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.  

 

 

14 Pentecost

 

September 6, 2020

 

Romans 13.8-14; Matthew 18. 15-20

 

+ A few Sundays ago I preached about the conversation between Jesus and Peter in that morning’s Gospel reading.

 In Matthew 16: 16, Peter professed his belief that Jesus was the “Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

 In my sermon, I mentioned that there were several different interpretations of what all this meant.

 One of the more popular beliefs was the Roman Catholic belief that Jesus was, in fact, founding the Church on Peter whom they claim to be the first Pope and giving to him and his successors the power to bind and loose.

 And for people who hold that view, the Roman Church and the Pope have full authority to bind and loose.

 Now, although I have respect for the Roman Catholic Church, there is much I disagree with as well.

 I do not believe in any way that what Jesus is establishing that Gospel reading was a Pope.

 But with all of what have heard and learned from our pondering of Matthew 16.16, we now need to tackle our Gospel reading for today.

 In today’s Gospel, we find that the power to bind and loose was not given just to Peter, but to all Jesus’s followers.

 After talking about his followers  who have disagreements with each other and how they should resolve their differences, he goes on to say:

 “Truly I tell you [and he is speaking to all his followers at this time] whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

 He goes on to say: “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

 This is very important to us.

 Because when Jesus gave that power to bind and loose to all his followers, he didn’t just give it those followers who were with him that day.

 He gave that power to all Christians, throughout all time.

 He gave that power to us, as well, here and now.

 And because there are, in fact, more than two or three gathered here this morning, even virtually, Jesus truly is in the midst of us—his Church.

 We, being the Church, have that power to bind and loose and it is quite the power.

 Take a moment and just think about what it is Jesus is giving us authority to do.

 What we bind on earth, will be bound in heaven.

 And what we loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven.

 This is some incredible power.

 We as followers of Jesus have the power, in a very real sense, to control not only what is here on earth, but that control carries over into heaven.

 Still, it’s confusing, this concept of binding and loosing.

 What is it Jesus is talking about when means binding and loosing?

 Probably the best way to try to understand it is to put it in the context of Jesus’s own time.

 For Jewish rabbis in Jesus’s time, "binding" the Law meant they were able to apply it to a particular situation.

 They “loosed” the Law when it was not able to be applied to situation.

 There were some situations that the Law was clear about, and  they could not be loosened.

 But there were also grey areas in life where the Law wasn’t so clear and, as a result, the rabbis had to figure out if the Law could be applied to it.

 They made the decision about whether it was binding and loosening.

 For us, this passage isn’t quite so clear.

 For us, “binding” and “loosening” don’t mean the same things as they did to Jesus’s followers.

 Still, we are able to grasp, in some way, what Jesus is getting at.

 The simple fact is this: what we do here on earth, really does make a difference with God.

 And that, as Christians, as followers of Jesus, what we do has great power.

 Because when we gather together, Jesus is in our midst and what we do together becomes an act of Christ.

 We have been given the power the bind and loose—however we might understand those terms.

 And we can use (or mis-use) a power like this.

 But, there is one motivating factor behind all binding and loosing.

 And we find this motivating factor spoken to us in our reading from Paul’s Letter to the Romans today.

 There we find the summary of this same Law that binds or loosens.

 The summary of this Law is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.

 And here we find the truly binding experience of Christianity.

 Our job as Christians is not to nit-pick about what should be bound and what should be loosened.

 Our job as Christians is to make sure that we love each other as we love ourselves.

 Love, after all, is the ultimate experience of binding.

 And Christian love, because Jesus has given us this power to loosen and bind, has a power that few other loves have.

 The love we have as Christians is more than just a love for each other here on earth.

 This love that we have is a love that binds itself even in heaven.

 And this is why we can’t allow anything else other than love in ourselves.

 That’s why we cannot allow feelings like hatred into our lives.

 Just as love is the ultimate binding experience, hatred is the ultimate loosening experience.

 And hatred for others, or for ourselves, loosens us and that loosening experience is also loosened in heaven.

 God does pay attention to what we feel and what we do.

 God does notice when we do not love—when we do not love others, or ourselves.

God is aware in this age of racism and division what is in our hearts.

 And God is not happy with it, as we all know.

 Racism is a sin, plain and simple.

 It has its core in hatred.

 Hatred for another race.

 Hatred for a race other than ours.

 And that is not God’s intent for us.

 God does not want us to feel anything other than love for others, and for ourselves.

 Because in loving each other, in loving ourselves, we are loving God, who is present in our midst—who is present with us and within us.

 And that perfect balance is what gives us a glimpse of the Kingdom of God in our midst.

 The Kingdom of God, as elusive and vague as it might seem at times, is a place of balance.

 This much we do know.

 The Kingdom of God in our midst involves catching a glimpse of the balance that comes when we love each other and ourselves.

 Our job as Christians is always, always, always to love.

 Love should always win out over hatred and racism.

 If we love fully, as we are commanded to do by Jesus, we have no place for hatred and racism.

 So, because we, as Episcopalians, believe that Jesus founded the Church not just on the Rock of Peter, but on Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God,  and because we believe that the power to bind and loose was not only given to the Pope, but to all of us who are Christians, we need to take stock of the words that come out of our mouths and the emotions we feel in our hearts

 We need to let love always win out.

 We need to know that if we bind we must bind in love and if we loosen we must loosen also in love.

 And by doing so, what we do in love on earth, will be done in heaven in love.

 So let us love fully.

 Let us love others and love ourselves as Jesus commands us to love.

 And if we do, we will find the words Jesus said to Peter in that Gospel reading a few weeks ago coming true in us as well.

 The gates of Hades will not prevail against us as followers of Jesus.

 The gates of every ugly, evil thing in this world will have no power over us.

 Rather, with a love like that in us and emanating from us, the powers of darkness and evil will fall flat before us.

 So, let us love fully.

 And let that love that is bound in us be bound in heaven.

 And by doing so, we will be bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst.

 Let us pray.

Holy God, you have given us such amazing power in our following of Jesus, your Son. Let us use these powers as you intend us to use them let us use them in love, so that our love, bound here on earth, will truly be bound within you in heaven. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.