A congregation never knows what lies around the corner. Trinity Episcopal Church is part of the Trinity cluster which includes St Paul’s, Harlan and Trinity, Carroll.
The three churches share a priest, though they are independent of each other in
their governance. They serve different communities. Denison has a large Latino
population and has recently attracted other non-Anglo peoples. My conversations
with the cluster after the retirement of long-serving priest, Glen Rankin, two
years ago have centered around the idea of centering the call of a new priest
around the Denison rectory and seeking a bilingual priest who could initiate a
Spanish-speaking congregation. To this end the Board of Directors of the
Diocese approved a grant to Trinity to help renovate the Rectory, which was
augmented by one from Trinity, Carroll on behalf of the cluster. Last year we
met together for several rounds of bible study in an effort to reinvigorate the
cluster and talk about their common future.
One Sunday morning about a dozen Anglicans from South Sudan
turned up in Denison for the morning worship. They quickly became a part of the
community, and decided to connect with Trinity as part of their regular Sunday
service. The group was organized with a pastor and deacon who, though raised
Anglican, had been formed and called to ordination through an independent Bible
College. In effect for our canonical purposes they are pastors ordained not in
the historical apostolic tradition. The group grew, and participated in the
cluster’s joint events, such as the picnic Eucharist in last August which was
one of my visitations to the cluster. (In effect, I do three visits every
eighteen months, one to each Church).
The small group of members from Trinity worked hard at
receiving their new guests—painting the facilities next door which had been a
local pre-school, overseeing the completion of the renovated rectory. New life
and energy were flowing through the congregation. Eventually the South Sudanese
leadership realized that the morning service time did not fit the work
schedules of many of their people, and began holding an afternoon worship on
Sundays. The new parish priest, Diana Wright, attended but the service was in Dinka and led by the pastor and deacon, using a well-worn Anglican prayer book.
On my visitation, the cluster gathered in the morning, about
two dozen of us, and in the afternoon we worshipped in Dinka and English with
almost five-dozen South Sudanese. About fifty people came forward for
reaffirmation of baptismal vows and the laying on of hands. It was a hot day,
and at times I felt like I was back in South Sudan.
The arrival of the Dinka was not the only surprise up God’s
sleeve for the people of Trinity. A few months ago they were approached about
the use of their pre-school for a new Pentecostal congregation led by a pastor
from El Salvador. And so at the end of
my visit, I paid a call on the Central American congregation gathering for 4pm
worship next door in Trinity’s Hall, bringing greetings and offering welcome.
They were about thirty-five in number.
We simply never know what God has in store for us. It is a
joyful and hopeful story, but not without its problems. The congregations,
especially the two Anglicans, have to learn how to grow together without one
overwhelming the other. How can they be life giving to each other? In one way
simply offering a structure within which to become tied to one’s historical
ecclesiastical roots is a gift on the part of the people of Trinity. Cultural
difference, especially in terms of understandings of leadership and gender, is
an ongoing issue. Mutual expectations of responsibilities on both sides in
terms of the upkeep of the buildings and how to make decisions that are of
mutual benefit while acknowledging the canonical structure of our governance
are other things still to be worked out. I left for vacation after my trip to
Denison full of hope and ready to work with what might become a new chapter in
the life of the Diocese as we work on creating our first South Sudanese
congregation based in partnership at Trinity. I returned to find that we are
not quite there yet, and that there is more work to be done on seeking how to
be in mission together with Christ with these communities of each and all. I
have decided that it is a good problem to have, and an important one to resolve
quickly.
Sermon at Trinity Episcopal Church, Denison
This week I had to break down and hire a young man to take a
stab at my garden. It has really overgrown—with weeds that look like trees
hiding in the bushes; and flowerbeds minus flowers taken over by more weeds and
growing seedlings of nearby trees! It is a jungle. It is a mess and rain on my
only day off is not helping me get any handle on it.
I wish I had at least been intentional and sown good seed;
and could blame an enemy for mixing in the weeds. But no such luck. My garden
has had a few good years, and more bad ones; but this is the worst I have
experienced. How quickly things get away from you. We should blame Adam and
Eve. Leave things untended and disaster happens. And so I have hired a savior!
I have just been away at the Episcopal Youth Event where I learned that the five marks of mission of the Anglican Communion can be
reduced to five words—tell; teach; tend; transform and treasure. Tend and
treasure are the two words that stand out with respect to the parable Jesus
tells us today: the wheat and the tares.
According to the Apostle Paul, we live in a physical or
natural world groaning under the weight of its very way of being. Maybe that is
how he looked at his own garden. It is probably accurate to say that Paul was
not an ecologist, and yet his words sound very appropriate to our understanding
of what is happening within nature today. In fact the hardship of human battles
with nature have been with us from the beginning, even to the point that the Creation
story ends with disobedience causing humans to be thrown out of the idyllic
state of Eden (where presumably flowers blossomed without the need for tilling
and care) and were condemned to a life of servitude towards nature. It would
have to be tamed by us to provide food and nourishment, or simply not to be
overrun, not to mention having a garden for simply enjoyment.
So for Paul the great reversal that had taken place in Jesus
Christ—where out of death had come life—had its impact, too, upon nature and
our relationship with it. Our freedom is to be nature’s freedom. For Jesus
restores all things in God. The enemy in the parable is defeated. Whenever,
however, the Scriptures speak of such future things—there is always the sense
and recognition that restoration and salvation happen even as we labor and
struggle. It is always “while we were yet sinners (that) Christ died for us” as
Paul says to the Corinthians. New life comes out of and with suffering, and
that suffering is the struggle of the Spirit and the flesh, or the struggle of
being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
My jungle backyard could be the last word. I could just
retire to my room, close the curtains and never give it another thought. This
year it certainly has proven too much for me. Calling on help—bringing another
in to work with me became my hope. In that simple act there was a refusal to
let decay become the last word.
The early disciples or followers of Jesus needed to know the
lay of the land. They needed to know that not everyone would receive their good
news about Jesus, though many would. They also needed to know that patience was
a virtue in the lives of faith. Jesus would not leave them unprepared or naïve
about the struggle before them.
The listeners of Jesus would be aware of the familiar weed
that grew among the wheat—which in its early shoots looked a lot like wheat.
Underground, its roots would tangle with the wheat roots and to pull up one was
to risk the destruction of the other, the good other. And so it became best to
let them grow up together until their distinction became clearer around harvest
time. The weed also had the additional element of being poisonous. So they were
not to rush to judgment, nor be premature in their discernment, but show
patience. Patience and longsuffering are important fruits of the Spirit, by the
way.
Jesus also needed his disciples to realize that their work
of following was not without resistance. There was an enemy of the Gospel
rooted in nature itself and in our self-centeredness. These realities from
Jesus’ day are as present to us today as they were then. Life has not changed,
nor has human nature. And so in a few moments I will ask: “Do you reaffirm your
renunciation of evil and do you renew your commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior
and Lord?” and “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in
the breaking of bread and in the prayers?” To which as followers of Jesus, we
say, “I will with God’s help.” And God promises to give us that help in the
activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
The challenges and the choice is not to be overwhelmed; to
know when to call for help; to trust that nature itself is freed when we find
our freedom of Spirit—our love, our joy, our peace, our hope, our faith, our
gentleness, our patience, our meekness, our perseverance—all as ways of
life.
This is what you have been seeking to do down the years. You
would not still be gathering if that were not so. Your future lies where it has
always been—in the purposes and mission of God which you are continually asked
to tell, teach, tend, transform and treasure.
What you cannot afford to do is lose faith, to get
overwhelmed by nature’s wildness and Satan’s adversity, to become fixed in the
past and retire to your room with your curtains closed and to turn on each
other in frustration and in the toughness of the task of being a follower of
Jesus.
In a few moments I am going to invite you to be prayed over.
I am going to remind you that the Spirit who has begun a good work in you can
and will direct you and uphold you in the service of Christ and Christ’s Kingdom.
I urge you to receive this gift of prayer into your own hearts. Jesus’ own
disciples and the Church they founded needed to be reminded that He was with
them always—not because it was easy going, but because it was tough going. Yet
in the end, with Isaiah, they would say to God’s question, Who is there beside Me?, “No one, Lord, not One. There is no God
like you, and we are glad to be your followers and your servants. Here I am
Lord, use me until that day of harvest when all is made clear.”
Amen
