I took the opportunity of coming to St Mark’s to preside at the celebration of new ministry with the arrival of Fr Bob North from the Diocese of Chicago as their new priest in residence. The Warden said that it has been more than twenty years since the congregation had celebrated a new ministry. I stressed that it was a ministry with and among rather than for, and that Fr Bob had actually given us a new liturgy to use in these circumstances where a congregation receives a priest who is not going to be their rector. It was a simple adaptation of celebration of new ministry, and the enthusiasm of the congregation helped us see the importance of marking such an occasion.
The people of St Mark’s Maquoketa have made some distinctive
choices in the past few years. They decided to demolish their rectory that
stood next door, and built a large community center on the spot, which now
serves the whole town. Several weeks ago they held their annual Shrove Tuesday
meal in which they serve noodles instead of pancakes. The high estimate of
meals served was put at 450 people! Prior to the building of the center, the
congregation gave their sanctuary over to a local youth choir for regular
practice. Some might remember the evening that they came to Diocesan Convention
and sang at the convention banquet.
As I looked over the church registry, this is a congregation
of 10-12 people on a Sunday, and yet they have made bold decisions which
reflect their desire to be of service and to remain vital and visible in the
community. It was very clear how much they loved Kent Anderson, the priest who
has been coming to them a couple of times a month these past few years, but the
strength of their community comes from one another, especially their long-serving
worship leaders and their wardens. They had also obviously maintained good
ecumenical connections or perhaps that is the nature of Maquoketa, but among
the clergy present were pastors from the United Methodist Church, the ELCA, the
UCC and a Roman Catholic Deacon who read the Gospel. Bob is committed to
pastoral care, but also sees his role as leading from the front beyond the
church walls. His connection with Bishop Peni in Nzara is certainly going to have
some influence on the shape of ministry and mission at St Mark’s, I am sure. [Note: click here to read Fr Bob's blog of his time in Nzara.] The other gift to the community is going to be
Karen North. This was a celebration when it was very fitting to bring priest
and family before the people for welcoming.
My only regret from combining the celebration with the
visitation was that there did not seem to be time or opportunity for the actual
visit part of things. It is good to recognize that there is a difference! Maybe
we can come together for an afternoon chat during my visit to Anamosa in
August. It will be interesting at that time to see how they are doing in making
room for each other and shaping that shared mission which is theirs and God’s.
Sermon at St Mark’s
Episcopal Church, Maquoketa, 16 March 2014
(16 March 2014: Celebration of New Ministry – Num. 11:
16-17, 24-25; Romans 12: 1-8; John 15: 9-16)
We make a lot of promises today. First, let me note that it
has been a long time since we have celebrated new ministry at St Mark’s in
quite this way. Nevertheless I count your dedication of the new community hall
some years back as evidence of new ministry and especially the courageous and
far-sighted decision to pull down the rectory and build such a bold enterprise.
You were thinking about your neighbors and how best to serve them. It was an
iconic decision. It was a statement about wanting to be outward-looking. And
when I think back to your housing the children’s choir that sang at Convention
one year, it is clear that you have always been this way. The community salutes
you in recognition as we witness the fine number of ecumenical participants in
today’s service.
Neither is this new ministry for Bob North. What is new is
your ministry together, and that we
are delighted to celebrate. Bob, too, is
outward-looking; you only have to have followed his passion for ministry in the
South Sudan, shared too by his wife Karen and her love for children, to know
that you share the desire to be outward-looking. And so Fr Bob’s ministry
letter indicates an intention to lead in evangelistic efforts, as well as
pastoral care. There is an urgency in this promise. There is also an invitation
to shared action, for Fr Bob does not expect to be “doing for” but to be doing
“with and among” you all.
“For” and “with and among” are key prepositions; key for the
deterring shape of your common life, and key for understanding the Scriptures
chosen to mark this day, as they remind you of your calling and identity moving
forward.
Vocations are God’s interest and business, not volunteers.
And so I invite you to discover and embrace your giftedness in Christ, and
shape your ministry accordingly. This is the promise of the Scriptures. First,
we promise to work together. In Numbers we find that even Moses could not do it
alone. Nor did he fully know it. His father in law, Jethro, in another version
of this scene devised the plan for Moses to avoid burn out. God devised the
plan—choose seventy, bring them into the tent where we meet, and stand back.
The promise is that if we listen to reason and inspiration,
God will provide what we need to be able to do God’s work. Seems only fair; and
so the Spirit comes.
The second promise is that—as long as we learn to honor one
another’s abilities and not seek to fill out a volunteer roster for the sake of
it—we find that we actually make up the body of Christ as a group. The world is
made up of fractals—wherein large shapes are made up of smaller ones, which
have the very same shape and structure, only in miniature. Break up a
cauliflower for example and you find that its broken up parts are but replicas
of the image of the whole. Each floret is itself a mini cauliflower.
There are enough fractals in creation to guess that God
enjoys them, and so in one sense each person is a mini-Christ, each community
the body of Christ, and all parts of a whole that as John says in his epistle:
“when we see Him, we shall be like Him.” The promise is that God can and does
work through us the continuing ministry of Christ and Christ’s ongoing life. To
that end we each have our part to play. The trick is to learn to recognize this
in each other; and to know that the gifts in a given person or community might
change over the years, and adapt accordingly.
And so God invites us to dedicate ourselves to this purpose—to
lay our lives on the altar of thanksgiving as Paul refers to it in Romans 12.
We offer ourselves as living sacrifices—our time, our energies, our minds, our
hearts—all offered to God. We are thus called and chosen; it is a matter of
vocation not volunteerism.
The other part of this promise is that the gifts for mission
are also present beyond those we currently recognize within the church
community. They are in the people in Maquoketa and surrounding towns. They are
in the people with whom you share your gratitude for life and the wisdom you
are receiving from living with God. The other day I heard that Christian mission
requires four actions—feed, teach, heal and raise the dead! This is what Jesus
did and it is what Jesus continues to do through us. Now I can hear you saying,
“Well three out of four isn’t bad!” We’ve just fed more than 400 people; and we
regularly pray for healing; we teach at Sunday school. But it is that fourth
thing that is the clincher—the raising of the dead! What about the bringing
back to life of people who have lost their way? Of those who have forgotten or
never known why they are alive, or have not known the joy of being alive? Help
them back to a God who starts over, and you have raised the dead. That is what
you did with your Rectory. You let it, as a space, die and be demolished; only
to be raised from the dead as you built the new community center. So hear God’s
further call to do the same for the people around you—friends, family,
neighbors, strangers.
The promise is a beautiful community for God where love
flourishes and resistance is overcome by love.
Finally, Jesus promises that we are more than servants, but
friends. It is His holy work we are asked to do, called to do—and He will never
leave us in the dark about it. He has chosen us from the start, even if we
think that we had chosen Him. “Cradle Episcopalian” makes no sense to Jesus
Christ. We can never get ahead of Him, as He is there choosing us from the
beginning. So why bother entering into a resistant identity wrestling match
with God? Hear God’s call and yield to it.
So we return to Moses and realize, as Moses did, that we are
not left alone by God to do God’s work alone. As a priest, as a Church, as a
bishop, as a diocese, we have to learn to do more together, committing a
certain proportion of our time and energy to help each other beyond our local
concerns. Kent has done this beautifully through the years, coming from Dubuque
and sharing his time with you, as he has helped bring you to this point. We
rarely share ministry regionally, and so we don’t know how it might look or
what vitality it might create. We rarely share it ecumenically, but if not now,
when?
The promise is before us. Lift up your hearts and give
thanks. With God all things are possible—old things are being made new—and this
congregation has been here a long time. Many of you have given large parts of
your lives to this place. Throughout, the God who has yet begun a good work in
you now seeks yet again to direct, strengthen and uphold you in the service of
God’s Kingdom. With Moses we stand back, and we let the Spirit of God fall upon
us all, calling God’s fully equipped and fully gifted children to action with
Christ as His chosen friends.
Amen
