Darwin’s principles were claimed to be alive and well in the
life of St Paul’s Durant as one member claimed that “survival of the fittest” was at
work in their ability to move forward from the split that almost cost them
their existence a couple of years ago. Today, sitting in a newly refurbished
fellowship hall, which is a symbol of their intent to be a witness to God’s work
to make all things new, the Senior Warden presented to me their 2014 Mission
Plan. It is an outstanding use of the Diocesan plan as a framework. So much so
that I am sharing it with you here.
“Is this something we should put up on Iowa Share?” someone asked. The question
alone was a delight to my ears, because it meant that they were paying attention
to our hopes to make IowaShare.org the vehicle for inter-connectedness across the
Diocese. You will find St Paul's Durant's 2014 Plan under the "Success Stories" tab at IowaShare.org.
St Paul’s Durant was the only congregation in Iowa to hold a
referendum on whether to stay within the Diocese of Iowa or become part of a
breakaway that called itself the Anglican Church in North America. The
referendum did not get the super majority vote which was needed for the
congregation as a whole to move out, but more than two-thirds of the
congregation, including most of the younger families, set up a church in a
local lawyer’s office, and are now situated in their own space. Support from
members of the East Chapter, and individual work by Susanne Watson Epting and
Pat Kirkland in developing new leaders among the laity, helped keep them
focused on recovery. The pain of the split remains because this is a small
community and people see each other in their daily lives. One outstanding
effort is D.U.C.K.Y. —Durant’s United Churches for Kids and Youth—a ministry to young people that
continues to this day, with teachers from each church in town, including the
two communities from the Episcopal split, taking turns.
Thanks also to the faithfulness of grandparents in bringing
their grandchildren to church with them, the congregation is enjoying the
sounds and energy of children once again. In fact, I have begun to call out the
grandparents for special attention in my recent visits, especially in the smaller
congregation. Just like Lois of old,
Timothy’s grandmother, these are the quiet evangelists and disciplers of a new
generation. They may have lost the company of their own children in church for
now, but they attempt to introduce their children’s children to the faith and
rituals of the Church. We spoke a bit about faith development and mission
opportunity as older people during our fellowship time. Faith development and
opportunity doesn’t stop in the mid-fifties. As a relatively new senior myself,
I am very aware of my own faith’s development, the fresh perspectives God
brings to me and the constant challenge of new mission.
It was a blessed time at St Paul’s. They acknowledged that
they probably could not bring anyone to the Anthony Robinson Baptismal Living
Day Conference on April 5th, but they had ordered his book and were
intending to study it together. Alice Haugen, their priest in residence, has
been a wonderful presence among them. On the wall of the fellowship hall is a
large flat-screen TV, which is linked to a video camera in the church. They use
the TV for recording and relaying baptisms and weddings, and hope, in the
future, to record audio and potentially video of Mother Alice’s sermons. The
services can be transmitted elsewhere beyond the Church. In other topics
discussed they spoke of bringing a speaker on Human Trafficking into town, and
I was able to share some of the things going on with that ministry, especially
the new work going on in visiting women in jail and finding out more of the
story of trafficking from their experience.
Donna and I brought visitors with us in Bishop Meshack
Mabuza and Lucy. I had asked if he could bring Lucy to an event on Saturday
evening to celebrate the ministry of Deacon Melody Rockwell, and arrange to
stay over the weekend so we could enjoy one another’s company. Donna and Lucy
had not seen each other since the Healing Mission around Iowa almost ten years
ago. They drove back to Des Moines after the service in Durant, and I stayed in
the area for the celebration of new ministry of Lauren Lyon and the people of
Trinity Iowa City.
I also took the opportunity to nip down to Mount Pleasant and pray with Fr.
Gary Coldwell who is in a nursing home there.
The Trinity celebration must have been a great encouragement for their
new Rector as the place was packed with lots of excited and enthusiastic people
representing every generation. There was good support from Chapter clergy as
well as a couple of others from Grinnell, Cedar Falls/Waterloo, Burlington,
Davenport and Dubuque. This is the second time in a row I have seen the former
Rector return to welcome and support the incoming Rector. In fact, it was good
to see Mel and Barbara Schlachter on Saturday night at Cedar Rapids and on
Sunday afternoon.
The weekend began with the Diocesan Board meeting at the
Cathedral in Des Moines. There we heard testimony and a challenge from Kim Gee of St
John’s Shenandoah on investing more energy and resources into our rural
churches. She called for a Rural Summit, and I was glad to be able to tell her
that an invitation along those lines was “in the mail” with the visit of
Anthony Robinson. It also seemed a fitting bookend discussion for the weekend,
as I traveled home from Durant via Iowa City, and thought we should get the
people of St John’s to meet with the people of St Paul’s.
Sermon at St Paul's Episcopal Church, Durant, 9 March 2014
Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7; Romans 5: 12-29;
Matthew 4: 1-11
I love Rowan Williams’s description
of how original sin entangles us. He likens it to the country roads in Wales.
In contrast to the roads of Iowa where apart from one little corner in the
central north east, you cannot really get lost—miss a turn and you can probably
take the next turn and get back on the road you missed—in Wales the roads are
likely to head off in all directions. There is no certainty of a road returning
back on itself. Miss a turn and take the
next one offered and soon you might find yourself in a twisting web of roads
all seemingly having minds of their own.
Sin, says Williams, is a lot like that. It might start with
a simple mistake but there is no certain self- correcting mechanism. One thing
leads to another and soon it becomes a tangled web of deception or self-deception.
Finding our way forward reminds me of the tourist who stopped in a local
village and asked the way to Torquay. “Yes, I know the way to Torquay,” said the local,
“but I wouldn’t go there from here.”
The conversation between God and Adam and Satan and Eve is
intriguing. God said, enjoy fruit from every tree except one. In turn Satan
said, God doesn’t want you to eat of that one because He says you will die—you
won’t die. God knows and is afraid that you will become like God, knowing good
and evil. Your eyes will be opened and God wants to keep you dependent on God’s
guidance and wisdom. He denies you your freedom.
And so they eat. They disobey and indeed their eyes are
opened, but what do they see? Their first awareness is not about good and evil,
but about their nakedness. They see that they are different and they feel
shame. The difference they perceive is not between good and evil, but about
each other. Theologically we call that the alienation of sin. They covered up
from each other and they hid from God. And God’s response was reconciliation.
Looking at the
Genesis reading, I remembered a bible study with the people of Trinity Ottumwa in which we studied this passage. I learned an important lesson from the people
of Trinity in that when I allowed the text to speak to them, amazing insights
would flow from them; but one night I directed their thinking with a simple but
pointed question, inviting them to see what I was seeing, and they were left
not looking for God’s revealing, but my insight. Fortunately the Genesis
passage was not one of those nights. And that night we realized together that
simply having the power of knowledge, even of good and evil, was insufficient
without the wisdom of knowing what to do with it. That is where God wanted to
play a part. It was not about dependence, but about partnership.
We can do all kinds of remarkable things but we do not
always know the true impact of our actions’ significance. We can split atoms—but
then we decide to turn that knowledge into a weapon of mass destruction and
planetary threat. We can create a system of estimating value—but then we decide
to use that system for individual competition and domination of one another.
This, in turn, translates into the realm of international relations. And we
fail to recognize the artificial definition of identity that has arisen as we
limit ourselves to a community of nations based on the value of capital.
As with Adam and Eve, we cannot get over our awareness of
difference. Alienation becomes a new power and creates a new blindness as it
holds us in its grip. “Can’t we all get along,” was the cry at the heart of the
1990s riots in Los Angeles.
“No,” is the answer. We simply cannot, for we are too aware of our differences.
Even good people of faith are still pretty clear why “those others,” whoever
they may be, are not going to heaven! The important cry through the ages is
this, from the end of the seventh chapter of Romans, “Who can deliver us from
this body of death?” Paul goes on to say, “Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord.” Contrasting with the imagery of the Welsh roads, we join in
with the prophets like Isaiah who declare God’s promise that God makes the
crooked roads straight, and creates a highway to our God.
Yes—by one man’s disobedience and unrighteousness, severe
consequences have taken hold of us. Our eyes were opened but we could only see
the surface of things. And yet, by one man’s obedience and righteousness, light
and life have come. In the ancient days baptism was called “enlightenment” for
precisely for this reason. It opened our eyes to the true light, to things in
their profound context and reconciled relation to each other and to God. It was
understood that baptism brought about the effective power of the cross and
resurrection of Jesus Christ to bring forgiveness of our sins and the cleansing
of our past and Adam’s past; and our eyes were opened again. We are not only
born again, we see again, but this time in the accompanying light of Jesus
Christ.
He guides us to see beyond the differences—in Him there is
no male or female—and helps us capture the unity of all things and of all
people. (Again, this has implications for the use of scientific discovery, the
development of international relations and the deployment of financial systems,
but how rarely we dare go there). If we allow it, innocence is returned to us,
and a kind of unselfconsciousness that only comes from being focused on or
conscious of God.
This enlightenment is a new awareness that will always be
tempted or tested. God not only allows that but also insists on it. Jesus was
declared the beloved in whom God was well
pleased only to immediately be sent into the wilderness—led by the Spirit—to
be tempted by Satan.
All the physical tests of relevance (making bread from
stone), celebrity (jumping from the Temple and dazzling people with His power)
and domination (ruling all He could see) were countered by the written Wisdom
of the Unseen One who gives sight. “It is written,” Jesus said in response,
using Scripture to go beyond the surface challenges and to take the
conversation into a deeper place. He invites us to follow Him in the same way;
he invites us to receive a new way of looking at things ever sharpened in the midst
of temptation and distraction, by the Presence within us of the Wisdom and
Teaching of the Living Word of God. He
always sees to the heart of things and not its surface; He sees that we are all
made to be One for we come from the One God and Creator of all things. And He
invites us to a new way of having our eyes truly opened.
Amen
Sermon on the occasion of celebrating new ministry with
Lauren Lyon at Trinity, Iowa City,
9 March 2014
Numbers 11: 16-17; Romans 12:1-8; John 15:
9-16
Looking over this crowded congregation, I would say that I am
very impressed if it wasn’t for Spring Forward! [Note: This sermon was given on the first day of Daylight Saving
Time when clocks were turned forward one hour.] But I am sure that most of you
are enjoying your second trip to Church today. What a joy for your new Rector
to receive this support and be lifted by this sense of excitement. I would add
how grateful I am for the tone being set in our liturgy as well. Jim Collins— the business theorist—speaks of the significance of the Flywheel Effect.
Good companies become great because of their consistent persistence on a theme.
They find the product they produce well, and stick with it. People come and go,
but the wheel of their productive identity keeps spinning, and with it the
growth of their prosperity.
I am struck by the contrast of behaviors when we consider
the Church. Too many times even when a congregation has a good sense of
ministry direction and the wheel is spinning fast, they will slow it down to a
stop just to wait and see what the new Rector wants to do. We then let him or
her give the first next push, but momentum has been lost. Sometimes it is a
push in the same direction, other times it changes direction, but one way or
another the momentum of mission has been slowed; the flywheel is stopped.
I sense none of that here today. That is both a credit to
your leadership in the transition and to Ben Webb who served with you as
Interim Rector. And so to all of you I say that you together, with your new
Rector, have been called—and called to nothing new. You are called because you
are chosen just as you chose Lauren and called her—to do the will of God and
know together the joy of Jesus in all its completeness.
The flywheel has not been slowed; rather your Rector has
come alongside you, having interviewed you even as she was being interviewed,
and having chosen you even as you were choosing her. In this mutual act of
discerning prayer you both decided that this is the people whose zeal for God is
worth working with. I hope you took my advice of a couple of weeks ago and took
Lauren by the arm as she entered the building and invited her to “come and join
us as we go out to serve God and God’s beloved creation beyond this place.” The
flywheel is still going round fast.
According to your reading in Romans, there is specific work
for each of us to do in this. And perhaps Lauren’s work is the more obvious
piece, because you have already defined a pretty steady place for her in the
community. She is, after all, a priest— she gathers the people around God’s
altar, and together in various other places—and points to the source of our
deeper life. She may, however, have particular gifts beyond this general
calling to which she was ordained, and as a baptized member of Christ’s body I
urge you to give her room to offer them. This, I think, is the missing link in
baptismal ecclesiology, a link which would prevent pitting clergy with laity
which can often seem to happen among those who urge that ministry is a product
of all the baptized— which, by the way, it is. The ordained, however, are also
the baptized and their specific call to ordained ministry has come from that
source. But they also have specific passions and gifts of the Spirit to offer
as the baptized which they would offer if ordained or not. And we should invite
that gift to be offered and I hope you will do so with your new Rector.
Lauren knows that her job is to place as many of you as she
can within the tent of the Holy One, as Numbers indicates, and to pray for the
Spirit of God to come upon you all in sharing the call to leadership, of
caring, of wisdom and guidance and empowerment. It is important for us all to
try out what gifts God has within us. Again, Collins speaks of great
organizations as those who get the right people on the bus. It does not matter
where the journey actually takes you, the right people can adapt and remain
productive, even be interchangeable, wherever the bus takes you.
As Church we tend to think that one structure fits all. If
it was good enough for the Church of the eighteenth century to have certain
guilds or offices or committee structure then it is good enough and essential
on our part to replicate it. And we do this regardless of the Spirit’s gifts of
the people in our time. So we seek volunteers—even if we have to squeeze the
proverbial square peg in the round hole—when instead we should be seeking
vocations. Vocations are not only reserved for ordained ministry, but also include
all the baptized. We should be free to assess at any given time who is called
or on whom do we perceive a call, and then devise the system or structure
around the gifts presented for a given time. This is how the Church is renewed.
This is how the prayer we so wonderfully prayed as our collect today is
fulfilled in which we thanked God for God’s Church that wonderful mystery in
which things old are being made new, and things cast down are being raised up.
The flywheel keeps on turning when we allow room for the Spirit of God to be
pushing it, and when we let the shape of our ministry structure follow suit to
our giftedness.
Finally, it will not be Lauren’s vision that will lead the
way. Vision is also shared—even though it is often a distinct gift of a Rector,
though not of every priest, to be “vision people.” They often carry a marked
ability to articulate the vision of the whole. It is part of that call to be a
person who gathers. The Rector often gathers the various strands from each and
every one that make up God’s strategic vision for your mission together. It is
part of what comes from standing she they does, at the center of the altar,
presiding at the people’s celebration of God’s grace.
Having said that, however, all of us—Lauren included—are
asked to hear the words of St John that we haven’t done the choosing, nor have
we really done the visioning. For there is One who loves us, who calls us and has
chosen us to fulfil God’s purpose in Jesus Christ to make of us, as Christ’s
Body, an agency that reconciles the world to God. For this fruitful outcome we
are chosen, called and sent.
We do this by the honoring of one another; by not claiming
or thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought; by the humble offering of
ourselves to God while honoring the blessed offering of our neighbors. All of
this is happening among friends—fiends who tell each other what they are going
to do. Jesus has no secret agenda and neither should we. We need not fear if we
will fit in or have our place in the new arrangement. In the end it is God’s
vision and mission Jesus seeks to fulfil through those who are His through
baptism. The mission of the Church is about humility—the humility of being a
loving people.
Out of Loving, everything else flows—the pastoral care, the
healing touch, the exhorting words of sermons and study, the availability for
late night conversations and prayers, the celebration of lives lived, the
honoring of achievements, the readiness and compassion to meet people with
Jesus on the streets, the willingness to look out for those on the margins and
to think about those easily forgotten or neglected—all that makes for God’s
reconciling mission through you and now through you with your new Rector,
Lauren.
Receive such Divine Love, build your life and its structures
around it as the gifts it produces present themselves; place yourself in the
tent and say together “Come, Holy Spirit, come.”
Amen
