Dedication Sunday

 

September 13, 2020

 

Genesis 28.10-17; 1 Peter 2.1-5,9-11

 

+ Well, what can I say about Dedication Sunday this year?

 

What can I say about the uniqueness of this past year and where we are right now?

 

Usually, my Dedication Sunday sermon is a sort of “State of the Union” address.

 

We usually discuss where we are and what we have done.

 

But this year…well, there’s never been a year like this in the history of St. Stephen’s.

 

But, this is what I am going to say on this Dedication Sunday, during this pandemic, during this time of strangeness.

 

If you ever doubted that St. Stephen’s and the larger Church are resilient, those doubts should be gone now.

 

When we look back to where we were in March, when it all began, we went from one Sunday at which we had almost 45 people in church, to the next Sandy when we had 5.

 

But before you despair over that, just remember this: while other churches closed, while other churches stopped worshipping together, we did not.

 

We did not miss a beat during this time.

 

Those five people—James, John, our Wardens Jean and Jessica and myself—we kept it going.

 

And you kept it going as well by joining us through that new=fangled social medium—livestreaming.

 

It was strange.

 

It was new.

 

And for me, it was (and still is) frustrating.

 

But it kept us going.

 

And…amazingly…it opened us up to a whole new opportunity as the church.

 

In no time at all, we had as many as 70 to 75 people worshipping with us on a Sunday.

 

And not just St. Stephen’s people.

 

We had people joining us from around the country and around the world.

 

Even as far away as Kenya.

 

As Holy Week approached, we still worshipped, doing all  of our most important liturgies.

 

We still did Stations of the Cross on Fridays during Lent (which, let me tell you, is not easy to do with only a priest and a camera).

 

And let me tell you, there is nothing more desolate and despairing than preaching my Easter sermon to a church in which there were no people in the pews.

 

But it was amazing the preach to 150+ people by social media.

 

But still, despite that, we—all of us—celebrated Christ’s resurrection this year with as much joy as we could muster.

 

This time of pandemic reminds me, in many ways, of another bleak time for me personally.

 

10 years yesterday, we also celebrated Dedication Sunday.

 

2010 was one of the first years in which we had seen some real growth, some real long-lasting changes here at St. Stephen’s.

 

It had been an amazing year

 

Then, on Tuesday, September 14, the Feast of the Holy Cross, my father died very suddenly and without warning.

 

Many of you remember that day and many of you walked with me through the very dark time.

 

I was in shock.

 

I suddenly became the head of my family in a way in which I was not prepared.

 

My mother was devastated and lost, and I now had to take care of her, a job I actually ended up cherishing, but at the time I felt ill-equipped to do.

 

And, here at St. Stephen’s, I was in the midst of a cycle of funerals.

 

On Sept. 12, Florence Anderson died.

 

I officiated at her funeral two days after my father died.

 

I still remember breaking down in my sermon and wasn’t sure if I’d recover enough to finish the Mass (I did).

 

Then, on Sept 16, Hale Laybourn.

 

The next day, on the 17^th, Ruth Stickney died.

 

On Sept. 20, Marlys Lundberg’s son, Tracy Ford, died suddenly.

 

I also officiated at two weddings that month and two the following month.

 

Plus, I was also working at the Diocesan Office part-time.

 

I remember feeling at moments as though I was drowning

 

It was an overwhelming time.

 

And there were moments I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep going.

 

In some ways, that is exactly what this pandemic has been like.

 

It’s been overwhelming and frightening.

 

Senior Warden Jean Sando made a very astute observation the other day when she said that we now essentially have two congregations.

 

We have the congregation that meets here in this building.

 

And we have the virtual congregation.

 

If you don’t believe me, just look at this morning.

 

We have new member joining St. Stephen’s this morning who don’t live anywhere near here.

 

But they worship here—virtually—every Sunday.

 

I know it’s hard for us to fathom these things.

 

It’s hard to accept and understand what all this means.

 

But we need to be open minded enough to realize these are the changes that are happening.

 

Because if we don’t do that, the Church will die.

 

This is not the time for us to be set in our ways.

 

This is not the time for us to think “I personally have it all figured out and I don’t like this new way of doing Church—and being the Church.”

 

That’s death talk.

 

That’s toxic thinking.

 

That will bring about the end of the Church and St Stephen’s.

 

It’s a whole new way of doing Church.

 

But, I do want to remind you of all those sermons I preached over the years about this.

 

I warned that the Church was changing and that we had to be prepared.

 

I preached it again and again.

 

Remember all those times people may have frowned at me or shook their heads at me when I did things like officiating at Baptisms outside the Sunday morning Mass.

 

Let me tell you: I received flak for that for years.

 

Well, doing that prepared us for where we are now.

 

We have done almost as many baptisms this year already during the pandemic as we do in a normal year.

 

Well, here we are.

 

And thankfully, we as a congregation, were essentially prepared.

 

To be fair, I didn’t quite imagine it this way.

 

But this is what it is.

 

And we were able to step up and the be the Church during an insanely difficult time.

 

One would think a pandemic would mean that the church would go into hibernation.

 

Not so here.

 

I personally have never been busier.

 

And it didn’t slow down once during the pandemic.

 

It was exhausting.

 

And exhilarating.

 

And it shows another thing we have heard from this pulpit for years:

 

The Church is not what it contained within these walls.

 

The Church is all of us together, being the Church wherever we are.

 

This is where we are on this Dedication Sunday of 2020.

 

It’s different than we were last year.

 

And who knows where we will be next year.

 

And you know what?

 

Despite the pandemic, despite the division we are experiencing in this country right now, we are able to say: it’s not so bad.

 

We have done better than we even  imagined during this time.

 

In fact, we are still flourishing.

 

We are still growing.

 

We are still being who we are.

 

And if you doubt that, look no further than our new refurbished labyrinth.

 

In so many ways, that labyrinth is a symbol for us of who we are here.

 

A Labyrinth is a prayer walk with God symbolic of our life.

 

Parishioners here like our beloved Jim Coffey and others saw that vision 20 years ago.

 

They saw what that labyrinth represented.

 

The labyrinth shows the twists and turns of our lives.

 

It shows us that God truly does laugh at the plans we make.

 

But it also shows us that the path we walk is already marked out by God.

 

As we look back at our 64 years here, that describes us perfectly.

 

And as we look at our  own life journey, that describes it perfectly as well.

 

This labyrinth, that has become a spiritual magnet to so many people, is very much symbolic of who we are as St. Stephen’s.

 

We too are spiritual magnet.

 

We can say, in all honest, that God is here at St. Stephen’s.

 

We see it in all that God has done.

 

I very proudly boast of all that God has done here.

 

I have no qualms about boasting about what all of us are doing here at St. Stephen’s.

 

In our wonderful reading this morning from St. Peter, we find him saying,

 

“Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.”

 

When we look around us this morning, as we celebrate 64 years of this unique, spiritual powerhouse of a congregation, we realize that truly we are on the receiving end of a good amount of mercy.

 

We realize that mercy from God has descended upon us in this moment.

 

And it is a truly glorious thing.

 

So, what do we do in the face of glorious things?

 

We rejoice!

 

We give thanks to our God!

 

And, as unbelievable as it might seem at times, we cannot take it any of it for granted.

 

We must use this opportunity we have been given.

 

We realize that it is not enough to receive mercy.

 

We must, in turn, give mercy.

 

We, this morning, are being called to echo what St. Peter said to us in our reading this morning.

 

We, God’s own people, are being called to “proclaim

the mighty acts of [God] who called [us] out of

darkness into [that] marvelous light.”

 

We proclaim these mighty acts by our own acts.

 

We proclaim God’s acts through mercy, through ministry, through service to others, through the worship we give here and virtually and in the outreach we do from here.

 

I love being the cheerleader for St. Stephen’s.

 

Because it’s so easy to do.

 

God is doing wonderful things here through each of us, even now.

 

Even in a pandemic.  

 

Each of us is the conduit through which God’s mercy and love is being manifested.

 

In our collect for this morning, we prayed to God that “all who seek you here [may] find you, and be filled with your joy and peace…”

 

That prayer is being answered in our very midst today.

 

That joy is being proclaimed in what we do today.

 

And although it may seem unbelievable at times, this is truly how God works in our midst.

 

God works in our midst by allowing us to be that place in which God is found, a place in which joy and peace and mercy dwell.

 

So, let us continue to receive God’s mercy and, in turn, give God’s mercy to others.

 

Let us be a place in which mercy dwells.

 

Because when we do we will find ourselves, along with those who come to us, echoing the words of Jacob from our reading in the Hebrew Scriptures this morning,

 

“How awesome is this place! This is none

other than the house of God, and this is the gate of

heaven.”

 

 

Let us pray.

Holy and loving God, we are thankful to you this morning for guiding us through the twists and turns of this life. We are thankful for the sixty-four years of ministry that have been performed for you here. And we are thankful for your protection and blessing during this time of pandemic. Continue to be with us. Continue to guide us and continue to be the source of our strength so that we may continue to dwell in this your house and be the gate of heaven. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.