Who would’ve thought three and a half years ago when our family walked through those red doors that our journey would lead us through this nave and into this pulpit?! I can assure you that out of everyone gathered here today, I am indeed the most astonished. But as Rev. Kurt would say, “God is tricky like that.”
My route has been circuitous – first being raised in the Catholic Church, then making my way through Quaker meetings, evangelical community churches, mega churches – I spent many years wandering in my own wilderness, you could say, seeking and trying to catch glimpses of God along the way. Unfortunately, the blessing that those glimpses provided was often quickly overshadowed by disharmony between the voices coming from those many pulpits and the words God had written in my heart. It always started out well and with the best of intentions on our part and on the parts of the many different parishioners we would meet, but like the Israelites who had left Egypt exuberantly, once the newness had worn away, we as a family would inevitably find ourselves again asking, “Why are we here?” We would get to the meat, and we would find that it was dust in our mouths.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. What I’m saying is not about pointing to some sense of Episcopal exceptionalism; that’s not what this sermon is about. In fact, in our college days, Peter and I found a wonderful, life-giving, loving community church filled to the brim with the Holy Spirit. We left that church because we were searching after jobs and promises that had been rightly or wrongly made to us about the opportunities a college degree would bring and that meant we had to leave Greensboro, NC where our little church was located; and lucky us the Recession was just beginning to peak. God heard a lot of complaining from us over the next several years as we tried to find our footing, particularly complaints about the turnstile of churches we wandered in and out of during those years of instability: “Why, God, would you lead us to a church where the pastor is so clearly wayward in his understanding and accepting that God’s love and grace extends to everyone? And why, God, do we keep finding superficial relationships in all these spaces?” but also “Why, God, do they only serve decaf coffee here?” Put simply, we had sat next to the fleshpots and nothing else could compare.
By the time the military brought us to Georgia, we (not unlike many others of our generation) were over it – we were over the gospel-veiled hatred we found, we were over the fear-fueled notions of salvation, and we were over the church as an institution, acting in its own interest, caught up in self-perpetuation and not acting as the body of Christ in the world. Fortunately, God was not done testing our faith, leading us to try ONE LAST CHURCH and we found you. You, the fluffiest, dewy-ist congregational equivalent to manna we had ever encountered, flakiest in the best of ways – “What is this?” we asked. And I mean it when I say “flakiest in the best of ways” because, contrary to the negative connotations that term carries in our society, the word itself speaks to a certain eccentricity and individualism, which is made all the more wonderous by the fact that we here are all so different, yet are corporately, or rather corporally, one in Christ. We did not know, or had long forgotten, what it felt like to belong, what it felt like to be called to a church home and to be accepted with all our own quirks.
In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians today, he begs them to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” using the pronoun “you” to address the early church as one whole and as individuals. It struck me as I was preparing this sermon that this “you” could be understood as being simultaneously singular and plural, many but one, just as our triune God is. Over the past two years of discernment here, at first asking why God would be calling us to this church to eventually asking where God wants us to go from here, He has pulled me into exploring what that mystery of our faith means. What does it mean for God the Father to be above all? What does it mean for God the Son to be through all? What does it mean for God the Holy Spirit to be in all? And what do I have to do with any of it?
This line of questioning all started, really, one Friday not long after we came to St. Augustine’s. I excitedly invited Rev. Amy to come over for tea because I was equal parts impressed by her preaching and intrigued by having encountered my first female soon-to-be priest serving at the altar, the latter becoming the topic of our conversation for much of the afternoon, toward the end of which I looked at Amy and said glibly, “You know, I could never be a priest.” Her eyes shot over quickly to meet mine, piercing in their sincerity, and she said simply, “Why not?”
Go ahead and say it Rev. Kurt … (God be tricky like that). Yep.
I feel that God’s call to me, His calling for me, has always been part of the divinity, my gift of the Spirit, which I carry within myself – though I didn’t adequately recognize that before coming here. And if we’re to agree with Paul, we must acknowledge that the divinity which we each carry is also carried by everyone else as well because it, as he says, “fills all things.” This is a mystery that though sometimes difficult to conceptualize and accept on a personal level is revealed every time we profess ourselves as being one church and, in every moment, when we choose to acknowledge the grace which has been given freely to each of us. What do we do with that knowledge of the unknowable, though? How is it that we have this grace and what are we ultimately to do with it? I believe Paul was right that, ultimately, we must take this grace and use it to speak truth in love, but what is this truth so that we as a body might speak it and be “brought to the measure of the full stature of Christ?”
The truth we heard in our gospel reading is, but one part of what John’s answer would be, and I feel it can be best illuminated through those three questions posited earlier. What does it mean for God the Father to be above all? It means that God has set his seal upon Jesus, a power so awesome that it could make that which is fully human fully divine. What does it mean for God the Son to be through all? It means that through a belief in Christ, we can perform the works of God here in this kingdom now. What does it mean for God the Holy Spirit to be in all? This: That in discerning God’s call to each of us, by seeking, recognizing, and following the movement of the Holy Spirit we find perfect freedom. When we prepare ourselves to partake of this bread, of this body, when we follow God in His call to come to this table to kneel at this altar rail as flawed and beloved as we are, we trust in the gospel’s truth, in John’s answers. Our imperfections meet and are transformed through a perfect Christ, and we cannot step away without being confronted full on by God’s call to us to lovingly extend His gift of life to the world, to every. one.
I know when I say this that it is not easy. In one of our last meetings before I took over the missioner position, already in discernment for over a year, Rev. Amy asked me how I felt about my relationship with God. I said, “I dunno, it’s like, Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs. God reveals each step of the way, but I can never see beyond the next piece of bread. I don’t always know what’s coming, but I do know now that the bread will be there, and I do know God is calling me into the priesthood. Does that make sense?” She smiled and said, “You mean, like manna?” [pause … sigh] She, of course, was right. God gives us the gifts, but we must use them. Ask yourself “Why not me?” then seek and follow that which God has written onto your heart. You might be surprised what will happen when you invited God to work through you and in you. For even though you may not see the blessing you would be to others in doing so, those people and God indeed will see it. Build this body in faith through love, and even if the path isn’t straight to begin with, God will leave the crumbs along the way, for it is this bread that will be given to us always.
Amen.
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