Sunday, March 6, 2011

Sermon for Last Epiphany, Emmanuel, Mercer Island

From the Epistle 2 Peter 1:16-21 reading for today, verse 16:
“We did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you the power and Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

I am taking this opportunity of the 25th anniversary of my ordination
to tell my story,
a story about God’s Presence in my life, the Call
and my response and interaction with that in the setting of the Church.

The point is not simply to talk about myself,
but instead to direct attention to the One who initiates the Call
and who carried out the fulfilling of the Call, and the work of ministry
- then and now.

I am a child of the Church.
I was baptized at age 6 weeks,
and as far back as I can remember my parents brought me to church
week by week.
Even as a small child way before I could articulate it
I could sense that this was a holy place that we went to
and what we did in that holy place filled me with a sense of belonging,
a sense of awe and peace, and a strange sense of being drawn there
that seemed utterly trustworthy to me.

This continued powerfully in my young life
despite one incident after another that could have snuffed it out:
- being told to stay outside the altar rail, only the priest could go there
- being told to stop reading aloud along with the priest during the Eucharistic Prayer
- being told that only boys could be acolytes
- being told to wait until I was 12 and confirmed before I could receive communion

Yet all that time I truly believe that the Holy Spirit was at work
in the process of my spiritual formation
despite the blocks and frustrations of the institutional church,
because by the time I was 16 and had gone through a significant period
of searching for answers to questions about what this church,
what this religion, what this faith was all about,
the breakthrough came as a gift of revelation
not in church on a Sunday morning or in a Sunday school class
but as a personal encounter with God one afternoon when I was alone.

And after that the way of faith seemed to easily and effortlessly unfold before me,
as those important questions of life that I had had
started finding answers that connected directly with Jesus.

So my calling to ministry came
when out of the gratitude and joy that I was experiencing I said to God,
“You have done so much for me; is there anything I can do for you?”

And the response came immediately and clearly.
It was as though I had heard someone say, although no voice was heard,
“Thank you. Offer accepted.”
as though it were already decided,
and God was simply waiting for my cooperation.

The problem was I knew exactly what this meant – if I were a boy.
But I was a girl and this was 1963,
and it wouldn’t be until 1977 before women would be ordained priests.

So it became a matter of waiting for the institutional church
to catch up with the Holy Spirit.

Now, as an aside let me say this about children in church.
All this is why I will not refuse a child communion if they ask for it
or deny them access to the altar.
Jesus said, “let the children come to me and do not forbid them…”
and “If you cause one of these little ones to stumble,
it is better for you that you tie a millstone about your neck
and be dropped into the sea.”
Drastic, terrifying consequences, for standing in the way of our children’s faith
so pay attention to the children.
One of them may be your priest one day
and will be preaching the sermon at your funeral.

Back in those early days of the ordination of women
it was hard just to get into the process,
to get a bishop’s approval and the Commission on Ministry’s consent.
There was no model for a woman priest
and applying the criteria that applied to men
made for some tremendous frustration among us women.
We were looked at far more closely and had more expected of us.
We were subject to discrimination, sexual abuse and suppression.
Yet we women brought with us into the priesthood
and into the institutional church
a new model of wholeness and integration very much needed
if the Church was to continue viable and relevant and have a witness in the world.

It took me four tries and two different dioceses
before I even could become a postulant.
And I added two years beyond my Master of Divinity degree
doing a clinical pastoral internship in the hardest place I could find:
the trauma hospital in the Texas Medical Center in Houston,
all in order to have undeniable credentials in the eyes of the institutional church.

So finally the Church ordained me conceding to and complying with
the call of the Holy Spirit from 23 years before.
The question comes up:
How could I have stayed in the Church in the face of all the ways
in which I experienced suppression and rejection?
But the revelation of God’s love through Jesus breaks through despite it all
and I was able to see the potential and the biblical model, the ideal and the goal.
So the only way I have been able to stay in the Church
has been to be actively engaged in changing it.

The institutional church, organized religion is a glorious mixture
of life-giving, life-changing, life-transforming
encounter with God through Jesus
in the face of all the ways we seek to contain that revelation
within liturgy and theology
and all the ways in which we make ourselves comfortable and secure
despite this closeness of God,
all the ways we would try to domesticate our salvation.

Why would we want to do that?
Why would we want to domesticate,
to put a damper on the saving action of God in our lives?
Because even though the action of the cross and resurrection
ultimately brings all that our souls cry out for in spiritual hunger
- love, life, joy, peace -
the road to get there is challenging
and first takes us to places where we must face what it is we are being saved from –
all the ways in which we lie to ourselves, ignore and hide from
our dark places, our places of wounding
and our self-interested, self-centered, self-protective mechanisms
that inflict hurt on others and leave us isolated from God.

So for many years I worked in small congregations
that were on the verge of collapsing,
because there, out of necessity,
people were willing to change the way they “did” church.
There was the openness to the Gospel, to the good news of Jesus.

There, instead of vain struggles to preserve a model for being the church
that could not be sustained because of lack of resources,
we experimented with being more like the first century church,
much more relational, more shared ministry, more becoming self-responsible
and more in the process of discipleship with Jesus.

This all may beg the question: Why then am I here? What am I doing here?

I think the Holy Spirit was very much involved in that
for MY sake – and hopefully for yours too.
I needed to come to and serve in a place that is more spiritually dangerous,
where the old model of how we are as a congregation still works well enough,
so that the challenge would be greater
for leading people to opening to gospel revelation and conversion.

It is not that this is a terribly sinful place;
it is that the spiritual danger to our souls is much, more subtle,
and therefore more dangerous,
cloaked successfully by our ability to keep functioning in old familiar ways,
so that the power of the Gospel is not readily apparent to us.

But we are sitting in this place in the midst of huge symbols of huge meaning,
eating bread and drinking wine
unconscious of the Body and Blood of our Lord.

You see, after all these years I have come to realize
that the call I heard as a 16 year old girl
was not about being ordained a priest after all.
The call was and is about responding to the mercy and grace shown me
for wholeness of life for myself
and for empowerment and compassion for serving others.
That is really why I am here, and that is what I preach and teach
and hopefully live out with a certain amount of integrity.
That is what we are all called to.
That is part of the package when we dare to baptize or to be baptized
into the Name of Jesus.
This is what we are all called to.
The writings of Roland Allan, an Anglican priest and missionary,
greatly influenced my own formation as a priest
and my understanding of the mission of the Church.

As early as 1924, following his reading of the Acts of the Apostles, Roland Allen said:
"A Christian community which has come into being
as a result of the preaching of the gospel
should have handed over to it
the Bible, the Creed, the Ministry and the Sacraments.…

The Holy Spirit,
working on the human endowments of the community's leaders
is sufficient for its life.

A Christian community that cannot do these things
is not yet a Church;
it is a mission field."

So what is the connection here at Emmanuel?
What in this is bringing us here into truth in the light of the Gospel?
Are we a Church, a real community of faith?
Or are we yet a mission field
to whom the personal and individual revelation of the Gospel has not yet come?

Sometimes we act like a faith community,
but more often we are still a mission field.
And until we come to conversion
how will we recognize that the Holy Spirit is calling each of us
into greater faithfulness and service?

I stand here as a priest,
but I speak to you as a sister in Christ through our common baptism.
There is nothing to celebrate here if today is just about 25 years on the job.

What is to be celebrated is how I am one example of the transforming work of God
through the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus.
What about you?
What is your encounter with the risen Jesus?
Will you let him into more of your life?
Will you let him liberate you from what binds up your life?
Will you let his love overcome fear and anger?
Will you let him touch you?
Will you hear him calling your name?

From the Epistle for today, verse19, heed these words:
“You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until the day dawns and the morning star – Jesus – rises in your hearts.”