Go Deep and Go Wide

Sermon for Jan. 29, 2023, and State of the Parish Address
Matthew 5:1-12

Welcome to annual-meeting Sunday and the state-of-the-parish address!  Back in the day, when I was the speechwriter for the governor of Missouri, preparing the State of the State Address was a complete nightmare.  I received input from a dozen executive departments, directives from staff policymakers, and musings from the governor himself.  Inevitably, the speech was more laundry list than inspiring leadership.  Plus, the thing went on forever.  I’ll do my best this morning not to do that in this state-of-the-parish address, but it is going to be longer than my usual 12 minutes.  In exchange, you can enjoy your breakfast without listening to a speech from me downstairs.

So, first: What’s the state of our parish by the numbers, or at least by some numbers?  Here are some quick vital signs.  First, let me tell you what I think isn’t vital: the size of our membership.  We have about 1,600 members on the books right now, but that counts equally the people who are here all the time, the people who are here on Christmas and Easter, and the people I couldn’t pick out of a lineup.  More useful, I think are these vital signs: average Sunday attendance, the balance of revenue and expenses, and the number of pledges.

Our average Sunday attendance this year is the same as it was last year: 407.  Now, that number requires some explanation.  It includes the number of people in the room, as well as the number of devices livestreaming the service (but not the number of individuals who might be sharing a device, nor the number of devices playing the sermon later in the week).  But that 407 is not the number we report to The Episcopal Church, which wants the number of people worshiping in person.  That average was 265 last year, but I think the attendance story is more accurate counting people online, too.  Anyway, for comparison, an average Sunday here before the pandemic was 362.  Having more people worshiping, wherever they are, is a blessing, and I’m grateful to God for it.

Financially, we ended the year in a solid place, with revenues exceeding expenses by $6,000.  I don’t want to steal the treasurer’s thunder, so I’ll leave the details to Paul Wurth downstairs.  But your generosity is what makes that good news happen, and I’m deeply grateful to you for your giving hearts.

In terms of pledging, the story is less positive.  Over the past few years, the number of households making a pledge of annual giving has declined each year, even as worship attendance and giving have increased.  So, the Vestry and I have work to do in the year ahead, helping members see why it matters to make a pledge of estimated giving, as well as figuring out how to make that process easier.

But even with some work to do, the state of the parish is solid.  We’re making good progress traveling along the road following Jesus, as we seek his healing love and share it with the people around us.  For details about 2022, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the annual report, either downstairs or online. For the year ahead – what’s on the horizon? 

In 2023, we’re going to focus on how we travel with Jesus and do it a bit more intentionally.  We walk with our Lord in several ways, and different words frame different kinds of trips – especially the words journey, mission, and pilgrimage.  In a journey, we’re traveling from one place to another to accomplish some purpose.  In a mission, we’re traveling because a higher authority is sending us to accomplish some purpose. In a pilgrimage, we’re traveling because we feel a stirring to meet that higher authority and gain deeper insight and direction for the journeys and missions that lie ahead.  

We use these words to describe the Christian life because the Christian life is about movement.  If there’s one thing we know about Jesus, it is that he didn’t hold still.  And that’s our model, too.  

Sometimes our movement is literal, and sometimes it’s figurative.  For me, 2023 will be a year of both.  As I told you several months ago, I’ll be taking a sabbatical this year, being gone from mid-April to mid-August.  I didn’t get the grant for which I applied last year, so I won’t be taking the three pilgrimages I’d hoped.  But, it turns out Ann isn’t up to that anyway; so, it’s just as well that our itineraries will be more limited.  Immediately after Easter, she and I will go see our five friends from seminary, with whom we’ve gathered annually 20 times now.  Then, in early May, I’ll go to Israel myself, both to make my own pilgrimage and to learn how to lead future pilgrimages from St. Andrew’s.  Then, in the early summer, Ann and I will go see our kids and their spouses in New York.  And toward the end of the sabbatical, Ann and I hope to go to England and Wales to visit places from which our families came.

Why am I doing this?  Fundamentally, this sabbatical is about sabbath.  It’s about rest.  In my sabbatical eight years ago, I took on a study project and wrote a book.  It was the best time I’ve ever had, but I’m not sure I’d say it was restful.  Since then … well, you know my pathologies about overwork; and at this point, my tank is empty enough that I’m running on fumes.  

But this sabbatical is also a chance to practice what I’m preaching.  Our life with Christ isn’t just about moving for the sake of moving.  It’s about walking the circle of connecting with God and connecting with others.  It’s about prayer and action.  It’s about breathing in and breathing out.  It’s about going deep and going wide.

Jesus gives us that model himself.  In today’s Gospel reading, if you look a few verses before these familiar lines of the Beatitudes, you find what we heard last week – Jesus calling his first disciples, Peter and Andrew and James and John.  They left their boats to follow the new king in town.  From there, Jesus takes his followers “throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.  So his fame spread,” the story says, “… and great crowds followed him” from all over the Holy Land (Matt 4:23-25).

But then, Jesus takes a turn from that public path and leads his disciples up the mountain.  He stops.  He even sits down.  They’ve been “going wide” right out of the starting gate, but it’s time to slow down now and “go deep” for a while.  So, Jesus offers these Beatitudes, which means “blessings” – pointing out who’s truly blessed, who’s truly fortunate in the reign and rule of God.  Then, after what we heard this morning, he goes on for 99 more verses giving what we call the Sermon on the Mount, showing his disciples how following God’s ways will shape their hearts and guide their minds and awaken their spirits.  On this leg of the journey, he’s forming them into the people God has always dreamed they would be so they can live into their best selves and take their transformed hearts back into the world in loving, healing service.  

So, when the Sermon on the Mount is over and they come back down the mountain, the disciples follow Jesus from village to village as he heals the sick, casts out demons, stills the storm, and finally sends the disciples out on their own as apostles – those who are sent on a mission.

My challenge to you is to follow the same pattern in 2023 – go deep and go wide.  But how?  I mean, ask a hundred people, and you’ll get a hundred resources for self-improvement, each with its own app, it seems.  Ask a hundred people, and you’ll get a hundred issues to fight for or causes to support.  It can all seem overwhelming, thousands of billboards on the highway all competing for your attention.

So, as you’re preparing for your travels with Jesus in 2023 – your various journeys, missions, and pilgrimages – let me challenge you to take six paths to follow where Christ is leading.  (You’ll find these steps listed in the bulletin and on the screen.)

First, read the Bible.  You can get the texts or emails from our Good Book Club, or download an app, or listen to the readings that come in Morning Prayer, or just get a good study Bible and dive in.

Second, say your prayers.  There’s no magic here.  Just set aside time each day to sit down with God, ideally with equal parts talking and listening.  Join Pray at 8 each day on Facebook, or download Morning Prayer, or read Compline before bed, or just sit quietly with a candle and a cup of coffee.

Third, come to worship.  And you all have; so, good job.  Keep it up.  Whether it’s here on Sunday mornings or over at HJ’s on Thursdays, whether it’s in person or online: When you offer yourself, praising God and taking in Jesus himself, God makes good on the promise to guide and sustain you.

Fourth, learn your faith.  Get together with others to discuss a book or the readings for Sunday.  Come for dinner and a presentation at Trailside Thursdays.  Sign up for the St. Andrew’s podcast we’ll be offering in the next couple of months.  The disciples had three years with Jesus himself, and that just got them started.  There’s always something new to discover as we walk the path with him.

Fifth, serve the world.  We have 16 Outreach ministries and partnerships where your time, talent, and treasure can help build opportunity for children, or feed hungry people, or raise up folks at risk.  You can share God’s love by serving coffee at HJ’s, or praying for people who need healing, or cooking a meal for someone in grief.  When we do these things for the people around us, we do them for Jesus himself.

And finally, sixth, here’s a challenge you might not have expected on this list: Make a pledge. I’ve put this last because making a pledge brings the inward and outward journeys into one.  We make a pledge in order to empower godly service, right? – salaries for clergy and staff, funding for Outreach partners, payments to keep the lights on here and at HJ’s.  But just as much, we make a pledge to offer our hearts to God up front, in that ever-so-tangible form of money.  Just as my spiritual director once told me to put myself in the offering plate on Sunday mornings, so our pledges of giving bring us to the altar, giving to God off the top to help us remember how God gives us everything we have.

Finally, as you navigate these six roads through God’s kingdom, I want you to know that we’ve got your back.  You’ve got guides ready and happy to help you.  First, I hope you’ll pull up and use two maps for the journey – and you’ll find links to them in the bulletin this morning or on the screen.  The first is called “My Way of Love.”  Remember the RenewalWorks assessment we took a few years ago, identifying where our parish was on the spiritual journey and how we might move forward?  “My Way of Love” is the same kind of assessment, and from the same group, but for personal use.  It shows you where you are on the continuum of exploring a life with Christ, to growing in that life, to deepening in that life, and eventually to finding your life centered in Christ.  A report comes back to you suggesting strategies for growth and offering some coaching resources: Each week for eight weeks, you’ll receive an email with an individualized spiritual workout plan highlighting a few growth areas.  So, that’s “My Way of Love.”

The second map for your journey with Christ is a spiritual-gifts inventory developed by the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island.  We’ve offered this to people coming though the Discovery class, and it opens up great insights about how the gifts and interests God has given you equip you both to serve and to go deeper in your faith.

So, there are a couple of resources to help guide you this year.  But know this, too: You have travel agents here to help you take your journey.  Mtr. Jean, or Mtr. Rita, or Mtr. Anne, or Deacon Adam, or Archdeacon Bruce, or I – we’d be happy to talk with you about where these maps are guiding you and how to take the next steps.  Yes, we sometimes struggle with the busyness of the roles we serve here.  But that does not mean we don’t have time to talk with you.  In fact, we’d love to meet with you to help plan the journey, or pilgrimage, or mission that God has in mind for you next.  We’d love to help you go deep and go wide – to breathe in and breathe out – to be disciples and apostles – to love God and love all.

We’re just a call or an email away.  Travel agents are standing by.