Flying in from the Episcopal Youth Event (EYE) very late on Friday night, I was not sure what state I would be in as I
met with clergy from the Metro Chapter for clericus Saturday morning, and then
with the laity for the Chapter Conversation with the Bishop Saturday afternoon.
I warned the people of St Luke’s that sometimes I carry over the
energetic spirit of these kinds of events into Sunday morning, and so they
should not be surprised if I suddenly shout out “How’s it going Episcopalians?”
A dozen senior-high students from the Diocese of Iowa attended EYE on the
campus of Villanova University, Philadelphia. It was a stroll down memory lane for me, as my daughter
attended Villanova and I found myself recalling the many trips we made during
those four years, first from LA and then from Iowa—especially the different
halls from which we packed and unpacked loaded vans. I think people were ready
to say: “Yes, we know. Your daughter went here.” As things went on Sunday at
St. Luke’s, I was quite controlled. The experience with the youth, however, did
have its impact upon my choice of direction for the sermon.
I confirmed a couple of young people with significant
connections with the life of St Luke’s. One was Elizabeth Elfvin the
grand-daughter of long-term Rector Robert Elfvin. Robert’s wife Karen was
present but Robert was unable to make the long trip from Ely, Minnesota.
The other young confirmand was Benjamin Russell, the son of Jeff Russell, who
played a prominent part as Senior Warden in the lengthy transition process
after Robert’s retirement before the congregation settled on Martha Kester as
Rector, even as she was about to be called up for active duty as chaplain to
the Iowa National Guard in Afghanistan.
Sometimes being Senior Warden during such times can be very wearing on a
person, and there was a sense of closure to those days as we prayed for God’s
strengthening for service on the next generation. For their standing with
Martha during her time in Afghanistan, the congregation received a Patriot Award (given to employers who support service members). I was mindful of my gratitude
to Ben Webb for stepping in as an interim while Martha was away.
The congregation has, I think, gone through some changes but
with the presence of a wide range across the generations and a noticeable
number of young adults among them, there is an expectation of growing into
renewal and a new day. St Luke’s had been a center for the Angel Food Ministry,
a program that has stopped. They continue, however, their concern for the needy
through an extensive buddy backpack ministry, as well as support for ministry
in Haiti and Kenya. On the Sunday after my visitation, the congregation was
anticipating a visiting priest from Kenya who directs The Ekklesia Foundation for Gender Education, a leading advocate “for equality and
gender justice from a biblical perspective in Africa and Kenya.” Martha’s
ongoing work as chaplain to the Iowa Guard, with its requirements for monthly
training, brings its own connections and emphases at St Luke’s. I hope that the
Young Adult Ministry Development Team will find opportunity to work with the
congregation both in terms of its ability to gather young adults beyond college
as well as increase a focus on work at neighboring Drake University. In
October, the church is hosting a marriage retreat with the interesting title of
“Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage.” I encourage them to be bolder in making
their creative offerings known throughout the Metro Chapter.
Sermon at St Luke’s, Des Moines
I have just returned from the Episcopal Youth Event in
Philadelphia and so please forgive me if I break out into clapping, iphone
light waving, and the occasional “So, how’s it going, Episcopalians!” If people
wonder about the state of the Church today, they should not worry about God
working among our young people. They want to praise, they want to pray and they
want to serve; and they have signatory scriptures—God’s word that guides them.
I sat in a class of forty high-schoolers who were in a workshop on how to
discern God’s will, and how to learn to meditate and journal on God’s word. It
was stunning to interact with them.
The sower is sowing the seed and the richness of the harvest
depends upon the preparation of the soil into which it has been cast. And maybe
we have to notice that we older end might be the very stones that create the
shallow dirt—that we don’t let the roots grow deep enough for our young
people’s growth as they face the resistance. Or perhaps we are the thistles and
weeds that clog their joy and faith, exuberance and vision, as they come from
events like EYE or Happening and their life in Christ shoots up, ready to
flower?
Now this is nothing personal about you. Nor is it a comment
about this community. You just happen to be my first visit after EYE! And the
images are fresh before me and I know that we have an obligation as the
ministry support and fellow members in Christ to be nutrients and
life-givers—faith-growers to the newly baptized and recently confirmed, as well
as to one another, including your priest and bishop.
In other words, we need each other. We need to respect that
there is nothing automatic about the Kingdom of God’s appearance. There is a
resistant force that we call evil—prowling around like a lion—Peter says in
that sentence we use for compline—seeking whom he can devour! That is why the
five marks of mission are so important, and I was glad to see that at least
among our young people an effort is being made to immerse them in them. You can
learn them on one hand, using your five fingers: Tell; Teach; Tend; Transform;
Treasure.
To the prowling devil we can say in Christ’s Name—“not on
our patch; not down our street. Get behind me Satan!” The struggle is as old as
the early patriarchal history of our Hebrew roots.
Esau and Jacob fighting in their mother’s womb; an image
declared as prophesy of two warring nations to be. These are the scary parts of
Scripture especially as we see back into the days of the Patriarchs, beginning
in fact with Abraham and Sarah and Isaac, and Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael and
see a long view only too real at least over these past fourteen hundred years.
Of course, we do not have a direct prophetic prediction about Christianity and
Islam—even though the players’ line of descent seems to coincide. We do,
however, have an early dispute of primary origin which can lay claim to or be
taken for a new global faith fight. The roaring lion in fact doesn’t take sides
but looks on with glee when the opportunity presents itself to have us devour
one another. That is the point of God’s call to us to be alert and aware. To be
careful how we tend the garden of our souls.
It is why we must make our children aware and alert that
this walk of faith requires close attention. I say this as I think about
confirmation, and the tendency to want to engage our children in the process
before they are ready. Sometimes it is our adult needs that prevail rather than
where they may be in their own reckoning and wrestling with the faith. For it
is when all of us, regardless of our age, can recognize and claim the truth
that “being justified by faith, we have peace with God” that we have the
foundation to declare Jesus as Savior and Lord, and make the life commitment to
follow Him as such—reaffirming our renunciation of evil and promising to make a
life-long vow to celebrate and serve God as long as we have breath and until we
see God face-to-face. To this end we can then commit to tell the faith; teach
others in it; tend to the sick and needy; seek the transformation of our human
systems into that which reflects the love of God’s reign; and treasure every
aspect of our life as a gift both personally and environmentally.
Think for a moment of Martha’s commitment to the Iowa Guard.
She is no longer in Afghanistan surrounded by the dangers of that experience.
Yet every month she is to be found at Camp Dodge in training—always being made
ready for whatever her nation might ask of her. When she excuses herself from
the Clericus group on a Saturday or is not able to attend a Chapter meeting
even in her own church, she wrote to me, “The Army is not a flexible
organization.”
Nor, I would imagine, would we want it to be. Can you
imagine the following command: “There’s an attack on our left flank—if you are
able or feel so obliged, I would appreciate it if you could go out there and
push them back a bit. Of course, to those of you who feel like it right now, your
nation thanks you.”
But what about the rocks and thistles of our faith life—the
attention needed to be paid to the preparedness of the good soil that bears
fruit? What about the discipline required of us all to grow spiritual fruits,
listed by Paul in Galatians as “kindness, love, peace, humility, gentleness,
hope, steadfastness, joy?”
At its best have we turned the Kingdom of God into a
proselytizing agency, and at its worst a social club? God’s highest purpose is
for the Kingdom to be a place in which human beings and human community reflect
the fullness of God’s character of self-sacrificial love. And that takes our
full attention and effort. The Spirit continues to seek lives that can be
transformed and transforming. We are always invited to be justified by faith
and thus at peace with God so that out of that very same peace our children can
learn the faith and thrive within it too. All of us are invited to share in the
experiences of common growth in the knowledge and love of God in Jesus Christ.
To that end we are invited to prepare the soil for ourselves and for those who
come after us. It is the action of the whole Church growing together.
We need to be as prepared for the mission of God as our
soldiers are for their national missions. Are we ready to give our formation in
faith, our discipleship as followers of Christ, our full commitment, and to do
it as young and older together, not fighting for birthrights, but honoring with
expectancy what God will do with one another in telling, teaching, tending,
transforming and treasuring this life we have been graciously given?
Amen.
