St. Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” ~ Ephesians 3:17
Being rooted & grounded in love is key to our health as Christians because only love with Christ in our hearts will truly set us free from sin and death. And that love is rooted in us at baptism.
The community of the baptized by water and the Holy Spirit is the church. In this historic & holy place, it is St. Peter’s Church.
So why do you call this place home? Why is this your parish family?
One author put it this way, which I really liked, as she thought about the parish she called home for her faith:
So why would I choose to live out my faith here at this parish? Because this is where I believe I can best give myself to others and because, most simply, this is where I believe I am being personally invited to live out my baptismal covenant. In the final analysis, I believe that we do not choose the parish so much as discern whether it is a place we can find the intimacy we are called to and seek. By the sacramental reality of baptism, we are each called to holiness, to intimacy with God, and therefore we each need a special place in our lives where we can look after that relationship. This is mine. What is yours? [original by Jean Chivley, OSC]
And that is our question to answer – what is our special place?
I pray that St. Peter’s has been for you as it has been for me these 18 years that special place.
But the community of faith is always more than one person, it is about our collective spirit.
At the 2003 Annual Meeting, I reflected on my first year with you and I said…
“There is a welcoming atmosphere (here at St. Peter’s), a passionate spirit, a new resolve to move from maintenance to ministry.”
I know that was true in 2003. I pray it is so today.
Our calling to live out our discipleship through this parish and to live into our evangelism as we tell the world what we are up to are key points for the future of this place.
As our own Presiding Bishop said this past week: “Evangelism is sharing Jesus. Marketing isn’t bad, but it’s not evangelism. Real evangelism is unselfish. It may not make your church bigger, but it will make the world better.”
And that’s what we are up to, to make this world a better place. We are smaller than we once were… our average Sunday attendance 18 years ago was 95, we are now at 69.
But the point of our work as a church is to do what God has called us to in this time and place.
There is no time to lament. We must acknowledge the loss of persons in this church, but we must not give into the fear of what we have lost but need to hold onto the hope of what we are being called into, a future that will look different than the recent past.
Evelyn Underhill wrote a hundred years ago (or so) that “the only interesting thing about Church is… God.”
As wonderful is our Fish Fry & Apple Festival, our outreach to DCF and Chapel on the green, our choirs, our worship, all that we do, what makes us a church, is our relationship to God and our response to what God calls us to do.
(As Jesus put it, you are to love God with your whole being and you are to love your neighbors as you love yourselves.)
I recently came across this reflection on Catherine Doherty's classic book Poustinia and I think it says something to us about our lives together as a church…
"Poustinia" is the Russian word "desert," and in Russian spirituality it refers to a tradition where persons would leave society to go and live a life of prayer and solitude, building a small hut or finding a cave out in an isolated, secluded place. The person who sought the life of prayer in the poustinia was called a "poustinik."
The poustinik isn't a classic hermit, seeking to avoid society. Yes, the day to day life of the poustinik is one of silence, solitude and prayer. But in contrast to the western monastic tradition, the poustinik is also radically available to others. The door of the poustinia is always unlocked and open. The poustinia prizes hospitality and welcomes interruption. In fact, the poustiniki functioned as spiritual directors for the the Russian people. If a person was needing prayer or spiritual guidance they would seek out the local poustinik, who would listen, pray and offer counsel.
Even more, if the town ever needed an extra hand, to care for the sick or harvest the crop, a person would be sent to the local poustinik who would rush to the town to be of assistance. A poustinik might spend weeks and weeks in the town among the people bringing in the harvest. And when the work had been accomplished the poustinik would leave, to return back to the silence and solitude of the poustinia.
In short, because of the poustinik's availability to the people, from spiritual direction to hard labor, when a poustinik arrived in the vicinity of a town that was consider a very good omen for the town. Every town wanted a poustinik living somewhere close by.
And wouldn't it be awesome if our neighbors felt about our churches the way the Russians peasants felt when a poustinik moved near?” (The Poustinia and the Poustinik by Richard Beck)
His final thought got me thinking about the Church in our society. We no longer hold a privileged spot as a church. But I wonder, can we recapture the idea of our necessity in the lives of others. That the church exists not just for its members but for the world, a place of spiritual direction for our lives and a place you can count on in times of need?
That’s the challenge ahead of us as a church but individually, its through our Baptism that we live our faith in the world and we can do this every day.
As Dr. Lisa Kimball said this past week (same conference as our PB): “Baptism changes everything about your life. I leave a note and a tip on my pillow in hotels, not because I’m a good person, but because I’m baptized and I promised to work for justice in the world.”
How do we live out of our baptismal covenant? How will we fulfill God’s calling in this church and in our lives?
One last story to consider…
Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation, one of the world’s largest philanthropic organizations. With an endowment of $13 billion, the Ford Foundation last year made some 1,300 grants totaling more the $650 million, to support the work of organizations around the world tackling justice issues surrounding the economy, the environment, education and technology.
Walker sees the foundation’s work as trying to improve the life for people who, in his words, are “invisible in our society.” People like the child he once was
He was born in a charity hospital in Louisiana and raised in a rural town in Texas. He went to public schools, attended colleges on scholarship, then went to New York to practice law, eventually moving into investment banking.
On Wall Street, Walker made money — and makes no apologies: “Growing up poor [you] never want to be poor again, and to have clarity about that.” But Walker walked away from Wall Street and went to work for a nonprofit economic development organization in Harlem. From there, he moved on to an executive role at the Rockefeller Foundation, and then the Ford Foundation, becoming president in 2013.
In an interview in The New York Times [September 29, 2019], Walker said the experience that most prepared him to be president of the Ford Foundation was working as a busboy when he was thirteen.
“When you work as a busboy, you are the lowest person in the organization. You are invisible, and relevant only to the extent that you are cleaning up after people and taking away the things they discard. No one acknowledges you, no one speaks to you, no one recognizes your dignity. There was something about being rendered invisible and the perniciousness of the systems that render too many people invisible that has informed how I think about our work at Ford.
“For me, this question of how I settled into philanthropy is one that I struggle with, because there is an enormous amount of privilege [among Americans]. And so the question is, what are we doing with our privilege?”
Today in the Gospel, Jesus begins his preaching life, proclaiming his vision of the kingdom of heaven. That vision is illuminated by the great light of God’s justice and mercy that enables us to see ourselves and one another in all our dignity and goodness, in all our brokenness and failings. In the light of God’s Christ, no one is so invisible as to be beyond the love of God, no one is so privileged as to be above the demanding work of the Gospel in our compassion and justice for one another.
As we accompany Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel in the year ahead, may we walk with the humility and insight of Darren Walker’s 13-year-old busboy, embracing the hope that we can restore and re-create our world by God’s grace through this parish and in our lives.
“God is not finished with this world, and God is not finished with the human family yet.” (PB Curry)
Indeed, God is not finished with this parish. With you and with me.
Indeed, God is not finished with this parish. With you and with me.
May Christ dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love. Amen.
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