Callings

5^th Sunday of Easter, Yr. B; May 6, 2012

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

Sermon preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

            As the bishop was leaving yesterday, I told him about the first time I walked through St. Stephen’s.  Michael and I were together.  I think I had already made the decision to accept the offer of becoming pastor here.  Michael had already looked at the finances, so there were no surprises left there.  I was remembering the bare cinderblock walls in the chapel and the water stains on the wall in the tower entrance.  I remember sitting in a meeting with Michael and Steve Lane wondering what the hell I was doing.  They were talking about what they had been reading about covenantal relationships in other denominations.  Stuff I didn’t know anything about.  I must have looked a little doubtful about the whole thing because Steve Lane looked at me and said, “St. Stephen’s has good lay leaders.  They really do.  They will help you.”  And then he said, “So what do you think?  Are you interested?” 

            I have always felt called to the church.  Growing up Roman Catholic, Sunday worship was a regular part of my week.  There was no skipping church.  It was what we did, no matter where we were, no matter what else we had to do.  You went to church.  Strangely to many … I enjoyed it.  I had a deep sense that I belonged in the church, while at the same time I had a deep sense of fear about it. I had the sense that the church would suck me in if I let it.  I liked going to church without any commitment to doing more than that. In a large parish in suburban Pittsburgh in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s it was easy to remain anonymous.  That was my church life for many years.  Attending church but not seeking anything more from it or in it … until Nancy and I moved to Lake Placid, NY in 1990.

            Lake Placid is a small village.  Church was the hub of our social life there for quite a while after we moved.  When the deacon there heard that we were going to be alone for our first Thanksgiving, he invited us over to his house to join their family gathering for the holiday.  Some of the parishioners were also teachers at the local school where Nancy worked.  Others were shop owners in town.  Some were parents of students that Nancy had in school.  Our vet was a parishioner.  The local liquor store owner was a member.  The people we went to church with were also the people we lived with and worked with.  I had never had a church experience that was anything like this.  We were a community integrated in the larger community, a family.  I fell in love with those people.  It was something that I never expected to happen.  Instead of feeling trapped, I felt freedom.

            After we had been there about three years our church called a new rector.  She began offering some adult formation opportunities.  She began a Tuesday afternoon bible study.  We studied the Bible readings for the coming Sunday.  I went to those Bible studies every week because the Bible was hard for me. Growing up Roman Catholic, I hadn’t read much of Bible.  I really only knew the portions that we read on Sunday mornings in church.  I looked at those Tuesdays as an opportunity to ask questions and get answers.  There were things in the Bible that didn’t make sense to me, things that I not only didn’t like, but things I wasn’t sure I believed.  I wasn’t really sure what to do with all that.  I wondered if that meant that perhaps I wasn’t really even a Christian after all.

            So I went to Bible study expecting to find some answers, and what I found was a room full of people who had all come looking for answers.  We all had questions.  We were all struggling to figure out what the Bible meant!  It wasn’t just hard for me, it was hard for a lot of people!  The Bible was filled with ambiguities and contradictions.  It was mystery, and each of us … though we read the exact same words …  heard different things in the reading … or focused on different characters in the stories … or would be reminded of life experiences that suddenly felt important to share with the group.  Often, we understood the words differently when we heard them read aloud by someone else.  In this little Tuesday afternoon group, the Bible suddenly came alive. 

            Week by week, I found myself being challenged to look at the world a little differently by those words and the people who read them with me.  Themes of love and generosity and justice kept coming up … in Jesus’ parables … in Paul’s letters … in the prophets.  Love.  Generosity.  Justice.  Love.  Generosity.  Justice.  I discovered that there was a lot in the Bible about all three.  In fact, most of the important stuff in the Bible seemed to be about those three things.  Love your neighbor and love God.  Give to those in need, especially the widow, the orphan and the stranger, especially give to the one who cannot repay you what you give.  Seek justice for the poor, the prisoner and the outcast.  In community those words started to take on some urgency. 

How was I spreading love? How was I living love?  How generous was I?  Was I doing anything to make the world a more just place?  How was I contributing to injustice and not realizing it?  I went looking for answers, and this Bible study was just leading to more questions … some more disconcerting than I anticipated.   Instead of finding comfort, I found myself being troubled.  It was as if the Bible actually had something to say to me ... to me personally.  It demanded a response.  I wanted to respond.

You might be thinking that that’s when I knew I was being called to ordained life.  If so, you would be right … and wrong.  Right because I was being called into the priesthood, but not into the ordained priesthood, into the priesthood of all believers.  It was the first time that I started to think about my vocation as a teacher as a calling.  It was the first time I ever thought about my life as a gift that could make a difference to my community and the world.  It was the first time in my life, that I really felt powerful.  I had choices to make, and those choices mattered because they could change the world.  Love.  Generosity.  Justice.  They mattered to me in a new way.

That realization set a fire under me.  I began reading everything I could find about the Bible and theology.  I wanted to know what my faith really taught, and what I really believed.  I joined a prayer group at church, began spiritual direction and an intentional prayer discipline.  I started encouraging my parish to become involved in mission beyond their walls.  I helped at the local food pantry and thrift shop.  I organized a CROPWalk and started thinking about what it would be like to go on a mission trip with people from my church. 

My world got suddenly bigger.  Now I had neighbors that lived half way round the world … because “neighbor” had been radically redefined for me in our Tuesday discussions.  My neighbor didn’t have to live next door, or down the street, or even in the same town.  A neighbor could be anyone in need.   The energy was amazing, and it all started happening because I went to Bible study, because through that I came to see our salvation story as my story.  But to realize that, I had to hear other people’s stories.

            An angel of the Lord told Philip to go down a wilderness road.  He got up and went probably thinking he wouldn’t see anyone.  But he met up with a eunuch who happened to be reading the Bible.  The Spirit sent Philip over to talk to the eunuch.  It turns out the eunuch was reading from the book of Isaiah, but he didn’t understand anything he was reading.  I’m not surprised.  So he invited Philip in to teach him.  Philip started with the scripture, but then he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.  Now let’s be clear.  There was no New Testament when Philip lived.  What Philip shared he hadn’t learned in a book.  Philip was living the New Testament.  Philip was living what we now read.  So what did Philip tell the eunuch?  He shared his experience of the living God.  He connected the Isaiah passage with his own lived experience of Jesus of Nazareth.  After hearing the story, the eunuch wanted to be baptized because he knew that Philip’s story connected to his own experience.  The eunuch realized that God was also at work in him! 

It wasn’t the scripture that converted the eunuch.  As good as Isaiah is, it wasn’t enough.  Isaiah wasn’t a contemporary of that eunuch.  Isaiah lived hundreds of years before he was born.  It was Philip’s proclamation that made the difference.  It was the kerygma, the story that Philip told, his own faith story, how he encountered Jesus and grew closer to God through him.  If faith doesn’t meet experience, it is useless and irrelevant.  When faith and experience intersect … we’re at the cross.  We straddle the chasm between divine mystery and human knowing.  We are transformed, like I was by that Bible study group.  Like each of us can be.

Because of what happened five years ago, my faith story … which began long before I met any of you … has intersected your story.  Steve Lane looked at me one day and said, “St. Stephen’s has good lay leaders.  They really do.  They will help you.  So what do you think?  Are you interested?”  I really wasn’t sure that I was.  At the time I was looking at two other full-time chaplain positions.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to work in any church full time, let alone two churches at the same time.  I had told Nancy over and over again that I wasn’t going to be a parish priest.  And yet, there was something I couldn’t ignore; maybe not speaking as clearly as an angel, but there was something tugging at my soul.  Something I couldn’t just dismiss.  Something that kept telling me to say “yes” to this crazy idea, even if it scared me to death.  So I did.  Maybe some day Nancy will forgive me.

Turns out, Steve was right.  There are good lay leaders here.  They have helped me.  From day one I have benefited from their passion and wisdom and leadership.  We have a story to tell.  It’s a great story too.  It’s a story about how we have encountered Jesus in the quiet of meditation, in the guests at Sunday supper, in the faces of children at Freedom Kids’ Camp, in the beat of a drum, in voices raised in song, in the smiles of our AA friends, in collard greens and onion bulbs and hundreds of cherry tomatoes.  We have encountered God in our life together over and over again, and for that I am very grateful.  May we have the courage to go out and tell our story to others in our neighborhood, not to get them in … but because we need to continue to find ways to go out!  The Spirit is calling us, just as it called to Philip.  May we continue to answer. 

Amen.