Bishop Lane’s Sermons

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.