The First Sunday
after Christmas
30 December 2012
Saint Faith’s
Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
1 Samuel 2.18-20, 26;
Psalm 148; Colossians 3.12-17; Luke 2.41-52
For an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist at Saint Faith's please click here.
For an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 a.m. Eucharist at Saint Faith's please click here.
In June of
1981 I was ordained to the transitional diaconate and assigned to the Diocesan
Office in Denver as Deacon to the Bishops.
I suppose that today we might call my position as ‘personal assistant to
the Bishops’. Basically my job was to do
whatever the Bishops asked me to do --- so long as it was legal, canonical and
moral! I remember those seven months
very well. It was during that time that
Paula, a member of the Diocesan staff, and I became more acquainted. It was also a time that bequeathed a broader
vision of the church to me --- a church in which parishes were a vital
expression but not the only expression of what it means to be ‘church’.
One day the
switchboard transferred a call to me --- the days before voicemail and sedate
electronic voices saying things such as ‘if you want Richard Leggett, press
201’. A member of one of our parishes
had been admitted to Saint Luke’s Hospital, the Episcopal hospital in Denver,
and wished communion before surgery.
Since none of her parish clergy were available, the called asked if one
of the members of the Diocesan staff could go.
I checked with the Bishops and they sent me off, communion kit in hand.
Now honesty
compels me to say that I thought that I was a pretty important person in those
days. I was freshly out of seminary,
very sure of myself and a member of the Bishops’ staff. Surely the woman would feel particularly
honoured to have a communion visit from someone of my stature!
The woman’s
name was Euke, short for Eulalia, and she was a member of Christ Church Denver,
the parish that I would serve as curate in six months’ time. We chatted for a few minutes while I set up
the reserved sacrament. We read the
scriptures, prayed and I laid my hands on her and anointed her in preparation
for surgery. Then we shared the bread
and wine of the eucharist. After a
moment of silence we began to say the Lord’s Prayer together. That’s where the problem began --- I could
not remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer and I had closed the prayer book.
It’s a
funny thing. By ourselves we can
probably all recite the Lord’s Prayer in either traditional or contemporary
language. But when we recite something together
we become dependent on one another. If
one of us slips us, all of us go down together.
Euke and I spent a few agonizing moments stumbling over words that both
of us could say in our sleep. Mercifully
we struggled to the ‘Amen’ and I brought the service to a conclusion.
Euke
reached out and took my hand. In a quiet
and wise voice, she said, “It’s alright, Father Richard. You’ll get better at this.”
What I did
not know then was that in two years’ time I would officiate at Euke’s funeral,
my last act as a priest of her parish.
Over the next two years I learned that Euke was right about many things
and I hope that she was right about my getting better. Her words were a reminder that life isn’t
over until it is over and even then God may have more for us than we can ask or
imagine.
It is
customary to hear today’s story from the gospel according to Luke as a story
about the precocious wisdom of the young child, Jesus. But as I thought about Euke this week and
about my own life and the life of my family, I realized that today’s story
about Jesus in the Temple is also a story about a young person who will get
better at being who he is, but he is not yet there. In fact, today’s episode is a story about a
pre-teen boy who is being a pain to both his parents and other members of his
family. I can almost hear Mary saying,
“You may well be the son of God, but you’ll still listen to me, young man! You are still living with your father and
me.” And Luke gently says, “Jesus went
down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. His mother cherished every word in her
heart. Jesus matured in wisdom and
years, and in favor with God and with people.” (Luke 2.51-52, Common English Bible)
I find come
comfort in the idea that even Jesus had to mature in his relationship with God
and in his relationships with people.
Sometimes we are so focused on the divinity of Jesus that we forget his
humanity. During the theological debates
of the fourth and fifth centuries, one of the defenders of Jesus’ full humanity
taught that if Jesus was not fully human, in every dimension of his being, then
we are not truly saved. If Jesus was
truly human, then he experienced what you and I experience, that mystery and
challenge of becoming fully ourselves, fully alive as God intended us to be,
that process we call ‘growing up’.
As I
approach sixty in four months’ time, I am deeply aware of the fact that I am
not yet fully grown up. There are still
many things that I have yet to fully learn and yet to have incorporated into my
ways of thinking, acting and feeling. I
am sure that each one of us has a similar experience to mine: Each time I think that I have figured
something out about being human, I realize that I have not yet truly figured it
out. Just as I continue to be an
unfolding mystery to myself, other people continue to be unfolding mysteries to
me.
This is, I
believe, good news. I can live in hope,
the hope that my mistakes are not the last word in my life, that my future is
not merely a repetition of my past.
What is
true of you and me as individuals is true of that community we call the
church. There are folks who think of the
church as an absolute, an unchanging institution that has nothing more to
learn, nothing more to offer to the world.
But the truth is that God is still unfolding our future, still pointing
us in new directions that lead us to ask new questions about who we are as
God’s people. Our past successes and
failures do not define our future.
In January
we will be presenting to the Ministry and Congregational Development Committee
of our Diocese a document that has been developed over the past year and a
half. It’s called our ‘Preferred Future’. All of you have had a hand in shaping this
plan for the next three to five years.
At its heart is the conviction that our ministry in Vancouver is not yet
finished and that we still have work to do.
We are, in fact, still growing up, still maturing in our thinking, our
acting and our feeling as a community of Christians. One of my teachers, Louis Weil, said that when
we see that there is still work to be done, there is only one thing to
say: “Thanks be to God!”
So, let us
join Jesus in maturing in wisdom and in favour with God and with our neighbours. Let us grow in our compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness and patience. And
whatever we do, whether in speech or in action, let us do it in the name of the
Lord Jesus and give thanks to God the Father through him. [i] Amen.
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