Dedication Sunday

September 10, 2017

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

+ I love our Dedication Sundays. I really do!! It is this one Sunday each year when we really get to celebrate St. Stephen’s and all it is and does. We get to celebrate what it has been, what it is and what it will be. And today, we get to even celebrate a special something about St. Stephen’s: its music ministry. Which is definitely something that needs celebration.

We celebrate this ministry because we are dedicating and blessing our fourth stained glass window, dedicated to St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. We’ll get into her in a second.

But, first, as we look back over our 61 years of ministry, we realize that music has been a very big part of that ministry from the very beginning. I don’t know who the first organist was at St. Stephen’s. I actually don’t know many of them, actually. But they were all important to this congregation. Whether they were only organists or where choir directors as well, a lot of music has filled this nave and resounded from these walls.

A lot of voices, many of them who are now no longer with us in this world, sang those amazing Episcopal hymns over these 61 years. Please think about them this morning for a moment.

Music is this ever-flowing river.  It has been flowing long before we ever came on the scene. And it will be flowing long after we are gone.

But, this morning, as we sing these hymns, as we celebrate our long ministry of music, I want you to just think about how your voices and your talents as musicians (or, as in my case, lack of talents) joins with the voices of those have sang here over the decades.  Your singing of these hymns is a very beautiful and wonderful way to step into that ever-flowing river of music. It is your way of joining with those voices who sang here once, but who sing now in a place of unending music and beauty.

Now, I’m no musician, as you all know. But, I am a poet. And as a poet, I can say that my earliest poetic influence were hymns.  

One of my favorite poets, whom I quote regularly, is Elizabeth Bishop. Although she was agnostic, she very proudly said, “I am full of hymns,”  I am as well.  I only, in the last ten years or so realized how the hymns I grew up hearing and singing were my first—and certainly most consistent—influence in my life. 

The hymns of my childhood and youth come back to me now with an emotional and spiritual force equivalent of the sky falling upon me.  Nothing touches me and caused uncontrollably floods of tears quite like hymns. And nothing helps salve my sorrow as hymns do.

This is why music is essential to our worship of God. Our church music is not just sweet background music It is not meant to happy, clappy and sweet. It is essential to our worship.  And it is this that we celebrate today.

We also celebrate St. Cecilia today. St. Cecilia was a Roman noblewoman who converted to Christianity. As a Christian, she decided to not marry, to devote herself entirely to Christ. However, the story goes, she was forced to marry a Roman nobleman by the name of Valerian. She was, it seems, not happy to do because during the entire marriage ceremony she sat apart from everyone singing praises to God.

On the wedding night, Cecilia was not happy to do her “marital duty,” shall we say. So, she, quite bluntly, told Valerian, that an Angel of the Lord was watching her and would punish him if he tried anything with her.

Poor Valerian, I imagine, regretted at that moment ever marrying this poor crazy young woman. But he played along. He asked to see the angel. Cecilia told him that he could, but only if he went to third milestone on Via Appia and was baptized there by none other than Pope Urban I.

So, what did Valerian do? He went to the third miles, was baptized by the Pope and…

…he saw the angel.

The stood beside St. Cecilia, crowning her with crown of roses and lilies.

In 230, she, along with Valerian, his brother Tiburtius and a Roman soldier by the name of Maximus, were martyred for the Christian faith. Her body lies in the catacombs of St. Callistus, but were later transferred the church of St. Cecilia in Tastevere.

St. Cecilia has been a very important saint in the long history of the church, and represents in a very real way the importance of music in liturgical worship and prayer.  And that is the important thing to remember today.

Music is essential for us liturgical Christians. For us, for whom the Book of Common Prayer and the holy Eucharist are vital, music too is important and vital.

Just imagine, for one second, what a Sunday morning would be like without music, without the richness and beauty of music.

We, at St. Stephen’s, sometimes forget how fortunate we are. We, in our worship, we get to use all our senses. We get music, we get bells, on Wednesday nights we get incense. We get to use all the gifts God has given us to return to God a beautiful offering.

These hymns we sing are not quaint little songs. These not happy little ditties we sing to make us smile and make us feel smug. The hymns we sign are offerings to God. It is prayer, set to music. It is worship with all our senses, with all our gifts.

And that is why it is important that we be grateful for James, for our cantors Michelle and William and Alice and Leo, for all our parishioners like the Sandos, the Tacklings, the Demmons and Amy (who is playing flute for us today) who are so willing to share their wonderful gifts of music with us in worship. I, for one, am so very grateful for all our musicians, all our music.

And I am very thankful for James. Although he is not one to toot his own horn (no pun intended), music for James is more than just something he does. I know for a fact that, for James, music is a true offering to God.

For him, it is a vital and essential part of the worship we do here on Sunday mornings. And that deeper commitment shows in all that does for us and for God here.

On our website, we are described as a

“growing, inclusive community of artists, poets, musicians, professionals, writers, students and searchers for God.”

I love that description of us. Because that is definitely who we are.  

This past week I wrote a small blurb for the Capital Campaign, which is about to launch today.  I wrote,

  St. Stephen’s is, to say the very least, a unique place. There are not many congregations quite like it. It is for this reason so many people are drawn to this out-of-the-way church in the far reaches of Northeast Fargo. But this spiritual powerhouse of a church means so much to a wide variety of people…this wonderful, eclectic place which has become home to so many people [as it ] continues to be what it is—a vital embodiment of the all-encompassing love and acceptance of Christ in this world.  

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 61 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 glorious thing.

So, what do we do in the face of glorious things? We sing!  We make a joyful noise to God!  And, as unbelievable as it might seem at times, we cannot take 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 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.  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 song today.  And although it may seem unbelievable at times, this is truly who 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 Bible this morning,

“How awesome is this place! This is none

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

heaven.”