Taking the Stranger's Hand

[Sermon from Sunday, June 29]
Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew (10:40-42) concludes a chapter that’s all about discipleship, costly discipleship.  And that’s OK.  As Fr. Marcus said last week, following Jesus ought to cost us something – in fact, it ought to cost us everything. 

Now, Fr. Marcus was discussing the Church’s call to take decisive stands on large issues – issues like marriage equality, and investment in Israel, and economic justice.  I guarantee you the Episcopal Church will debate these same issues next summer when we gather for General Convention.  Even now, the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council passed a resolution two weeks ago encouraging all Episcopalians to “stand in solidarity with our low-wage brothers and sisters” and commending the voters of Seattle for raising the minimum wage there to more than $10 per hour.¹  Some of you are probably angry to hear that; others of you are trying not to applaud.  That’s what living in the Big Tent of the Episcopal Church is like.  But here’s what else I know about living in that Big Tent:  Faithful, passionate people can share a holy goal even as they disagree vigorously on how to achieve it.  In this example, one person might work for legislation to raise the minimum wage; another might extol the free market’s power to expand opportunity and raise incomes for all.  But both can make the case from deep faith, and both can share the same kingdom goal: getting people out of poverty.  Working toward that goal is one way we strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks here because issues of justice have kept knocking at our spiritual door, one after another.  The Kansas City Public Schools unveiled a plan last week to lease Southwest High School to charter school Academie Lafayette, which wants to add high-school grades to its successful elementary and middle-school programs.  After a conversation between the Southwest Faith-Based Coalition and school-board member Gunnar Hand, the writing on the wall seems clear:  Southwest would be closing anyway; and the Board sees partnering with Academie Lafayette as a way to give this historic high school a new lease on educational life.  We’ll see; it’s not a done deal.  Of course, the members of the Faith-Based Coalition are concerned for the students who won’t qualify for admission to Academie Lafayette – which is nearly all the students currently at Southwest.  What happens to them, other than being shunted off to an even worse educational environment?  The faithful folks on the Coalition, who’ve served the students and teachers of Southwest for four years now – they want to ensure these kids who’ve often been forgotten are not forgotten again.  The Coalition members are striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of these forgotten kids.

Then, two days after the Faith-Based Coalition meeting, 29 St. Andrew’s people gathered at Operation Breakthrough for perhaps the least likely bus tour ever: a tour of Kansas City’s east side, “the city you never see.”  Dorothy Curry organized it as the next step in a journey of relationship we’re trying to begin with people we basically never see.  When Sister Berta from Operation Breakthrough was with us in May, she spoke about the power of connecting with another human being – the transformation that can happen when individuals who live in wealth and individuals who live in poverty enter each other’s worlds by simply sitting down together for a cup of coffee or a meal – or, before that, by taking a bus ride.  On Thursday afternoon, just a few miles from this beautiful church and this beautiful neighborhood, we saw parts of our city that many of us had never even driven through.  We heard clients from Operation Breakthrough describe challenges most of us would never think about – the insane reality of getting a 10-cent-an-hour raise, and thereby losing your state child-care benefits, and thereby losing the job at which you were excelling.  That makes no sense.  Or how about this one:  A mother on the bus whose young son was shot to death told a story about talking with a teenage boy at Operation Breakthrough about the pervasive presence of guns, mostly illegal guns, on the east side.  The teen said to her, “Give me $10.  I could buy you a gun today faster than I could buy you a fresh tomato.”  Let me say that again, because it’s true:  With $10, he could buy a gun today faster than he could buy a fresh tomato.  That’s appalling – and it’s life on the east side.  On that bus, our hearts were stirred by the lived experience of other children of God – folks who’d suddenly become real people rather than representations of poverty.  Seeing “them” as human beings is the first, absolutely necessary, step in striving for justice and peace, and respecting their dignity as human beings.

And then, on Friday, another 20 of us went to the housing projects east of downtown for an evening with Freedom Fire Urban Ministries.  We brought dinner for the 80+ kids there, but this is no feeding program.  This is an eating program and a playing program, a ministry of simply hanging out.  You don’t do “mission work” at Freedom Fire in the sense of doing a project for someone; the things being built there are human connection and faith.  You eat hot dogs with a few boys and throw a football around; you sit and talk with a few girls and paint their faces – and something happens.  Something changes.  No longer are they “them” – those people in the projects who … fill in the blank with whatever judgments you want to make.  Instead, they become kids who like to play football, and have their faces painted, and eat hot dogs.  Again, it’s a way to redeem our perception of “them.”  It’s that vital first step in striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of other human beings.

I know people who would argue that the way to live out that baptismal promise is at the macro level, working for systemic change.  And I know people who would argue that the way to live out that baptismal promise is at the micro level, working to build relationships.  And I would say … yes.  They’re both right.  One of the absolute requirements for practicing faithful, costly discipleship is to look carefully at your own context and ask, “How can we best reveal the kingdom of God where we are, who we are, here and now?”  And then – like the members of the Faith-Based Coalition, and the people on the bus tour, and the people who went to Freedom Fire – then we have to take what may be a huge risk for many of us, the risk of taking the stranger’s hand in ours.

This is small-time ministry.  It’s not going to change the state’s rules about qualifying for child care, or get guns off the streets, or bring a decent grocery store to the neighborhoods of the Northeast.  But in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus raises up the blessedness of small-time ministry.  After spending an entire chapter outlining the costs of being his ambassador, sent to bring the kingdom of God to life in the world around us, he ends with a counterintuitive model of success.  Not only will the one who endures costly discipleship receive the reward of eternal life, but even those who simply welcome Christ’s ambassadors will receive their reward.  Bringing the kingdom to life is not always about large-scale metrics of success.  Sometimes simply extending hospitality, extending relationship, leads to blessing enough.  We strive for justice and peace by showing up – to work with a kid in a classroom, or to hear a mom tell her story, or to throw the ball around in the yard.  It’s thinking globally – or thinking “kingdomly” – and acting locally.  As deeply as we want to solve the problems around us, as badly as we want to fix the Kansas City schools and get poor people decently paying jobs, we can’t make it happen tomorrow.  And we can’t make it happen at all without first loving people as children of God. 

How do we do that?  Well, here’s a very direct suggestion.  It won’t apply to everyone here today, but maybe the Spirit is whispering directly into your ear this morning.  The idea is simple yet simply transformative:  Strive for justice and peace, and respect human dignity, by crossing a boundary to build a relationship.  Take a stranger’s hand in yours.  You’ve heard before, from Sister Berta, about one way to do this – by being part of Starfish Ministry.  The idea is that a small group of women here would get together with a mom who lives east of Troost, not to “fix her” but just to get to know her.  Maybe God is calling you to be part of this, to build the kingdom by building a relationship.  Or here’s another possibility.  You know about our partnerships with Southwest, and Benjamin Banneker, and Gordon Parks schools.  No matter how those partnerships may look in the coming year, I can guarantee you this much:  There are people in this room right now who can offer what these kids need deeply, which is someone who cares enough simply to show up consistently.  So whether it’s through Starfish Ministry, or by working with a teacher or a student, or some other way of crossing a boundary – some of you, right now, are hearing God whisper new life in your ear.  So talk to me or Dorothy Curry – or to Gerry Barker, or Pete Vogt, or Sally Tudhope, or Jerry Kolb, or Joy Bower, or Ann Rainey, or any of us who’ve already heard this holy whisper. 

In these relationships, at first, we might imagine that we’re in the role of Jesus’ ambassadors, and we’d be right about that.  We are his disciples; and we are called, in word and deed, to “proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 10:7).  But the beautiful paradox is this:  In being sent to bring God’s healing, we are healed ourselves.  In being sent to proclaim the kingdom, we hear the kingdom proclaimed to us.  Jesus’ ambassadors aren’t just church people.  Sometimes the ambassadors with the clearest message are those God sends to talk to us.  God wants us to sit down and get to know those ambassadors of Christ we usually don’t hear. 

When we do, the relationships will cost us something, because we’ll have to let go of some of our favorite pat answers and presuppositions and prejudices.  “But I tell you,” Jesus said, “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones” who speak on his behalf – truly, they will receive their reward (Matthew 10:42).

1.  Schjonberg, Mary Frances.  “Council takes action on both justice and governance issues.”  Episcopal News Service, June 12, 2014.  Available at:  http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/06/12/council-takes-action-on-both-justice-and-governance-issues/.  Accessed June 27, 2014.

Ordained to Minister as Jesus

[Sermon from May 4, 2014]

What an incredible celebration we shared last weekend!  In Carthage, we witnessed the ordination of four new priests including our own Fr. Mike Shaffer.  The liturgy was beautiful (especially if you like incense), and the Holy Spirit’s presence was palpable as Mike and the others made their vows.  Then we were blessed the next morning to be with Fr. Mike as he presided at Eucharist for the first time.

Well, what if I told you that we had ordinations here, at St. Andrew’s, just a couple of weeks ago?  And what if I also told you we do that at least five times a year?  And what if I then told you the bishop knows about it – and approves?  In fact, it’s the bishop’s description of this that I like to steal. 

At the Easter Vigil, five people were ordained to join the ranks of the primary ministers of the Church – baptized Christians.  If you look in the Catechism, it makes it plain:  There are four orders of ministry in the Episcopal Church – lay people, bishops, priests, and deacons.  And the order of those orders matters.  Baptized people are the first and most important ministers of the Church.  As Bishop Marty likes to say, others are “further ordained” to the more limited vocations of bishop, priest, and deacon.  During the ordination rite in Carthage last weekend, Fr. Mike and the others took vows that will dictate how they live their lives from here on out.  And during the baptisms at the Easter Vigil, the two adult candidates also made life-long promises:  to trust, follow, and obey Jesus as Lord; to continue in the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, and prayers; to repent when they fall into sin; to proclaim the Good News; to seek and serve Jesus in all people; and to strive for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of everyone.  Those are vows every bit as challenging as what the clergy promise in their ordinations.  And your living out those vows has the potential to change the world astronomically more than what the four of us up here could ever hope to do.  Every baptized person in this room is ordained to be a minister, nothing less than an incarnation of Jesus, risen and alive in the world.

So, as Jesus’ risen presence, as the Body of Christ known as St. Andrew’s, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of years discerning how God is calling us to ministry.  We’ve asked you, in surveys and listening sessions, how you hear God leading us to serve our community.  Parishioners went out and surveyed our neighbors, on front porches and at the grocery store, asking how St. Andrew’s can make a difference in the life of Brookside.  We asked the same questions of community leaders and experts at UMKC.  We asked all of you for your feedback about what we should do in a campaign to celebrate our centennial, and 200 households responded to the feasibility study. 

With all that input, we’ve been on a journey of discernment, listening for the Holy Spirit’s guidance, praying to hear what kinds of ministry God wants us to advance, planning how we might live it out now and in the years to come, and then revising those plans along the way as God’s direction continues to crystalize.  We are blessed with a deep pool of incredibly talented people leading this effort, especially Blake and Megan Hodges, and Sean and Sarah Murray, who’ve been doing the heavy lifting of chairing our Gather and Grow Campaign for new ministry.  But they haven’t borne it alone.  At this point, we have about 80 parishioners carrying out this campaign: everything from composing prayers, to figuring out how to thank people, to making phone calls, to discerning how best to steward our building and property across the street to empower ministry.  In all of it, we can see Jesus’ primary representatives – you – living out those vows we all reaffirm at every baptism.

In this journey of discernment, we’ve come to hear some clear direction about our church’s ministry in our second century.  First of all, we know God is asking us to go out on the road, like the apostles after their Holy Spirit moment at Pentecost, and reach people in the community around us.  Specifically, we hear God leading us to focus our ministry “across the street” in four broad areas, as I’ve shared with you before.  For us, “E = mc²”:  Our mission in our second century involves these “four E’s” of ministry. 

First is Evangelism, by which I mean specifically worship, fellowship, and formation for people who probably wouldn’t come join us at 8:00 or 10:15 on Sunday morning.   And we’re beginning that now, not just with Take5 on Saturday nights but with a weekly prayer opportunity at Bella Napoli coffee shop on Friday mornings.  In addition, we’ll demonstrate a fresh expression of worship two weeks from today as our 10:15 service, down in the undercroft.  It’ll be Eucharist, but we’ll have very different music, prayers, and proclamation.  And, yes, we’ll even have words and images projected on the wall rather than a thick bulletin filled with text.  And that’s only a beginning:  Look for opportunities for prayer, conversation, and learning down the street at The Well in the next few months.

Another E is Empowering Young People, both those here and those around us.  Starting this month, we’re going to begin the Fourth Friday Hangout at HJ’s – a chance for young people to talk, play games, listen to music, and find out they’re really welcome here.  And it’s not just for our own youth – we’ll be inviting kids in the neighborhood, very intentionally.

Another E is Events that Build Community, something we’re pretty good at already.  But we want to open up more, inviting our neighbors to join us for fun like the Feast of the First Tomato.  In fact, after the meeting this morning, parishioners will be delivering door hangers to the houses around the church, inviting our neighbors to a garden party after worship on June 8.  We throw a good party – we just need to expand the guest list. 

The last E is one that you may not know as much about, but I think it’s an incredibly rich opportunity for us to take Outreach ministry to a new level.  That E is Entrepreneurship for Social Change.  And what is that exactly?  Well, let me give you a couple of examples – in the flesh.  With us this morning, we have Natasha Kirsch and John Stamm – would you please stand?  They’re social entrepreneurs, people who are creating businesses whose goals are about social, rather than financial, profit.  Natasha’s venture is called EPEC – Empower the Parent to Empower the Child.  It builds self-reliance for families in need by providing job training, life skills, and mentoring to help families break the cycle of poverty.  How?  By training the parents for specific, decently paying jobs – at the moment, that job is dog grooming.  Kansas City has lots of dogs and not enough groomers – who knew?  EPEC works with parents to train them and place them in businesses needing this skilled work.  The other example is John Stamm’s business, Tutorious.  Tutorious’ model is to offer low-cost preparation for college-entrance exams, using college students as the tutors, and to offer those services to kids and families who can’t afford the standard, high-cost options for ACT and SAT prep.  You can find out more by talking with Natasha or John after the parish meeting.  They’re also coming to the Fools for Christ’s Sake Dinner tonight, so you can chat with them then.

So how does all this involve St. Andrew’s?   For years, we’ve been hearing a call to take Outreach ministry to the next level.  We’ve moved from a model of giving small amounts of money to several organizations, to allocating a proportion of pledged income to Outreach giving, to building sweat equity with our Outreach partners, to building relationships with them.  Now the call we’re hearing is to move from simply a charity model toward work that strives to make real change in people’s lives – ministry that truly seeks to build justice and really respects the dignity of people caught in poverty and educational inequality.  One step we can take in that direction is to offer an incubator for social entrepreneurs like John and Natasha – offering both physical resources like office space, desks, and Wi-Fi access, as well as the most important capital: the wisdom and expertise of people here at St. Andrew’s who know a lot about business, nonprofit work, and entrepreneurship.  It’s a natural fit in that we have both kinds of resources, and we’re now making space available at HJ’s to get the relationship started.

And that brings us to HJ’s.  You’ll notice I haven’t said anything about a campaign to build a building across the street.  That’s because the Gather and Grow campaign is, first and foremost, a campaign for new ministry.  But clearly, we have to steward that building and the land where it sits.  Everybody agrees about that.  But the question, “What should we do about HJ’s?” is really shorthand for, “How is God calling us to empower ministry ‘across the street’ as we steward our resource across the street?” 

In our meeting after worship, you’ll hear more about this journey of discernment about our resource across the street.  But what I want you to keep in mind is this:  Jesus shows up in all kinds of unexpected ways, and in all kinds of unexpected places, as he calls us to live into our ordinations as his primary ministers in the world.  And when he does, what he has to show us can make us stop short.

Let me end with an example.  I got a phone call on Monday, someone looking for assistance.  But this man’s story wasn’t typical – not the usual request for cash for a bus ticket to go visit a sick mother.  This was an ex-convict, on parole, who works as a day laborer, but who couldn’t work for a few days because he was recovering from chemo treatments for brain cancer.  He was calling from Shawnee Mission Medical Center, and he needed a place to stay for a couple of nights to get his strength back.  So I got that arranged for him.  And in my conversation with this man, I could see Jesus suddenly breaking into my regular life, just as he did with the disciples in today’s Gospel:  “While they were talking and discussing” – while they were carrying on with the rest of life – “Jesus himself came near and went with them…”  (Luke 24:13).

I had no trouble imagining it was Jesus on the other end of the phone.  But what really threw me for a loop was realizing the opposite was also true:  For him, I was Jesus on the other end of the phone.  Even if it was only for a couple of nights, I was bringing him a little in-breaking of the kingdom of heaven:  a clean bed, a warm shower, a room with a TV.

For this man, I was Jesus.  But guess what?  So are you.  So are we.  This is the body of Christ, and we each have gifts and callings for ministry as Jesus’ hands and heart in the world.  So take a moment, and look around you – look to your left, to your right – and know that you’re seeing Jesus.  We are the presence of Christ, walking with the people God brings into our lives.  This congregation, each one of us who helps to make it up – we are the instruments God fills with the Holy Spirit to bless “[ourselves, our] children and … all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him” (Acts 2:39).  When you go home today, take a minute and look in the mirror.  You’ll see something amazing.  You’ll see a minister.  You’ll see someone ordained to do God’s work in the world.  In fact, you’ll see the face of the risen Christ.

Live Hope Out Loud

[Sermon from Easter, April 20, 2014]

This year, our journey with Jesus through Holy Week took a turn we’d have never expected.  Seven days ago, we had just marked Palm Sunday and the deep mystery of God’s self-sacrifice for us, despite our propensity to choose death over life.  And in the beauty of that quiet springtime afternoon, a longtime hatemonger turned his vitriol into violence, traveling hours to Kansas City for the sole purpose of killing Jews.  Ironically failing in his task, he still murdered three people at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom.

This act is something we can neither understand nor undo.  But, as we’ve witnessed throughout this week, people of hope can do something:  We can respond in love.  We gathered here on Wednesday to lift up our Jewish sisters and brothers in prayer as they celebrated Passover – the story of the redemption of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, God’s victory over the forces of sin and death.  Their Exodus is our Exodus; their freedom is our freedom; our stories are one.  And so is our common blessedness as children of the one God.

These murders – particularly with their horrifying motivation – they make us recoil.  But they also challenge us to speak our faith in the conversations that follow.  A reasonable person might well look at this week and wonder how in the world we can claim what we claim.  We say Jesus has defeated sin and death … and yet, look at the world we live in.  Where is Jesus’ victory?  Where is God’s deliverance through the Red Sea?  Evil and death are clearly still there; Pharaoh’s forces still bear down on us. 

The mysterious truth is this:  God paints new life on the canvas of death.  Yes, death is present, but it is never the end of the story.  Yes, evil still raises its head from the swamp of our brokenness; we still have an enemy against which we contend.  But those battles are merely mopping-up actions in a conflict Jesus has already won.  So even in a week like this one, our call is to live hope out loud.

And you know – God assigns that mission to those who seem least likely to carry it out.  Go back to the Gospel reading we just heard.  Mary Magdalene has come to Jesus’ tomb to take care of the final details of burial.  Because he died just before the Sabbath began, she couldn’t finish her work on Friday.  Her world has come to an end – and now she has to deal with the body.  So in her grief, she comes to the tomb, where she finds insult added to injury:  The body is gone.  She runs to find Peter and John, either to help her find it or just to share the pain.  They look around and find the body’s wrappings neatly set aside.  But the men just go back home, leaving Mary alone in her grief.  As she sobs, she sees angels in the tomb; but even they don’t offer any help.  She turns and sees someone she thinks is the gardener, and she looks for help from him.  But that man standing there is Jesus himself, having come to Mary in her pain.  Once he speaks her name, she can see him for who he is – and his new life becomes her new life.  This person whose words were choked by tears now finds a new voice.  She runs to the disciples, who are hiding out at home; and she boldly says to them, “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).  God has transformed her pain into proclamation as she lives hope out loud. 

In our own experiences, we’ve each had our places of pain.  If we have very many years behind us at all, we’ve each known Good Friday, one way or another.  Whether it’s abuse or addiction, limitation or loss, self-doubt or self-destruction – we’ve all come a little too close to the tomb.  And yet, here we are.  God has empowered us to keep on walking.  In a faith that thrives on paradox, this is perhaps the most surprising truth we come to know in our relationship with Christ:  That precisely through our deepest wounds, we’re called to help God heal the world.  The pain that we’ve confronted, the evil we’ve resisted, the tombs from which we’ve walked away – all of it prepares us to serve those still broken and bound.  Through our words and through our deeds, our call is to live hope out loud.

This week, we’ve heard an incredible example of this kind of proclamation – Mary Magdalene among us, in the flesh.  She is Mindy Corporon, the mother and daughter of two of Sunday’s victims, who was there when her loved ones were gunned down.  I imagine most of you have seen Mindy Corporan on TV at some point this week.  She’s appeared on local and national newscasts; she spoke at the funeral of her father and son on Good Friday.  And she’s done all this with astounding composure.  She embodies such peace that, as she describes her experience and her feelings about the shootings, you almost forget that this woman is living through hell:  the brutal killing of her father and her son, perpetrated by the worst person you can imagine.  Out of such sorrow, most of us would speak horror or bitterness or vengeance or despair.  Mindy Corporon spoke peace – even the very day of the shootings.  Only hours after losing her father and her son, at a hastily arranged vigil, this is the proclamation God gave her to share with the world.  She said:

 “I came upon the scene very, very quickly … before the police and before the ambulance … and I knew immediately that [my father and my son] were in heaven.  And I know that they are in heaven together.…  My dad got elected to take [my son to the audition] because my mom was busy with other cousins, and I was with my other son at a lacrosse game.  We were in life; we were having life.  And I want you all to know that we’re going to have more life, and I want you all to have more life.”¹  

Deep in her bones, Mindy Corporon gets Easter.  Faced with seemingly unbearable loss, she chooses to bear it by proclaiming life and peace, fearlessly.  In doing so, she is nothing less than an apostle.  As God did 2,000 years ago for Mary Magdalene on the first Easter morning, God has brought life out of death, giving Mindy Corporan an unbelievable assignment and equipping her for her task.

That is our Lord’s pattern:  God takes the person in the deepest pain and chooses her as the proclaimer of new life – resurrected life – eternal life – in the here and now, and continuing forever.  Like Mary Magdalene, clearly Mindy Corporan has seen the Lord.  And in her witness, so have we.  In this terrible and beautiful and holy week, she has shown us the best way to join in Christ’s victory and stand against evil when it surfaces.  She has shown us that the wounded make the very best healers.  She has shown us how to take up the cross, bedeck it with flowers, and boldly bear it to a world that loves to hate.  Mindy Corporon has shown us how to live hope out loud.

And now, that call is ours.  We, too, have been to the cross.  We, too, have come to the tomb and found it empty.  Unlikely witnesses though we are, we, too, have peace to proclaim.  Use the wounds you bear to help God heal the world.  Live hope out loud.

 

1.        KansasCityStarVideo.  “Daughter and mother of victims speaks at prayer vigil after Overland Park shootings.”  April 13, 2014.  Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N1_qcUwTeQ.  Accessed April 18, 2014.

 

Who Is This Man, and Why Is He Dying on a Cross?

[Sermon from Palm Sunday, April 13, 2014]

Palm Sunday is one of those times when the liturgy preaches far more eloquently than I can.  If we truly see and hear what today’s worship proclaims, we will walk away astonished, slack-jawed at what we’ve witnessed.  So rather than trying to explain a theology of the atonement; rather than examining Roman imperialism and the religious power structure in Second-Temple Judaism; rather than trying in any other way to make rational sense of the events we’re bringing into living memory this morning – instead, I’d like us to consider two simple questions:  Who is this man, and why is he dying on a cross? 

And I’d like us to put a face on the person who might be asking those questions.  I’d like you to imagine her now.  Her name is Chelsea, and she isn’t anyone you know … or she’s many people you know.  And this anecdote about Chelsea is a true story.  As Emmanuel Cleaver likes to say, it’s a true story, and it may have actually happened, too.

Chelsea walks into Macy’s, shopping for Easter.  She’s looking for an outfit for her little girl because the family is getting together for Easter brunch, and it’s a longstanding tradition in her family to get something new and springy to wear that day.  But Chelsea also wants to find something for herself; after all, moms deserve a little something special for a holiday, too.  So she comes to the jewelry counter.  Since they’re getting together for Easter, she thinks it might be nice to get a new cross necklace.

So Chelsea starts looking at the crosses … dozens of them, it seems.  Every possible style you could imagine – gold and silver, ornate and plain, traditional and contemporary, fine and rough.  Who knew you could find so many different crosses?  The sales associate comes over, offering to help – “Do you know what kind of cross you’re looking for?”  Chelsea examines the options and sees that, even with all the variety, they fall into two basic categories.  “Well,” Chelsea says, “let’s start by narrowing it down this way.  I’d like one with the little man on it.”

I’ve heard this story told to bemoan the religious ignorance of our culture today.  But there is no shame in not knowing something.  The only shame would be if we had nothing to offer Chelsea in reply.

So:  Who is this little man, and why is he dying on a cross?  I can see why Chelsea might look for those answers.  She’d be in good company.  Everybody in today’s Passion Gospel is asking those questions, too.  The Roman governor, the religious authorities, the soldiers, the passersby – everyone’s trying to get a handle on those questions:  Who is this man, and why is he dying on a cross?

What would we say?  Well, if I know anything about theology, I know there is no single way to answer those questions.  But here’s my answer, at least.

In one sense, this man is Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish peasant and itinerant preacher who’s been alienating himself from his own religious leaders by questioning their authority and undermining their credibility with the people they’re supposed to lead.  He keeps pointing out how they’re missing the mark by worshipping their religious system more than following God – a God who’s much more interested in seeing people fed, clothed, healed, and forgiven than in seeing people follow religious rules. 

Not surprisingly, Jesus has gained quite a following.  And that’s brought him to the attention of the Roman authorities – especially when he marches into the capital city with the crowd calling him king and calling out to him to “save us,” which is what that cry “Hosanna!” actually means (Matthew 21:9).  Jesus is a threat to everyone in power, religious and civic rulers alike; and starting a riot in the Temple only seals his fate.  He’s whipped within an inch of his life and then crucified – a ghastly way to be executed, reserved for the lowest of the low, intended to terrorize anybody else who might think about challenging imperial authority.  So he hangs on a cross, along with two lowlifes, until he suffocates.

That’s one way to see who this man is and why he’s dying on a cross.  But Jesus is so much more than that.  This man dying on the cross is there to rule and heal the very people who are killing him. 

All through the story we heard this morning, he’s named as “king.”  The chief priests and religious elders accuse him of it.  The governor interrogates him about it and even presents him to the crowd as “the messiah” (Matthew 27:17), which means the one anointed by God to rule God’s people.  The soldiers dress him up as the emperor, complete with a fake imperial scepter and a wreath of thorns instead of laurel on his head.  Even the official charge nailed to the cross ironically proclaims the God’s-honest truth – this is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. 

And that’s only scratching the surface.  The religious authorities also speak the truth they can’t abide.  As Jesus hangs on the cross, gasping for air, they mock him by calling him “Son of God” (Matthew 27:40), the historic title for the divinely chosen kings of Israel.  They challenge him to save himself, this man whose very name, Jesus, means “he saves.”  They say they’ll believe in him, if God actually bothers to show up.

And here’s the greatest irony:  As is so often the case in our own hearts, the reality they most reject is the deepest truth there is.  Everybody’s working so hard to deny that Jesus is king and deny that Jesus is divine because, deep down, they’re all terrified it’s true.  Only the emperor could be called kyrios, or Lord – the incarnation of divine power on earth.  Only the religious hierarchy could command the people how to live.  Imperial power and religious power must be unquestioned … unless, of course, God actually shows up in the flesh. 

But the journalist on the scene tells the truth.  As the Lord and king takes his final breath, the earth shakes, and rocks split, and the Temple’s barrier between people and God is torn in two.  And the Centurion, the reporter doing the live shot, names what he sees, with no filters:  “Truly, this man was God’s son!” (Matthew 27:54).

So who is this little man on the cross?  Jesus, the insurrectionist?  No, Jesus the kyrios, the Lord – the true emperor and the true embodiment of God among us.  We know it precisely because he doesn’t claim it.  He doesn’t need to.  This is the One – the one who, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself … [and] humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).  And in God’s inverted economy, where power is weakness and weakness is power, God reverses humiliation into exaltation, giving him the “name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9), so that we all might see and know the truth:  that this little man on the cross, this Jesus, is the Lord – the ruler anointed to follow the great Jewish king David, the emperor who trumps whichever clown sits on the imperial throne in Rome.  This little man on the cross is God in the flesh – torn and bleeding flesh – come to bind up and heal every wound we bear.  This little man on the cross breathes the Holy Spirit as he gasps for his final breath.  This little man on the cross holds his arms out wide to speak this astonishing truth to the world that wants God dead:  “See how much I love you?” he says.  “I love you this much.”  [Arms extended in cruciform shape]

Am I More Than My Work?

Sermon from March 23, 2014 -- part of a series on "What Keeps You Up at Night."
Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Here we are in the third week of Lent and week 3 of this sermon series on “What keeps you up at night?”  The first week, the topic was money.  Last week, it was aging.  This morning, it’s another one of the questions that plague us:  “Am I more than my work?”  

Well, I’m a priest; so my work is an ordained vocation and all that.  But I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a bartender.  The romantic image of it appeals to me, the image from movies or old reruns of Cheers.  On difficult days here, I could really see myself doing it:  John at the bar, who welcomes people as they come in, listens to their stories, offers a wise word here and there, and serves drinks to ease their pain.  Actually, maybe my current vocation isn’t so different after all.  Turn the bar into a communion rail …. well, perhaps it’s not a 1:1 match. 

But I do have days when I wonder, “Am I more than my work?”  You don’t have to be a priest to experience it.  You get up in the morning and start thinking about what’s on your schedule.  You get to work and dive into the day – moments of energizing creativity alongside mind-numbing details.  Amid one meeting after another, you try to get the most important things done and keep the urgencies of the moment from pushing the priorities aside.  You struggle to keep up with the e-mail.  You worry whether there will be enough – customers or profits, Sunday attendance or pledging units.  You take real joy in those times when you know, deep in your heart, that you’ve actually made a difference.  You go to the day’s last meeting, and then you go home to find it’s nearly bedtime.  And you go to sleep thinking about what’s on the schedule for tomorrow….

You don’t have to be a mental-health professional to know we need a more holistic sense of who we are and what we do.  God has equipped us for work, but God has not created us to be workers.  God has created us to be … human beings, earth-creatures miraculously filled with the divine Spirit so that we can bridge this world and the kingdom of heaven we can’t quite see.  We know this, deep down.  We know we’re more than carbon-based life forms, random collections of chemicals that somehow evolved self-awareness.  We know God sees us as more than that.  But we also find ourselves right there with the people of Israel sometimes, wandering in the wilderness.  In the dust and the heat of our own barren landscapes, we sometimes look around and see no water.  Intellectually, we may know God’s leading us on a journey; we may understand we don’t get to see the Promised Land until we’re there.  But in the moment, it’s easy to wonder whether we’re doing anything more than wandering.  Are we just walking in circles in a barren wilderness?  “Is the Lord among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7).

Let’s change the scene to today’s Gospel reading.  We’re not in the desert wilderness, but the setting is just as hot and dry – and potentially, just as spiritually desolate.  Jesus is walking through Samaria, a place that used to be part of Israel.  David and Solomon ruled this land; the people there and the people of Judea once were one.  But over the centuries – after divisions, and invasions, and deportations, and return from exile, and rule by different foreign empires – the people of Samaria and “the Jews” are just similar enough to despise each other.  

So at noon, traveling in the heat of the day, Jesus stops at a well to rest.  There he meets a Samaritan woman – an odd meeting for several reasons.  First, most of the local women wouldn’t have chosen the heat of the day as the time to lug gallons of water back home, so you have to wonder if she wasn’t welcome among the others who would have been there that morning.  Second, Jesus engages this woman – he asks her for a drink, and he carries on quite a conversation with her.  That would have been a breach of social norms because a man and a woman wouldn’t have engaged each other like that in public.  And finally, he was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan.  And you don’t have deep, meaningful conversations with people you’re supposed to hate….

The woman names the awkwardness, but Jesus takes the conversation in a new direction – away from the need for a drink of water and into the need for hope.  He tells her he can offer not just well water but “living water” (John 4:10) – flowing water, not stagnant; and water that leaves you satisfied forever after only one drink.  The woman is intrigued – she’d love to stop making her daily journey to carry water from the well – but she’s no fool.  Who’s ever heard of water that quenches your thirst forever?  Jesus needs to take the conversation deeper so she can see him as something more than a snake-oil salesman.  So he leads her to look at herself through his eyes.

Now, here we’ve got to be careful to step outside the assumptions people often bring to the character of this Samaritan woman.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of R-rated biblical interpreters, but that’s what often happens with this story.  Jesus points out the woman has had five husbands and that the man she’s living with is not her husband.  That doesn’t make her either a skank or a hooker with a heart of gold.  In this social context, a woman had no legal right to divorce her husband.  So the likelihood is that she’s lived through the hell of being dumped or widowed five times.  And now, the only relationship she can find is outside what little protection marriage offered women.  She’s had an incredibly hard life.  She’s on the margins of everything.  Jesus wants her to know that he gets it.

And he wants her to know that she is more than what her hard life would lead her to believe.  In the eyes of her culture, this woman’s identity would have been a negation: “not someone’s wife.”  In the eyes of a Jew walking into her Samaritan culture, the woman’s identity would have been a judgmental negation:  “a heretic who’s not someone’s wife.”  At best, she’s a nothing.  And yet, here’s a prophet engaging this nothing in a theological conversation.  Here’s a prophet saying that where people worship God doesn’t make a nickel’s worth of difference; what matters is knowing the Father and worshipping authentically, “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).  Here’s a prophet revealing to her that actually he’s the Messiah, and he wants to have a conversation with her.   This woman’s identity is as far away from “nothing” as you can get.  It’s not about her marital status, or her ethnic group, or her religious practice.  Her identity comes from the living water welling up within her, the water Jesus gives her by focusing not on what she is but who she is.  And who is that?  This woman is the greatest thing there is: a child of God, worthy of a conversation with God’s own Son, worthy of receiving living water, worthy of being taken completely seriously.

And once she begins to see herself through Jesus’ eyes, she begins to see Jesus through God’s eyes.  She says, testing the waters, “I know that [the] Messiah is coming…” (4:25).  And Jesus smiles and lets her know she got it right:  “I am he,” he says – or, more precisely, as the Greek text gives it, “I am” (John 4:26) – just like God on Mt. Sinai.  This has truly been a divine encounter.  And it heals the woman so deeply that she can live into the opposite of her society’s expectations.  This outsider, who couldn’t even go to the well with the other women, now runs to the crowd and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done!” (4:29)  Come and see the first man who ever truly saw me.

When Jesus looks at you, who does he see?  Does he see a banker, or a homemaker, or a student, or a parent, or a physician, or a retiree, or a businessperson, or a priest?  Does he gauge who you are based on your accomplishments in your role?  No.  No.  No.  No.  What Jesus sees is you – the real you, deep down, at the core of your being.

Our identity, our value, comes not from what we make but from how we’re made.  We can earn millions of dollars, or labor countless hours, or insist on perfection in all that we do – but none of that gives us our value.  Our value comes from the Spirit’s presence welling up within us.  Our value comes from the fact that you – not humanity in general but you, the beautiful face looking back at you in the mirror – you are made in the image and likeness of God.  You bear the spark of divinity within you.  In God’s eyes, you are worth dying for – not because you are “good”; in fact, despite much that you regret. (Romans 5:6-8)  Your failures aren’t the point.  In God’s eyes, you are worth dying for simply because you are a precious child.  Precisely because God knows you so well, because Jesus can tell you everything you’ve ever done, because you cannot earn love no matter how hard you try – because God knows you need it, the love of your heavenly parent flows into your heart.  It’s the river that watered the Garden of Eden in the beginning and the river that flows through the city of God, the heavenly city waiting to welcome each of us home.  It is the water of life.  And it’s yours.

The question isn’t, “Am I more than my work?”  God knows you’re more than your work.  The question about work is this:  “Does my work reflect who I am?”  Does what I do spring from the living water that springs up in me?  Does my work honor the God who loves me unconditionally for who I am?  Does my work honor the inherent value of every person my work touches?  Through my work, do I love God and love the person in front of me? 

So what is your true work?  To serve drinks.  When you come right down to it, we are all holy bartenders.  You are called to take the love of God that flows into your heart and pour that love back out again.  In your office, in your home, at a party with your friends, in a meeting room filled with tension – in every waking moment – your work is to love.  Nothing less will do for us, for the children of the God who is love.  Your work is to draw living water from the well of your own beloved heart and pour it out freely, not fearing the loss.  Your work, my work – our work – is simply to offer a drink to every thirsty child of God the world sends our way 

Open Your Doors

[State-of-the-parish address; St. Andrew's, Kansas City; Jan. 19, 2014]

Welcome to annual-meeting Sunday and the state-of-the-parish address.  And here’s my annual warning: This will be longer than a standard sermon.  On the bright side, I won’t be giving a speech in the meeting downstairs….

In a nutshell, the state of our parish is mixed, honestly.  Some parts of our common life are strong and getting stronger; in others, we see red flags we’ll be addressing this year.  That’s not a surprise, given the huge changes underway, both in our parish culture and in our world.  Following our model of collaborative leadership, I’ll share with you where we are in terms of the parish’s spiritual affairs, and you’ll hear about the temporal affairs downstairs. 

We’ve had a very good year in terms of “equipping the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12).  Basically, we’ve spent a year strengthening our staff.  We defined a new leadership position, pastor for young adults and families; and we searched for and found Fr. Marcus – praise God for that.  We bid farewell to Dr. Sharon Hettinger in her retirement, redefined the music director’s job with a more missional focus, and called Dr. Tom Vozzella – praise God for that.  We redefined the roles of the children’s and youth ministry coordinators, making their work more collaborative with their commissions; and we found Kat Mercer and Mathew Berger, who’ve energized these ministries greatly – praise God for that.  We redefined our communications role to focus on marketing the parish internally and externally, and we’re very close to filling two part-time positions to get that work done.  Our talent pool is deep and getting deeper – praise God for that.

We’ve also built our capacity to stay connected with you.  Many of you remember Telecare, led by Chuck Sweeney – a ministry of calling everyone in the parish simply to check in.  Thanks to the leadership of Mtr. Anne and Deacon Peg Ruth, we’ve renewed Telecare and rechristened it “Sweeneycare” in Chuck’s memory.  We’ve also increased the number of parishioners visiting other parishioners for pastoral care, with 11 lay people now regularly doing that work.  At the other end of the age spectrum, Fr. Marcus, Kat Mercer, and Mathew Berger have been busy contacting our families to strengthen those relationships and invite them to join the fun.

And we’ve begun building our capacity to reach people who aren’t yet here.  With Take5, our Saturday-evening service, we’re offering a new, more relaxed approach to worship at a new time – and about 50 people a week are taking us up on the offer.  And Fr. Marcus is meeting people in neighborhood coffee shops and watering holes, building toward a regular series in a bar – relaxed fellowship and conversation about real issues, offering “church” in a new way.

But in other ways, as I said, the indicators aren’t so good.  For the year, our worship attendance is down.  Our sojourn in the undercroft during the nave renovation had something to do with that, and the addition of Take5 on Saturday evenings has increased our averages in the past seven weeks.  But still, attendance is down.  Also, our pledged income is basically at the same level as last year, which is good; but the number of pledging units has decreased.  From what we’ve heard in following up with people, many just forgot to send in their pledges or didn’t recognize the pledge mailing for what it was.  Still, we have some real work to do in engaging parishioners better and in making stewardship a year-round, spiritual practice; and we’ll be digging into that beginning with the Vestry retreat in a couple of weeks.

You’ll hear more about 2013 in the meeting downstairs.  But for now, let’s think about the big questions as we look forward:  Who are we, what is our mission, and what’s God asking of us in this moment?  The answers to these questions have everything to do with what’s coming in the next 12 months.

Our readings today tell us pretty clearly who we are and what we’re called to do.  The prophet Isaiah says, “It is too light a thing” for us simply to be people of faith.  Like the Israelites, we are called to be the Lord’s “light to the nations, that … salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (49:6).  The people of God are by definition a missionary presence in the world.  The light of Christ shines through us.  It shines through the witness of our lives, our words and our actions.  That witness is both our greatest gift to God and our brightest beacon of blessing for the people around us.  And in that offering of ourselves, in our brokenness and in our giftedness, we are “called to be saints,” Paul says in First Corinthians:  We are holy and set aside for the service of God, and we “are not lacking in any spiritual gift” necessary for a saint’s work (1:7).  If a bunch of fisherman were good enough to follow Jesus and take his word to the world, aren’t you?  And in John’s Gospel, we hear that story, our story – the call of Andrew to call others.  He begins as a follower of John the Baptist, but he goes off to follow Jesus instead.  Jesus asks him what he’s looking for and invites Andrew to “come and see” (John 1:39).  We don’t get to hear what happened, but something clearly happened because Andrew couldn’t keep his saints’ light from shining.  He had to run off and find his brother, Peter, and share the news: that he’d found the real deal, the messiah, the real presence of God come to earth.  Andrew couldn’t help himself: He had to open the door and invite his brother in.

So, for this congregation of “missionary zeal,” as the plaque to my left says – what do we hear in all this for us?  I hear God calling the saints of this place to open our doors and let Christ’s light shine.  It’s right there, in our parish vision statement:  “St. Andrew’s is a spiritual home to all, inspiring us to shine Christ’s light into our families, our city, and our world.”  So here are four doors we’re going to work to open in the next 12 months:

First, the doors of our hearts.  There are lots of ways our hearts might be opened to a deeper relationship with God.  But first and foremost, those doors are opened by worship; and within worship, it’s particularly music that turns the key.  Over the past year, we’ve been taking a few steps to differentiate the musical experience at our three weekend services.  Now, with Tom Vozzella here, that work will step up.  8:00 will still be an experience of the richness of traditional hymnody and classic composers.  At 10:15, we’ll keep exploring a greater musical diversity, including traditional hymns along with spirituals, more contemporary pieces, maybe music from other cultures.  And at Take5, we’ll keep moving toward a more inviting and accessible sound, giving people the chance to sing things they might hear on Christian radio, things they can sing with ease.  It’s all a work in progress, the musical “product” one week being influenced by your experience in the weeks before.  So please, talk with Tom, or with Mtr. Anne, Fr. Marcus, or me.  Let us know what’s working and what isn’t.  Because the point isn’t to create an interesting range of church music; the point is to open your heart to Jesus Christ, who’s standing at the door and knocking (Revelation 3:20).

So the door to our hearts is the first one to open.  Second, we’re going to work on opening the interior doors of our parish.  Of course, I don’t mean that literally; I mean the doors that sometimes keep us separated from other members of our church community.  Maybe the door is closed by physical difficulties in getting to church.  Maybe the door is closed by a habit of keeping to the crowd we know.  (I heard recently from a long-time member, and a ministry leader, that she’s never been invited to another parishioner’s home.)  Maybe that door is closed by forgetting to invite newcomers to get involved in something you’re involved in.  (We have a good number of people coming through our red doors; and even though they may not say it, they want you to “make the ask.”)  We’re going to work on opening each of these doors – increasing our capacity to get older and disabled people to church, creating new opportunities for fellowship and pastoral care, explicitly offering multiple entry points into the life of the parish.  In the city of God, scripture tells us, “its gates will never be shut” (Revelation 21:5).

Third, we’re going to work on opening the doors of our faith to our friends and neighbors by helping you tell our story.  We’ve made a good start, with parishioners putting out yard signs at Christmas and Easter, maybe even distributing some door hangers (probably in the dark and in other people’s neighborhoods…).  As Episcopalians, speaking about faith is our greatest growing edge.  Well, your new Communication Commission has been helping us find the words to say when the time is right to talk about what makes St. Andrew’s special.  On the back page of the bulletin, you’ll find the progress so far:  a statement of beliefs and values that encapsulate what differentiates us.  (Please don’t read it now; take it home instead.)  The commission isn’t finished, so look for more tools to help us share our congregation’s story.  Doing that, along with growing our capacity to market ourselves professionally, will open doors for people who never would have thought to seek God here.  As Jesus said, “Knock, and the door will be opened for you.” (Luke 11:9)

Fourth, we’re going to work on opening the exterior doors of our church.  Again, I’m not talking about literally propping open the red doors.  I’m talking about opening the parish to the community around us, continuing our journey of reaching new people with “church” done in new ways.  As you know, for some time now we’ve been exploring what to do with our facility across the street, HJ’s, and whether we should conduct a capital campaign to celebrate our second century.  In November, we asked you those questions through a fundraising feasibility study.  The results were deeply encouraging.  We received more than 200 responses, and 88 percent of you feel this church is effective in meeting your spiritual needs.  That’s huge – exciting and humbling, all at the same time.  In addition, a clear majority supports replacing HJ’s with a new facility, and our consultants say we have a very high likelihood of raising the money to do it.  So the Vestry has voted to proceed with a capital campaign, and you’ll hear more about it downstairs.  For now, let me say this:  It’s an open question exactly what we’ll do with HJ’s; that decision is part of the campaign process.  But the building is not the point.  The goal is to create a new open door between our parish and our community – a place where activities like Youth Group and Scouts can grow and thrive; a place where fresh expressions of worship can happen; a place where neighbors can gather for art exhibits, classes, meetings, or events; a place where we can support and empower entrepreneurs working to improve the lives of people in our city who are suffering.  We want to build an open door through which parishioners and residents can come together, both to prosper our church and to prosper our community.  It’s the next step for the spiritual descendants of St. Andrew, providing a place where we, along with those not yet among us, can “come and see” Jesus as we gather together, opening the doors of the kingdom for people, like Andrew himself, who don’t even know what they’re seeking.

When we truly open our doors, we can’t predict just what will happen.  We can’t know exactly who may come in.  And that’s a good thing.  In fact, it’s the point.  Jesus is asking the saints who tend this house of God to open the doors of our hearts and the doors of our parish to the gift of new life that Jesus wants to give us. 

I want to close by reminding you of a story, something that happened here three and a half years ago now.  A parishioner and I were returning to the church after lunch; and as we pulled up under the porte-cochere, we noticed the door was propped open.  Directly in front of the doorway, at the threshold, there stood a dove.  It was minding its own business, with its back to us; and it was looking into the church. 

We sat in the car, watching to see what this symbol of the Holy Spirit would do.  And what it did was … nothing.  It just stood there, looking inside, weighing its options.  Finally, it jumped, spread its wings, and beat them hard to lift itself up and … into the building.  We took it as a healthy sign.  It’s always good when the Holy Spirit chooses to join us here in church. 

So my friend went back to work; and I went inside – where the dove was now flying around in the narthex, trying to make sense of a new space.  Part of me wanted to let it stay, to see where else in the church the Holy Spirit might choose to go.  But the practical side of me – the part that really didn’t want the dove to fly into the nave and roost in the rafters – that practical side of me intervened.  And I found myself in the dubious position of trying to corral this emblem of the Holy Spirit and drive it back out of the church. 

The dove had flown pretty far in, onto the small greeter table by the Wornall Terrace door; and I thought I should get myself between the dove and the Jewell Room so it wouldn’t fly around in there.  Slowly I walked around it, but the dove didn’t seem to care.  Instead, it seemed to be waiting for me to take my place.  Once I’d gotten behind it, the dove flitted over to the oblations table by the door to the nave.  I came along slowly, hoping it would keep moving toward the outside door.  It looked at me, hopped down from the oblations table, and flew over near the door.  Again I came along behind.  Finally, I watched as the dove beat its wings and flew out the open door. 

I was relieved but also a little disappointed by the role I’d had to play.  But then it hit me:  Who was leading whom?  Rather than me driving the Spirit out of the church, perhaps the Spirit had invited me to follow it.  The dove had come through the open door, and I had followed it in.  Then it had moved to its positions, and I had moved into mine.  Like dance partners making up the steps as they go, the dove and I moved in choreography that came as it needed to come.  I wasn’t herding or corralling anything.  It was the dove who was leading me out, just as the dove had led me in.

The same holds true for us.  The Holy Spirit has led us here, into this beautiful and sacred space, into this warm and welcoming family.  Now, the Spirit says:  Unlock your doors and open them wide.  Open your doors, that we might let the light of Christ shine through them.  Open your doors, that we might bring in people looking to connect with a power they can’t quite name.  Open your doors, that we might go out into God’s world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.  Open your doors, that the Spirit might use us to make the old creation new.