Sermon and Annual Meeting Address: It's Not About Success or Failure

 

Today, on our Annual Meeting Sunday, we look back at 2022 and ahead to our goals for 2023. How easy it would be to fall into one of two traps: to focus on our successes, as though we have somehow earned God’s love; or to focus on our troubles, as though we are a people without hope or purpose. It’s a good thing that our entire set of readings today points in a different direction all together.

First, St. Paul, in his letter to the church in Corinth, warns us that we’re going to have to think about ourselves, our parish, and our world in a new and unconventional way. God in Jesus Christ is a strange God, a God of paradox, a God whose ways often seem scandalous. In following a God who comes to us as a frail human being, born in poverty and dead on a criminal’s cross, we know that fame, success, and brilliance are not what we can expect. We know that God’s strength--a strength so powerful that it eventually defeats sin and death—is a strength that looks to us like weakness. It is strength born of a wisdom that looks like foolishness. In following such a God, we can be assured that our most reasonable expectations will be turned upside down.

Just look at the way that Jesus blesses us. If I asked you to name our blessings at St. Ambrose in 2022, what would you say? Paying off the mortgage? A gift from St. Michael’s that bought us a needed heater? Meeting in person together again and hugging at the peace? New friends? A warm welcome? Greater recognition in the community? A successful Interfaith service? Inspiring music from the choir? You’ll see photos of all of these things later as you look at our slide show of photos from 2022. These are all heart-lifting things. They’re the kind of blessings that you post on social media with the hashtag #blessed. They are the moments that you put on a slideshow. They’re things for which we can be thankful. But they are not the blessings that Jesus offers us in our Gospel lesson, are they?

Jesus does bless his followers—but not to encourage their successes or to elicit their gratitude. Jesus blesses, or honors, those without blessing and honor. He might as well say to us: “Blessed are you when you can’t pay your bills.” “Blessed are you when you are tired of trying.” “Blessed are you when there aren’t enough people to do what needs to be done.” “Blessed are you when you are sitting at home with Covid.” “How honored you are when the world’s injustices weigh you down.” “How honored you are when your friends laugh at you for believing in God.” Can you imagine putting a photo of empty pews on our Facebook page, with the hashtag #blessed?! Or photos of the rotting wood around our windows? Or closeups of the dead mice in the empty nursery?!

Of course not! But it is in our anxiety and despair that Jesus comes to bless us, to lift us from shame to honor, to prepare us for his reign when all that is wrong with the world will be made right. Before Jesus tells his gathered followers how they are to live, he first blesses them where they are. To the persecuted, the hungry, the sick, the downtrodden, the despairing, to all the suffering straggle of people looking to him for hope, Jesus first gives blessing—before he gives instruction.

As we examine our parish and ourselves, trying to find out what Jesus is calling us to do, may we remember that, before we try to do anything, we are blessed; we are honored; we are beloved. Especially when things aren’t going the way we want them to. In God’s wild and topsy-turvy way, what is cast down, will be raised up. What is broken, will be made whole. How, you might ask? We are part of God’s plan for the blessing and healing of the world! You, me, and St. Ambrose.

  The prophet Micah lays out pretty clearly how that is going to happen in the famous passage we hear today. Micah is preaching in the midst of a world gone awry. The rich and powerful exploit the marginalized for their own gain. War is on the horizon. Corruption is rampant. Micah describes how those in power, “tear the skin from my people” and “break their bones in pieces.” They take bribes and ignore what is just, “doing evil with both hands.” And the religious leaders sanction their actions, promising that the status quo is the will of God.[1]  Sound familiar?  

In such a world, God has a calling for God’s people, and it’s not doing their duty within the established religious structures. It’s not offering elaborate sacrifices to God in worship. Might we say today ... It’s not building bigger and more beautiful churches; it’s not creating more inspiring worship; it’s not hiring more staff; it’s not getting more people in the pews. It’s not even praying for hours a day or giving an enormous part of your income to St. Ambrose. “It was told you, [people,] what is good and what the Lord demands of you—only doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with your God.”[2]

God is giving us action words here: doing, loving, and walking. They are ongoing action words, too, not just something we do once and then sit back down. We keep on doing; we keep on loving; we keep on walking.

And what is it that we keep on doing? We keep doing justice. Not nodding our heads for justice, not loving justice, but doing it. All the time. Getting personally involved wherever people are deprived of their dignity, wherever human rights are being violated, wherever creation itself is being unjustly treated. We keep on doing justice, over and over again.

How do we keep on loving? We keep on pouring out God’s own loving-kindess, the love that never stops, that offers itself up sacrificially, that flows out to every creature, no matter what. We keep on loving when we don’t feel like loving, when we’re tired of loving, when others are unlovable. There’s no age limit or energy limit on loving.

And how do we keep walking? We keep on walking humbly—not putting ourselves down, but staying open to God’s weird wisdom. Listening. We keep on walking, open to changing our minds, open to changing course, constantly discerning. We keep on walking when our knees hurt, when the trail climbs, when the path is clear and when the trail markers disappear. We keep on walking humbly, together with our God.

In this year of intense self-examination and revitalization as a parish, let’s remember that Jesus honors and blesses our needs and shortcomings; that God’s action among us will likely look like foolishness or even failure; and that what God requires of us is to keep on doing justice, loving kindness, and walking with God, come what may.

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[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1251-micah-prophetic-critique-and-pastoral-comfort

[2] Translation from Robert Alter, “Micah 6:8” in The Hebrew Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Norton, 2019), 1314.

Flawed and Chosen

 

Today’s lesson from Hebrew Scripture is one of the passages in Isaiah about a mysterious suffering servant of God. When we hear it, we don’t tend to think that it applies to us. Oh, that’s about Jesus, we Christians say. The bible scholars among us fight over which famous historical figure in Israel's history Isaiah is referring to. Some of us today might imagine a famous faith hero of days gone by as we hear these words. In this passage, though, Isaiah doesn’t name an individual as the servant. He names a community—the flawed and chosen nation of Israel. What if we are the suffering servant? Us, the flawed and chosen community of God gathered today at St. Ambrose?

Isaiah is talking to a nation who’s about to return to its own land after generations in exile. The people think that they know why they’re heading home: to rebuild their city and to settle back into the same kind of life that they had before the destruction of war. But Isaiah is telling them that God’s answer to their purpose in returning home is different than they imagine it to be. As far as God is concerned, they’re returning not to get comfortable again, but in order to bring God’s salvation “to the ends of the earth.” God is asking them to reach out beyond themselves, beyond putting things back the way they were. Today, too, God’s calling is never just about us—it’s always about reaching beyond ourselves.

Today, I’d like to tell you the story of Elias Neau (spelled n-e-a-u). Why am I telling you this story today? (Well, there’s the fact that I’ve spent all my free time for the last two weeks with this story, trying to finish the corrections to my thesis on this guy ...) But I’m also telling you this story today to tell the story of another suffering servant of God: one who is just as unlikely as we are.

Elias Neau was born in 1660 in a small seaside town on the Western coast of France. His people were simple sailors, followers of John Calvin, Protestants in a Catholic country ruled by the powerful King Louis XIV. They were despised by the Catholic majority, economically oppressed, and soon to be persecuted. Elias, like other boys his age, went to sea as a cabin boy at age 12. He had a simple faith and very little education. He was insignificant, just one of many boys born in a troubled land, at a troubled time in history.

          As a teenager, he made way across the Atlantic to French-ruled Saint-Domingue, now Haiti. It was a tough place, full of rough men, pirates, sugar cane, brutality, and slavery. But the rules were easier on Protestants there, for awhile, at least. Young Elias probably got an eyeful of human suffering and depravity in Saint-Domingue. When the crackdown on Protestants came to the islands, Elias and his friends drifted north to Boston, where he continued the hardscrabble life of a sailor. He worked hard, though, and soon married and became a naturalized English citizen. He even became a ship’s captain. But just as things were looking good for him, out of the blue, Neau’s ship was captured by French pirates on its way to Barbados. Nothing ever goes as planned in this world, does it?

          The pirates seized the ship and took Elias back to France, where they promised to free him when the ship’s owners paid ransom. He had thought that he would be let go, since he was now an English citizen. Indeed, he should have been set free. But Elias was a hated Huguenot, a Protestant, and once in France, he was told to abjure his faith. When he refused, he was accused of the crime of escaping the country illegally and was sentenced to life on the galleys.

          Nothing was more miserable than life as a galley slave. Elias was first chained to hundreds of other men by the ankle and sent on a forced march across France to Marseilles. The men were starved and beaten, walking in rain and scorching sun, alike. Once on the ships, they were chained six to a bench, where they remained-- to eat, sleep, live, and row, until they died. Galley slaves were considered scum—the lowliest of men. Most didn’t live long.

          But Elias was cantankerous. He was far from meek and mild. In fact, he was pretty stubborn and ornery. He kept singing psalms and telling the other prisoners about Jesus. So the authorities took him off the galleys and put him in the infamous prison in Marseilles, the Chateau d’If. For several years, he lived in a windowless cell, without light, full of vermin and disease. Part of the time, he shared his cell with a physically decaying man who had already lost his mind. Part of the time, he was alone. To pass the time, Elias started writing amateur poetry, song lyrics that he would sing to the psalm tunes that he learned by heart as a child. He poured out his suffering, his sense of abandonment, and his faith that God would save him, that God would free him from this living hell, one way or another, by death or by new life. It wasn’t good poetry, but it was his.

          Finally, Elias was freed, thanks to petitions on his behalf and lucky changes in international politics. He came out of prison a “hero of the faith.” Who would have thought it? He was hosted throughout protestant Europe and invited to write and tell his story. He was suddenly, for the first time in his life, an “important” man. He went back home to Boston, and then to New York. Understandably, he never went back to sea. He became a merchant and made money. He bought a big house and a couple of enslaved Africans to work for him. He was no saint, remember, just a regular man of his time, a participant in the evils of slavery.

But God didn’t intend for Elias to return to life as it had been before. Elias heard a strange call from Jesus: to free the souls, if not the bodies, of the suffering enslaved people around him. He used his own money to start a school in his home—a school for enslaved Africans and Native Americans and for poor white servants and sailors, like himself. He visited his pupils in their homes when they were sick. He endured the ridicule and even the hatred of his white friends because of his work. He even left the small French Protestant Church, the Church for which he had suffered so much. He left his friends and his comfortable worship to become an Anglican. He knew that he couldn’t do this work alone. He needed the support of the official state church in New York.

Elias wanted to teach those in chains about the love of Jesus, to teach them to read the Bible, to pray, to find the peace that he had found in prison. But his students were never as numerous as he had hoped. The white masters made it hard for them to attend. And maybe they just weren’t interested in what an enslaving church had to say. Elias’ struggled. Given his orneriness, he often rubbed influential people the wrong way, too. He despaired of the small impact that he was making, of the difficulties that plagued his work. When he died, I doubt that anyone would have called his dream a “success.”

But Elias taught hundreds of people to read and to sing—to sing together the powerful psalms and the songs that Elias continued to write for his students. His songs were about suffering, about God’s powerful love in Christ. Elias’ pupils loved to sing those songs. They sang them so loudly and so well that people would come stand outside the classes to listen. The enslaved students could hear the hidden promises in those songs, promises of true freedom that even Elias might not have realized were there. They could experience the power of raising their voices together, as one, of being heard by someone, somewhere.  They could find hope in a hopeless situation. Because of one insignificant, imperfect man’s suffering, his response to God’s call, and his willingness to be open to change, hundreds of enslaved people were able to get a small glimpse of freedom. And here we are, listening to Elias’ story today, three hundred years after his death.

Like Elias, we, too, follow the Lamb of God, the slaughtered Passover Lamb who protects us as he leads us all from bondage to freedom. We don’t have to be perfect to follow him. We don’t have to be important or influential. We don’t have to do it alone. We don’t even have to meet the world’s standards of success. We just do it as a scrappy community that reaches out, despite ourselves... A community that lets God’s healing light “shine to the ends of the earth.” Can we do it? Well, as Jesus says, “Come and see!”

Gifts of Water and Stars

 

Today is a strange Sunday, liturgically. It's the first Sunday after the Epiphany. Since we didn't have a service on Friday, the Feast of the Epiphany, we didn't get to hear about the wise men bearing gifts and following the star. We didn't get to think about the first "epiphany" or "showing forth" of God's presence in Jesus. So, as you might have noticed, we're adding a bit of the Epiphany story to our liturgy today. But today is really another feast day in the church calendar. It's the Baptism of our Lord. The day we remember Jesus' baptism, and ours.

I couldn't decide if I should preach today on the Epiphany story, or the baptism one. So today's sermon is going to be about gifts from God— gifts of powerful and transforming words.

First, to celebrate Epiphany, I have "star words" for us today. As the magi followed a star, searching for God, we too search our world for a word from our God. We look for meaning, for connection, for a voice that makes sense of the chaos in which we can find ourselves. In our search, we often puzzle over or reject encounters that we later understand to have been precious gifts.  "Star words," are prayerfully chosen words, written on a wooden star, that you are invited to pick from this gift bag. As you each pick one star at random, we will prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to open each of us to "our" word over the coming year. I invite you to keep your word in prayer throughout 2023, asking for God to help you live into the word with intention and faithfulness. Put it on your desk or on your dresser, and open yourself to God's voice in this year's "star word."[1]

And now, here are the most important words of all for us today. [Unroll paper sign with "I am Precious and Beloved" written large across the top.]

Take a good look at these words. These are divine, holy words. When you're born, God engraves them on your soul. Everyone--each son and daughter of Adam and Eve, from the beginning of Creation until now--carries these words deep within their very being. There are no exceptions. These words are who we are in God’s eyes, who God created us to be: “I am beloved and precious.” Say them with me!

Can you feel the words stir around somewhere inside?  If you feel silly doing this, it’s because these words are strangely hard to believe. My preaching mentor used to always say that it’s easy to convince people that they are terrible sinners. What’s hard is to get them to believe that God loves them. Usually, young children have less trouble calling themselves beloved than we adults do. It’s only in babies’ eyes that you can see straight through to the special words. Baby’s eyes have a kind of soft glow, a thinly-veiled twinkle. I think that’s God’s hand-etched love language shining through.

          What happens to us as we get older, then?

Well, I bet you can all remember that time when that kid in sixth grade told you that she wouldn’t be your friend anymore? Or the first … or the tenth …. time that you got picked last for the team? Or didn't get hired for that job? Rip, went part of God’s beautiful name for you. (Children tear paper and let it fall).

Remember the time when the teacher sent you out in the hall for talking, when you were just trying to help your neighbor? Remember your first B, or C, or D on a test? Remember that first failed romantic relationship? Rip, went part of God’s beautiful name. (Children tear paper and let it fall.)

How about the time when you didn’t get a Valentine, and everyone else in the class did? Or the time someone yelled at you really, really loudly?  Or even worse, belittled you in front of others? Rip, went another of those letters. (Children tear paper and let it fall.)

And then there was the time that you prayed really hard for something, for something important, and it seemed like God didn’t hear you. There was the time that you or a loved one, or your pet was really sick, and it sure didn’t look like God was doing anything to help. Rip, went another of those letters.

Pretty soon, that beautiful name that God gave you is covered over by hurt and lost behind all the ugly names that life pastes on top. The letters are torn in little pieces by the destructive powers that swirl around us in this world. Oh, we’re all still anxious to touch these words again, of course. We'll do anything for words of approval, words of unconditional love. We'll work too hard, hoping to hear them. We'll buy whatever advertisers promise us will deliver them. We'll hunt for them in food, or alcohol, or money.

We might forget where to look for these words, but God never gives up on us. God is like the nanny in the film, The Help.  She croons over and over to her neglected and abused young charge, “You is good; you is beautiful; you is important.” In today's Gospel, we see a crowd of God’s beloved people thirsty for answers, starving for hope. They think that they might see that hope in the person of John the Baptizer. They pray that they will find the wholeness of these words under the waters of the Jordan. Even Jesus. Like each of us, each child of Adam, Jesus needs to gather the strength of these words before he can fulfill the Father’s plans for him. God breathes them down from the heavens for all to hear: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well-pleased.”         

When we remember our baptisms, too, God sends the Holy Spirit to breathe us back to wholeness, to the loving, living wholeness of Jesus. My favorite part of every baptism is when I get to take the blessed oil, the chrism, and make a tiny cross on the forehead of the person being baptized. “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever,” I say.

What I didn’t know until recently is why we make this sign of the cross on the middle of the forehead. According to an ancient tradition, the eye of the soul is located here, in the middle of our foreheads. While our regular eyes look out to see the world, the eye of the soul both looks out on God’s spirit in the world AND looks deep within us, to the place where God resides in us, to the hidden place where God’s name for us is still intact. Our baptism washes the dirt from this third eye. It washes this eye open, here in the middle of our foreheads. Our baptism wakes our souls to what God intends for us. With the third eye open and sealed with the Cross, we can once again see ourselves as God sees us.[2] We are made ready to love God, to love others, and to love ourselves. We are made ready to do the work of love that Jesus gives us to do.

Artist Janet Richardson tells the story of an unhoused, mentally-ill woman named Fayette. Fayette found her way to church and asked to be baptized. The priest explained that baptism was “this holy moment when we are named by God’s grace with such power it won’t come undone.” In the chaos of her troubled life. Fayette would come to church every Sunday, and ask, “When I’m baptized, I am …?” Everyone would tell her “a beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.” The day of her baptism, she lifted her head from the font and shouted, “And now I am ….?” And the congregation responded, “beloved, precious child of God, and beautiful to behold.” “Oh yes,” she shouted, and began to dance around.

Sometime later, the priest of this church heard that Fayette had been attacked and beaten out on the streets and was in the hospital. The priest stopped by for a visit, and from the door to Fayette’s hospital room, he saw the woman pacing back and forth. “I am a beloved, precious child of God, and …” she said, over and over. She was hurt and disheveled from the attack, and the words were stuck and torn, like these pieces of paper on the floor. Looking at her bruised face in the mirror, though, she persevered. “I am the beloved, precious child of God …. and God is still working on me. If you come back tomorrow, I’ll be so beautiful I’ll take your breath away,” she finally said triumphantly.[3]

You, me, Fayette, every child of Adam and Eve, every child of God: We are all beloved and precious, bound to God in Christ, bound to one another in God’s love. Forever.

             

 

  

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[1] See https://revgalblogpals.org/star-words/.

[2] John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers: Following Love into Mystery (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), 70.

                 [3] As told by Janet Richardson, http://paintedprayerbook.com/2010/01/03/epiphany-1-baptized-and-beloved?#sthash.wMZfB0kT.dpu