jeremiah means when he speaks of writing the law in our hearts – not that we will simply memorize by heart the law of Moses, but that our hearts will be changed, that we will be new people, that we will live in new ways. No longer will be we simply observe the law. Now we will follow God.
The problem with all this, of course, is that the cross is a painful place to be. To stand at the cross, to stand with Jesus, is to risk sharing in the pain and suffering of all those Jesus came to save, to share in the pain of the homeless, the outcast, the prisoner, the refugee. It is to let our own hearts be pierced by the pain of others.
At the spring HOB meeting this past week the Presiding Bishop, in one of her meditations, invited to the Holy Spirit to keep piercing our hearts so that they could open enough to take others in. We can wall ourselves off from the hurts of the world. We can turn our backs on the suffering of others. We can focus our attention solely on our own needs and those of our loved ones… but then we’ll still be looking for Jesus.
Jesus did not come to overthrow the Roman Empire. He came to turn the whole world upside down: to transform the cosmos, and to transform our hearts. It is the transforming of our hearts that makes journey through Holy Week and Easter so hard, that makes finding Jesus such a puzzle. Because we don’t want to change, and we certainly don’t want to suffer.
The Good News is that, visible or not, Christ is right here with us. Christ is everywhere someone suffers, including us. There is risk in seeking Christ – yes – but also the joy of knowing and being with Jesus.
It’s not magic, what we’re talking about, but it is mystical. It’s opening ourselves to a deeper level of reality, to the reality of cross and resurrection. Sir, we wish to see to Jesus. Go to the cross.
Amen.
Sermon for Lent 2 by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
St. Dunstan’s, Ellsworth
March 4, 2012
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8: 31-38
I think you all know by now that Abraham, the father of the Israelite people, the ancestor of a multitude of nations, was not really a great guy. He was a schemer. He passed his wife, Sarah, off as his sister and gave her to the king of Egypt for a wife. He fathered a child by his wife’s slave, Hagar, and then disowned them both. He owned slaves, conquered and enslaved Canaanites, and tried at all times to cover his own butt. He may, in regard to all these behaviors, have been no different than any other wealthy nomad, living by his wits, but he was hardly a model citizen or a pillar of virtue – either by the standards of his own day or our own.
But God favored Abraham and promised to bless him, and Abraham, by hook or by crook, kept faith with the promise. Abraham believed what God had told him, what God had promised, and God counted that as righteousness. That’s not to say that Abraham was actually righteous… but God counted his faith as righteousness.
It’s important that we not see Abraham’s faithfulness as some sort of achievement, as a muscular act of spiritual will power, something we should emulate. Because it’s not that. Rather Abraham’s faith is a matter of his response to grace and to the Giver of grace.
Faith and promise stand in an interesting and paradoxical relationship. Without a promise, there’s nothing to believe. If I don’t tell you I’m coming at six, then you have no reason to believe I’m coming at six. But without faith, the promise has no meaning. If you know I’m never on time and you don’t believe I will come at six, then my promise is empty, meaningless. You might count yourself lucky if I show up, but you don’t have faith in me. Faith allowed Abraham and Sarah to hear God and to imagine a future in which the reality of the future overturned the reality of the present. But you will remember it was a hard go – both Abraham and Sarah laughed.
So the whole thing is not rooted in the muscularity of Abraham’s belief, but in the reality of God’s grace. It is out of God’s grace that God chose Abraham and promised to make him the father of many nations. It is out of grace that God kept God’s promise in the face of Abraham and Sarah’s laughter. And grace is as well the source of Abraham’s faith that God would do as God promised. (Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters call that prevenient grace – the grace that goes before grace.)
All this is important because today we’re reading about taking up our cross and following Jesus, and our temptation is to think that taking up one’s cross is a matter of gutting it out, stoically enduring the trials and tribulations of this life for the sake of a reward we will receive in the future. We tend to think of the cross in terms of hardship, of suffering, of unpleasantness. And we’re tempted to hold up Abraham as a role model thinking that if Abraham could do it, well, so can we. But carrying the cross is not about human strength. It’s about imagining a future beyond what humans can accomplish by themselves. It’s about death and resurrection.
And it’s about faith. About believing the promise. Jesus seems to be saying that saving our lives and losing our lives are actions within our control. To follow Jesus is to move beyond a fixation on self-preservation, to move beyond scheming. It’s to see the present in the frame of eternity. The cross we are to bear is not a pre-determined struggle, a hard row we must hoe. It’s rather a daily effort to focus on the things that endure, that matter, that are good. It is to keep in mind eternity. It is to keep in mind that there is nothing we can give in return for our lives – except our lives.
This time we live in with all its hardships – a struggling world economy, global warming, wars and rumors of war, toxic politics – all these things make it hard for many us to have hope. What can we do we wonder? How will we solve the problems confronting us? Whom can we find to lead us, to give us the fix for the mess we’re in? We keep behaving as if it were all up to us, and we have no answers.
But as people of faith we know – we should know – it’s not all up to us. We have a role to play. There is good we can do. But we know that it is God who takes the good we do and makes of it something truly transforming. We know that our lives take place in the frame of God’s eternity. We know that God is, even now, moving this old world to its final fulfillment – to a new heaven and a new earth. In these days, perhaps, to take up our cross means simply to believe that God is in charge and, in spite of everything, to trust in God and hold fast to what is good.
There is suffering in trusting God to be sure: to be hopeful in the face of despair, to treat everyone with love and respect, to name as neighbors the poor and the outcast, the stranger and the alien – to do these things is to put ourselves on the wrong side of the politics of division (of both parties). To believe that love can win and to live that way, to give some of what we have away rather than hoard it all for ourselves, is to take risks in this shaky economy. To plant a garden or a tree, to protect the earth, the water and the air, is to believe that this old earth has a future beyond what so many see as imminent death.
To carry the cross is to live without shame in this adulterous and sinful generation, to live lovingly and hopefully – trusting that God will keep God’s promises, trusting that there is a future beyond what we can imagine.
God grant you his grace to bear the cross. Amen.
Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
at the Celebration of New Ministry for the Rev. Craig Hacker and
the people of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Bridgton, Maine
February 18, 2012
Brief readings from Genesis, Exodus, Jeremiah, Luke (the Magnificat), Matthew and Mark (the empty tomb)
In that not too distant past, this service was known as the Institution of a New Rector, and the focus was on the role and responsibility of the priest. The service is now named the Celebration of New Ministry because we rightly recognize that the ministry priest and people share is the ministry of Christ, and the service marks a new phase and a new partnership in that ministry. As the reading of salvation history and the reaffirmation of our Baptismal Covenant make abundantly clear, we are all called, together, to seek and serve Christ in all people.
This is, perhaps, not a particularly auspicious time in the life of the Church for the celebration of a new ministry. In many places, the things we have long done as churches are no longer working very well. Making the rounds on the Internet the past few days is a video by the rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, St. Paul, Minnesota. She tells the story of how, after years of trying, the parish has cancelled its adult education programs and its weekday services – because no one was coming. And it’s not just a problem in St. Paul. Two congregations of this diocese have recently ended Sunday School programs for children – because no one is coming. As the rector of St. Mary’s laments, “I feel like a failure as a priest because I feel called to teach. But it’s clear my congregation is not interested in hearing me teach about Jesus.” She notes that they do seem interested in outreach ministry and they are still showing up on Sunday morning. But adult education is not something they care to do.
It may be that the educational programs offered at St. Mary’s are not very good – although the parish seems to have tried many different approaches. Or, it may be that people’s lives are simply too full, too busy, to make time for education. Or, it may be that our whole way of forming people for the life of faith no longer meets the realities of contemporary life. But whatever the case, one thing is clear: without followers, leaders can’t lead.
Ron Heifitz, the Harvard professor who has written a great deal about change and coined the term “adaptive change,” notes that a crisis exists when the standard solutions to standard problems – like the need to educate people – no longer work or require a change beyond the power of the leader to provide – when the solution requires every person to change his or her behavior. That seems to be the crisis at St. Mary’s. An adaptive change is needed, a new way of forming Christians that requires every member of St. Mary’s to change.
And I think that’s the reality facing the Christian Church across the United States. As long as people expect the clergy to provide the solutions for the problems the church is confronting, the church will continue to decline. The solutions lie within the collective wisdom of the whole body, each member of which must be willing to change in order for the solutions to emerge.
What might that look like? Well, I’m not entirely sure – and if you expect me to have the answer, then you are still expecting a technical fix. But I think it has to do with a very old idea – and that is that church is leaven in the loaf, functioning as the yeast in the dough of the community and not as a body drawn out from and separated from the community.
The church is to be a community with very porous boundaries, where the line between members and non-members is blurred. It is a community that recognizes oneness and unity across the distinctions of service provider and client, member and recipient – a community where each person expects to receive gifts from the other. It is a community where the primary concerns are the needs, not of the church, but of God’s world. Where we see ourselves formed and nourished for the renewal of the world – where our goal is the transformation, the redemption of God’s creation. It is a community where the distinctions between holy and mundane, sacred and secular, cease to have much meaning – where we recognize that you and I, business owner and street person, are all bearers of God’s spirit, all persons who may reveal the presence of Christ. It is a community where the celebration of relationship with God, the celebration of our service to others, is more important than the music or the niceties of the liturgy – where we lift up all who show us the way – even the little children.
In order for the church to thrive, we will all need to be leaders. Some of us will lead from formal positions of authority – like Craig – who will try to provide some order and some organization. And some of us will lead from the outside, with new ideas and insight, with creative possibilities. But we will lead together or none of us will go anywhere.
Because what we are engaged upon here is not the ministry of St. Peter’s or the ministry of the Episcopal Church, but the ministry of Christ. Here we will worship God, turn our hearts toward God, proclaim God’s love, seek Christ in every person, and advocate for justice. That’s what we are all called to do. That’s what makes us the church. Without this, the success of our Sunday School doesn’t make much difference.
The Good News is that God will empower us for this work. Our task, truly, is not to be successful, but to be faithful, and for each us to do his or her part. Craig can’t do this work alone – and shouldn’t try – and neither should any of us. Only as a body, as Christ’s body, with Christ as the head will God’s mission be fulfilled.
May we, all of us together, enter into this new phase of Christ’s ministry with joy and with hope. Amen.
Bishop Stephen T. Lane’s Christmas Eve Sermon
Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Portland, Maine
December 24, 2011
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20
A friend of mine called recently about her grandson. A bright, sensitive young man, he dropped out of college this fall. Training for the National Guard Reserve, he’s had trouble making himself go to weekend training events and has gotten himself in some trouble with the military. He’s depressed, unsure what he should do, searching for community. When he talks with his grandmother, as he still does now and again, he asks her, “What hope is there for me, Grandma? What hope is there for my generation.”
It’s not hard to identify with that question. Looking at the violent world scene, witnessing aghast our breathtakingly dysfunctional political system which itself reflects the breakdown of our community life, watching friends and neighbors and children look fruitlessly for work, we may be asking it ourselves. Whether or not we find ourselves in sympathy with the Occupy Wall Street movement, few of us would argue that things are not seriously out of whack.
That’s certainly one story we can tell about our times: a story of faded dreams and lost hopes, a story of disappearing opportunities, a narrative of decline and disaster. I’ve been struck again and again this fall by the hardship and the sadness of our days. Nine years of war in Iraq. The first anniversary of the discovery of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme. Rich and poor at odds across the land. Tough times. Tough, tough times.
But not the first tough times; nor the worst tough times. Not the worst we’ve seen in our own country. Not like the Depression. And certainly not the worst the world has seen. Not as bad here as in many other places around the globe. Not as bad as what the people endured in Jesus’ time.
I think what’s hard about our times, here, is that the contrast between what is and what we hope for is so great. It seems to be innate in human nature to wish for fulfillment, for wholeness, for unity with God and one another. Not too long ago, we thought, we dreamed, that we might be achieving that fulfillment, and now it seems to be fading away. We know there is a better way. We know there is a better world. And how we yearn for it! How we long for it! Come, Lord, Jesus!
There is, however, another story we might tell. A true story about who we are and where we’re going. It is, in fact, the story we tell tonight. And the story is that we are beloved. We are God’s beloved. Our existence began in the mind of God, as a glimmer in God’s eye. We were born for a purpose: to be loved by God and to love God and one another in return. And behind all we see, behind and beyond all the sadness and the pain of this hour is another reality. A world of fulfillment and wholeness, a world of justice and peace, a unity of God and humanity, is taking shape. It’s hovering on the horizon. It’s appearing here and there among us. We catch glimpses. We hear echoes. We discover signs: a child in a manger; the kindness of strangers, the generosity of communities, the resilience of the human spirit. And we rejoice. We rejoice that God is with us. We join the angelic chorus. We dance to the music of the spheres.
That story says that the best days are yet to come. What we experience now is a mere foretaste, an appetizer for the feast that is to come; a promissory note on a pledge that will be paid.
The story we tell matters. The first one makes us victims, whines that we’re alone in the universe, drains the hope and the life right out of us. The second story gives us cause for celebration, empowers us to act, invites us to share our hope with our neighbors.
The story Luke tells, of a Jewish baby born to a carpenter and his bride, in a small Palestinian village, two millennia ago, to be a sign of God’s presence among us, is actually our story, everyone’s story. God not only gives us life, but shares our life and walks with us and among us so that we might share that life with others. It is the beginning of a cosmic reversal wherein the universe of dog-eat-dog becomes a peaceable kingdom, and a little child leads us.
It is the universal human trait to hope for more, to seek a greater wholeness, a greater fulfillment, a greater love. Don’t ever let that go. Don’t ever surrender that hope. On this night we know that hope is not in vain, that we together, by God’s grace, can make our way to the manger and see the world that is coming. Together we can share our hope.
May it be so. Amen.
Bishop Stephen T. Lane’s Sermon at the 192nd Diocesan Convention
October 22, 2011
Sunday River, Maine
Acts 1:1-9; Psalm 121; Luke 10:1-9
Last week The Episcopal Church held its second Everyone, Everywhere conference on the Church’s mission. Folks from all over the world came together at Estes Park, CO, to discuss God’s mission and the Church’s place in it. The thrust of a couple of the presentations was that the Church has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of God’s mission. We’ve thought of it as something the Church does, rather than something the Church is. But mission is not outreach. Mission is the Church’s identity. Or to use an old line, God’s mission has a Church, and not the other way around.
The core, therefore, of God’s mission is not a program – as important as programs may be. The core of God’s mission is relationships – both within the body of Christ, and through the body of Christ with God’s world. We need to get beyond our comfort zones and engage with people who are very different from ourselves.
Several of the speakers at the conference were missionaries who spoke of beginning their work in far places and of their preparation to share their training and their expertise with those in need. They discovered upon arriving in those places that God was already at work everywhere, and learned of their need to work in partnership with the people they met. It’s not that they didn’t have something important to offer. They did indeed bring important skills and training to the table. It’s simply that they discovered many others who also brought skills and training to the table, and who represented the dignity and integrity of the people they served. The world is not full of people waiting for our help. The world is full of people waiting for God’s justice and for friends who will work with them to achieve it.
Another way to say this is that mission is not done by patrons on behalf of those who are incapable of helping themselves. God’s mission is done by brothers and sisters in partnership, who work together for the benefit of all.
Our readings for this service are drawn from the Propers for a Missionary, and they offer some insights into the nature of God’s mission.
And the first is simply that – it’s God’s mission. Our help is in the name of the Lord. The mission does not belong to us. We belong to God’s mission. And our hope is not based on what we can accomplish, but on God’s faithfulness. The God who created everything still looks after us, morning and night. Still shields and protects us. God’s mission will be accomplished because that’s what God chooses.
So despite what may be happening in our communities, God is not absent. Indeed, God may be calling us away from things that no longer serve, no longer work, and inviting us to consider new possibilities. Is there no one left who will volunteer to teach Sunday School? Are there too few attending such a Sunday School to make it viable? Is there no one who will attend adult Bible study? Perhaps then God is inviting us to look at new opportunities for Christian formation, whether that might be in small house groups or at the food pantry.
Second, it’s clear that mission is our primary purpose. We’re sent. Some of us call our Sunday worship the mass. And the source for that word comes from the dismissal at the end of the Latin mass: Ita missa est. “Go, you are dismissed.” Each week we are sent from worship to do God’s mission.
Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. So, mission is not Lone Ranger work. It’s something we do together. But it’s clear we’re meant to go out. The disciples were told to enter fully into the life of the communities they served. They were to make themselves dependent on those communities, dependent on them for food, clothing and housing. They didn’t invite people to come to them. They went to the communities. They were sent to proclaim, “The kingdom of God has come near you.” And they represented that kingdom.
Our primary work is not to invite people to join our church. It’s to go to them with the good news of the kingdom. The hospitality we offer in our congregations is not something we do because we want new members. Hospitality expresses our participation in the kingdom of God. We’re hospitable because God is hospitable. And more important than hospitality is solidarity – the recognition that our neighbors are God’s children and our partners in ministry. It is by going to meet them that we turn strangers into friends. Our call is not to invite others to be like us, but for us to be more like Jesus and to go where he goes.
Third, the timeline for God’s mission is not up to us. It belongs to the Father. It’s not for us to know the times or periods the Father has set. We have received the Holy Spirit who has empowered us to be witnesses for the kingdom of God. And that is enough.
I suspect this is the most difficult matter for us. We don’t know when God will restore the kingdom to Israel, and we’re invited to labor without knowing that. The changes that have hit the Church in the last two decades are simply overwhelming. All the cultural supports we used to enjoy seem to have vanished. We want to know when all this will end. We want to know when God will restore our church. But we don’t know. And God doesn’t seem much interested in telling us. Rather God invites us to continue our witness.
Is the period we’re in an aberration that 100 years from now we will recognize as such? Or in 100 years will we recognize the situation of the postwar period as the aberration? I don’t know, and I don’t think it matters much. Because the task before us is the same: to witness that God is among us, that each of us is loved by God, and that God invites us to work together for the well being of all. That’s God’s mission and it is, I believe, the only growth strategy we need.
The kingdom of God is a kingdom of resurrected people, people who understand that beyond all appearances God is working God’s purposes out. God’s kingdom is born out of the death of this old world. And that dying and rising includes our beloved church. A way of being church is dying – and we can’t stop it. But a new way is being born – I do believe it! Death is not something we seek, but when it approaches we meet it with faith, confident that God is up to something for our good; confident that life will rise from death.
Like the missionaries of old, we are venturing into foreign territory. To be effective we’re going to need to travel light, to be flexible, to immerse ourselves fully in a new and often strange world. We do not know, probably can not know, how effective we will be. We don’t know if the seeds we plant will grow. But we do know that God will bring new life. There will be resurrection. May we go about our work, go about God’s mission, in such hope. Amen.
Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
September 9, 2011
St. Stephen the Martyr Episcopal Church, Waterboro
Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14
Our Gospel this morning is one of the parables of judgment. Martin Luther specifically did not like to preach on this one calling it the “terrible gospel.” And it’s difficult to rationalize. If we succumb to the temptation to make it a simple allegory in which the king is God and the son is Jesus, then we end up with a story in which God kills the Jews for failing to come to the wedding feast of the son, and then invites others – read Gentiles – who will respond to the invitation. But then we get stuck with the piece about the wedding garment. So reading it as a simple allegory is probably not helpful. Yet it’s hard to read the parable without identifying some of the characters because Jesus tells us it’s about the kingdom of God and the story ends with the comment, perhaps by a later editor, “For many are called, but few are chosen.”
It may be helpful to remember a bit of the context. Jesus has been engaged in a hostile debate with the priests of the Temple and the Pharisees, that is, the leaders of Judaism. We’ve been listening in on those debates and hearing Jesus’ parables for the last two Sundays. And Jesus is clearly upset with the leaders of Judaism, declaring that they have failed to teach pure religion and have used the precepts of Judaism for their own gain. They have failed to see that they are stewards in God’s vineyard and have failed to deliver the fruits of the vineyard to God.
And then, Jesus tells the parable we’ve just heard. Same audience; still the priests of the Temple and the Pharisees. Jesus teaches them that the kingdom of God is like a wedding banquet. Without repeating the details of the story, we know that the host of the banquet is exceedingly generous, issuing his invitation three times. But the invitation is refused, and more than refused, it is denied with contempt. So the host of the banquet, the king, responds to the guests hostility by denying them a place at his table for ever. Then the king invites everyone, good and bad, right off the streets. The host is, again, exceedingly generous. And the people, good and bad, flock to the feast. Unlike the original guests, they recognize the grace that has been offered. They are grateful for the invitation.
But one guest, apparently, has not fully understood the nature of the invitation. He has not understood that this is a wedding feast, and is not properly dressed. So he is expelled, as perhaps, many will be.
Hmmm… So what do we make of this parable? What is Matthew trying to tell us? Is he telling us God will kill us if we don’t accept his invitation? Is he telling us that only some of the good and bad will be accepted? That some forms of badness are not acceptable?
Matthew was, as you may recall, a tax collector. Tax collectors were considered tools of the Roman oppressor and traitors to the people. They lined their own pockets by overcharging folks when they paid their taxes. Tax collectors served as icons of really bad sinners. But Matthew was a disciples of Jesus, and a couple of weeks ago had Jesus saying that tax collectors and prostitutes would go into the kingdom of God before the priests and Pharisees. So we have to believe that there is a certain irony in Matthew’s telling of this parable.
It’s also important that God has promised never again to destroy his people. That’s the promise God made to Noah after the flood. It’s the promise God keeps when Moses talks God out of killing the people of Israel for making a golden calf. And we know that when Jesus was killed, God did not destroy his murderers, but raised Jesus from the dead and offered everyone eternal life.
So perhaps the meaning here is not about being destroyed for our failures. Perhaps the meaning here is that God’s grace demands a response. God gives us what we don’t deserve, gives to both the good and bad among us. God invites us over and over again. God reaches out to us whoever we are. But when we are reached, when we accept the invitation, then God expects us to live into it. God expects us to change, to put on new clothes, as it were; to live a new life.
There is in Christianity a deep paradox that lies near the heart of our faith. The grace of God is offered freely. We can never earn it or merit it. It’s given to all without regard for who we are or what we’ve done. It’s offered over and over again. And yet, once God’s invitation is received, once we’ve accepted the invitation, then we’re expected to live new lives. We’re expected to live lives of gratitude toward God and love toward our neighbors. We are expected to think on those things that are honorable and commendable and pure and excellent. We are to be more like God than we were before. We’re expected to follow Jesus.
We try to describe this paradox using lots of different language in the church. Sometimes we talk of repentance – turning around. Sometimes we talk of a new birth – being born again. Sometimes we talk of salvation – being raised from sin and death. Sometimes we talk about being transformed – transfigured. Sometimes we talk about being made holy – divinization, growing up into Christ. All these concepts are meant to describe what happens after we’ve accepted the invitation, after we’ve shown up at the wedding feast. The threat that we face, from the standpoint of faith, is that we might be left out; that we’re going to decide that we’re too busy, or we need to take a trip. We’re going to decide our own interests are more important. Or, even worse, perhaps we respond to God’s invitation with contempt or even violence. And we lose our place at the table. We cut ourselves off from the grace God has offered.
And so the question before us this morning is this: how have we responded to the invitation we’ve received? How are we living new lives?
In just a few moments we’re going to move to the service of confirmation, and we’re going to promise to live into the grace we’ve received in baptism. We’re going to promise to love and worship God. We’re going to promise to repent whenever we fall into sin – over and over and over. We’re going to promise to proclaim the good news of God’s freely offered grace by word and deed. We’re going to promise to look for Jesus in every person. We’re going to promise to be advocates for justice and peace in our communities. We’re going to promise to live the new life of grace…
The world we live in is a lot like the world Jesus lived in. And all kinds of folks are invited to the feast. In our lives, as we love God with our whole heart, and our neighbors as ourselves, we’re going to show that world there is a different way.
May it be so. Amen.
Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
September 11, 2011
Christ Church, Norway
Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was with my bishop on the way to a joint meeting of Episcopal and Lutheran clergy representing churches in the city of Rochester, NY, to discuss how we might share in a ministry to the city. The bishop had been listening to the radio in his office and turned on the radio in his car. We heard all the confused reports of a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
When we reached the Lutheran Church where the meeting was to take place, we found a small group of clergy huddled around a television in the parish hall watching the tower burn. As we walked into the room, the second tower was hit by a plane. We stood in stunned silence, and then joined for prayer.
No one else ever arrived for the meeting. The Lutheran Bishop called to say he was turning around and heading to his office. We quickly adjourned the meeting and headed to our respective churches to begin the work that lay before us. The meeting was never re-scheduled, and, as far as I know, the joint city ministry never took shape – one of the infinite number of consequences of that morning.
In the universe God has created, life is consequential. Every decision has an impact, and every action has eternal consequence. Life has no do-over. There is no going back, and we all live with the new realities created by our actions.
There was a sense after 9/11 not only that the events of the day were terribly wrong, terribly unjust, but also that we had been betrayed in some fashion by the universe. Were we not the good guys? We were not the heroes of WWII? Were we not the new Israel planted on the American continent? Many, I think, had expected God to protect us as he had protected Israel with a pillar of fire and the parting of the sea. We were not accustomed to feeling vulnerable, to being so profoundly and fundamentally exposed to the actions of others. Some wondered, in those early days, if God had abandoned us. Some wondered if God were punishing us for some terrible sin. Some wondered if God were calling us to new holy wars. We have spent much of the last ten years trying to restore a sense of our place in the world and to recover a semblance of security in a world which seems increasingly vulnerable in all sorts of ways. We hate – I hate – feeling so vulnerable.
Our lessons this morning, in the ineffable way of the lectionary, are all about mutual vulnerability and about the ways we are called to live together with that vulnerability. In the world God has created, no one is isolated, no one is independent. It is a given that we are different and that we do impact and influence one another. “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;” wrote Anglican poet and theologian John Donne. We may wish to be invulnerable, we may dream of perfect security, but such longings are only that.
In the Gospel, Jesus has been speaking with his disciples about life in community and how we should address the sins of our brothers and sisters against us. Last Sunday we heard Jesus recommend a prolonged and public conversation whose purpose is to reconcile the parties, and, if that fails, then the offender is to remain in the community as a tax collector or a Gentile – an irony we should not miss since the Christian community was wrestling with the admission of Gentiles and the author of the text was himself a tax collector.
This week we hear Jesus answer Peter’s question on how often we should forgive by answering that we should forgive 490 times, and then illustrating the point by telling the story of a king who forgave a debt of 10,000 talents and a slave who refused to forgive a debt of 100 denarii. A denarius was about a day’s wages for a laborer in Jesus’ time. A talent was 6000 denarii, or something like 16 years’ wages. 10,000 talents was 160,000 years’ wages for a day laborer. In contemporary terms something like $3 billion. In other words, the debt of the first slave was unpayable in any possible manner, and the debt of the second, though severe, was well within the realm of possible repayment. And Jesus says that our indebtedness to God is like the first and our indebtedness to one another is like the second, and therefore we must forgive one another from the heart.
There is always a temptation to turn readings like this into a sort of a manual, a dummy’s guide to forgiveness, which, I think, is not Jesus’ intention. Rather, I think Jesus is talking about reality and relationships. We are, first, all different. And as the Letter to the Romans makes clear, our differences are substantial. It’s not a matter of giving up our beliefs. As Paul says, let all be fully convinced in their own minds. But second, we all belong to God. Whatever we believe, whoever we are, whether we live or die, we belong to God. And God has given us to each other and invites us to live together.
There have been so many consequences of 9/11, we have lost so much and paid so high a price, and still do every day, that even after 10 years we’re probably too close to the event to talk about it with any objectivity. We certainly won’t forget, shouldn’t forget. And many of us aren’t ready to forgive, even if we knew whom to forgive. But the way forward, at least as our tradition describes it, is to recognize that we are all God’s children given by God to one another to live together.
What are your thoughts on this 9/11 Sunday?…
In just a few moments we’ll turn to the service of baptism and the renewal of our baptismal covenant. And as we do so, I invite us to consider that the covenant we share is not so much about what we believe – we all interpret the Creed to suit our liking – but about how we will live; how we will live together. It’s an invitation to consider how we will manage our shared vulnerability and how we will treat one another so as to recognize that we are children of God and brothers and sisters of one another. As our Presiding Bishop noted in a recent sermon reflection on 9/11, vulnerability is a gift of God. It’s what makes community possible. It’s what makes intimacy possible. It’s the means by which we each find our place in society and contribute to that society. And it is the reality of the world as God has made it. We are invited by God into a life of inescapable relationships, relationships which by God’s grace, can make for the health and the wholeness of all creation.
God grant us grace to wrestle faithfully with God and one another.
Amen.
Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
Pentecost 2 – June 26, 2011
St. Philip’s, Wiscasset
Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
I don’t intend to preach on the story of Abraham and Isaac this morning, but before I move on, I do need to talk about it. The story of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his first born son and of Abraham’s obedience presents both God and Abraham in a despicable light. God’s command to Abraham, if it is genuine, is obscene, and so is Abraham’s response. Because it seems so arbitrary and cruel, this story has been read in many ways – as an explanation for why the people of Israel, who once worshiped fertility Gods, moved from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice; as a story about how God calls us beyond our most immediate and profound self-concerns; as a story about how God uses even those who fail the basic tests of humanity and charity for God’s purposes. Was God testing Abraham’s obedience? Or was God testing Abraham’s moral sense? Was God expecting Abraham to sacrifice Isaac or to refuse? We don’t know, but whether Abraham passed the test or failed it, he became the vehicle for God’s promise that God will make of Abraham a great people.
Despite our moral and other problems with the story, the theme of the story is that God will provide – God will provide the lamb, God will provide the faith. It is not Abraham’s faith – or lack thereof – that is the subject of the story, but God’s. God is supplies the faith we need to accomplish God’s purposes on earth.
Similar difficulties in understanding are also found in relation to this morning’s reading from the Epistle to the Romans. Paul is using an image of slavery that modern minds find hard to countenance, even if it is slavery to Christ. How much clearer is a parallel verse from Galatians. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Let me read to you from Petersen’s The Message to give a different sense about what Paul is saying.
*****
The Message – Romans 6:12-23
12-14 That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time ~ remember, you’ve been raised from the dead! ~ into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.
What is True Freedom?
15-18 So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
19I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing ~ not caring about others, not caring about God ~ the worse your life became and less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
20-21As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
22-23But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.
*****
The issue is that we all bind ourselves to something – our jobs, our families, our country, our pensions – and once we bind ourselves, then our lives are shaped or misshaped by that binding. In these hard economic times, it’s become abundantly clear that we Christians, like almost everyone else, are deeply bound to our nation’s economic life. We are driven by our need to pay the mortgage or to save for retirement or to provide for health care. And therefore, for many, if not most of us, the most important thing is our paycheck or our savings account. It interests me a lot that Petersen uses the word “pension” – “Work hard for sin your whole life, and your pension is death.” For clergy in the Episcopal Church, the Church Pension was one thing that secured a life that was often spent in lower paying jobs or was spent in a variety of settings with a variety of pay scales. The one reliable thing was the Church Pension. But that pension is rooted in years of full time service, and one thing in short supply today is full time jobs. So suddenly a life of service in the church looks a lot less secure than in once did.
The issue is not that, I think, that we can or should ignore our economic life, should ignore our pensions. Rather, the issue is the binding. To what or to who are we bound? The thrust of Paul’s message is that anything other than Christ causes us to lose our God-given freedom. And therefore, anything other than Christ amounts to sin – to putting in God’s place of something that does not belong there. And that would include our jobs, our families, our country, and our pensions. For those yokes bind our noses to the grindstone and can cause us to neglect the needs of the poor, to neglect all those things that upbuild God’s people. Such binding makes us decide we can’t give us much as we’d like or don’t have the time that we’d like – or, to paraphrase Paul, don’t have the freedom to do what God is calling us to do.
And the way it is in the world, once we are bound by something other than Christ, eventually our whole life is consumed by that something else, so that we lose even our capacity to exercise hospitality or to give a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty.
And so the question for us this morning is, “What binds us?” What takes Christ’s place in our lives? What keeps us from responding to God’s call? What do you struggle with?
[Wait]
Clearly this is not a new issue for faithful people. Indeed, it’s as old as Abraham. And the cure is equally ancient – to trust in God. God will provide. The testimony of the centuries is that tying our lives to anything but Christ distorts those lives and denies us our freedom. Despite all our uncertainties, despite the fears of our generation, God can be trusted.
The spiritual challenge is for us to relax our clenched fists, to let go of our fears and our anxieties, to trust that God accompanies us even now and even in our circumstances. By relaxing our grip a bit, we can begin again to see Christ in one another and, indeed, all the people around us. We can begin to offer one another a cup of cold water.
In just a few minutes we will continue the service of Confirmation, and we will renew our baptismal covenant. As we do so, I’d like to invite you to think of that covenant as expressing what it means to be free in Christ: to worship God, to turn from all that alienates us from God, to proclaim the Good News of God’s love, to seek Christ in every person, to advocate for justice and peace. Such a life is profoundly different from the life we are often tempted to lead – in fact, often do lead. But it is the life God continually offers us, and the life, by God’s grace, we are able to lead.
May it be so. Amen.
Ordination Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
June 25, 2011
Cathedral of St. Luke
Portland, Maine
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 84; Philippians 4:4-9; John 6:30-40
Today we mark a major milestone in the lives of the six persons we are ordaining. For each of them, this liturgy marks the culmination of years of hard work and devotion, not only for them, but for their loved ones and parish families. I offer to each of you our thanksgiving for your steadfastness and dedication and for the support of your communities. We are proud of you, and we look forward to serving with you in the years ahead.
Yet today’s service is not so much about the ordinands as it is about our lives as a faith community, because in the service we proclaim as the body of Christ our understanding of our common call to ministry. Our service, including the ordination of deacons, transitional deacons and a priest, gives us an unusually fulsome opportunity to reflect on the nature of holy orders as this church understands them and to reflect, further, on the relationship of ordination to the mission of God.
As we shall soon experience, the source of the power to ordain, the wellspring of the Spirit which is invoked at ordination, is the prayer of the people of God. It is out of the silent and fervent prayer of the people that the bishop conveys, on behalf of the community, the authority for the offices of priest and deacon. And these offices, therefore, are representations, in a focused and limited manner, of the priesthood of all believers: the call that every baptized person has, in the words of the Catechism, “to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to them wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world…”
There should no notion that the offices of priest and deacon are somehow offices of greater holiness than the ministries of the baptized. Indeed the witness of scripture and the history of the church instruct us that the ordained ministries are purposefully limited to and focused on empowering the baptized for their work of reconciliation, which is God’s work. As described in Chapter 6 of the Book of Acts, the early disciples created the role the deacon so that the apostles might continue to focus on proclaiming the Word of God. The work of deacons was to wait tables, that is, to prepare for worship and to share among the widows and orphans the food and alms that were gathered at the sacred meal. The work of the apostles became the ministry of priests. The waiting on table became the ministry of deacons. Over the centuries, the church has so focused on sustaining the church as an institution that the fundamental role of priests and deacons in forming the people of God for service in the world has sometimes been lost. But our lessons this morning remind us that the field of operation for the ordained, as for all the people of God, is the world.
And these two offices, priest and deacon, are not related to one another in a hierarchical manner. Rather each stands as a full and equal order, each representing an aspect of the fullness of Christ. The priest is the icon of God’s presence, a sign to the gathered community that God is present among us, one who teaches and forms us from riches of the scriptures, and who offers signs of God’s continuing love and care through the sacraments and pastoral support. The deacon is the icon of Christ’s service, one who witnesses to Christ’s love for the world by offering service to the poor and needy and who encourages and trains us for our own ministries of witness and service. And both offices are essential for the people of God to have a glimpse of the fullness of our calling: the sharing in God’s work of reconciling all creation to God in Christ.
In working together, priests and deacons, with the bishop, represent and enact the collegiality and mutual interdependence which is to characterize the life of the Christian community as an image of the life of the triune God.
We are holding this service in a time of profound and rapid change in church and society. Indeed, every time we think we might draw a bead on what’s happening, things change again. Recent studies indicate that Americans today are, in many ways, every bit as religious as previous generations. Better than 70% of Americans claim to believe in God and to pray regularly. By every measure, the US remains among the most deeply religious countries in the world. Neither is there any indication that younger people are hostile to the intentions or practices of the church. Indeed they often give voice to a deep hunger for the very things the church is intent on providing. And yet institutional expressions of the church, congregations, are in decline in many places. Maintaining institutions for the sake of maintaining institutions no longer has much traction in our society. Only as people find life transforming experiences are they willing to commit to an institution. Since we believe we are in the business of transformation, the fact that others don’t see us that way is a profound challenge. It’s something we will be working on for the rest of our lives. None you being ordained today will likely have what was once called a “career in the church.” You will all work, for at least some of the time, as part-time, bi-vocational or, even, non-stipendiary clergy. The nature of the congregations you serve is also uncertain, but surely many of them will do their ministries in new configurations and in collaboration with other congregations and with the community at large.
All of this could easily be depressing, and those being ordained might be forgiven a certain cynicism about the church as an institution. Certainly old mother church is having a rough time and cannot be depended on to provide for the clergy in the manner of earlier generations. A way of being church is ending and the new way is not is not yet visible.
Yet though these faithful servants of the church are being ordained in the church according to the ancient traditions of the church, the goal of their work is not to save the church. In fact the church does not need saving. We are the church, and our ministry it is to serve God’s dream of reconciliation. Our call is to be the church, to represent Christ wherever we may be, and to carry on Christ’s ministry of reconciliation.
One, old, tongue in cheek definition of the Christian Church is “one beggar telling another where to find bread.” We may chafe a bit with the notion that we’re beggars, but the bread bit is undeniably true. All the bread we have is from God. It’s not from Moses or church or anyone else. All we have is from God, and our job is to share it – with everyone. The charge that Jesus has received from God is that he should lose nothing that God has given him, but raise it up on the last day. What we hold together, as the body of Christ, is the apostolic faith, the bread which came down from heaven. And all of us are invited and empowered to share that bread.
That’s job one. And it’s more important than anything else. The evidence that we are living and sharing the apostolic faith is not the beauty of our liturgies or the beauty of our buildings, but the quality of our lives. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near… by prayer and supplication… let your requests be known to God… Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”
We are called to practice our faith, to be the church, to empower God’s people for ministry, whatever the circumstances of our lives. It is the call we have received from before we were born, and it is a call that continues come what may. My charge to each of you, as you begin your ordained lives in a church where the road is quite suddenly uncertain, is to tend the faith that is in you. Be for us models and examples of what it means to live trusting in God. Help us grasp hold of our own faith and discern what God is doing in our lives. Help us have a vision of ourselves as the beloved community building with a God a new creation of truth and justice.
May it be so. Amen.
Sermon by Bishop Stephen T. Lane at the Area Confirmation Service
Cathedral of St. Luke
May 1, 2011
Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m just not sure… you know, about God… about God and Jesus and the Resurrection and all that. What I want, what I fervently desire, is for the Resurrection to be real – very real. And for it to make a difference. I don’t want my faith to be an intellectual construct or a spiritual fantasy. I want faith to be so real that the world must be changed…
That, of course, is what Thomas wanted. He wanted to see Jesus. But more importantly, he wanted to see the Jesus whom he had followed, whom he had loved – and who had died. He wanted to see the nail holes. Because only the nail holes would demonstrate that the risen Jesus was his Jesus. Only the nail holes would prove that Jesus had risen.
The other disciples had seen, to be sure. But that wasn’t enough. After all, they were under a lot of stress. They were afraid. It was not stretch to think they had imagined it. And even if they hadn’t, was it the same Jesus – the wounded Jesus? Because that Jesus was the only one that mattered.
In many ways, my problem, our problem, is the same one Thomas faced. We haven’t seen the mark of the nails. We haven’t seen the wound left by the spear. There is such a longing in my heart for Jesus, for his presence, for a resurrection faith that will change the world.
This has been such an extraordinary week. We have witnessed a veritable army of tornadoes march across the Midwest and South. Over 340 have been killed. There is billions in property damage. Whole communities destroyed. The destruction in human terms is staggering. What it may mean in terms of environmental change is terrifying.
We’ve continued to witness the incredible uprising of ordinary citizens in Libya and Syria, thousands of people risking their lives to express their hunger for freedom, absorbing in their unprotected flesh the shattering impact of modern weaponry. It’s a display of both human courage and of government cruelty unlike any we’ve seen for a while.
And closer to home, a young mother went missing, her infant daughter left untended in the parking lot of the Cranmore Mt. ski area. Five days later her body was found in a nearby pond, the victim of an unknown assailant or undetected despair.
So perhaps we haven’t seen Jesus, but the wounds to his body are everywhere. Perhaps, in fact, the wounds are so omnipresent that we just don’t see them anymore, don’t want to see them, don’t want to consider what they might mean for us.
For Thomas, as for us, the true problem isn’t the reliability of the witnesses. Mary had been absolutely correct in what she reported. The disciples were likewise correct. No, for Thomas the real problem was that if he accepted the witness, if he chose to believe, then he would have to change. Then he would have to come to terms with the staggering reality that death was no longer the most powerful force in the universe. Love was… love is… and love would call him to act.
For me, at least, the problem is that I always want someone else to believe for me, to show me that there really is no need for faith, to save me from having to take the risk of making my own decision. I want Jesus to do it for me. I want Jesus to make it unnecessary for me to have to do anything at all. But, my friends, the ball is in my court…. It’s my decision… my call. For more than 2000 years the church has proclaimed its experience that Christ is risen. And now it’s time for me – for us – to decide; time for us to take the risk that the witness of our forbears in the faith is reliable enough…
The Good News of Easter is that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth changes everything. Not only is he changed, but so are we. The wounded Savior now becomes the standard for God’s work in the world. Jesus, in showing his wounds, has shown us the reality of life in this world and has invited us into his work of healing the wounds. By our baptisms we are empowered by our wounded Lord to witness to and touch the wounds of his body. And we can do so, not because we are perfect beings, but because we share his wounds, because we know from our own lives the woundedness of living in this world.
For centuries faith has imagined a perfect world, hoped for a peaceful kingdom. It is the hope witnessed in the Garden of Eden and the Servant Songs of Isaiah. We still hope for that New Jerusalem. But the faith we proclaim is not one that ignores or covers up the pain of our world. It’s not one that buries its head in the sand and pretends that everything is fine. It’s not a faith reserved for a quiet cloister or golden sunsets. It’s rather a wounded faith for a wounded world. It’s a faith that sees the suffering which Jesus claimed as his and for which he died. And it’s a faith that invites us, in all our weaknesses and limitations, to do our part, to share with Christ in the healing of the world.
The vision of the kingdom of God keeps us going. But it’s our wounded savior who empowers us to minister in the world as we find it. As we renew once more our baptismal covenant, may God grant us courage to accept the witness of those who have gone before and proclaim Jesus as our Lord and God.
Amen.
Passion Sunday
April 17, 2011
Trinity Church, Portland
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11; Passion According to Matthew
Today we mark what used to be called Palm Sunday – the Sunday of the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. We no longer call it simply Palm Sunday, but now also include the reading of the Passion.
We do that for a couple of reasons: The passion reading for this Sunday is read from one of the synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark or Luke. If we didn’t read from the Synoptics on Palm Sunday, the only passion narrative we would ever hear would be from the Gospel of John, which is always read on Good Friday.
The other reason we read the Passion today is that most Episcopalians, indeed, most Christians, don’t attend church during Holy Week. And therefore, their experience of Holy Week would move from the Hosannas of the Triumphal Entry to the Hallelujahs of the Resurrection. Singing songs of Hosanna and Hallelujah only would give us a very misshapen understanding of Jesus’ journey to the cross. The reading of the Passion tells us where we’re going during this Holy Week, and it makes clear to us just what sort of weird procession the triumphal entry really is.
The fact is that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is anything but triumphal. Jesus rides not on a stallion, but on a donkey. His triumphal parade is a profound bit of performance art, a divine street theater. As the crowds dance and frolic, treating him like a conquering king, Jesus is the only one who knows the meaning of the procession. And if he is a king, he is a king unlike any king ever seen before.
The crowds who cheer him are exclaiming “Hosanna” meaning, “salvation now” or “save us now.” They are shouting their joy that liberation has come. Jesus is the long expected messiah, the heir to David’s throne. He will rescue Israel from the power of Rome. He will free the people from subjugation by both the political and religious authorities.
Yet, in very short order, as Jesus fails to raise an army, as Temple and Empire collude and Jesus is made to stand before Roman justice, those cries of “Salvation” change to shouts of “Crucify.” Far from mounting his throne, Jesus is entering Jerusalem to mount his cross. And the final irony is this: throne and cross are the same. Salvation comes through crucifixion, through the peace of the cross.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is not a journey upward, not the battle march of a conquering hero, not a time when Jesus is filled with earthly power and might. It is a journey downward, the funeral march of one who is relinquishing his power, a time when Jesus empties himself of every trace of divinity and becomes simply – one of us; God fully incarnate in human weakness even to death. In entering Jerusalem, Jesus becomes simply the human one, the son of man, Emmanuel.
Now all of us who are created in the image of God, who hold within us the divine spark – all of us want to be God, to have the power and the glory, to bend the world to our control. Only Jesus was content to be the son, to be fully and only human, and to let God be God so that the world might be saved.
The crowds were fickle then. Our faith is fickle now. We want to follow God, but we also want to be rich. We want to follow God, but we also want to be powerful. We want to follow God, but we also want to create a sphere of safety within which our way of life is secured against the needs of others. We say, “Save us” and “Crucify him” in the same loud voices never understanding that we are saying the same thing. Jesus is crucified, and the world is saved. Jesus is crucified, and we are crucified with him. Jesus is crucified, and we are all called together into life in his name.
Amen.
Ash Wednesday
Cathedral of St. Luke, Portland
March 9, 2011
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103, 2 Corinthians 5:20b- 6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Today, all across the Christian Church, followers of Christ will begin the ancient disciplines of letting go and taking on. Letting go of chocolate, or alcohol, or desserts, or other forms of self-indulgence… and taking on prayer, study, sacrificial giving… all in order to bring a bit of discipline to the life of faith, to create space in the midst of a busy lives in order to devote more attention to God, to express solidarity with the poor. And all this is fine as long as we understand that the larger task of Lent, the goal of Lent, is the restoration of right relationships with God and one another.
Lent is the season of turning – that’s what “repentance” means – turning away from sin, as we often think, but also turning toward God, turning toward the source of our lives and the end of our lives. All the disciplines of Lent are meant to help us restore what has been lost, to recover what has always been intended.
I don’t like language about “The Fall” because it’s unbiblical. No where in the Bible is there any talk about a fall. Lucifer is thrown down from heaven… but human beings never fall. Rather, in the Biblical story, there is disruption, alienation, separation. Human life is disjointed. Relationships are broken. Life is diverted from its intended purposes and ends.
Lent is a time to reflect, both personally and corporately, on the disruptions and separations in our lives and to turn in the direction of recovery, to turn toward wholeness. And far from taking things on, Lent may simply mean letting go – letting go of the accumulation of “oughts” and “shoulds,” letting go of the layers of business and self-importance, letting go the depth of our neediness, to simply rest in the hands of the One who has never gone anywhere.
One of the real costs of alienation is that we lose sight of that. We lose sight of the fact that God is always and everywhere in our midst, bring life and health out of death and chaos. We celebrate the Eucharist each week to remember that God is among us. But despite our best efforts, we begin to think that it’s all about us, about what we think, what we decide, what we do…
When, in truth, our task is simply to reflect the love of God, to align ourselves with God’s loving purposes for us and for the world. It’s our job to discover what God is already doing and join in.
Yesterday on the Episcopal Cafe website there appeared a blog post from a young Alaska woman, Tamie Harkins, who was formerly Episcopal chaplain at Northern Arizona University. Her post consisted of twenty suggestions for offering genuine ministry to young adults. It was written in a very breezy, flippant style, but was full of sound insights into contemporary young adult culture. Several of the things she wrote actually fit well with what I’m trying to say here.
#8. Start worrying about extreme poverty, violence against women, racism, consumerism, and the rate at which children are dying worldwide of preventable, treatable diseases. Put all the energy you formerly spent worrying about human sexuality into figuring out ways to do some good in these areas.
I think these things – poverty, violence, racism, materialism – are actually matters God cares deeply about. In these hard times our focus on our own lives and our own concerns may make it difficult to see the larger picture. One thing I’m actually very sure of is that God cares about every human life and cares that we care.
#17. Remind yourself that you don’t have to take God to anyone. God is already with everyone. So, rather than taking the approach that you need to take the truth out to people who need it, adopt the approach that you need to go find the truth that others have and you are missing. Go be evangelized.
The church we serve, the liturgy we love, the institutional structure we take for granted, was established in a time when it was believed that the church was the gateway to God. Without the church, without the sacraments, no one was able to connect to God. But no one believes that now. We know God cannot be contained in the church. If God is God, then God is active everywhere. It’s only our self-centeredness that sees our work as somehow necessary for God. What we need to do is connect with others in our communities and discover what God is already doing.
#20. Listen to God more than you speak your opinions.
In this era of reality television and Internet socializing everyone wants to be a participant, a subject. Everyone has an opinion and wants it heard. And that, I think, is very good. For too long only certain folks have been considered subjects. The rest have been considered objects and the passive recipients of the wisdom of the leaders. We know that everyone is equal in the eyes of God.
But our faith is not rooted in human opinion, but in the word of God. Whoever we are, it’s crucial that we allow God to temper our words and to inform our opinions. Because even if we don’t care about poverty, war, famine and disaster, God does. God’s heart is with the poor and suffering, and ours should be, too.
The restoration of right relationships with God and one another requires the capacity to see clearly: to see what’s broken (you know best what’s broken in your life), to see what God intends (to remember God’s loving purpose for creation), to see how the brokenness may be healed (that’s our call to action). In this Lent I invite you to do what helps you the most – to give up or to take on or to let go – whatever you need to discover again the loving purposes of God which have existed for all eternity. And then to turn toward that love.
Amen.
Pentecost 15
September 5, 2010
St. Anne’s, Calais
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 13-17; Philemon 1:1-21; Luke 14:25-33
I’m delighted to be with you this morning at St. Anne’s for my first official visit. I look forward to meeting with you and talking with you about the life and ministry of St. Anne’s. Our job is to discover together the ways we can strengthen Christ’s ministry in this place.
This past week President Obama spoke to the nation about the end of American combat operations in Iraq. He did not declare victory. Rather, he spoke of the handing over of security to Iraqi security forces, and he counted the cost. He counted the cost both in terms of the loss of life to American and Iraqi armed forces and citizenry and the economic costs to the American economy. He spoke of the urgency of restoring the American economy. Hearing President Obama, I was reminded of the king in today’s Gospel.
The harsh sayings of Jesus are difficult to hear and difficult to preach. Today’s Gospel contains one of the harshest. And there is no way to soften the word “hate.” Luke seems deliberately to have chosen that word to describe the nature of the choice that confronts Jesus’ followers. The other words English translators might have chosen, like “abhor” or “despise,” would not have made our conversation any easier.
Yet the use of the word “hate” seems very much at odds with Jesus’ Summary of the Law: love the Lord your God with everything you’ve got and your neighbor as yourself. So we must ask: What might Jesus be suggesting when he says that his followers should hate family members and even life itself?
Jesus has been preaching in group settings in the lessons we’ve been reading from Luke, and the number of folks following him is growing. Jesus has created a sensation, and large crowds of people have begun to follow him. They are both inspired and perplexed by Jesus’ teaching, and they keep asking one another, “Who is this? “What does he mean?” I think it’s fair to say that they did not have much understanding about what it would cost to follow Jesus. And I think Jesus knew that if they didn’t understand, they would turn away at the first sign of difficulty.
So Jesus began with the primary loyalty of his day – family loyalty. And he said, “If your loyalty to me and my cause does not make your loyalty to family seem like hate, then you can’t follow me.” Using the hyperbole common to Semitic story-tellers, Jesus poured cold water on the thoughtless enthusiasm of the crowd. “Unless you understand this as a real choice, as a choice with life-changing consequences – unless you’re really prepared to change – you can’t be my disciples.”
And then he goes on to give two quite ordinary examples of what happens when one fails to count the cost.
Several years ago, I was in the Dominican Republic for a meeting of the Executive Council. All along the waterfront in Santo Domingo were large hotels and casinos, and among them were several unfinished hotels and apartment buildings. They stood out like sore thumbs – three or four stories completed with empty superstructures towering above. I discovered that in the Dominican Republic financing such large projects was a year-by-year matter. Like ancient cathedrals, the buildings went up a little at a time, as money became available. No one knew when the buildings would be finished or if they would be finished. Some had been sitting there for years.
Unfinished buildings were not uncommon in Jesus’ day either. But then, as now, unfinished buildings were a blight on the landscape, as much a liability as a benefit. Jesus said you must count the cost BEFORE you start to build. Otherwise you may end up a laughingstock and your legacy may be a slum. His example about fighting a war was much the same. If you don’t count the cost, in lives and material, you may end up suing for peace at a disadvantage.
The life of faith requires the same counting. The life of faith is the real deal. It’s supposed to change everything about us. It’s supposed to invite us into a new perspective and a new way of life. The dying and rising of Jesus is to become the pattern of our lives. And nothing should stand in the way – not even family.
Most of the people who followed Jesus were poor. I don’t think counting the cost meant much in material terms. They lived from hand to mouth anyway. But the cost in terms of their place in society and their relationships with family, with the Temple, with their Roman overlords, was great. Jesus asked if they were willing to put all that at risk. Would they give their first loyalty to the kingdom of God?
Although we think of Christianity as commonplace in the United States, truly following Christ may also put our relationships at risk. And for us who are much more affluent, who own homes and cars, and perhaps a summer cottage, counting the financial cost may be much more painful. Are we willing to use our possessions, our resources, in serving Christ? Are we willing to offer them as a sacrifice?
That’s what these lessons are about: sacrifice. Sacrifice is not a popular word these days. The arguments of an earlier time that sacrifice is a social good and a Christian virtue have gotten lost as we rightly confront abuse and the suffering cause by injustice. But externally imposed sacrifice is not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is talking about an offering of our lives in response to the offering of his life.
The kingdom of God requires sacrifice because what God intends is not a few minor adjustments to the world as it is, but a new world order: a world of justice and peace, a world of harmony, a world in which the quality of our neighbors lives is every bit as important to us as the quality of our own lives.
In just a few minutes we’ll join in the service of confirmation, and together we’ll promise to live according to this new world order. This is our moment for counting the cost, for taking a good hard look at what the life of faith requires. We’ll promise to worship in community, to repent, to proclaim good news in word and deed, to seek Christ in every person, and to advocate for justice and peace. The question before us is, “Will we fully commit to this way of life or will we be an unfinished building?”
The good news is that God’s does not expect perfection. God will accept and use the offerings we make. But God expects it to be a genuine offering. God expects our first and our full devotion. God expects our loyalty to God’s kingdom first of all. May God grant us grace to make a genuine offering of our lives.
Amen.
Celebrating Frances Perkins
May 16, 2010
St. Andrew’s Church, Newcastle, Maine
Deuteronomy 15:7-11; Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Today we mark an important and relatively rare occasion: the celebration of the life of a local saint. Our new calendar of saints, Holy Women, Holy Men, includes a feast day for Frances Perkins on May 13. The calendar is for trial use, and one of the requirements for making it permanent is to demonstrate that there are places where the day is marked and celebrated, where there is, as it were, a cultic expression of support for the saint. [You are the cult of St. Frances.] So this afternoon we both celebrate the life of Frances Perkins and proclaim to the larger church that Frances is a saint worth keeping.
You have already heard much about Frances Perkins. It’s not my intention this afternoon to talk about her life. Rather I’d like to reflect on the meaning of her feast day for our own lives.
As I’ve considered Frances’ life, it’s struck me that she addressed one of the questions that all of us must answer. To use Cain’s phrasing, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” To put the question in more religious terms “Does God have intentions for our relationships as God’s people?” “Are we responsible before God for more than our own lives?”
As you may know, Frances came of age and was nurtured in the Anglo-Catholic culture of New York City of the early 20th century. That culture, influenced by Roman Catholic and Jewish thinking, held a “theology of generosity,” which contrasted sharply with a “theology of righteousness.”
The theology of righteousness held that people get what they deserve, that their wealth and status are signs of their relationship with God. It was a theology of social Darwinism, a combination American individualism and Calvinist Predestinarianism. Good, hardworking people get what they deserve. Sinful, lazy people get what they deserve. Good people are not responsible for alleviating poverty, although they may out of their goodness offer charity if they choose.
In contrast, the theology of generosity held that all we have is a gift from a generous God. The particulars may be influenced by our own effort, but the foundation is the generosity of God who gives to all people without regard to our particular circumstances or merit. If we are wealthy, we are wealthy only by God’s grace. [Get down on your knees.] If we are poor, we are poor because the circumstances of our lives have blocked our access to God’s blessings. It is, therefore, the obligation of those who have been blessed to share those blessings with the poor.
That belief, along with Frances direct experience with the grinding poverty of the people who worked in the mills and the factories of the industrial revolution and her witness of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, caused her to work with unrelenting passion for the establishment of what we now call the social safety net, most particularly the regulation of labor and Social Security.
In our day, as we survey the vast populations of impoverished people spread across the planet, as we witness the increasingly violent competition for resources, as we struggle to maintain the lifestyles to which we’ve become accustomed, the theology of generosity may seem a bit naïve. Certainly we are no longer confident that God’s blessings may be fairly distributed by legislation alone.
Yet the tensions between rich and poor which Frances confronted have not faded. They have only increased. In our day many believe that there are not enough resources to go around and that it is our right to keep whatever we can hold. If we use 25% of the world’s oil, well, so be it. We have a right to our place in the sun. A theology of scarcity has replaced a theology of righteousness, but it still means haves and have-nots.
The question before us is whether or not all God’s children deserve a place in the sun, whether or not the abundance which God has been given might not be used in ways that enrich many more lives.
Jesus spoke of wealth and poverty more than anything else. He taught that the use of the earth’s goods is primarily a spiritual matter. Wealth itself is morally neutral. But the use of wealth is a matter of eternal significance. God holds us to account for our use of what God has given. Therefore, as Deuteronomy has it, “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.” And this is an issue not only for individuals, but also for us as a people.
When Frances joined the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she famously said, “I came to Washington to serve God, FDR, and millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.” Her charge came from God and was lived it out in her daily life as an educator, administrator and consummate politician. For Frances there was no question that she was accountable to God for the work she did and that her work was to help create the world God intended.
The Gospel appointed for this Feast of St. Frances is the Lucan version of the feeding of the five thousand – a signature story of the Christian faith and a delicate narrative about the interaction of God’s abundance and the willingness of God’s people to share. The story says that by God’s grace there is enough for all and more if we are willing to pass the baskets among us.
Frances believed that and her feast invites to offer our own answers. Are we our brother’s keeper? Do we believe that God intends to bless us all? Are we willing to conform our lives to God’s intentions? Will we share what we have so that others may enjoy what God has given?
May this celebration of the life of St. Frances of Newcastle inspire us to address anew these fundamental questions of human living and to answer, with Frances, in a resounding “Yes.”
Amen.
Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
Easter 3
St. David’s Episcopal Church
Kennebunk, Maine
April 18, 2010
John 21:1-19
“Come and have breakfast…” I’ve often thought that these words might be the best invitation to and description of what we do here on Sunday mornings. “Come and have breakfast.” Come and share the meal I have prepared for you so you may do your work.
Scholars are agreed that Chapter 21 is a later addition to the Gospel of John. It does, after all, follow the obvious end of the book in Chapter 20 where John writes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe…” But late addition or editorial insertion, scholars agree that the material is consistent with themes and perspectives in John.
The story begins in much the way that the story of the resurrection begins, “early on the first day” – “just after daybreak.” And the story continues to echo the theme of seeing Jesus but not fully recognizing him by his appearance alone. In the case of Mary at the tomb, Jesus needed to speak. In the case of Thomas, Jesus need to show him the wounds. And here, the beloved disciple recognizes Jesus when they catch the fish. It is Jesus’ actions which give him away.
And the story clearly reflects Eucharistic action. It reminds us of the Last Supper. Jesus invites his friends to come and eat. He takes bread and gives it to them. He shares the fish. And they know it is the Lord.
Yet the story is different in important respects. The disciples no longer seem to be living in fear. They’re no longer in Jerusalem. And the seven named in the text have returned to their lives as fisherman. They’ve returned to everyday life. This resurrection appearance occurs in the midst of normal life.
And despite the great events that we know disciples have already lived through, this story has elements of a call story, of beginning again, of recalling them to the life of discipleship they seem to have left. But this time the call is based on their experience, on the relationship they already have with Jesus.
One of the difficulties of the resurrection – at least for me – is that it is such high drama: Roman centurions, a rigged trial, questions before the Procurator, the screaming mobs, the release of a convicted murderer, beatings and whipping, a staged and gruesome death, words of mercy from the cross, a misplaced corpse. Talk about a story that’s over the top in almost every way… My life does indeed get stressful at times, but the events of the crucifixion and resurrection are beyond my experience. And I hope it remains that way.
There is something about the quiet dignity of this story, of working people going about their jobs, of a breakfast among friends, and of a call to risk all for the sake of others that speaks deeply to my faith.
We are, at least most of us, I think, ordinary folks. We work, we raise our children, we try to be good neighbors and citizens. We try to live peaceful, productive lives. The world we live in is a difficult place and seems to be becoming more difficult all the time. Many of us would like nothing more than to live an even quieter, less eventful life. It would be fine with us if we could just get back to fishing.
We know the world could be different. We know, in fact, that the world should be different. We even know that the values of our faith put us at odds with a good bit that goes on. But to confront all that just seems too hard. We haven’t got the energy. We haven’t got the time. Perhaps, we haven’t even got the faith to do what’s needed – to follow our Lord and to feed his sheep.
And then we meet him on the beach, and he invites us to breakfast, and we are filled with grace to do more than we think we can.
It is profoundly true that we are living in a time of great change. The economic difficulties of the last year are just the tip of the iceberg. We know there are constraints in the natural environment, in natural and financial resources, in the desires of poor people everywhere to have a share of the world’s riches that mean all of us will need to make changes in the way we live with one another. We worry about the world our grandchildren will inherit.
And in this world, we Christians are called to love God, to care for the least, the lost and the lonely, to be peace-makers, to be seekers after justice, to be voices of hope for a new and better world. That’s what it means to be baptized. That’s what we will promise in just a bit as we renew our baptismal covenant. But we just aren’t sure we can do it.
And then we meet him on the beach, and he invites us to breakfast, and we are filled with grace to do more than we think we can.
The good news of Christ’s resurrection is that God can use whatever we give God and make it good. God can take our feeble efforts, our misguided efforts, our sinful efforts, and use them for new life. We just have to have breakfast with him. In the midst of our daily lives we have to seek him, look for him, and when we find him, follow.
We don’t know where it will lead. But we do know it will be surprising. And whatever is asked of us, God will supply what we need to respond. Like Peter, we won’t do it perfectly. We may not love him enough, we probably can’t love him the way he loves us, but we can feed his sheep.
By God’s grace, we ordinary men and women have extraordinary capacity. Jesus said, “Come and have breakfast… and come follow me.”
May it be so. Amen.
Chrism Eucharist Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
March 30, 2010
Cathedral of St. Luke, Portland, Maine
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 71:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; John 12:20-36
I renewed my vows of ordination as a bishop last Wednesday at the House of Bishops’ meeting. I enjoyed it immensely – I had never had the opportunity to renew my vows with my fellow bishops before. But I also found it a bit odd: odd because there were, in fact, only bishops present and because we bishops are so conscious that we are not, by ourselves, the church. In The Episcopal Church, we are only church as bishops, priests, deacons and people come together.
We believe in the priesthood of all believers. It’s probably helpful to remember that initially that phrase meant every Christian could interpret for him or herself the meaning of Holy Scripture. Sola scriptura – the “Scripture alone” was authoritative. No priest was needed. Anyone who could read could serve as a priest for him or herself.
The phrase quickly expanded to mean that the faith itself required no mediation by priest or church but was accessible to every believer through the Holy Spirit. As such the priesthood of all believers was an attack on the mediating role of the Roman Catholic Church and the abuse suffered at the hands of arbitrary and corrupt authority. It’s deeply ironic that today some reformed denominations have prescribed understandings of the faith, including Holy Scripture, to which their members must now give their assent.
In our tradition, the Anglican Tradition, the priesthood of all believers has taken on a deeply incarnational sense, that each of us, as baptized persons, incarnates the ministry of Christ, indeed, Christ himself. Each of us is charged to carry, convey, and mediate Christ to the world around us. That is why today our service of renewal begins with the renewal of baptismal vows and invites the participation of the whole people of God, not just the ordained. In our understanding, lay and ordained have differing roles in the priesthood of all believers, and the effective functioning of the body requires all of us to do our particular jobs, fulfill our particular roles, to the best of our abilities.
Because we are a liturgical church, because we enact our life in our worship, it’s sometimes difficult to see that everyone is required. It sometimes looks like ministry is something the ordained do, something they offer on behalf of the people. One of the helpful things the Emerging Church is doing for us is offering a radically egalitarian vision of church, where everything, including liturgical planning and preaching, is done by the community. It’s done carefully, accountably, using the gifts and graces of seminary-trained clergy, but it’s shared. Such worship is truly liturgy – the people’s work.
The task for each of us, for all of us, is to represent Christ, to be Christ for the world around us. But none of us is Jesus. We can’t fully represent Christ alone. Only together, bringing our roles and our work together, can we begin to approximate the fullness of God’s presence among us.
Bishop Duracin of Haiti was present at the House of Bishops. It was good to see him and to hear him. And though he didn’t provide any new information about the earthquake or the recovery efforts, his words gave greater nuance to what we knew. He said, “Port-au-Prince is gone. Everything – all the buildings, all the churches, all the services – everything is gone.” Everything has collapsed. There are no public services. There is no plumbing. There are no lights. There is no security. There are between 3 – 400,000 dead – many bodies still trapped in the rubble. And the primary concerns for most people are food, clothing and shelter. But, he said, God is present. We know God is present because the amazing about the earthquake is not how many died. What’s amazing is how many people survived. All four members of Bp. Duracin’s family were in their house when it collapsed. And all got out alive. Our job, he said, is to testify to God’s presence, to the love of God, in the midst of this disaster. And we testify as we worship, as we feed people, as we provide safe shelter, as we bury the dead.
You see, the glory of God is revealed in the innumerable acts of kindness, the innumerable expressions of hospitality and welcome, and the innumerable acts of feeding and forgiving, that are offered every day by God’s people. That is how the seed, dying in the earth, bears fruit a thousand-fold. That is how Christ, who died, lives eternally among us.
The earthquake in Haiti has proven to be a great challenge to faith. All over the blogosphere one can find testimony that the earthquake proves there is no God. But I suspect the earthquake is no greater challenge than the one offered by the crucifixion of Jesus. What kind of God dies? What kind of God endures death as though God were a mere mortal? Our God… our God.
Our God was not content to keep God’s ministry to herself alone. It was God’s intention that such ministry should be ours as well. It was God’s intention to embrace our death so that we might embrace God’s life. Our vocation as people of God is to be children of light, to bring the light of God’s love to every place we are.
It is not something we do without struggle. Indeed, the more we allow ourselves to experience of life the more we immerse ourselves in Jesus’ own struggle. And it’s not something we do alone – each of us and all our ministries are required. It is in the worship of our churches, in a cup of hot soup, in the offering of health care for all, and in a smile – in all these that the love of God is proclaimed.
It is our vocation to take Christ to the world. May God grant us renewal in our vocation and in our love for God and for the world. Amen.
“In the midst of death, life will emerge”
Cathedral of St. Luke, Portland, Maine
January 24, 2010
Ordination Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Stephen Lane
June 20, 2009
Cathedral of St. Luke, Portland, Maine
Jeremiah 1:4-9; Psalm 119:33-40; Acts 6:2-7; Luke 22:24-27
When I served in parish ministry one of my favorite services was the service of Maundy Thursday with its agape supper and foot-washing. There is a simplicity and directness to the service I found very appealing. The message is eat and drink and be like Jesus, and even very young children could grasp it. We held the service in the parish dining hall where spilling water wouldn’t be a problem. The children loved that part. Making a mess was part of the liturgy, and a grown up got down and washed your feet! Too cool!
The foot washing was never really popular. I think it grew to maybe 30 people over the years. There was always a particular awkwardness to the foot washing. I always found myself a little flushed afterwards. I discovered that no one thinks they have nice feet. And a lot of people actually have club toes and messed up toenails. There’s a kind of reversal of the expected social order. And then there’s the whole matter of offering personal service, of treating someone’s unlovely feet with reverence. It’s recognition of an intimate, a sacred, a holy, connection with someone I don’t usually think of in that way. After a time, I came to see the awkwardness of the foot washing as the whole point: a reminder that social conventions are simply that – matters of arbitrary status – and a reminder that the service of Christ always involves relationships of love and care with other folks – folks who are all pretty much the same under their socks.
The early church made the connection between preaching Christ and serving Christ pretty early on – in fact, almost immediately. The apostles quickly discovered that there was more work to do then they could manage by themselves. They saw their primary responsibility as preaching the good news of the Jesus Christ crucified and risen. Yet they recognized their responsibility for what their preaching produced. Everywhere they went communities of believers sprang up. And those communities needed to be supported and organized, worship needed to be conducted, instruction needed to be offered. And then, in every community, there were those members who could not really care for themselves – who were poor or sick or old. The community needed to care for them.
Indeed, care for the widows and orphans soon became a major undertaking, so important and so time-consuming that the apostles needed help. And so the first servants of the church were chosen, the Magnificent Seven, who were given responsibility to care for weaker members of the community, to visit the sick, to prepare for worship.
And so, from the very earliest days, the church was marked by worship, by preaching and teaching, and by service. We now call the icons of Christ’s service deacons. Deacons represented Christ’s own service. Deacons represented and were emissaries of the bishop. Deacons shared the gifts of the community with the wider world.
But foot washing has never been all that popular in the church. As the church grew, the deacons were soon outnumbered by the elders, the leaders of the local communities, who represented the apostles in that place and led the services of worship. And over time, as the church embraced the trappings of empire, the offices of deacon, priest and bishop became hierarchical and serial. Eventually the diaconate became a stepping stone from the offices of acolyte and sub-deacon to the office of priest. And it has remained that way until today. We still require priests to be transitional deacons before they may be ordained priests.
The recovery of baptism and the renewal of the diaconate both began in the Vatican II era in the mid 20th century. It’s probably no surprise that they’re linked because both movements are rooted in the conviction that the church is the body: the church is the body of Christ whose members carry the ministry of Christ to the world. And because that’s so, what happens outside the church is every bit as important as what happens inside the church. The renewal of the diaconate is helping us to recover our balance as a church, to rediscover the ancient balance of worship and service.
And perhaps, even more important, the diaconate is helping us recover our theological conviction that the purpose of the church is to help us grow up into Christ, to be like Jesus, to be like the one washing the feet. “The greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. I am among you as one who serves.”
To make direct, intimate human service the goal of the Christian life is awkward. It means to forego our usual notions of status and power. It means to recognize our essential equality as human beings and the need we all have or will have for such personal care. It means to acknowledge that someplace close to the heart of our faith is the necessity of putting the neighbor in first place. It means being like Jesus with all the risks he once faced.
The world desperately needs this humble service. We are confronted by so many intractable problems in the 21st century – global warming, religious fundamentalism, declining standards of living, poverty, air and water pollution – you make your own list. None of these problems will be solved unless we are willing to humbly wash our neighbor’s feet.
We in Maine have done a good job with the renewal of the diaconate. We have deacons serving in many communities. But we have much more to do because the goal is not to make a lot of deacons. The goal is to help the people of God be like Jesus. Deacons can be for us persons whose own ministries serve as examples of the ministries to which we are all called as servants of Christ. Deacons bring the needs of the world into the life of the church so that we can see and respond in the name of Christ. Deacons help us pray for the world, recruit and train us for service, organize us to do Christ’s work. There is no limit to the need and no limit to the possibilities for service.
These ordinations this morning give me hope… not because I think these deacons are a source of cheap labor for the church – I’ve given them specific instructions to resist that – not because I think they will help us solve our financial problems as an institution, but because I think they will call us to wash feet. The heart of our baptismal promise is to live a life that is faithful to the one who calls us, the one who sees us all as children of one family, the one who understands that we all have the same needs and the same hopes, the one who died for us that we might live for him and one another.
My prayer for you, my friends and colleagues, is that you will simply get on with it. That with our support you will plunge into the work that lies before you, that you will show us the opportunities for our own service and help us claim them, that you will makes us feel a little awkward, help us to see the world as it really is – help us to see all those feet out there in need of a good washing.
God grant you the will and the grace to accomplish the ministry God sets before you.
Amen.
Passion Sunday Sermon
April 5, 2009
Trinity, Castine
Ash Wednesday
by the Rt. Rev. Stephen T. Lane
February 25
Emmanuel Chapel
Cathedral of St. Luke, Portland, Maine
Joel; 2 Corinthians; Matthew 6
I grew up in the Presbyterian Church where Ash Wednesday was celebrated not at all. In fact the only real observances of Lent and Easter were Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Easter Day. So all of Lent was compressed into one week and the focus of that week was the betrayal of Jesus and the inauguration of the words of institution at the Last Supper. [I can assure you that we did not celebrate the foot-washing on Maundy Thursday.] Ash Wednesday, being considered a Roman Catholic service, was not observed.
My first real encounters with Lent occurred as an adult when I served in youth ministry in the Diocese of Rochester. There I was involved in a rather intensive bit of programming in which we planned and presented Lenten educational programs and worship events with parish youth groups. I remember one particular Good Friday vigil when a life-sized cardboard Jesus, nailed to a large wooden cross, launched itself like a huge paper airplane and soared out into the congregation. Impressive – if not quite awe inspiring! I don’t remember, though, that we did much with Ash Wednesday.
It was when I was a newly ordained priest, in Corning, NY, that I had my first soul-stirring experience of Lent and, particularly, Ash Wednesday. It was there I first truly encountered the rich and moving experience of marking people I knew and loved with a cross of ashes. My boss, Scott Harvin, a low church graduate of Virginia Theological School, taught me to provide congregants with the option of washing off the ashes before they departed the church so that they would not make a show of their religion, as the Gospel advises. For Scott, Ash Wednesday and the disciplines Lent were spiritual exercises whose purpose was not to serve as signs to others, but as spiritual signs to ourselves.
The providing of wash cloths or paper towels has been part of my practice for many years. And yet I have always found the marking or being marked with ashes as sacramentally significant. It is an outward and visible sign of the truth, a reminder that we are mortal, creations and gifts of God and destined to return to God after our lives have ended. And we are marked with ashes at the outset of Lent so that we can consider our life before God in proper perspective, not much lower than the angels, perhaps, but mortal nonetheless. Our struggles here on earth, our battles with sin and death, must be seen in light of our mortality and our creaturely life before God. None of us is perfect. Indeed, perfection is not a possibility. All we do is dependent on the grace of God, who loves us.
So how DO we mark Ash Wednesday – pun intended – without making a show of our religion? How do we observe a holy Lent?
The definition of a sacrament, for those of us who remember our catechism, is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The purpose of a sacrament is to make visible that which is invisible. We baptize in order to see that we are beloved children of God in whom Christ dwells and that we are invited to be part of Christ’s reign. We celebrate communion to see that God loves us still and dwells in us and sustains us in our daily lives. The sacramental meaning of ashes is that we are mortal. We will die. Our lives are dependent on God, who calls us into her love and invites us to share in her care for the world. The purpose of the ashes is to help us see and respond to our need for God.
Another way of expressing of this is to say that the purpose of Ash Wednesday, indeed the purpose of Lent, is to strip away all that is inessential in our lives so that we can see what is essential and can focus on that. The purpose of Lent is to get to the heart of the matter and, perhaps, to see what is in our own hearts.
How do we do that? Well, the traditions of the church suggest self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting and self-denial, and reading and meditating on God’s holy word. And I would encourage you in those disciplines. It’s important to try to get past the inessential and to focus on the essential. And it won’t hurt us to be more reflective, more prayerful, less gluttonous, and more grounded in God’s word.
But let me also suggest another possibility. The ashes that you may receive today will soon be washed away – later today or by tomorrow, for sure. But if you were to try to symbolize what’s at the heart of the matter for you, what is central for you as a child of God, what would that symbol be? What would be the outward and visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace? Would it be your love for the members of your family and community? Would it be your service to others in the community? Would it be your worship of God in prayer and praise? Would it be your kindness toward all those whom you encounter? What would be the symbol, the sacrament, of your Christian life?
A few years back a popular aphorism ran, “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” More recently the “pass it along” television campaign has encouraged us to pass along the kindnesses we’ve experienced as a way of up-building community. Both efforts are intended to help us see the social benefits of kindness.
For Christians the standard is much higher. We might say our baptismal charge is to “practice daily acts of kindness and intentional acts of beauty.” Kindness is one of the marks of Christian belief. Could we really do that? Could we be kind every day?
At the Lambeth Conference last summer, I met bishops from the Churches of North and South India. In India, proselytizing is illegal. Even the simple act of putting a cross on a sign for a church sponsored medical clinic can result in arrest and imprisonment. So I asked a bishop from South India, “How do you cope? How do you spread the good news?” And he answered, “You know, we have to make our service so beautiful that people want to know why.” How about us? Could our service be that beautiful?
Lent is about rediscovering the heart of the matter, about reminding ourselves and one another what it means to be followers of the cross of Christ May be this Lent be a time when you discern the heart of the matter – and you let it show. Amen.
All Saints Day
by the Rt. Rev. Stephen Lane
November 2, 2008
Christ Church, Norway, Maine
Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
It’s my joy and privilege to be with this morning. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and to strengthen with you Christ’s ministry to the people of Norway…
Today is All Saints’ Sunday, one of the seven Principal Feasts in the Episcopal Church calendar. [The others are Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity.] Of the seven, All Saints’ is the one day that’s moveable to the nearest Sunday. All Saints’ is almost always celebrated on the Sunday nearest to November 1, not on the first itself. And that’s because it’s quite important to have the saints present if we’re going to celebrate their day.
The Episcopal Church understands the saints in three ways: the great saints of the first centuries of the church, the founders as it were, figures such as Peter and Paul, Mary, James and John, etc. Then there are the great figures of the church who served as leaders, heroes and martyrs, people like Ambrose, Gregory the Great, the Martyrs of New Guinea, Martin Luther King, Jr. – persons we celebrate throughout the year in the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. And finally, but not least, are the one’s St. Paul calls the saints, the Christians of every age, past, present and future, who have loved and served our Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s all of us. We’re the ones we sing about in that much loved hymn, I Sing a Song of the Saints of God. (And I want to be one, too.)
So All Saints is a celebration of our history, our founding and our development as a community of faith. It’s a celebration of our heroes, all those who have been models and mentors for us. It’s a celebration of our hope, eternal life in the kingdom of God. And it’s a mystical day, the day we recognize that we are connected with all the saints, past, present and future, those who have lived and died, those who are alive now, and those yet to be born.
But how do we hold all these understandings together? How can All Saints’ celebrate both our heroes and martyrs and also celebrate just us? How can we be saints, too?
The answer, I think, rests in our Gospel from Matthew, the so-called Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The church has always struggled with the Beatitudes. There’s more than one version. The one in Luke is a bit more direct, less spiritualized than the one in Matthew. And quite frankly, a number of things referenced in the Beatitudes don’t much seem like blessings. And there are translation issues. Some scholars have suggested that a better word than “blessed” might be “happy.” While we can perhaps rationalize some notion of mourning being blessed, we would hardly call such persons happy.
How is it that we are blessed when we are poor, when we mourn, when we hunger and thirst, when we are persecuted or reviled? What does that mean? Is this all about “pie in the sky when you die?” Or is there something for us now?
The conviction of the Biblical writers, the conviction of the Church, is that we belong to God. All of us. Now. Indeed, all creation, the cosmos, belongs to God. And more than that, Christ is in all the things that God has created, in every person we meet, whether Christian or not. Our task, our job, is to look for Christ, to seek after him and find him, and to assist him in building his kingdom. And that kingdom is always and everywhere under construction, so we are able to build at work, at school, in our homes, in our communities, when we are well, when we are sick, at the grave, in the midst of conflict, when we are persecuted, whether we are rich or poor. Every occasion is an opportunity to proclaim that this world is God’s world and that we are building God’s kingdom. And that way, we are always blessed and always have the chance to be a blessing to others.
In her All Saints’ message to the Church, our Presiding Bishop, asked, “In your neighborhood, who is the saint who picks up trash? Who looks out for school children on their way to and from school? Who looks after an elderly or frail neighbor, running errands or checking to be sure that person has what is needed?” She didn’t ask, “Who are the Christians?” She asked instead, “Who does the work of Christ?” Who reveals Christ’s presence in the world? The person who picks up litter might be a Baptist or a Seventh Day Adventist. The crossing guard might be a recent immigrant, a Hindu or a Moslem. The person checking on a neighbor might be an unchurched young person or a Buddhist. It doesn’t matter, because the work of Christ is being done.
What makes us saints, the only thing that has ever made saints of whatever kind, is that we are followers of Jesus and fellow travelers on the road to the City of God. It’s not our denomination that matters, or our theological position, or even, dare I say, our formal membership in the Church. Rather it has always been the case that what matters is doing the work of Christ. It is our call to recognize our poverty before God, to mourn with the hope of eternal life, to live humbly, to seek justice, to be compassionate, to model holiness, to make peace, and to endure persecution with patience as our Lord did. Because it all belongs to God, and God’s kingdom is our home. Christian living is living with this perspective. And as we come together week by week, we affirm and support one another in such living.
In just a few minutes we will celebrate the renewal of our baptisms, and in so doing we will be upholding our participation in the mystical body of saints. We will remember our call to live as members of God’s eternal kingdom and we will affirm our desire to do the work of Christ. May we, on this All Saints’ Sunday, be filled again with God’s holy Spirit, and may we claim our place, our life, as saints of God.
Amen.
The phrase “random act of kindness” touched off for me an experience I had on the tollway in Illinois last summer. I stopped at the booth and proferred my dollar. Oh said the clerk,” the lady ahead of you already paid your toll.” I remember how surprised and joyous I felt as I considered that simple act of an unknown person and wondered how much more joy I should feel about the free and grace filled gifts that God offers me in this Lent season through the strangers I meet.
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Though we differ religiously, Bishop, I find your sermon today to be quite on the spot and widely applicable to all of our lives.