EASTER 5C - Acts 13:44; Psalm 145:1-9; Revelation 19:1, 4-9; John 13:31-35 - 6 May 2007 -

A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

Are We Committed to Loving Each Other?

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Last Sunday we shared in a dialog sermon, which was a little out of the ordinary. Today I am making very little reference to our Bible lessons, which is very unusual for me. Today is not a day where I am going to spend much time talking about how much God loves you and me, which is something I love to preach about. It might even be argued that what I am going to share with you today is not a sermon at all. But it does come from my heart, and it is what God seems to be putting most on my heart to say, so maybe that makes it a sermon. Anyway...

 

A VISION QUEST

 

We are about to go on a vision quest together - all of us. At least all of us who choose to participate. I realize for some of you this may want you to groan, either inwardly or outwardly. For those of you who have done this at work, or even done it here at St. Ambrose, and you’ve wondered what really has come out of it, you may be thinking, “Here we go with this amorphous, airy-fairy stuff again. Let’s just get on with the work of being Christians.” I can sympathize a little with those thoughts myself. My hope is that if I talk for a few minutes today about where I think we are, you will see the need for this process, and be willing to participate in this process - a process which will probably take about six months.

 

I want to start by talking about being a priest and about being your rector. I have discovered, by the way, that the two things are not the same thing.

 

Being a priest is something that I love. In the ordination service (The Book of Common Prayer, pp. 531-532, in particular), it talks about the calling to be a pastor, priest, and teacher. I am to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and fashion my life in accordance with the precepts of the Gospel. I am to love and serve the people among whom I work, “caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor.” As a priest, I am called “to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.” Things like weddings, funerals, last rites, hearing confessions, and offering healing prayers come to mind.

 

These are the reasons that I became a priest. It is a great joy and a great privilege to not just “do” these things, but to be a priest among you. After almost 15 and a half years in three different congregations, and traveling in other circles - youth weekends, youth summer camps, Diocesan conventions, clergy meetings, General Convention, etc. - I think I can say now, “I am a priest.”

 

Sometimes as a priest I feel like a proud papa. Yesterday was one of those times. To see so many of you give up a Saturday - and for some of you it was several days leading up to Saturday, too - and be the people of God through the Kidstuff Sale... to hear some of the people who were shopping say they couldn’t afford some of the things that they really wanted to get their children in the stores or on-line, but they can find them here... to hear Ellen Horn-Lamb break into Spanish to help solve a minor misunderstanding... to see people here from age 10 to age 70 or so come together and offer love, in the name of Jesus, for those who might need a little love, and to be the light of Christ... that kind of thing makes me proud to be part of this community, and proud to be a priest - your priest - and I just want to say to you, thanks for a job well done, and not just yesterday, but for 18 years in a row.

 

Sometimes as a priest I still hear myself asking, “Who am I?” Who am I that this person comes to me for counsel? Who am I that I get to stand up almost every week, and sometimes more than once a week, and preach the good news of God and God’s love for us? Who am I that folks ask me to marry them or baptize their children or lead a liturgy that helps in some way, as they grieve the passing of their loved one? Who am I that people allow me to come into the room with them and pray with them, just before they get wheeled back into the operating room for surgery? Some of you have said to me, “I don’t see how you do what you do.” Some days I don’t know, either. But it is what I am called to do, and most of these aspects of being a priest I love and treasure and consider an amazing privilege, and for these aspects, I can’t thank God enough, and I can’t thank you enough for putting your trust in me. Thank you!

 

There are other parts of being a priest that are just weird and annoying and frustrating.

 

Sometimes I invest a lot of time in people who show up for a short time, have a lot of needs, have needs that are truly beyond what any person can address, much less fill, and almost as soon as they get here, they leave. And I am left wondering, what just happened here? It sort of feels like what I imagine a hit-and-run accident might feel like. It feels like someone has grabbed a part of me and run away with it.

 

Sometimes I get hit by someone who wants what I call a drive-through sacrament. Will you marry us? Will you baptize our child? Will you do this funeral? They don’t want a relationship or to invest in being part of a community. Someone told them it’s not really a wedding unless you do it in a church. Someone told them that if, God forbid, your child dies before it is baptized, some sort of angry God is going to send that child to hell or to limbo or somewhere for the rest of eternity. It’s terrible theology and I still wrestle with what to say to some of these folks, and yet, they show up on the fringes of church a lot more than you’d think.

 

There are many classes we did not have in seminary. They did not tell us how many projections there would be flying around - how so many people will see you as their father or their mother, or expect you to be Jesus.

 

Sometimes being a priest is like walking through a minefield, because we are all so wounded, and you never know whose wound you might be about to open up, by what you say or teach or do.

 

We didn’t have classes in management, or how to run a mini-corporation when the challenge is almost always going to be too little capital and a work force that is almost all volunteers. They didn’t talk nearly enough about expectations and about how people can convey, in one way or another, that they sort of expect you to be an expert at everything. I think it’s that expecting-you-to-be-Jesus projection.

 

They didn’t teach us that sometimes it feels like you have as many bosses as you have adults in your congregation, and how you keep your sanity working for that many bosses at the same time.

 

They didn’t warn us that some folks would threaten to leave if the service went over an hour, that others would threaten to leave if you took out the pews, that others would threaten to leave if you tried to make the liturgy a little more meaningful, because to them changing the liturgy was the last straw. Everything in the world is changing, and well, if you change the liturgy, too, that is just too much, and I’m out of here.

 

They didn’t warn us that folks would threaten to leave the community over so many things.

 

They didn’t tell us that so many people would get hot under the collar about suggesting that children could have fun and learn about God at the same time.

 

They did tell us that people would have very strong feelings about music - about what they liked and what they didn’t like, that everyone who have an opinion, and to be careful in the whole area of music. And they were absolutely right about that.

 

These latter things that I have mentioned have more to do with being a rector than being a priest. They didn’t tell us all these things in seminary in part because a seminary education is a little too theoretical and in part because you cannot anticipate all the things that might come up in a Christian community, anymore than you can anticipate all the things that will come up in your family. There is a certain amount of on-the-job training that happens in any job, and I get that.

 

And there is a certain amount of discernment that happens in any job. What is the most important thing for me to be doing today, this week, this year? Am I doing it? If not, why not? And if not, how can I get back to it? There are a lot of those questions in being a priest, at least for me.

 

A COMMITMENT TO LOVE

 

As we set out on the next phase of our journey together, to really listen to God and to each other, to set a course of what we believe God is calling us to be and to do - for the next 5-10 years - there is an underlying question, it seems to me.

 

And the question is this: Are we committed to loving each other?

 

There are two key words in that question.

 

The first one is “committed”. There is a certain dance, a certain amount of wooing and dating that goes on between a priest and a congregation. Both sides are sort of wondering, from one year to the next, sometimes maybe even from one moment to the next, if the other side is committed to seeing things through.

 

I will say this to you. I am not the kind of person or the kind of priest who likes to just hop around from place to place. There is no greener pasture for me than St. Ambrose. I am committed to being the best priest that I can be - with you. I am committed to an ongoing, never-ending growth process, first and foremost as a follower of Jesus Christ, and second, as a priest - with you.

 

I will also tell you that there are aspects of being a priest, the ones that I described as having to do with being a rector, the aspects that have to do with expectations and projections, the aspects that I referred to that have to do more with what they didn’t teach us in seminary, that are bringing me down and burning me out and eating at my soul. So my truth is this: as we talk about our vision for St. Ambrose, I am engaged in a parallel process of discernment, and the questions have to do with:

- What things that I do as a priest most feed my soul and most feed your souls, and how can I focus mainly on those things, and not all the other things?

- What are all the needs we have as church, and how can we put a staff together that best addresses all those needs?

 

And, of course, under this commitment issue, comes the question that each of you must answer. I am asking you to ask the question: Am I really committed to this community? To answer that, you have to think of it almost as a wedding vow, it seems to me. Will I leave when I am upset or things don’t go exactly the way I want them to? Am I willing to be part of something that is greater than myself, which, by definition, means that I will not always get my way? For better for worse? For richer for poorer? In sickness and in health? To love and to cherish? What would vows like that mean if I said them to my Lord Jesus? And what would they mean if I said them to my brothers and sisters at St. Ambrose?

 

And the second word, of course, is “loving.” As the song goes,

 

“Love, love, love, love,

the Gospel in one word is love,

love your neighbor as your brother,

love, love, love.”

 

And Jesus adds a nice little twist. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

 

It is a short little word - love. But living into it... learning how to love one another... to be a community where people love, and where other people say, “You know, those people over at St. Ambrose really know how to love each other.” - there’s the challenge, right there.

 

Can we commit to each other and commit to loving each other, with God’s help? Can I support you as you strive to be the most creative, joyful, loving person that you can be? And can you support me as I strive to be the most creative, joyful, loving person that I can be? And where our journeys make us collide at times, can we “re-up”? Can we say to ourselves, “No, I’m not leaving or threatening to leave because this didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. I am committed to loving my Lord and loving these particular people, and I am going to see how God brings us through this - together - and what joys await us on the other side.”

 

CONCLUSION

 

A church does need to pause and listen and get a new sense of God’s call every few years. That is what working on a vision and a strategic plan is about. But underneath all of that is this commitment question. Are we committed to loving each other? What unfolds is not all up to us. God’s grace is going to play a huge part - we all know that. But it is up to us to decide if we are committed to each other, and if we committed to loving each other. If we can make that commitment, then great things are ahead for us - things that will feed our souls, things that will feed the souls of those outside of St. Ambrose.

 

If we can make this commitment, then we will be a light to the community. By this everyone will know that we are Jesus’ disciples, if we have love for one another.

 

As we start on this next round of visioning together, will you pray about your commitment to this community - to all of the people here, and to the work that we will be doing together, in God’s name?