Formation Sunday Sermon

Proper 25-A

October 23, 2011

Formation Sunday

The Rev. Marguerite Alley

In the Episcopal Church every Sunday we participate in a liturgy designed to demonstrate for us the two most important concepts of our faith:  Word and Sacrament. Each Sunday we gather to hear, to interpret and to meditate upon the history of our faith and the teachings of our “great high priest”, Jesus. In the sacrament of bread and wine we are reminded of God’s unconditional love for us. In the word and the interpretation of the word we are called to a closer relationship and deeper understanding of our connection with God.

Today in the Gospel lesson we are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. This is our primary purpose in life: To know God in our heart by prayer; in our souls through our deeds and in our minds through learning. In our Formation activities we teach that our purpose is to learn the mind of Christ, to offer the prayer of Christ, and to do the work of Christ. In this way, we love the Lord with our whole being. When we do this, we discover that love is verb. It requires action. To love is to leave ourselves open to doing the work of Christ in the world.

Being an active part of a community whose total purpose and focus is to do the work of Christ in the world, is what belonging to this church is about. I can’t say that for all churches. For some, going to church is about personal salvation. For others, it is about hearing a personal interpretation of scripture and being told how to behave and act as a result. But in this church, our primary goal and purpose for existence is to do the work of Christ in the world; to be the hands and feet of the Lord for those who are in need. Now you might think that if you are out there in the trenches day in and day out, fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised, or working for equality in the work place or teaching or whatever it is that you do, that you are exempt from being here on Sunday morning…or Thursday night or whenever. You might think that because you have no disposable income or because you are a single parent struggling to make it from month to month or because your family is pulled in 8 different directions at any one time or because you are retired and living on a fixed income that you are released from an obligation to participate either personally or financially. Maybe you are right. Or maybe you are thinking that we don’t need whatever it is you have that you CAN give. So I will just ask you one question. Do you love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, all your soul and all your mind?

Love has nothing to do with demands. Love is free. It cannot be bought; it cannot be sold. It can only be given. It does not expect anything in return. There are no strings attached. That's how God loves us and that how we are instructed to love.  We are also told to love our neighbor. But in order to do this, we must know and understand how Christ loves us. Having a personal relationship with Jesus is how we know that we are loved.  Now I know you have all heard that statement……. “have a personal relationship with Jesus”…..and we probably all have different responses. I am going to share my own with you, but you must keep it a secret. Please. No really. You can’t tell anyone I said this. I don’t really get what having a “personal relationship with Jesus” means. In any relationship that is healthy, we should find two things….we should find comfort and we should find challenge. We are offered strength and refuge when we need it, and we are pushed to be better when we need that as well. That is, I think, the mark of a good relationship. So how can you have a personal relationship with someone you have never met; someone with whom you can only have a one sided conversation? How do you get to know someone with whom you cannot communicate? Well, the only way that I have been able to figure out is to read and learn about Jesus’ teachings, to understand about the audience he was speaking to, know a little bit about the Mediterranean culture of the time and go from there to trying to translate that into my current life in this culture and time. And miraculously, by doing that, I do feel as though I have come to know Jesus in a deeper and more meaningful way. I may not personally describe it as a “personal relationship” with him, but I can easily say that I find comfort and challenge in his words and actions. So I could more comfortably say that I have a “healthy relationship with Jesus”.

As you know, we are in the midst of our Every Member Commitment Campaign at the moment and I would like to take a moment now to speak about that in connection to the Gospel today. If you don’t find comfort here in this place then we are not doing our jobs as fellow Christians. If you are not finding challenge here then we have missed the mark. But if you do find comfort here then you must also be here to comfort others. If you do find challenge here that calls you to be more Christ-like then you need to be here to share that as well. Nowhere does Jesus say “Come unto me all you are heavy laden and have some extra cash and I will give you rest”.  Our theme in formation this fall has been a short scripture passage from the 12^th chapter of Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, only be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that the will of God might be discerned”. In our formation activities and in our sermons we have talked about transformation. I hope that that message has been clear. Loving God with all our heart and soul and mind is the goal and the purpose for everything we do when we call ourselves Christians. Learning how to do that is the goal and purpose of our formation program. Doing that to the best of our ability is the goal and purpose of our liturgy…..in Word and Sacrament. All that remains is for us to be the verb…..LOVE.

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Lectionary:  1 Thessalonians 2:1-8,  Matthew 22:34-46

GOD, PRAYER, and our BLOG: Prayer

PRAYER

By George Herbert
(1593-1633)

Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against the Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days’ world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church bells beyond the stars heard, the souls blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

If you want a more indepth look into the author and the poem check out this commentary found at: http://www.faith-theology.com/2010/07/george-herbert-prayer-language-silence.html

GOD, PRAYER, and our BLOG: Disclosure

Disclosure

By Anne Lewin

Prayer is like watching for the
Kingfisher. All you can do is
Be where he is likely to appear, and
Wait.
Often, nothing much happens;
There is space, silence and
Expectancy.
No visible sign, only the
Knowledge that he's been there
And may come again.
Seeing or not seeing cease to matter,
You have been prepared.
But when you've almost stopped
Expecting it, a flash of brightness
Gives encouragement.

Disclosure poem read on Youtube

GOD, PRAYER, and our BLOG

GOD, PRAYER, and our BLOG

In addition to posting our sermons to our blog, I am going to try having a BLOG series.

Once a week until Advent begins (November 27th), I will be posting poems I got from one of my classes at Oxford. The theme of these poems range from poets wrestling with God, to what it means to pray, and everything in between.

I invite you to read the poems and to post your thoughts and comments about them. This series of “GOD, PRAYER, and our BLOG” will be only posted here on our Blog.

In faith and thanks,

                The Rev. Julia W. Messer

Growing Together IN MINISTRY Faithfully

The Rev. Julia W. Messer
18^th Sunday after Pentecost
October 16, 2011

Growing together IN MINISTRY faithfully

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s."(Matt22)

What a great Gospel reading to use for this second Sunday of our Every Member Commitment season! By now you have gotten your pledge packets and probably know this is the second of four Sundays that we will discuss the importance of being faithful stewards of our faith community.

Today’s message is “growing together in ministry, faithfully.” The two important messages to take away from this theme and today’s gospel are about ministry AND finance. 

In regards to ministry-- how often have we found ourselves not fully offering our gifts back up to God? Have you ever found yourself recognizing that you have a talent but are not utilizing it?  Maybe you are a wonderful storybook reader or have an eye for photography. Yet you found yourself pushing aside that talent…almost as if you do not recognize or appreciate that you have been given these gifts from God.  Perhaps these abilities seem to you as if they are “no big deal”; they are “just something you do”. When we push our gifts aside, we are acting as if we are waiting for God to see the situation and then expect Him to sets our hearts on fire.   The question we have to ask ourselves is:  Are we going to keep pushing these gifts aside or are we willing to stretch ourselves and see how our gifts can grow if we give ourselves the chance?

Today our intentional theme is not just about our ministries, or our ministries here at Emmanuel, but it is also about growing together FAITHFULLY.

Ways we show faithful living out/of our ministries is described in 1 Thessalonians when we are called to not only hold ourselves up but also our community in our prayers.  We are to be faithful to God and to our neighbor by our work and labor which SHOWS our faith and love by being imitators of Christ.  This can be shown through three types of ministry.

1.     The first is our ministry of our actions. How do we engage in our community; how do we offer our gifts up to God so that we, as a Christian family, can grow together in our ministries? Do we participate in any of the numerous and varied out-reach or in-reach programs? Are we willing to take a chance and see how our gifts can be used for the greater good? Good examples would be parishioners who are part of the numerous lay ministries that make Sundays run smoothly here at Emmanuel.  That would include the Altar Guild, sound system, choir and musicians, acolytes, lay readers, healing ministry stations, children’s chapel and nursery care workers, and the Flower Guild.  But it also includes other types of ministry of giving of one’s self -- from donating blood to the Red Cross to giving food to feed the homeless, or our Lay Eucharistic Visitors who bring Communion to people who can’t be here on Sunday.

2.      The second is our ministry of others. While we want to be the people offering ministry and help to others, there are numerous times in our lives when we are ministered to. We are called not only to be ministers, but to be open to other’s ministries to us.  As servants of Christ we are called to be servants to each other and we pray that we might have the grace to let others be servants to us too. For example, we love to eat at Emmanuel, and this act which brings people together is a ministry. When the Martha Ministries prepare food and tables for a family who has lost a loved one or for events where the Let’s Eat Guild makes meals for our social events, they are offering a piece of themselves and a space for people to meet. It is in this act that they show how they care for their church family and it is a form of ministry to offer it as well as to participate in it.

3.     And the third is our ministry of presence. In some situations and some times there is nothing we can say or do that can make a difference but by just  being open to Holy Spirit moving and being with a person, a ministry is offered. For example, simply greeting each other at the Peace not only signifies that we offer God’s peace to others, but we are recognizing that those we greet are here and that they are important. Another ministry of presence is hearing about a woman who was in a recovery program, and walked by our bulletin boards during a wedding a while ago.  Because of the information that she read, she realized that she needed to enter into a support group. By having our doors to the church open, a person was able to recognize and take the step to enter into an intentional community that helped her. A building can even be a part of the ministry of presence.

Which leads me to the second part to remember from this theme of “growing together in ministry faithfully” -- and that is finance.  Stewardship month is not only about evaluating your ministry gifts and how you are using them in your community, but also recognizing that this community could not exist or run without your gifts for ministry. Let me rephrase that again:  Your gifts of ministry make the spirit of this parish run, but the parish cannot run on spirit alone.  It needs your gifts for the ministry to operate.  So in other words, being active in ministry and giving financially are two sides of the same coin of rending unto God what is God’s.    By financially supporting Emmanuel, at whatever level, you are saying that you actively participate in the ministry of presence.  It says that you believe in the ministry that is going on here and you want Emmanuel to continue. Emmanuel’s ministries are not just what you see on Sunday mornings, but include countless others, from recovery programs that we house to our outreach programs, from our social activities to our mission trips. But we are limited in that even a church is an organization that does have to rendering unto Caesar what are Caesar’s….or utility costs to the city.

The ministries here at Emmanuel are numerous and many people come into our building pass through our doors or look to Emmanuel for help and to be the safe haven that it is called to be.  Emmanuel has been there for so many people and so many communities for so many years.  Therefore as you pledge your time, gifts, and finances, you are saying you support the ministries here.  You are saying that you are willing to grow in not only your ministries but also the ministries here that help others.  We grow in all together. By pledging you are being faithful to both of these commitments—both sides of the coin. Your gifts are indeed rendered up to God.

~~~

Now, during the PowerPoint presentation I invite you to write down on the flowers you were given one of these three ministries you have experienced here at Emmanuel or out in the world for which you are thankful for.  To recap the three ministries:  the first would be through the ministry of your actions, the second would be the ministry of others helping you, and the third would be the ministry of presence.  Think about how a simple moment was a moment of grace to you. If you do not have a flower or would like another, raise your hand and the ushers will be bringing more around. These flowers and leaves will be placed on a board, be blessed, and our ministries will be laid before the altar for the last Sunday of stewardship. 

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

+AMEN+

Lectionary used: Year A, Proper 24, RCL 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22

Growing Together IN JOY Faithfully!

October 9 2011

The Rev. John A. Baldwin

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice". (Phil.4:4)

Today is the beginning of our 4 week Every Member Commitment campaign “Growing Together....Faithfully”, in which we are asking everyone who considers Emmanuel to be their spiritual home & parish family to make a commitment (a pledge) to support our mission & ministry in the year ahead (2012). Our theme this morning is “Growing Together in Joy Faithfully”. My sermon focuses, therefore, on that elusive quality of life we all crave, experiencing Joy. At the conclusion of my sermon you will also hear briefly from someone who, I believe, epitomizes joyfulness in his ministry of music.

Our Epistle this morning comes from the 4th chapter of Philippians, the most affectionate letter of all those written by St. Paul. It is addressed to the members of the first congregation he established in Europe, at Philippi in Macedonia. Paul's relations with this church in all the years afterward seem to have been extraordinarily close & happy. Their contributions (which Paul gratefully acknowledges) are among the only ones he accepts. Their generosity stands out conspicuously in this Epistle. It's particularly remarkable, in that the Macedonian converts were, as a whole, very poor. Their poverty and their open-handed support of Paul and his work, moved him deeply.

One of the most remarkable things about this short Epistle is how much "joy" is woven into the very fabric of the letter. Here is a sampling: "I thank my God... always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy." (1:4) "Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord & of one mind." (2:2) " "You also should be glad & rejoice with me." (2:18) "Receive him in the Lord with all joy." (3:1) "Therefore, my brethren, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown." (4:1)

Paul's joy is deep, absolutely sincere & foundational. It is not a naive, Pollyanna, "Don't worry, be happy" kind of joy, because as Paul asserts in this Epistle, "I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any & all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance & want."(4:12) His secret? "I can do all things in him (Jesus Christ) who strengthens me." (4:13)

Paul didn't have an easy life once he met Jesus on the road to Damascus & was converted from zealous persecutor of Christians to bold proclaimer of Jesus' Resurrection. He was beaten, abused, stoned, imprisoned numerous times, and ultimately (according to Christian legend) beheaded in Rome during the reign of Nero. How is it possible to be so grounded in joy, when suffering & hardship were so close at hand? Quite simply, Paul did not equate joy with happiness. It is far deeper, far more steadfast & dependable than happiness, which can flee from moment to moment. They're not the same thing at all.

Happiness is grounded in material things, events & emotions which can evaporate in an instant when setbacks, disappointments & hard knocks interrupt our daily existence, as they inevitably do. Joy, however, is rooted in the divine.... in knowing deep down that no matter what, we are deeply cherished by the God who created us; in believing implicitly, as Paul asserts in Romans 9:39, that "Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord". Psalm 30 puts it this way, “Sing praises to the Lord...for his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” The pursuit of happiness is limited and bound for disappointment, but the pursuit of joy is eternal.

In an article about "Joy" that profoundly impacted me when I first read it many years ago, Louis Evely wrote this: "The Christian religion is a religion of joy. The Gospel is Good News, and in spite of our occasional melancholy appearance, we are messengers of joy, witnesses of the resurrection. (Yet), strangely enough, we do not cherish the joy of God. We are much more inclined to mourn with Christ (to follow the way of the Cross) than to rejoice with Him (to follow the way of Joy)."

We do a pretty good job of rejoicing on Easter Morning, but as Evely goes on to say, “All too often after Easter, we go on vacation in our religious life. We have worked hard during Lent. We reason: Christ is risen...He is happy....He is safely in heaven. We can do no more for him. Now that his hour of suffering is over, his way and ours can part. We are going to go on with our life and suffering here below. He is in beatitude.”

How crazy is that!! Each and every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection. Evely goes on to make some bold assertions that I want you to listen to carefully and ponder. He writes: “We have to make for God the sacrifice of being happy! This will prove the sincerity of our friendship. We have to give God the joy of seeing us happy because of him, to tell him, "You did so much for us, you loved us so much and suffered so much for us, that we now want to give you the reward of seeing us happy. We want to be happy with faith, happy with confidence, happy to be with you."

“Everything which we have closed to happiness, we have closed to God,” Evely asserts. ”We shut God out from all those areas in ourselves where we are resigned not to let joy, hope, confidence, and love enter. Our sadness measures exactly our attachment to ourselves. It denounces our selfishness. The place we give to joy is the place we give to God.”

It means a lot to me to be part of a faith community here at Emmanuel whose mission statement is this: “Sharing the Joy and Power of Life in Christ”. I have experienced Joy here repeatedly, not just on Easter, but sometimes even in the saddest events of life: the joy of recalling at the funeral of Father Bill and other dear members of Emmanuel now departed, how they impacted my life for the better, and how they honored God in their lives; the joy of seeing members cope with severe blows in their lives – chronic illness & life-threatening disease, divorce & broken relationships, loss of jobs, fear about the future for their troubled teenagers, and yet have still remained strong in faith; the joy of seeing infants I've baptized grow into beautiful and handsome young adults; the joy of connecting with the unique gifts and person-hood of so many people; the joy of empowering people for service in the world through the celebration of Holy Eucharist; and the joy of having God affirm for me over and over that in spite my flaws and foibles, I am His beloved child.

Evely concluded his article on Joy by saying, “Our (calling) is this: to have so generous a behavior, a love so alive among us, a heart so filled with joy & faith, that those who meet us can only explain it by admitting in their turn that Christ is risen from the dead. Our greatest mistake is to believe that we always lack only one thing in order to be happy: some money, a promotion, some luck; that this illness be cured or that trial ended. If we think thus, then we will never be happy, for there will always be another illness, another trial, some unexpected catastrophe. It is God we lack, & the unexpected thing about God is that he does not fail us: we fail him. We must learn to be happy immediately....right away - or we will never be happy. For the eternal, like the joy which it engenders, always begins now.” Amen.

Lectionary: October 9, 2011 Year A, Proper 23.Philippians 4:1-9, Matthew 22:1-14

The Wicked Tenants

Proper 22-A

October 2, 2011

The Rev. Marguerite Alley

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, Psalm 19 , Philippians 3:4b-14,
Matthew 21:33-46

The Gospel for today is a challenging one. Not in the sense that it is hard to preach, but in the sense that you may not like what it says. Now in preparation I have looked at several of my usual preparation sources and they are all pretty much in agreement on what the message of this parable is. Unfortunately, in our rush to not damage each other’s self esteem, in our need to put salve on our wounds, and in our twisting of our framing story, we have come out the other side with what I would suggest is a completely inappropriate, if not altogether incorrect understanding of what Jesus has just said.

            I am wondering if any of you were able to catch the pilot of a new television show this fall called “Terra Nova”. If not, here is the skinny. The earth is on its last leg. The environment has been destroyed. People have to wear masks if they leave their houses. They can (if they can afford it) have air purification systems in their homes. If they can’t, they wear masks 24 hours a day. The wealthiest of the world live in a few plexiglass domes that have all the air purified and can therefore live “mask-free”. There, in these domes, some trees and plants can still be found and enjoyed and are employed as part of the purification system. Outside the domes there is no vegetation. The population has outgrown the lands ability to sustain, and thus there are no houses, only high rise tiny apartment spaces. There are no pets, because they use up “human air”.  In the story, 7 years prior, a crack was found in the time/space continuum, and some explorers were sent into it to see where they might end up. It turns out that they end up 25 million or so years in the earth’s past. The decision is made to begin sending small groups of carefully selected people to “re-start” civilization and try to stop the destruction of the planet before it begins to happen. Ironically, they have only been working on this for 7 years and already the advance group has split over ideology and now is quite hostile towards each other. It promises to be an interesting show that I am going to actually make the effort to follow.

            Now….what has this to do with Jesus’ parable? Well, the characters in this parable are a bit too familiar for us to look at this and escape seeing the obvious. The tenants are enjoying a good life on the land. It is pleasant, comfortable and the benefits are great. Along comes a “messenger” who reminds them that the rent has come due…in other words, they are expected to give to the owner some of what they have enjoyed in payment for being allowed to live there and enjoy it! Despite the fact that they have been given this beautiful garden to live in and enjoy, they resent having to give back any of what they perceive to be “theirs”….so they kill the messengers. The owner must have thought that the news sent back to him was a mistake, because he sends more servants the second time. Oddly enough, the tenants I guess believe that the owner is so far away, there is little he can do to them, so they kill the next bunch as well. At this point, who can fail to see the obvious point? Pay what you owe or God will send servants to collect, and we will have to kill them to protect what is rightfully ours! God is so far away from us…what can happen? Well, so maybe we need to hear the next piece to make sense of it. After the second set of servants is killed, the owner decides to send his son. We are told that he thinks that the tenants will “respect” his son and pay what they owe. To no one’s surprise, the tenants kill the son as well. Now, who can fail to get the point here? The landowner is obviously either dimwitted, the eternal optimist or completely oblivious to the point of risking the life of his own child.

            Even I can see where this is going. Pay up or you will be forced to do something drastic that might cause you a moment or two of regret, and goodness knows, we don’t like living with regret. So there you have it folks…the easiest parable of the Bible. Unless of course, you want to take a look at what Jesus is saying…rather than what we are hearing.

Perhaps we should take a second look. The tenants, wicked and enigmatic, look strangely like us. We think the vineyard belongs to us and so we do with it as we see fit. We abuse the land, the water, and the air. We have built and we maintain societies based on the power of  having natural resources intended for all to share and in which a decent life for everyone is not a reality, but at best an ideal. And when the landowner sends his servants to remind us of our obligation to each other, we reject them. The behavior of the landowner is hard to accept as well, because it too is familiar. It is the behavior of God. The landowner sends his servants to proclaim and collect justice, and that message is rejected and the messengers murdered. God tries again with the same result. Finally, in an all out desperate act, God sends Jesus to proclaim justice, and mercy for all and we, still feeling as though we OWN the vineyard, decide this is not what we want and we see an easy way out in killing Jesus.

            Now if we still want to try and see what the story is really about we must look at

the end of the story. We are left with 2 possible outcomes. The first comes from those who are with Jesus. They are shocked and horrified by the story. They cry out that the landowner should put the wicked tenants to death and maybe even torture them a bit so that they suffer as much as he did. I wonder what would happen if I said right now that the United States is sort of like these folks responding to Jesus’ story? Well, I am not going to say anything like that. What I will say is that this is not the conclusion that Jesus endorses. What he says is very different. He reminds his listeners of a verse from the psalms: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” Those gathered around Jesus who said that the wicked tenants deserved to die seem to be advocating exclusion and violence. They believe the best way to handle murderous rebels is to make them taste their own medicine. This attitude is ancient, popular, and leads to…well it leads to where we are today!

If the landowner, if God believes that the tenants are not capable of any other kind of response then perhaps God should have wiped out human beings along time ago. Clearly, our Creator believes that we, the tenants, (see how smoothly I slipped that in?) are indeed capable of more appropriate behavior because if we are not and God kills us then we win. We are dead yes…but we forced God to deal with us in the exact same way that we dealt with those servants and God’s son! I seriously doubt if God will fall for our devious plan. Instead, we are “given” Jesus who offers us the ONLY plan that will save our lives!

In that pithy statement about the stone rejected by the builder becoming the cornerstone, we are given a way forward. Now many folks have interpreted this statement as being that Jesus is the stone rejected by the builders and certainly that could be true. But it would be more accurate to say that Jesus’ message is what was rejected. What Jesus taught and stood for and died for is what is being rejected in the story and in the world right now. That message is to us, about us and for us. It is quite simply….get over yourselves. Think about the bigger picture. Stop treating each other like enemies and start thinking about how you can all live together and take care of the vineyard.

            How do we do this?  We could start by understanding that whomever we call an enemy has within them some broken, rejected part of ourselves. By accepting that enemy, we accept back that part of ourselves. By continuing to reject that part of ourselves, we remain in a broken state. Acceptance of our own brokenness is the first step in being able to open the gates of the vineyard to all for whom it was intended. Allowing “our enemies” to share in the abundance of creation, accepting their differences and celebrating the diversity of creation means we are transformed and so is are they. That transformation is what Jesus came to teach, to live and to die for. The challenge then, from this parable is this…will we continue to be the wicked tenants or will we step outside the walls we have created around the vineyard and greet the  servants and the son as welcome  reminders of our  interdependence and our connections to each other, and be transformed.

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