Bishop's Blog

Bishop Scarfe shares his experiences, reflections, and sermons.







Thursday, February 27, 2014

Reflections on the funeral, ordination, celebration of new ministry, and visitation of the weekend of 1-2 February 2014



With a 525-mile weekend during which I had a funeral in Ames followed by an ordination in Fort Madison on Saturday, and a celebration of new ministry in Burlington the next afternoon, I joked about knowing where I was by the time I would arrive on Sunday morning for the visitation at St. Michael's Mount Pleasant. In the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I managed, of course, to call the congregation of Mount Pleasant “St Matthew’s” instead of “St Michael’s.” I gave them permission to say that I had come to them that morning thinking I was in Iowa Falls! Ironically, in a “physician heal thyself” moment the previous evening I had just preached to the new priest and deacon of St Luke’s Fort Madison of the importance of preserving time and space for the nurture of their inner lives. I added that the first people to know whether a musical artist has slackened off on practicing is his or her audience.

It was, in fact, a remarkable couple of days of grace and joy, capped off by the time with the people of St Michael’s. They had agreed to meet for fellowship before worship, and were ready for conversation as I arrived. They had also decided to hold the meal back until after worship—lunch instead of brunch.  They were excited about the two adults who were being confirmed. Both had found the church later in life, through the intervention of friends who had traveled the same route. Another person was reaffirming her faith after twenty years away from the church. I invited the confirmands to share their stories with the gathered group, and their openness set the tone. Everyone seemed to know them and be invested joyfully in their spiritual journey. 

We compared the opportunities for sharing the faith that the early church enjoyed in their cultural context with our own. We wondered about the questions people are asking about spiritual life today, and I said that as a bishop I felt more isolated from that discovery than I ever did as a priest or lay person. One person said that he/she had been attending a lot of funerals these days and realized that he/she did not know how to put his/her own funeral together. That led to a discussion about the role of the priest in helping that process, but also about taking the opportunity in the choices one makes to think about the issues of life that you proudly embrace and would want to be expressed at your death. The conversation got deeper as another person spoke about his/her personal struggle with God and a perceived cruel streak that God seems to indulge in. All of this was articulated within a deep inner faith and trust, but the honesty was in saying that it doesn’t always feel so comforting or even just.

Finally, the topic of a recent article in Iowa Connections—arguing that small churches were toxic or pollutants in that they were more predisposed to conflict than larger churches—came up. I gave a couple of examples of what I thought the writer was thinking from some stories I had heard from elsewhere just that week. For example: A new person volunteers to bring something for coffee hour and is met by a regular who has thought no one had signed up and so stepped in as usual to save the day. When the regular met the new volunteer he/she simply and innocently said that everything was sorted out and your offering is not needed, but thanks anyway!  That congregation lost a new member quite quickly. In other words you tend to bump into each other more readily when the community is small. In a larger setting, you can always go off into a corner and mumble and not be noticed. On issues of greater significance—inclusivity, changes in liturgy, etc.—smaller community gets a keener sense of the impact of new decisions on its members, especially its mainstays, and may behave more conservatively even than the majority of its members’ positions.

We moved on to begin listing the values of a small community; one particular aspect was that they could make a difference in the scheme of things by getting behind a global need as one single force. I thought of the creation of prayer beads which came out of our small churches, including, I believe, Mt Pleasant.  St Michael’s were the first congregation I came across in my early days who were attempting to organize their ministry configuration as a circle of ministry, and which was a forerunner to the ministry development model.  I encouraged a leading member of the congregation to pen a response to the article though we had to find another copy of Iowa Connections for him/her, as he/she had thrown his/her own away in anger!

The openness of our conversation flowed into the worship as I had hoped, and the tears in the eyes of the confirmands and the joy on their faces lifted us all. There was even an opportunity to speckle the sermon with connections to the conversation topics we had just engaged, including a moment as we came to the great questions of the Baptismal Covenant to pause and give an explanation on how, I believe, the Holy Spirit is addressed in the Apostles Creed. One of the conversation pieces was why did the Holy Spirit seem to get such short shift in the Creed—just one line! My theory is that the Holy Spirit Is known for her work within us—hence is evidenced beyond the one liner “I believe in the Holy Spirit” in the action of the Spirit in creating one HOLY catholic and apostolic Church; a communion of HOLY ones (saints); the forgiveness of sins (Jesus said, “Receive the Spirit whosoever sins you remit are remitted…”); and is the giver of life everlasting, raising our bodies (we receive, remember, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead according to Paul).

After my “apostolic intervention” we went on to promise to attend to the apostles’ teaching! The person who had raised the question gave me a thumbs-up from the back of the Church as a thank you.
I appreciated the prayers that followed me around this weekend by those who knew my schedule and also that we were dodging some tricky winter conditions. 




It was a marvelous couple of days—starting off with the celebration of thanksgiving for the life and ministry of Father Doug Haviland, chaplain at ISU from 1962-1991, at St. John's Ames. I chose to let his own words speak to us—delving through his sermons from Epiphany through Pentecost. It was an enormous privilege to encounter his wisdom and erudition. And through it all he was a voice for the Gospel in an age that is growing increasingly unaware of its deeper spiritual needs. He lived through the sixties and all the revolutions that have now settled as norms. He challenged his students and the Church to another timeless standard centered on Christ, and he continued to do so up to his final days. Having lost a son in the World Trade Towers on 9/11, he said that the issue of evil was not something we could address at our leisure, but needed to be confronted urgently and earnestly; and as its origins reside in the human heart, only Jesus offers the complete or final response. I hope we will find a way to let his voice live on for the wider audience our modern technology can embrace.





Finally, the ordinations of Bonnie Wilkerson, priest, and Kelly Shields, deacon, at St Luke’s Fort Madison marked the first second-generation Ministry Development Team. I noted that the words of Simeon in the Nunc Dimittis were probably glorious to the ears of retiring priest and deacon, Lyle Brown and Marilyn Weintzen. Seeing some twenty-somethings sharing in the service, I wondered if team three was on the horizon.  




The weekend ended in Burlington and the new ministry celebration of Pat Cashman and the people of Christ Church.  The focus was not only on that relationship but also the fruit of ministry in that we combined the service with the baptismal liturgy, baptizing the grandson of the church administrator, and confirming a recent adult member. I was grateful to see clergy from the area turn out to support the congregation and their new rector, especially in weather that was dubious at best. My self-fulfilled prophecy of a weekend of forgetfulness did have other manifestations. I had to return to the hotel in Mount Pleasant to pick up my overnight bag that I had left in the room, and then back to St Michael’s where I had left my crozier! It was a shock to open up the crozier case at Christ Church and see it empty; always a first time for everything. What does a bishop do with his/her hands in procession without the crozier? In Long Island I am told you had better be blessing the people as you go. I am not sure how that would go down in Iowa. In the end there was no reason to rush back for the Super Bowl—it was over by the time I got to Ottumwa on my way back to Des Moines.    





In Thanksgiving for the Life of The Reverend Douglas Brant Haviland,  St. John's, Ames; 1 February 2014    
                                                                                                                       
Readings: Job 19: 21-27a; Romans 8: 31-34, 37-38; John 1: 1-18

None of us can escape the judgment that will conclude our lives. At that moment the dynamic of our lives will become clear and we will need the intercession of the One who remained obedient to the end. The love enacted in Jesus is the power—the dynamic—that can save us… Let us pray for the mercy of God.”

These are the words from an Easter sermon by the man whose life as gift we celebrate and give thanks for this day. You remember Doug as a husband and life companion of 63 years; as a wonderful father and the family cook; as a brother shared not only in the gift of life, but also in the heartbreak of tragedy as you suffered the rare experience of losing children in two of the most iconic tragedies in US history. I came to sit with Doug in church on the 10th commemoration of 9/11; in Doug’s name we sit with you as we recognize the double significance of this day.

Of such things, Fr Doug said: “The suffering of life seems to draw people together more effectively than their great achievements and moments of triumph. When human pride is strengthened [the] distance between us easily expands. But when we descend into the shadows and finally reach the valley of death we discover that we are all brothers and sisters sharing one common end. There is a dark point of death where we all join hands and form a common circle.”

And yet he concluded that there was a deeper place of unity than shared sorrow, and that was the gift of the Spirit who helps us see that, “Jesus, not death, is the center of human life.”

We all gather to remember a man of faith, of hope, of sharp insight and compassion for the human condition. He was a man open to the spiritual life across the world—always ready to walk with people in their spiritual quest rather than try and convert or mold them into his image of what faith should be.

The past few days I have been greatly humbled to walk with Fr. Doug among his own words—words that I hope will find the light of day in a more permanent form. Many of his words live on in lives transformed by conversion of the kind Doug honored. And you are here today to give thanks for that.
As a father Doug might have appeared a soft target to this children, he could be pushed too far. As a priest and apologist for the Christian Gospel he was the same.

He believed that human diversity comes from the nature of God. He said: “True unity is not a simple denial of diversity. The Creator God we claim to worship created a universe of rich variety; so we cannot expect complete uniformity… A demand for uniformity applies to you free spirits as well as old conservatives. Spirit-filled charismatics can be as rigid in their own way as die-hard ritualists (among whom he included what he called “The poor Episcopal Church when it advances the notion that liturgy must be done one way and one only.”). “Acceptable diversity must be rooted in the divine nature we claim to worship.”

Born in 1926 and raised Presbyterian in the Catskill Mountains of New York, it was his finding of Betty at college that brought him into the Episcopal Church and produced the gift of his call to the priesthood. Betty’s own musicality and the music of the Church helped this process. He caught the tail-end of World War II serving in the Navy “working a crane” in Guam. He served as priest in St Andrew’s Schroon Lake, and came to Iowa to be chaplain at Iowa State University in 1962 from having been Rector at St James Church in Southwest Harbor, Maine. He served as Chaplain from 1962 to his retirement in 1991.

About those days at ISU, and at St David’s, Elliott Blackburn fondly remembers how he and his wife Hilary would sit with Doug and Betty trying to have “post-Friday fish-fry conversation” as the children scurried around them.  Elliott went on to describe those days of the sixties:

“The late 60s were crazy times, theologically as well as socially. Bishop Pike kept things stirred up and there was the rumor of the "Death of God" coming across the pond from England. There were the rumblings of changes to the Prayer Book, made real in the 1967 little green book. And then there were civil rights and poverty protests and, of course, protests against the war in Vietnam, the increase in the use of drugs, the sexual revolution and the general Hippy spirit. It was good to have a friend and colleague like Doug in those days. Doug had a way of being a thoughtful, careful and orthodox thinker, but one who was also a true liberal, that is, one who is open to truth whatever its source. I'm sure that his quiet, deliberate, thorough way of thinking through those events were frustrating to some who were all for immediate action, but he and his way of being and thinking were a holy, sometimes humorous and truly Anglican presence, especially in an academic community. I know that he gave guidance and balance to us clergy, and I'm sure that he did also to the members of St. John's and St. David's and through them to the university and Ames community. I'm grateful for having Doug as a friend and colleague in those days. It's easy to picture him now, in God's Kingdom, having very deliberate questions and conversations with St. Paul and other writers of Holy Scripture, as well as being a father, son, and friend to those who are there before him.”

Don’t be misled, Doug’s was not a perfect life—after all, he was a devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox. A proud moment came in 2005, or whenever it was, when he could don his Red Sox cap in celebration of their breaking the Babe Ruth curse in winning the World Series. As he would say later about a totally other affair, “fanatics always have difficulty with the larger view.”

His scholarly ways are evidenced by his library that rather than include the kind of scattered reading which most of our lives might betray, reveals a life devoted to following through on his passions—book shelves, not just occasional books, fully devoted to Dante, for example, or John Henry Newman, or the Metaphysical poets. Doug followed a theme to its end. His curiosity and incessant reading left its influence upon his own children who found the freedom to pursue their own inquisitive and creative purposes. This capacity for focus also led to the recognition of curiosity’s limits. He once said, in a Trinity Sunday sermon, “Trinity Sunday was a feast day in which preachers were often tempted to overreach!”

Reflecting on an attempt to offer a bible study on the Book of Revelation, he excused himself to Betty by saying that he was young at the time and didn’t know any better.

He began his professional life as a high school teacher and never stopped teaching. Some of you owe your love of George Herbert or of Dante to his addresses on the Christian classics. He called George Herbert the finest example of an Anglican theologian. Dante, however, was his greatest focus. Dante’s thought permeated his own. Every Lent he would read Purgatory [the second part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, following Inferno and preceding Paradiso], which he saw as the journey of restoration of faith. “There is nothing punitive”, he said, “about the discipline necessary to gain the prize we were all created to achieve—the final plan of entering heaven.” He considered the whole of Dante’s Divine Comedy as a reflection on the Prologue of St John’s Gospel, which we read as the Gospel today. It was the light shining in the darkness and the darkness unable to snuff it out.

The darkest day for Betty and Doug, and their whole family, came on 9/11, when their son Tim was caught in the World Trade Towers. It sharpened Doug’s view of evil and he was unequivocal about evil’s source.

“The war on terrorism”, he said, “that we inaugurated in the aftermath of 9/11 disaster has placed a new significance on the nature of evil and our way of coping with it has taken on a new urgency. What are the roots of evil and how do we uncover and eradicate them? [of this question] We can no longer speculate in a leisurely manner—but must deal with it and find some answers. The war on terror can alleviate some of these consequences [of evil] and bring temporal relief—but it cannot strike the origins of evil. Unfortunately, they reside in the human heart where our freedom to choose has been turned against us and against our Maker and Loving Master. The undoing of this false choice can only be done by Jesus on our behalf.”

For Fr Doug the continental divide of the Christian year was Trinity Sunday. It pointed back to the story of what we had been given in revelation from Advent through to the Day of Pentecost; and it pointed forward through the long season of Pentecost to what we could apply. “The dual process of considering and the applying what we have learned from our encounter with Jesus will always be the substance of a Christian life,” he said in a Trinity Sunday sermon.

Fr Doug preached what he lived. He abhorred cheap grace and self-central Christianity. He feared that we had so humanized Jesus—making into our own warm fuzzy—that we had, in fact, de-humanized Him as we promoted our overly soft-centered and self-catering versions of faith. He preferred the shorter ending to the Gospel of Mark in which the women fled for fear on encountering the resurrection. For faith in the Resurrected Christ did not just assure us of heaven, it took you into tackling the hard things of this life—embracing your cross in the midst of life’s sufferings.
Doug applied what he had received in revelation. And no greater challenge was posed than in embracing the question of forgiveness after 9/11. On the kitchen wall of the Haviland’s home is the Prayer of St Francis. It is honored because it was a source that forced them forward to forgiveness. “You don’t do,” Doug said, “but you let God work through you.”

And so today we give thanks for such a life and we will shortly come together around the words of that same prayer as our own act of re-dedication to let God work through us.

Fr Doug was a great polemicist for the Christian faith. He was very aware of evil but even more so that the Cross of Christ stands central in our faith and lives to dismantle it. “Religious fundamentalists can only see life from their own point of view – they lack the largeness of vision. Combine that with the destructive power of modern technology and we find ourselves in a world of growing fear.” These are words from the last decade of his life – from a man who never ceased to learn and apply faith’s lessons even to his final days.

He continued; “In such a world, heaven ceases to be a pious consolation or a projection of wishful thinking. Either there is a restoration of love which is the reality of heaven or evil has the final word. Either there is a transcendental Presence that can carry us beyond the absence of meaning, or we live in a hopeless world. .. As the slain Lamb, Jesus was torn from us by fear and despair… As the Risen Christ, Jesus is the heavenly King who will gather to Himself his fellow innocent victims.”

To that same Lamb of God now upon the Throne
To the One from whose Love nothing can separate us
To the Eternal Word so eloquently expressed through the life of His servant and priest Douglas, we now commend our own beloved.
                                                                                                                                                                                                      Amen



Sermon at the Ordination of Bonnie Wilkerson and Kelly Shields, St Luke’s, Fort Madison; 1 February, 2014 
            
Readings: Ecclesiasticus 39:1-8: Ephesians 4:7, 11-16 ; Luke 12: 35-38

I can imagine that there are at least two individuals here tonight who identify with tomorrow’s gospel characters from the story of The Presentation. There we come across two holy people—Simeon and Anna—who have waited longingly for the appearance of the Messiah. We have grown to know Simeon through the hymn that came from his lips: “Now let thy servant depart in peace. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” I hear it being recited by Lyle and Barbara as they look upon Bonnie, and by Marilyn as she thinks about Kelley. And it is alright to be that way. For you have done a good thing. You stepped up to participate in the first Ministry Development Team even though you were beyond mandatory retirement age before you were ordained! You sent me your retirement letters the next day and we have been going along year-by-year. Now, however, you have passed on your leadership to another, to a second-generation Ministry Development Team. And am I wrong to spot signs of potential team number three in the young people participating today in the service?

Nothing much will change in terms of any of your opportunities to continue to serve with the people of Fort Madison as priests and deacons, but there is a real sense of joy in seeing the process of developing ministry move into a second generation. I think back to when my own parish of St Barnabas’ called a second team. It was going to be much more interesting than the first in that we had invited a series of congregational meetings to establish our mutual sense of God’s mission and our community needs. We nominated persons to the team according to a series of perceived mission needs and we came up with some fascinating ministry titles. We thought of our multicultural setting and called someone to be a multicultural missioner. We had need for a more intentional coordinator for family ministry. Someone came up with a ministry resource person—stewardship and fund-raising, in effect. The one that caused me personal threat was that of liturgical designer. After all, that had been my job, and the congregation called my wife to the task! All of these positions were non-ordained, and the congregation was willing to set aside funds for continuing education for each person in their specific categories.

The team never fully materialized. Donna and I were called to Iowa; the multicultural missioner and his wife, who was also a catechist, found a job in New Mexico. Illness struck others. By a series of natural events, the team evaporated. It was a time only to dream, it seems. To see what could have been, and yet know what still can be if we seek to arrange our common life around serving the Kingdom of God.

Recently I have found myself preaching other people’s texts—by that I mean I have been given texts by the ordinands and then have to guess why they might have chosen these readings. I must say that these are quite unusual readings for the occasion—all except Paul’s words in Ephesians and his picture of the ongoing work of Christ as activity of a Body made up of many parts but called to a unity, a working as one in mature order. I am also assuming the Gospel passage from Luke inviting us to wait and be ready, dressed for action, is more about the diaconate as we read, “blessed are the servants whom the master finds alert.” The passage from Ecclesiasticus, however, is a challenge. Ecclesiasticus comes from that period of time in between the two Great Testaments of Holy Scripture, possibly from the second century before Christ. It associates finding wisdom as a prerequisite to understanding God’s way of salvation.

Bring them all together and we hear a call common to each—namely to pay attention to your inner preparedness.  And perhaps this is where the Spirit wishes to challenge you, and all of us. For you are busy people, poised for action. There is an irony in my seeing this on a weekend in which I am running from one end of the diocese to the other presiding at four very different occasions. I hear the words: “Physician, heal yourself.”

The truth is that there is never going to be an end to the work you can do. Soon we will ask you to care for young and old, rich and poor, sick and the healthy. There will always be a new need, another project. And as ordained persons, even working within an understanding of being a team developing the ministry of one another, we are good at jumping in until we don’t know where we end and the other begins. You can’t afford to do that. None of us can. God’s word to us tonight is saying pay attention to the inner journey – the way of gathered wisdom. Don’t be tossed to and fro. But be anchored in that which builds up the Body of Christ. Be inwardly alert. So let me give you a series of imperatives:
  • Study how things can work properly together and what promotes growth. That may require learning to speak truth in love when you tempt each other to do otherwise or to do too much.
  • Find what your part of the whole might be and learn to articulate it and then be true to it. Let others discern what this might be in you, and do the same for them. This is ministry development. Celebrate the gifts of God you each are to the whole, and that equip each of you to the common work of ministry.
  •  Keep the margins soft for that way you also are able to keep the soil turned over and fruitful. Maintain the growth as a people by ever reaching outward, and always having room for God’s new thing and new one.
The seeker in Ecclesiasticus travels over foreign lands to learn what is good and what is evil in the human lot. He prays for God’s counsel and knowledge. And we can do no different. It is what is meant by the trimmed lamps of the Gospel passage that are lit and waiting. This is about the things you do that no one but God sees: the times you turn to prayer and study of God’s Word; the coming alongside family or friends to offer yourself to the Unseen God. This is what makes you ready for God’s unexpected moments.

I remember a conversation with a spiritual director in which, for whatever reason, I was talking about “having a good mind.” “Had a good mind,” my director said, “for you just told me you had stopped reading for personal refreshment.” He then went on to ask and answer the question, “Who is the first to notice when a recital pianist has cut back on his or her practice time? The audience!”

Be wary therefore of spiritual auto-pilot—especially in this demanding business. Pay attention to paying attention. So I thank you for choosing this emphasis within the Scriptures. You probably know better than any of us how these might be words of the Spirit to you. It will assure you of the joy of the bridegroom that you are ready when He comes—a joy that Simeon and Anna experienced, the joy of being and serving in the company of such a Loving God.      

Amen




Sermon at St. Michael's, Mount Pleasant, and Christ Church, Burlington; 2 February 2014 

Readings: Malachi 3:1-4 ;Hebrews 2: 20-18; Luke 2: 22-40

It is rare for us to celebrate the Presentation of Jesus in the temple—just one of two glimpses of his life before we see Him ready for God’s mission at the River Jordan. Where then do we place our focus?

The fulfilling of all righteousness within the Jewish faith tradition of His time is of significance for us. As commentator Fred Craddock notes: “The new that has come in Christ is God’s old promises fulfilled.” This was a time waited for by a historical people: The coming of this child would be a sign to so many based on their reading of their Holy Scriptures and their understanding of God’s promises. It is intended to remind us that our faith tradition is rooted in revelation. As Paul says in Romans, chapters 11-13, that if God judged the Chosen for their unfaithfulness, how much more readily would God cast aside the wild branch of us Gentiles whom God grafted onto the vine of Promise for similar presumptuousness.

Jesus was brought by His family into the Temple as was the custom of the day. Through the very miracle of Incarnation—God’s method of salvation—the Holy One had to embrace a period of vulnerable dependency upon His parents. He trusted, and thus God trusted through Him, others to do the right thing by the Child on whom His mother had been so long pondering since His birth. And so we realize today how dependent so many of us have been that our parents would do the right thing by us as they brought us to baptism, just as Mauricio’s parents, grandparents and Godparents do today (during the Christ Church Burlington celebration of new ministry, with baptism and confirmation).
Jesus embraced the tradition of His day and of His people. It is worth our pausing and giving thanks for how we came to be where we are today because someone recognized that our faith is not only about our choice, but also God’s first reaching out to us through the gift of sacrament. Simply noting these things shifts our perspective on faith. It makes our spiritual lives more about receiving what God gives to us than taking what we feel we need from God. We become revelation-centered and not simply my-spiritual-journey centered. As we seek, we are met by the One who can lead us into our full meaning and purpose.

So it is no small thing that Mary and Joseph “did right” by Jesus, nor that our parents followed suit in so many cases. It was only after my own confirmation that I realized what a blessing my parents sought for me in bringing me to baptism as an infant. I had awakened to faith later as a Methodist and decided that this was the decisive moment of salvation for me and for everyone. We all had to be “born again” in a sudden and decisive way. I had dismissed my parents’ action as empty ritual. How wrong I realized was, and how arrogant. God was honoring their obedience and it took my confirmation—casual as I approached it at the time—to bring me into a conscious knowledge of what it means to be part of the Catholic tradition that stretched over the centuries. The saints in the stained-glass windows and represented by the stone statues seemed to come alive on that day. It was not really about me at all. We are invited to respond to a long line of divine revelation which is rooted back in the same tradition that Mary and Joseph faithfully followed. God first loves us before we know to love God.

Secondly, it is significant and compatible with Luke’s emphasis throughout his Gospel that we notice the offering Mary and Joseph made at the Temple. Two pigeons were the offering of those who lived in poverty.

As the Prayer Book reminds us (BCP page 826): “Almighty and most Merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget...Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord.” In fact, the Prayer Book got it slightly wrong—Jesus did not BECOME poor. He was born into poverty. He was poor from the outset. His family could only afford the cheapest end of the sacrificial menu; but it was an offering as effective as any of its more expensive counterparts.

-        Jesus identified with the religious journey of the People among whom He was born.

-        Jesus entered this life without privilege, born into the vulnerability and humility of the poor.

Finally, it is significant that there were witnesses whose joy overflowed at what they recognized.

Simeon and Anna had held onto God’s ankles for decades interceding for the coming of the Anointed One. Something leapt within them as Jesus was carried into the Temple. It was not the priest who noticed. He was busy fulfilling his religious duty. No one called the head office for the High Priest to come down; nor was there a back chorus of angelic hosts—that had been reserved for a more select group on that very first night of revelation.

It was out of quiet, intense and incessant prayer that the moment became clear for those two elders who had waited so long. “Now let your servant depart in peace,” says Simeon, “for my eyes have seen Thy salvation.” We are invited to sing this joy every evening at our night prayer. For Simeon this was a statement of readiness to depart this life happy; we are invited to find release in joyful recognition of God’s fulfilled promise in life.

In many ways it is more difficult to let ourselves enter into the joy of God, of God’s promises fulfilled, of the gift of God’s Son, of the new life in Him that the Spirit brings through baptism and in renewal. It is more difficult to stand with Simeon and Anna in their amazement and delight than it is to be preoccupied with the rigors of our religious duties, standing with the Temple priests or the altar attendants or the pigeon sellers.

Often I may be with Simeon in his waiting phase but then not notice that Jesus has come in. I pray however for an increasing awareness of revelation received, enlightenment given and joy completed.
As you know I am in two places today—here on visitation this morning, and later this afternoon at the celebration of new ministry at Christ Church Burlington. I wondered how the Scriptures might speak differently for each occasion. I am not convinced that they have to.

For whether our gathering is for visitation—and the renewal that hopefully comes as we talk together about the state of our mission together with God, and as we give thanks for new lives confirming their baptismal vows—or whether we celebrate new ministry as people and Rector, with its promise of new and renewed leaders across the whole body of the baptized in Burlington, the themes of the Presentation apply. 

  1. Be radical. Know your roots and live as a people embraced and directed by revelation, and be humble servants of a faith once delivered. God will do new things in and through you but remember that God’s new thing is always the fulfillment of God’s old promises. 
  2. Begin as poor and as among the poor. Identify with the least among you—not in pity but as your own flesh and blood. Start with the acknowledgement of each other as bearers of the dignity of God who made you. Where it is being lost, work hard for its restoration, using all the tools of love that the Gospel and Spirit provide. We celebrate new ministry but as ministers in common—as ministers together, united as one Body and in a place where often it is a child, the innocent victim, the least among us, who takes the lead and calls us forward.
  3.  Find the joy of Simon and Anna because you recognize that God is so good.  Wait upon the Lord for that joy to come. Jesus laughing is a rare portrait but I have one on my wall. He is indulging in a huge belly laugh. Sometimes I have to ask “What are you laughing at?” and I think I hear a voice reply: “You.”
  4. “The joy of the Lord is my strength,” says Scripture. And so it is. Even if it carries us through the valley of the shadows. It is what makes us fear no evil, for its foundation is the rod and staff of God that comforts us.


So today, we can depart in peace even if it is to beat through the ice and snow to get home for the Super Bowl, for our eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord, prepared before the face of all people. It is a light for us Gentile nations, whose origin and deliverance is the glory of (and gift from) God’s people Israel.
                                                                                                                                                                                    Amen

                                                                                                                          





                                               
     

Friday, February 14, 2014

Visitation to Trinity Episcopal Church, Iowa City, Iowa—January 26, 2014




“Welcome, Bishop, to the right place at the right time.” This unexpected greeting as I walked through the sanctuary at Trinity, Iowa City, prior to the service proved to be quite the mantra for the visit. I used it in my sermon introduction and it was used by Trinity leaders during their presentations at the Annual Meeting that followed the service. Ben Webb, the beloved Interim rector, was completing his duties there and next week the congregation is preparing to welcome their new Rector, Lauren Lyon from Kansas City. Lauren is no stranger to Iowa having lived her early years in Des Moines.

Change was very much in the air as the Annual meeting addressed the changeover of staff members, including the long-time Children and Youth director, Meg Wagner, who is in her penultimate year of Seminary and anticipates being ordained to the transitional diaconate in December as she completes her studies through the distance-learning program at EDS by June 2015. I rarely get to witness the internal life of a parish at such a juncture, especially on the regular visitation schedule, which follows a rotation across the years. Truly, I was at the right place and at the right time.

Falling on the Annual Meeting also meant that I presided at the one-and-only Eucharist of the day, and not the usual three that greet me at other times. I still think that since the Bishop’s visitation happens once every eighteen months or so, it really is not a routine Sunday and perhaps there is merit in calling for a single gathering of the whole congregation for one unifying act of Thanksgiving or Eucharist.

It really was a joyous time. Clearly the time with Ben had been a fulfilling one and one in which people had continued to enjoy being part of God’s mission. Trinity, Iowa City, has always been a source of Diocesan leadership—members serving on almost every Diocesan commission and board. And so it was good to give thanks as part of the annual reports. With the showing of the Diocesan strategic plan presentation at the meeting, I was able to follow up with mention of anticipated work by Ben in providing assistance with the development and renewal of leaders with which the presentation opens. I further and at more length addressed the on-going conversation and activity across the Diocese on ministry among young adults. I reiterated the Board of Director’s procedure for gathering information for the next budget phase, which is now on the website

Two keys to this process will be the first meeting of the Young Adult Ministry Development Team (YAMDT) in Grinnell on February 22nd, and the Indaba process, which the Board will promote at the spring Chapter meetings. I was glad to announce that current chaplain Raisin Horn, who also chaired the Annual Meeting brilliantly, would be serving on the YAMDT.

Weather forced Donna and me to leave before the lunch put on by Trinity’s youth as a fund-raiser for their pilgrimage in 2015. They hope to go abroad, possibly to the Diocese of Brechin or to Spain to walk the Via Campanella. I must say that is a pilgrimage I have wanted to undertake since I learned of it. Maybe they will take their bishop along with them.


Finally the Stewardship Chair, Joe Murray, gave an excellent presentation on the state of the finances at Trinity and how a good situation can become an even more secure one if each pledger decided to increase their pledge by 5-10% (or $25 for a $500 annual pledge or $50 for a $ 1000 annual pledge). He invited them to simply think of why they are thankful for God in their lives through Trinity and consider an appropriate increase. His goal was 5% but as he added, “Some can’t increase right now, and so others might consider giving 10%.” It was simple, it was gentle and it had the backing of a business professor’s acumen with data.  Of course, I invited him to consider serving the Diocese, adding his name to Trinity's long line of leaders.


Sermon at Trinity, Iowa City, 26 January 2014                                      
Epiphany 3 (Isaiah 9: 1-4; 1 Corinthians 1: 10-18; Matthew 4: 12-23)

As I walked into the sanctuary this morning, someone thanked me for being “at the right place, at the right time.” I was not quite sure what that meant but I am glad to be here and share in this moment of transition, as you say goodbye to Ben and hello to Lauren, your new Rector.

I don’t know about you, but there are certain moments in epic film that grip my imagination and don’t seem to let go. One of those for me came in the movie Gandhi as he prepares to leave his living compound and set off on his long walk to the sea to make salt. Suddenly the time is right, and he sets out at a striking pace, walking stick in hand and stringing his followers out. Others join along the way and a movement grows behind him.

There is a similar feel about the Gospel this morning. John’s arrest stirs something in Jesus; and He leaves home setting out first for Capernaum on a journey that will carry Him eventually to Jerusalem. Jesus strikes out, proclaiming as He goes that, “The Kingdom of God has come near.” The light is shining where people were sitting in darkness, just as the prophet foretold. Jesus marched forward–calling, teaching, preaching the Good News. And curing—healing the sick and infirm. And as He advanced, a movement followed behind Him.

I would hope that is an image that captures Ben’s mind as he sets out to establish the Center for Regenerative Society; that as he goes, there will be movement that forms behind him and with him. Similarly, for Lauren, that she comes among you and as she leads you forward, a movement begins.
Movement is a key word these days in Church circles. We talk a lot about movements, what we now seek to brand as “The Missionary Society of The Episcopal Church.” We are seeking to recapture the thrust of our original name, “The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.” In the middle of all this is a desire to be on the move, not static, reaching out, not waiting, a process and a movement for God’s mission. Processes take on new shapes and forms as they advance. This is not a time for us to stand still, but to be on the march, creating attention as we go.

There may be several mission concerns that impact you right now; but the one I wish to highlight for us all is that of Christian Unity. It is certainly central to our readings from Paul to the Corinthians today and its prominence in my mind comes from the fact that we are just coming out of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which spans the Confession of Peter on January 18th and the Conversion of Paul on January 25th. As a one-time Ecumenical Officer for the Diocese of Los Angeles, I am embarrassed how, as a bishop, this week of prayer has come so quickly upon me that I have not planned anything for us as a Diocese throughout my time here.

Movement for the unity of the Christian Church therefore might be a good destination. Did you notice the week that has just passed? Behind these two great awakenings of the Church—that of Peter and of Paul—the Church fell in line after Christ’s ascension and the Spirit’s coming. A movement began that took the Gospel to the heart of Western civilization in Rome and from there along its trade routes and infrastructure to the ends of the known world.

Yet very early on, cracks were appearing and affecting the Church even as it advanced strongly. People were forgetting the agency character of the Apostles’ call—that they were only agents of Christ and not Christ Himself. Personal attachments and personal admirations began to occur and preferences appeared: “I am of Apollos, I am of Paul; I am Cephas, Peter,” and of course there are always the purists who claim “I am of Christ.”

Of course we have advanced the divisive tendency to the level of the scandal of denominations; and even within denominational allegiance to certain local expressions of faith over others, or one pastor over another.

Reeling in the ropes of division from where we stand today is an enormous task—but someone has to set off to the sea, the ocean of unity!

On the eve of new leadership, what movement will you embrace as the people of God at Trinity, Iowa City? The apostle Paul could not control the reactivity of the Corinthian Christians. All he could do was seek to remind them of the foundation of their faith.

“In whom were you all baptized? Paul, Peter or Apollos? No, your baptism was in Christ’s Name! Who was crucified for you? Paul, Peter, Apollos? No, we preach Christ crucified.” I remember standing up in the House of Bishops after Bishop Bob Duncan had lamented, as he was accustomed to doing, that there were irreconcilable differences between him and his fellow bishops. “It is in Christ that we are reconciled,” I said. “There are never irreconcilable differences that affect our essential relationship. Christ brings us both together and holds our hands, even as we might be tweaking our thumbs on our noses at each other behind His back.”

Of course we have done much worse to each other than thumb our noses. We have killed each other, banished each other, doomed each other to our mutual hells. Yet we are not baptized Lutheran or Catholic or Anglican, but in Christ and therefore Christian. And we must start our journey from there. I am glad always to confirm and receive as marks of people owning their place in the “fellowship of this Communion.” If walking into The Episcopal Church helps a person inch along closer to Christ than where they have been up to now—including ironically moving away from divisiveness—then I am glad to welcome them. When a baptized person seeks to own the faith into which they were brought at an earlier age through confirmation, I am honored to seek the Spirit’s commissioning upon them.

But deep down, I want to welcome them into a Church fading away in terms of its peculiarities, moving on the road towards Oneness that is our sole identity in Jesus Christ. I want to welcome them into a Church seeking to be turned inside out by the Spirit of God—calling out in the words of John the Baptist, “I must decrease that Christ might increase.”

Our divisions have always gotten in the way, giving people a chance to fall in with one group over another and feel, no matter how they protest otherwise, that one (their group) is more suitable than the other. In the meantime there is teaching to be done; curing and healing to be done; good news to be preached; and to whom? Not merely ourselves, but chiefly to those beyond us.

When I visited a couple of Iowa Seminarians at Sewanee last October, the Dean gave me a small monograph of talks by William Du Bose. Du Bose had great ecumenical vision and he was writing more than a century ago. I quoted him extensively in an Iowa Connections piece, and want to do so again here.

He wrote: “All the new things, all the modern isms of Christianity that have life in them, and many of them have (i.e. attract people, make sense to them, inspire them), all these things are but broken fragments of the Truth that is Christ and who is ever the Same. While our sects and parties live by the truth that is in them and that is vital to them, they are but too apt to live also in deadly competition with other truths as true as they are; and so in fatal detriment to the whole and the wholeness of truth.

“The course of truth and of life, with beings such as we are (finite, sinful, always partially sighted), can never move centrally or evenly, wholly and together. It is always one-sided or has some part of it that is in motion or action, and that too often is a way to increase misunderstanding and resistance of other parts. There is always fault on both sides. The principle of competition, of antagonism, divisive, separatist, of hateful, hating and deadly competition has been prevailing in Christianity just as much as in our earthly life and business. The times are changing (Note: he wrote this more than a century ago), and the call, the appeal comes to us from every source and direction—come to us as Christians to show us the way, the better way among ourselves, in our relations with one another, of love and mutual understanding, and peaceful and fruitful cooperation.”

He further asked: “How deeply and sincerely are we working and praying and laboring to be at one, and to be one with God and Christ and all their living and saving presence and operation in our universal  humanity?”    

These are cutting and challenging words. The movement to embrace Christ’s unity has to begin somewhere. Why cannot this be the right time and the right place? Why not here and now? Why not with you and why not with me?
Too late for this sermon’s preparation I came across a book entitled Paradoxy whose thesis was that our very differences are in fact God’s way of helping us grow into the fullness of Truth and need to be received as such rather than as occasions for conflict. I am sorry that I came upon it so late to be able to use it more fully, and I am not sure how the argument plays out, but it will be a reading source for next week!

Surprise your new Rector as she comes in the front door. Even as she is getting ready to settle in, greet her, catch her by the elbow and turn her around to head back outside, and say “Welcome; we are on the move. Thank you for coming with us as we move out with the message that the Kingdom of Heaven is here.” Let us go together to do the work of proclaiming Good News to the poor, curing, teaching, and calling on the move, as we seek to become One Church, One People in Christ, and One Movement. Amen.