AKMA’s Random Thoughts

The Sermon

All right, I finished the sermon late-ish last night, and preached it this morning at 9 and at 11:15. The people at St. Luke’s were very positive about the sermon, which was heartening (if a little disconcerting — I was too self-conscious about it during the second service, and I dislike the feeling of self-consciousness when I’m preaching). As promised, I’ll post it here (in the extended-entry mode, in case someone wants to see how the serial turns out.

As to the experience of composing online, I must say it was peculiar. It takes more time, for one thing; one has not only to compose the sermon, but to compose little updates and summaries. That has benefits, too, as it keeps me thinking about the whole sermon as well as the point on which I’m working at the moment. Still, I expect it would be hard for me to work this way every time (except until I got used to it, after which I’d be reluctant to stop, creature of habit that I am).

Thanks for the interest and support that instigated my giving this a try, and encouraged me to keep at it when I felt stymied.

Proper 23, Year B — St. Luke's Evanston
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15/Heb 3:1-6/Mark 10:17-27 — October 12, 2003

We are [God’s] house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride
that belong to hope.

+ In the Name of the God Almighty, the eternal Blessed Trinity— Amen.

I do not just take it for granted that you made your way to church, to this particular church this morning. With dozens of other places to go, other places to be, each of you has offered to God and to our congregation the chance to share some time, to share a sense of the grace that attends and inhabits our gathering; each of you has lent us your presence, perhaps only for an hour or so but for a vital hour, and with you here this morning we are stronger and wiser and healthier and freer. Whether you're a vistor here, or a regular, we cherish your contribution to the energy we so desperately need for the work of healing and growing, of stretching our sympathies and bridling our partiality. With you, this morning, we see the sign of a hope that gives us confidence and pride. In you, we recognize our holy partners in a heavenly calling. Thanks to you, beckoning to us from ahead, we know that the wilderness has an end, that we are now coming home.

So we do give thanks for your coming out this morning, whatever brought you here. We're tickled pink, we're proud, if you came to us on the basis of the random choice of a random church; we’re not picky! We’re honored if you’ve come here before, and returned to give this tempestuous crowd another go-round. We don’t even mind if you dropped in to see whether things around here are as bad as the scuttlebutt circulating through the diocese would have it. These are not easy days at St. Luke’s, but no matter what anyone’s saying outside, in this home we welcome the sojourner. It’s not our house, to quibble and segregate, but it’s God’s house, and we come here, together, with worries and frustrations and distress, to testify that our love of God cannot be trumped by partisanship or power plays. And do you know what? As long as we hold onto that calling to praise and welcome, ain’t no conflict can break us, no schism can shake us, no change will deform us nor custom constrain us. We will give our praise, we will swing open the doors, and God’s glory will stream from every stone and portal no matter what.

Because people will talk, they will shake their heads with knowing smirks or they’ll frown with dire gloom, they will plot and consult and they will preach -- and yet we can come home to these halls, these walls, knowing that something greater than smirks and frowns has begun here. Years ago, a new life was born here. A congregation, a special congregation set down its roots and reached to the sky, and that congregation is older and stronger and wiser than any one of us here. Oh yes, our history is wracked with folly and even misconduct; what fools would we be to pretend otherwise? But visitors, but members, but generous-hearted guests, we are not determined by our past and we do not need to live out, over and over again, the grim convulsions that heredity would foist upon us.

We feel the spasms of our past, and we respond to the past, but the past is not our problem this morning. Troubles from the past can’t touch us without our own complicity. The new life that has grown from St. Luke’s beginnings includes more than just baneful habits that twist the spine of our common life, that halt and hinder us from the full freedom of discipleship. Those beginnings bequeath to us the strong muscles that we have long set at the disposal of weary refugees and hungry neighbors; our beginnings trained our voices to joyous song, our minds to ponder meaty sermons, our bodies to join with our souls in harmonious worship. Those beginnings taught us who we may be. We haven’t yet attained the fullness of the growth for which this congregation was planted; we’ve run into many obstacles, some that we even made for ourselves. But these walls, these pews, the aisles and offices, from our leaky roof to our flooded basement, throng with the living commitment of the saints who have built this church — not the bare wood and stone but the church itself, the Body of Christ here assembled. This Body has suffered much and will suffer more, but have no doubt, sisters and brothers: this Body will stand erect, and will rise and stand and sing more vibrantly than ever before, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

How can that be? Why would anyone suppose that after scandal and outrage, frustration and disappointment, and now after years of protracted conflict, our bedraggled congregation isn't at long last ready give up the ghost and collapse? Only one reason.

You came here this morning. Without a compelling reason to come, and with plenty of strong reasons to sleep late, you came here this morning. That tells me that somewhere, deep in your soul, you already know the one reason.

We are praying, we are singing, we are swinging incense and heaven help us, we are preaching — somewhere, somebody will articulate the reason for us.

Because decisively, more than anything we do or think or say here this morning, it is God’s loving that binds this living church together. We who gather here this morning love the Body of Christ gathered at St. Luke’s with a love that nothing can crush, and the unconquerable love holding us here even in the extremity of improbable tension is none other than God’s own love. Somewhere, whether at the tip of our tongues or in some neglected recess of our forgetfulness, we know the reason and we come back here to give that reason a voice, to give it a body. In this gathering, among us just moments ago, we heard Jesus Christ give the reason in words of truth that will raise us up who have long been bowed down: “For mortals, it is not possible — but for God, all things are possible.”

All things are possible, not because we sit on passive posteriors and drum our fingers waiting for a fairy-tale ending to a film-noir nightmare; all things are possible because God’s power is already at work among us, in the determination of everybody, on every side, who’s involved in our parish life that we wrench ourselves free from our paralysis. God’s power brings us back week after week, and God’s power brings newcomers in the door. In fact, even though our controversies balk and baffle it, God’s power surges even through our mistaken judgments, for the love and determination and commitment that keep us struggling come from a power greater than we could ever thwart. And if we will persist in striving to enact in our flesh that power for peace and harmony, by setting aside the necessity of winning; if we persist in striving to enable in our lives that power for patience and forgiveness, by refusing to permit Enmity to make our sisters and brothers into our enemies; if we persist in striving to engage with all our integrity that power for hope, by living as the children of God and citizens of the heavenly city who we are — then indeed, all things are possible.

We have come here this morning in answer to an invitation, an invitation to build and strengthen, an invitation to heal and renew. This morning, the words, “For God, all things are possible,” mean that nothing can separate us from the calling to which we have been called, that in all things God’s love works for good, that a Spirit and a power and a truth greater than our willfulness has made a way out of our “no way,” for us to escape our turmoil and find ourselves at home, in a house whose architect and builder is God. And here we welcome you, God welcomes us all, to St.Luke’s, our home, which is none other than the House of Hope; and if we turn loose the hope that brings us here week by week, that builds us into the Body of Christ, if we permit the Spirit to shape and to guide our hope, then no mortal force can hold back the grace and power of God's ministry, yet to be revealed in the life of St. Luke’s Church.

Amen

Posted by AKMA at October 12, 2003 02:54 PM | TrackBack