Annual meeting/Epiphany 3 C

Annual meeting
January 27, 2019
3 Epiphany C

    When I was in my first parish, one of my responsibilities was keeping our youth program running, which included recruiting volunteers.  This was a large youth program that was split into three groups, and we needed several volunteers to make it work. So, one day, I had a conversation with a dad, whose son was in my senior high group.  I wanted the dad to be the junior high leader. When I first approached him, he said, “nope, no way, you got the wrong guy. I don’t have those skills, I’m busy….” you get the idea. So, I said, “just do my a favor.  Pray about it for the next week. If, in a week, the answer is no, I will respect that”. He agreed, and as he left, he said, “but it will still be no, so you better figure out who else to ask”. Ok, I said… I did not have someone else to ask, nor was I going to figure out who else to ask.  I too, was going to pray for the next week, and hope that he and the mom I had asked would both say yes.

    So, a week went by, and my office door was open, and suddenly, there he was, standing there with the mom I had asked who had also been reluctant to say yes… and he said, “I’ll do it if she does it!”, pointing to the mom… “I’ll do it if he does it!” she said, pointing to him.  And I just smiled. “So I take it you both prayed?” Yes, came the reply in stereo… Excellent… you are both going to be great… “I don’t know why I’m doing this”, he said, “this is crazy”. “God called you… it’s always crazy”, I said. Fast forward about 2 years, and I was no longer at the parish, and living in another town.  That youth group was going to be stopping for dinner in the town I lived, and they wanted our family to come and join them for dinner, which we did. The dad came over to me at dinner and said, “Well, I signed up for another term. This has been the most amazing, frustrating, maddening, life giving thing I have ever done. It’s all your fault.  Thank you”. Thank YOU… I said… for answering God’s call.

    Isn’t like that for most of us?  No, not me, you’ve got the wrong guy, I don’t know how to do this, God must have meant someone else, I’m busy… the list of “why we can’t” is endless.  And, we all know that Jesus is relentless when he asks something of us…

    Our readings for today are so perfect for a parish about to hold its annual meeting.  In our gospel, we hear Jesus reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah… "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Once he is finished reading, he tells those assembled that the scripture has been fulfilled in their hearing, that is, Jesus, is the one whom the prophet is speaking of who is anointed to do all these things.   It’s kind of a brave and foolish act to come to your hometown and proclaim that you’re the fulfillment of scripture… but he is… and here’s the thing for us… there’s a sense in which we become the continuation of the fulfillment.  Jesus’ work isn’t over by a longshot. Because there are poor among us, there are captives today, there are those who need to have their sight, be in their physical sight or their internal, spiritual sight, there are those who are oppressed today, and those who need to know that they are the object of the Lord’s favor, here today in this church and out there on the streets of Oklahoma City, and on every street, every road, every dirt path, that exists everywhere… and because we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit of Jesus, it’s now the work he has given us to do.  We cannot say, I’m not the guy… we are the guys… there are no other guys, we are the guys. And Jesus never said it would be easy, or that other people wouldn’t get in our way; it certainly wasn’t easy for him… and if we are proclaiming and being good news to the poor and the oppressed, and the captives, someone, somewhere is going to get mad because they don’t understand a fundamental principle in the kingdom of God… and that is, there is enough for everyone.  God loves like God farms, remember?  Foolishly, extravagantly, and without caring what society has to say about it… and as Jesus’ ministry continues, we know that this foolish extravagance makes the powerful really, really angry.  And that’s still true in many places today…

    The good news for us, especially as we look at where we have been and where we are going, is that no one is alone in this work.  We have a community of brothers and sisters who have also received God’s call, God’s anointing to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world.  As we hear from Paul this morning, the body of Christ has many members; none of us are the same; all of us have different gifts, and we are called to do our part as individuals and as a community, for the good of the Kingdom.  When I asked that dad to do ministry with the middle school youth, I knew that he was the member of that community that had the skills for that ministry; not all of us have those skills, it wouldn’t be appropriate to ask someone who didn’t have the ability to work well with kids; yet there were other places for those people to minister.  It’s the same with St. David’s. It can be overwhelming to think about the poverty that surrounds us, but our calling has been pretty clear; focus on one area; do it well… see what happens. It’s hard being a small church with fewer resources, but we are still called. What are we? We are small but MIGHTY… and look how much we have done and continue to do… the food baskets to Hilldale school have not only grown in the number of baskets per event, but we also give baskets three times a year instead of two; our Daughters of the King chapter has started a small lunch sak pantry so that no matter who comes through our doors, even if we don’t have money to give, no one leaves the building without something to eat; we have responded to the shortfall in our internal ministry to each other by creating more opportunities to connect in a class or study, or movie night; we now have more clergy that can help all of us connect to the interfaith ministries of our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters who are also trying to help their neighbors here in Oklahoma City, a project that has been on my heart for some time, but one that I never seemed to have enough time to get to… we have more people involved in the worship of the church than before, something that makes worship so meaningful and wonderful.  Our sign is finally in… and people are noticing it. What a great way to let our neighbors know that we are here… Little by little we have done all kinds of improvements inside and outside; Hal, Paul, Tommy, Caleb, and various minions have continued to keep up with landscaping, making some changes both for looks and for function… it’s a joy not to have wet carpet in my office!

    We will celebrate all of this later at our official meeting, but I wanted us as the body of Christ that Paul talks about to know some of what we have been called to do.  I have no doubt there will be other ministry that we will be called to do as individuals and as a community… our lesson from Nehemiah tells us that “the joy of the Lord is our strength” and God is indeed filled with joy, filled with the knowledge of Jesus’ relationship with us when we honor the 2 great commandments that Jesus has given us, to love God and to love our neighbors.  We cannot do one without the other, for by loving and serving our neighbors, we love and serve God… and because we are members of the kingdom, members of the body of Christ, we know that there is enough… for us, and for all…

    So beloved, we are the guys.  We are the ones whom God has chosen for our particular call in this place and time… we are the guys.  
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing.  We ARE the guys...

A DOK profession/7 Epiphany C

7 Epiphany C
Feb. 24, 2019
DOK Profession

    Later in our service, we will celebrate with Sheilah Wiser, as she takes her life vows in the Order of the Daughters of the King.  Daughters of the King, is a religious Order for women in many different branches of the church; women who belong to the Order live their lives out in the world, living in their own homes, but they gather together in chapters or larger groups for worship and service.  Women in the Order live by a rule of life that they construct, which emphasizes a life of Prayer, Service and Evangelism. They also wear a special cross as a sign of their vows, that they wear for the rest of their lives.

    The 2 parts of the rule of life that are lifted up as being of prime importance are the rule of prayer and the rule of service.  Seems to me, that once again, that if we listen really carefully, we can hear echoes of “love your God and love your neighbor” when we hear those words.  Obviously, we are all called to these commandments, whether we take religious vows or not. Today, Sheilah, like other Daughters of the King before her, will vow to keep these two commandments at the center of her life.  She will do this, not as a person alone, but as a person who becomes part of a community of women who will help her to live into these vows, just as she will help them live into theirs. As someone who has taken vows in a religious community myself, I can say that my community is incredibly important to me, and to my living my rule of life.  None of us was created to live alone and cut off from others; it is in our nature, as I believe it is in the nature of the Holy Trinity, to live, and work in community.

    In today’s gospel, we have the next part of the sermon on the plain; what a great reading for a day when someone shall take vows!  As I said a couple of weeks ago, the Christian life is simple, but not necessarily easy. Jesus gives some guidance here about what it means to follow him; he shows us that God is always wanting us to go further and deeper into living as disciples.  As followers of Jesus, we are held to a different standard; we love not as others do, but we love even those who hate us; we give, rather than lend, expecting nothing in return. We are told not to judge or condemn… that’s kind of hard in this day and age, don’t you think?  It seems we are always trying to compare ourselves, or told to anyway, so that we can come out on top… we are constantly barraged with all sorts of news stories asking us to take sides so that we might demonize those who are different from us. That kind of behavior doesn’t promote peace or healing; rather it promotes fear and hatred; it causes us in our fear to see things that aren’t true; it can cause us to side with evil all in the name of “good”.  It can cause us to see things and believe things that aren’t true…

    One such story that has been on my mind for a while now, is the story of Emmett Till, an African American boy, who was visiting relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955.  Emmett was 14 years old in 1955 when he was brutally murdered by 2 white men who had accused the boy of flirting with a young white woman in her family’s grocery store. The men kidnapped Emmett, brutally beat him and shot him in the head.  Then they threw his body in the Tallahatchie river, tied with barbed wire to the 75 pound cotton gin that they made Emmett carry on his back to the river. His body was discovered and returned to Chicago, where he was from. His mother had a public service with an open casket, so that all could see the brutalized body of her son.  Her 14 year old son.  His murderers were acquitted by an all white jury.  Decades later, it was admitted that the testimony against the boy was false.  Fear, hatred, lies… all of these things caused people to act in violent, murderous ways to kill a 14 year old child.  Who kills a 14 year old child? And just so we realize that the story of hatred against this child isn’t over, the sign that was placed on the bank of the Tallahatchie where his body was found, has been vandalized numerous times; the last time that I was able to find was in August of 2018… the metal sign had been replaced just 35 days before and was once again shot and had several bullet holes…

    People who own family grocery stores probably don’t believe themselves capable of this kind of violence; many of us don’t believe it still continues… it continues for the same reasons it has since the beginning of time; it seems that we it is deep within our nature to need to be ahead of each other; we need to somehow prove that we are better than another; and if somehow we aren’t better, sometimes we try to figure out ways to look better; the story today of Joseph and his brothers is one such story; and yet, even though he suffered mightily at the hands of his brothers, Joseph manages to come out on top, saving his whole family from starvation.  Joseph's success at least in part was because he never let his relationship to God wither away. When he realized what his brothers had done and later how Potiphar's wife lied about him, he continued to believe in and pray to God. He never let that relationship suffer because he believed ultimately God would bring about the good. His brothers were jealous, and they lied about Joseph, and could have caused his death; certainly they caused him great suffering. Joseph prayed, and continued to serve God even when it would have been easy to to deny God to save his own skin; but we know the life of faith is not always if ever easy; praying to God and serving God sometimes take us to places we do not want to go… Emmett Till’s tragic story helped to ignite the civil rights movement so that others might one day enjoy the justice and freedom that Emmett did not; Joseph being betrayed and sold into slavery eventually brought about good for him and for his family…God’s faith, the faith lived in and through Jesus, is the faith that keeps all of us growing toward being the people that God has created us to be.  God’s love and God’s creative power are one in the same… if each of us can hold on to the faith given to us in the Holy Spirit, we can weather what others throw our way… not easily perhaps, not without sadness or anger, but in faith, we know that like the sheep led through the valley of death, we will come through to the other side.
    Today, Sheiliah will join other Daughters of the King by taking her solemn vows.  It is a day of celebration as well as a day of seriousness. She does not take these vows lightly.  She will promise to live a life of prayer and of service; and in those 2 places the third part of the rule is lived, and that is to evangelize.  My hope and prayer for her and for all of the Daughters of the King, especially the St. Clare chapter, is, like your patroness Clare, keep the Eucharist at the center of your worship life.  Meeting Jesus in the Eucharist is where we learn about love, about forgiveness, about being made strong in our weakness; it is where we all experience in all of our senses the life of Jesus… I hope you will pray daily, and offer up your whole life and all that you do, so that you might pray without ceasing, so that your life will be a living sacrifice and gift to God; I hope that you will be quiet, so that you might hear the voice of Jesus telling you what is yours to do in the world… and with that, I end with the motto of your Order:  “I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do. What I ought to do, by the grace of God I will do. Lord, what will you have me do?”