Dedication Sunday

 

September 12, 2021

1 Kings 8:22-23,27b-30;

+Today, we are of course celebrating our Dedication Sunday.

 We are commemorating 65 years of service to God and others.

 We are welcoming a new member.

 We are welcoming back a member who moved away and has come back.

 We are beginning regular coffee hour for the first time since March of 2020.

 It’s all very exciting.

 When I look back on our Dedication Sunday one year ago, I am amazed at how far we’ve come.

 It was, to say the least, a very bleak Dedication Sunday last year.

 The fact is, on this Dedication Sunday, we are in a different place than we were then or definitely one year before that, on Dedication Sunday 2019.

 Not everyone is back here this morning.

 We are not where we were then.

 And it has been slow.

 The pandemic is still with us, because there are people who are listening to half-truths and outright lies regarding this pandemic and its vaccine.

 And as a result of those half-truths and lies, we are, yet again, masked this morning.

 Thanks, QAon!

 Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers!

 We have taken a step or two backward on our way out of this pandemic.

 And it is frustrating.

 We are not the same as we were before all this began.

 And that hurts.

 Now, I am grateful for all that St. Stephen’s has done since the pandemic.

 It has been incredible!

 When I look at how other congregations ground to a halt, we did not.

 When churches closed down, we went viral.

 We didn’t miss a Sunday mass during the pandemic, thanks to Livestream (it will be one of the few times I will ever thank Livestreaming)

 And haven’t missed one since.

 We even had our Labyrinth renovated and managed to get a brand new organ in the midst of this all.

 And I am, once again, amazed by the resilience of St. Stephen’s, and for Deacon John and the lay leaders we have here who have stepped up.

 So, it’s important on this Sunday to really listen to what our scriptures are speaking to us.

 It’s good to hear all this talk of a building being God’s house.

 

As many of you know, I am a huge Leonard Cohen fan.

 Leonard Cohen, for those of you who might now know who he was, was an incredible Canadian musician, song writer and poet.

 You probably know his very popular song, “Hallelujah’

 I preach about him every so often, because he has been very important o in my life.

 Cohen was a well-known Zen Buddhist, but he was also a very committed Jew.

 Once, many years ago, when I was in Montreal, a friend took me to the synagogue Cohen had been a member of.

 

The name of the synagogue was Shaar Hashomayim, which is Hebrew for “The Gate of Heaven”

 As in “This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven.”

 I always loved that name and what it stood for!

 I think we sometimes forget that this place also is God’s house.

 God, in very unique ways, dwells with us here.

 But this Sunday is more than all these physical things.

 It is more than just being a building, and walls, and a tower and bells and vestments and dossal screens and paraments.

 It about us—all of us—being the House of God.

 It is about us being the tabernacles in which God dwells.

 It is about us and our service to God and others.

 And you know what it’s really all about.

 It is about LOVE.  

 Years ago, I read an amazing biography of the American poet Denise Levertov, I came across this wonderful quote, from another poet, St. John the Cross:

 “In the evening of our lives, we will be judged on love alone.”

 Later I heard a friend of mine comment on that quote by saying

  “we will be judged BY love alone.”

 I love that!

 That quote has been haunting me for years.

 And it certainly has been striking me to my core in these days leading up to our Dedication Sunday celebration.

 If this congregation could have a motto for itself, it would be this.

 “In the evening of our lives, we will be judged on love alone.”

 Because this, throughout all of our 65 year history, is what we are known for at St. Stephen’s.

 Love.

 We are known for the fact that we know, by our words, by our actions, by our faith in God and one another, that it is love that makes the difference.

 And by love we will, ultimately, be judged.

 It is not an easy thing to call one’s self a Christian, especially now after this traumatic event we have all lived through, with so many people having essentially highjacked that name “Christian” and made it into something ugly and terrible.

 It’s not easy to follow Jesus, whom so many Christians have re-formed into a white, blond idol of themselves—a nationalistic Jesus who carried a gun in one hand and a flag in the other.

 The great German theologian (and one of my heroes) Dorothee Soelle calls “Christo-fascism.”

 I call it “Jesusolatry.”

 But, we, here at St. Stephen’s, are obviously doing something right, to make better the wrongs that may have been done on a larger scale.

 We, at St. Stephen’s, (I hope) have done a good job I think over these last 65 years of striving to be a positive example of the wider.

 We have truly become a place of love, of radical acceptance.

 As God intends the Church to be.

On October 1, I will be commemorating thirteen years as your priest here at St. Stephen’s.

I can tell you, they have been the most incredible thirteen years of my life.

Personally, they have been, of course, some very, very hard years.

As a priest, they have been years in which I have seen God at work in ways I never have before.

This congregation has grown and flourished in incredible ways!

And it’s amazing!

 Seeing all this we need to give the credit where the credit is truly due:

The Holy Spirit.

Here.

Among us.

Growth of this kind can truly be a cause for us to celebrate that Spirit’s Presence among us.

It can help us to realize that this is truly the place in which God’s dwells.

God is truly here, with us, in all that we do together.

The name of God is proclaimed in the ministries we do here.

In the outreach we do.

In the witness we make in the community of Farg0-Moorhead and in the wider Church.

God is here, with us.

God is working through us and in us.

Sometimes, when we are in the midst of it all, when we are doing the work, we sometimes miss that perspective.

We miss that sense of holiness and renewal and life that comes bubbling up from a healthy and vital congregation working together.

We miss the fact that God truly is here.

And that this is the House of God and the Gate of Heaven.  

So, it is good to stop and listen for a moment.

It is good to reorient ourselves.

It is good to refocus and see what ways we can move forward together.

It is good to look around and see how God is working through us.

In a few moments, we will recognize and give thanks for now only our new members but for all our members and the many ministries of this church.

Many of the ministries that happen here at St. Stephen’s go on clandestinely.

They go on behind the scenes, in ways most of us (with exception of God) don’t even see and recognize.

But that is how God works as well.

God works oftentimes clandestinely, through us and around us.

This morning, however, we are seeing very clearly the ways in which God works not so clandestinely.

We see it in the continued growth of St. Stephen’s.

We see it in the continued vitality here.

We see it in the continued love here.

We see it in the tangible things, in our altar, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in our scripture readings, in our windows, in the smell of incense in the air, in our service to9ward each other. In US.

But behind all these incredible things happening now, God has also worked slowly and deliberately and seemingly clandestinely throughout the years.

And for all of this—the past, the present and the future—we are truly thankful.

God truly is in this place.

This is truly the house of God.

WE truly are the house of God.

This is the place in which love is proclaimed and acted out.

So, let us rejoice.

Let us rejoice in where we have been.

Let us rejoice in where we are.

Let us rejoice in where we are going.

And, in our rejoicing, let us truly be God’s own people.

Let us be God’s people in order that we might proclaim, in love, the mighty and merciful acts of Christ, the living and unmovable stone, on whom we find our security and our foundation.  

Let us pray.

Holy and loving God, bless us on this 65^th anniversary of our founding, and help us to continue to do the good works you have instilled in us. Let us love as you command us to love. Let us include all those who seek us out. And let your holiness and life dwell here with us in all that we do and say. We ask this in name of Jesus, our foundation. Amen.