December 8,
2019
Romans
15.4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
December 8, 2019
Romans 15.4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
+ So, do you want to feel good on this Second
Sunday in Advent? I feel this good this morning. I feel really good this
morning. After 11 years as your Priest-in-Charge, I’m about to become your
Rector. This is a big day.
And not just for me. It’s a big day for St.
Stephen’s. But I’ll get into all of that in a moment.
It is also a big day for me too, I have to
admit. It is my birthday today. I’m 50
years old. So, I’m feeling very good and very thankful this morning.
But do you
want to feel good this morning? Do you want to remember something that will
warm the cockles of your hearts (I don’t know what cockles are or where they
are, but it sounds nice to have them warmed).
OK.
So, let’s go back.
Let’s go back to when we young and innocent.
Let’s go back to this time of the year when we
were kids.
We have just turned on our big 1960s 1970s 1980s
console TV.
And what do we see?
We see a blizzard, people pushing their cars
from snow drifts.
We see newspaper headlines coming at us:
COLD WAVE IN 12TH DAY and FOUL
WEATHER MAY POSTPONE CHRISTMAS.
Then we see the credits:
RANKIN/BASS PRESENT
There’s Sam the Snowman, voiced by none other
than the great Burl Ives, who proceeds to sing the title song.
RUDOLPH THE REDNOSED REINDEER.
You feel pretty good right now don’t you?
Our own Kris Vossler says that the film is
actually not a very nice one, because the actual message of the Rudolph the Red
Nose Reindeer is this:
People are mean.
People are jerks.
Everybody made fun of Rudolph because he was different.
Then, when they needed him, when they needed
help from his very imperfection—his shining nose—then they were nice. They used
poor Rudolph. And that story is sad.
Rudolph shines with this bright beautiful light
and he has to constantly hide his glow.
Poor Rudolph!
But for any of you who have been here at St.
Stephen’s for any length of time, you know where I’m going with all of this. You
know that I’m going to my favorite part of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.
Yes, it’s the Island of Misfit Toys.
When I was a kid, that’s the what I loved the
most. Or maybe I should say, that’s what I related to the most. After all, I
always felt like a misfit toy. I never really felt like I fit in. I felt always
a bit odd, a bit different. (I know
that’s hard to believe because you have
this with-it, together, normal priest standing before you this morning)
And so, I understood this place—this Island of
Misfit Toys, this magical place where all the misfit, slightly off toys went.
A place where the toy train has square wheels on
its caboose, or the cowboy who rides an ostrich, or a water pistol the squirts jelly,
You’ve heard me say this over and over again,
but if there was an Episcopal Church
on the Island of Misfit Toys, it would be St. Stephen’s.
I
could be the Priest, I would be the Rector.
I think the Island of Misfit Toys is a great
analogy of what the Kingdom of God is like. Probably some hipster, pop
theologian has already made this connection somewhere. If they haven’t, I should probably put a
copyright on this idea I had.
A kingdom built up not of the perfect ones. But
a Kingdom built up of Misfits, though misfits made perfect in the eyes of God.
We, at St. Stephen’s, are a kind of Island of misfit
Toys. We are place made of people who didn’t quite fit in in the other churches
we belonged. And even we as a congregation are not quite like other
congregations around us.
Our own Senior Warden shared a wonderful story a
few weeks ago. Steve Bolduc was relating how there was a Regional Gathering
here at St. Stephen’s about twenty years ago. (This was before I got here). As the people
were lining up for lunch, Steve overheard a long-time priest of this diocese
say to someone else:
“Ah, St. Stephen’s it’s so low-church and plain,
it should be called Mister
Stephen’s.”
Well, we ain’t that anymore. We, this Island of
Misfit Toys, went from the lowest low church congregation in the diocese to the
highest Anglo-Catholic congregation.
You don’t believe me?
Did you smell the incense when you came in?
And come next week.
We’re the only congregation in this diocese
bedecking ourselves in rose-colored vestments next week.
So, why do we do this? Because that’s just who
we are. We like to keep ‘em guessin’… Just when anytime tries to peg us, we
rebound and surprise everyone.
I, for one, love that and I love that that’s who
we are. I love the fact that we are a place made up of people who felt like we
just didn’t quite fit in there, but here we really seem to hit our stride, even
despite the fact that our pews our don’t match and our bell doesn’t fit in the
tower, and we have really smart mice who are really good at avoiding the traps
we set for them ( as a vegan I’m actually kinda happy about that)
Imperfect as we are, we still celebrate a truly
beautiful mass, we have lovely windows, we wear lovely vestments, we ring our
bells really loud and we smoke the place up with incense and we actually go out
into the world and try to change that world for the better.
The joke among the Catholics who know about us
is that St. Stephen’s does Catholic better than some of the Roman Catholics. And we do.
And none of what we do should be working.
We’re hearing people around us telling us the
church is dying. But here we are doing what we do in our own way, and, for us,
you know what? It works. And it works well.
For me the story of Rudolph is about really embracing
our imperfections, and how what seems like imperfections to others, can be used
in positive and wonderful ways.
Well, this morning, this Island of Misfit Toys,
this strange, eccentric, slightly odd congregation of St. Stephen’s, is
celebrating.
And we’re not just celebrating your imperfect,
misfit priest being 50, or even the fact
that he’s being made your Rector.
We are celebrating what this Rectorship means. Rectorship
is not just about the priest. It is about all of us. It is about a congregation
that, although seemingly outside the norm, we have built ourselves up, with
God’s love and grace. This is about all of the ministry we do here. It is about
being a fully-functioning, fully independent congregation with a Rector—someone
we get to choose, we get to call, we get to have share with us in our ministries.
For the first time since 2000, and with the
change of policy in this diocese, we can now call our own Rector. And, within the next few short months,
we’ll have a deacon too! And today all
of that is what we celebrate.
Calling a Rector after almost 20 years is a sign
that we have now returned to that place where we were decades ago, which is
something you don’t hear about in churches these days.
You want proof of that?
A few weeks ago, on November 3rd, we
celebrated our 9th baptism this year here at St. Stephen’s. The last
time we had 9 baptisms in one year at St. Stephen’s, Lyndon Johnson was
president (that was in 1967). I wasn’t even born yet. And I’m 50.
This year we were the 3rd largest congregation
in the diocese. 15 years ago we were the seventh.
As we hear stories of congregations faltering
and losing members, and fretting over closing their doors, we celebrate the
growth and the vitality that we have here at St. Stephen’s and, with it, we
celebrate that ability to say “we have a Rector.” We don’t say that proudly. We
don’t say that with conceit. We actually say all of that with tears in our eyes
and true sadness for those congregations that cannot do that.
In fact, we, as a congregation, were, only 20 or
30 years ago, in the same place many congregations are now.
Some of us here remember well those days of
uncertainty, those days when these pews were not full, when we went years and
years without any baptisms or weddings or new members or even visitors, when
people were transferring their memberships in droves out of St. Stephen’s to
other congregations, when the future of St. Stephen’s seemed uncertain, when
people were saying, “St. Stephen’s should just close.” We remember those days.
And if don’t, we should.
And we need to say, “Those days will never
happen again.”
This is why we are grateful today.
See, it’s not just about Fr. Jamie being Rector
today. It is about all of us today. And that is important.
In a few moments, after I am installed, we will
process back to the baptismal font, we will renew our baptismal vows, we will
be sprinkled with holy water and we will be renewed in ourselves to continue to
do the ministries we do.
Today, we are being called.
Called to follow Jesus.
To be true disciples of Jesus in this world.
To be Jesus’ hands and feet and voice in this
world.
Today we are being built up.
Today, we are all being affirmed, each of us, as
truly loved children of a living, loving God. Each of is being affirmed as individual special
children of that loving God—a God who does not see misfits.
And it is very appropriate that we are doing
this in this season of Advent, this season of excruciating expectation and
hope.
Hope.
Today is all about hope. .
Hope.
Hope for us, as Christians, is a matter of
confidence.
It is a matter of believing that no matter how
fractured and crazy this life gets, there is the promise of newness and
fullness to this life.
Hope means that, yes, we might be misfit toys on
some exiled island, but we are not just misfits, but we are special and perfect
in the eyes of God.
And we can make that island misfit fabulous!
Hope means that yes, like Rudolph, people are
going treat us terribly at times, people are going to use us, but we will still
rise above all of that because we are loved by a God who really does care, who
does love us and know us
And you know what? like Rudolph, we will shine. We
will shine with light of Christ! And
nothing can hide or dampen that light within us.
Today, though, we celebrate. We celebrate God’s
goodness to us. We celebrate the wonderful things God has granted us. We
celebrate the grace of our lives.
The kingdom of heaven is near.
That Kingdom of people—misfits, people on the
fringe, people who swim against the stream, people who step outside the
expected boundaries of the world a bit.
That Kingdom is near.
In fact it’s nearer than we can probably ever
hope or imagine.
So, let us be prepared.
Let us watch.
Let us wait.
Let us hope.
For this anticipation—this wonderful and
beautiful hope—is merely a pathway on which Christ’s shining Light can come to
us here in our darkness and shine within us a brightness that never fade.
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