“If there is a low Sunday for us, it is probably Easter Day
rather than the Sunday afterward,” one parishioner told me. Seeing that the
attendance was about the same for Easter 2 as it was a week earlier, this
seemed to be a reasonable assessment. It would also appear to be an
understandable experience for churches in small towns that have a significant
liberal arts college. Grace Episcopal Church in Decorah takes its rhythm from the academic year of Luther College. It has not always been a worshipping destination for Episcopal students who
attend the Lutheran facility, but Episcopalians who teach or are part of the
administration have found a constant church home at Grace. Their willingness to
pursue the Ministry Development Team approach to ministry and leadership over
this past decade has paid dividends. The congregation before me on Sunday was a
microcosm of every demographic that tends to be found seeking God through the
Episcopal Church, except in this case it seemed that there was one example of
each kind! It is a place of great singing, or “participation” as the organist
put it. A number of the members come from the music department at Luther and it
shows. I also met a couple of religious department faculty who, as a former
Pentecostal and a former Southern Baptist, are just the kind of married couple
you’d expect to discover their place in the Episcopal Church. Together with
their young child, and one on the way, they provide the young family
demographic representation for the Church!
As I prepared for a portion of my sermon to include a recent
Ted Talk
I had heard on the subject of education, I forgot that I
would be addressing a group of people for whom education was their life’s
blood. Maybe it was fortunate that they had been willing to switch around the
worship and the fellowship times! That switch was a great help in managing the
travel time from Des Moines, which, as it was, required a 6am start. Once again
people seemed to appreciate the opportunity to sit and chat before we went
upstairs to worship. There weren’t any pressing matters, though we wondered a
little bit about the right timing for exploring a second generation of a
ministry development team. That was probably more my topic of conversation than
theirs. The people commended the team and how much they had grown in leading
the worship these past few years. That confidence was very evident as we went
to prayer.
I was moved by an apparent refusal to rush during the
service. Ironically I had spoken about how in the course of liturgical
development some lesser liturgies had been formed to bridge movement in the
service from one location to another. Often there had been a tendency for such
liturgies—or soft tissue—to fossilize and become rigid traditions even when
their original purpose had passed on. Yet here I was experiencing a willingness
to let silence reign, for example, at the presentation of the gifts. The hymn
had ended and in the silence, four people walked up the aisle—two with
offertory plates, one with bread, and a fourth with wine. The gifts were
offered and each was received with its own offertory sentence. The oblation
bearers acted also as acolytes, with the one bearing wine and water offering
wine first across the altar, and then the water with the much dignity. As the
monetary gifts were presented, we said the customary “All things come of you, O
Lord,” and then the four moved back to their seats—all in absolute and unrushed
silence. We were ready for Eucharist. Now perhaps this is something fitting for
a small sanctuary. It certainly caught my attention.
Grace Decorah stands at one of the corners of the Diocese.
It is 210 miles from Des Moines, and is probably the second-longest trip for me
as bishop. Nevertheless, it is not isolated from the Diocese. Priests from Its
ministry development team serve Charles City, and I expect will also serve
neighboring Church of the Savior in Clermont in the future after Kate Campbell
retires. Luther College attracts Episcopal students and faculty members and as
such is an important gathering place for leadership. Sean Burke, another
professor from Luther and an Episcopal priest, also travels most Sundays to St
James independence. I am often guilty of only thinking about the potential
impact of larger congregations as the sustaining source for smaller communities,
but Grace reminds me that you can become a significant hub anywhere. You just
have to have a wider view of yourselves and the possibilities that God can work
through you. What may have started out as a survival gesture—Ministry
development—is turning out to be a vital life-giver. What can happen if we
begin to be more intentional about the gathering of Episcopal presence and its
proclivity towards Episcopal leadership at Luther and Grace in Decorah?
Sermon at Grace, Decorah—27 April 2014
This week I was sent a link to a Ted Talk by Ellen
Bruckner, who many of you know in her support of your Ministry Development
Team. The subject matter was the education system, and the question posed was
“What is a school for?” What is the purpose of schools? To underscore his
point, he opened with a familiar greeting—“Good morning, everybody!” To which
he invited the response: “Good morning Mr. Godin.” He noted how we all knew how
to respond and that we had been taught to do that from an early age as part of
our formal education. “Order and obedience,” he said, were the goals of the
school system. He then went on to highlight other school traditions, including the
use of the #2 pencil, which may have had good intentions when first introduced,
but lost their purpose as they became stalwart aspects of school life.
Institutionalization and the needs of the institution have taken over, and the
original intent of education is being lost, he claimed. And he wondered who was
asking the fundamental question: What is the purpose of our schools?
Of course, you can imagine Ellen’s take on this as she asked
how much of this relates to the church!
Have we lost sight of the purpose of the Church, and have we
allowed customs and traditions, which may have begun with limited purpose, to
become more significant than important, and precisely so as the needs of the
institutionalization have grown? Now I know that this is true as a pattern for
liturgical action. There was a study on the development of liturgy in the
Eastern rite Churches, in which lesser liturgies were created to cover
necessary movement or action during the Great Liturgy. For example, churches in
the early days had baptismal fonts that were in a different building. Liturgies
were written to cover the procession outside and back again with candidates. In
time, everything was located within the church, but the chanting for the little
procession continued even though the action was no longer carried out. Maybe
liturgical reform has helped reduce these things, but the process of hardening
what we might call ‘soft tissue’ of our common life and perhaps losing more
essential aspects is a pattern still with us.
So forgive me for asking the obvious: Why are we gathered
today? One fundamental response needs always to be placed before us.
An Orthodox priest friend of mine had asked to use St
Barnabas for a Sunday afternoon liturgy. He built a beautiful iconostasis on
hinges which could be pulled out from the walls to create that mysterious line
between sanctuary and chancel. He dressed the altar with a gold brocade frontal
and dressed himself in fine vestments. The congregation average on a Sunday was
three and that included his deacon and sometimes his mother and father. One day
I asked him if he did not get disheartened at the poor turnout. “God is here,”
he said. “My responsibility is to worship God with heart, soul and mind, and to
offer praise and thanksgiving for His goodness and mercy. That is all that is
important.”
As I say—we need to begin with this fundamental purpose of
being gathered. God is with us and we address everything to God—our prayers,
our praise, our thanks, and we listen to God’s word to us. It is not about us,
but about God—this is an essential first principle of the life of the Church,
and one we easily forget. This is also a fundamental point to be carried over
into our daily lives—creating our routines for prayer, stopping to give thanks,
recognizing God among us and in one another—and it is something we gather to
encourage each other to grow into as life stretches before us.
Secondly, we gather to remind each other of these things.
Are we therefore so arranged as we come together to do this? Does what we do
bring us into the presence of God—make us more God mindful—and does it afford
us the opportunity to feel and know the Divine? We need to keep our liturgical
life fresh, and our opportunity for meaningful conversation in the assembly
accessible.
The passages of Scripture for today add another dimension to
the purpose of the Church.
Peter in Acts declares that “this Jesus (whom you crucified)
God raised from the dead. And of that we are witnesses.” The early Church was
witness to an historical miracle, and was accountable to give voice to it. They
also lived long enough to see their testimony pass on to a new generation—one
that had not seen and yet had believed just as they had not seen but had
learned to love, as Peter writes.
Placing that statement alongside the more familiar story of
Thomas shed a new light for me on John’s purpose for both that story and other
aspects of his Gospel.
Often we concentrate on Thomas’ doubting and questioning and
we use this Sunday to evaluate or even encourage ourselves in our hesitancy in
embracing the resurrection. We think about his realism which Jesus is willing
to confront with a special appearance complete with the invitation for Thomas
to place his fingers in the nail holes and into the pierced side. But it is what
comes next that is the clincher for me. “You have believed because you have
seen. But blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” Blessed, in
other words, are the likes of you and me as the faith community spreads out
through the centuries. That is the fresh miracle of the Church—that the witness
of eyewitnesses becomes transferred into the belief and witness of those who
have not seen and it creates followers and lovers of God through Jesus Christ
to this present day.
It is something to do also with what Jesus did when he first
appeared to the disciples—as he said “Receive the Spirit” and you will be able
to pass on this gift of forgiveness and new life along the generations. You
will also pass on this giving of the Spirit!
When people talk to me about closing churches, or especially
when they tell me how they have calculated how many years they have to live as
a community because of the rate their endowment is being eaten up, I know that
they have forgotten their purpose as a Church of God, and I wonder if they have
also forgotten their faith. For in the end, it really does not matter if an
institution closes or not, but that a community of faithful disciples continues
and draws strength and courage to carry out this witness to the Risen Christ,
and to the inner life of devotion and gratitude to God. In that sense, maybe
Ellen’s pointer is in the right direction.
I couldn’t fully identify with the TED Talk speaker because
I did not recognize fully the educational system he was describing. I was
raised with a tutor and an optional opportunity to attend lectures. The purpose
of my weekly educational endeavors was to pursue knowledge, focused knowledge,
to its frontiers if possible. My days were my own except for the weekly check-in
with my tutor and the huge subject matter I was expected to pursue. Education
was never divorced from my personal formation, nor even from the expectation of
a growing sense of vocation. I was also raised in a Church that focused on
mission and on developing in each of us a faith that was about God’s revelation
and God’s purposes for the world and for each of us. It was never about
perpetuating the system, but using the system to best perpetuate the formation
of faith and mission—which was seen as an extension of the will and purpose of
God.
Maintaining this sense of freshness in this aspect of our
faith is a great challenge. To this end I would ask: What is the purpose of the
Church?
As a way forward I would invite you to consider the witness
of the evangelists—Peter and John. They describe us as a people who have been
given a new heart; a living hope; an imperishable inheritance—all through our
Lord Jesus Christ. This is Peter’s witness. John adds that he writes that we
might know Jesus Christ and in so knowing have eternal life. We are the blessed
who believe even though we have not seen, and as such are more blessed than
Thomas or Peter or John.
How can we become such witnesses? How can we remain
faithful? How can we reshape our priorities or perceptions of our purpose to
maximize the potential of such a call to witness? “Receive the Spirit.”
Amen
