Ministry on the Fringes
RCL Proper 22C
28 August 2016
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 28th.
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 28th.
About a
year ago I told my ophthalmologist that I felt I was losing some of my
peripheral vision. So she arranged for
me to be tested to determine whether my perception was a physical reality.
On the day
of the test I was ushered into an examination room and asked to place my head
in a device that resembles a large egg with a face-size hole cut into it. The technician gave me a little device with a
button. She instructed me to focus my
eyes on the target in the centre of the field of my vision. Each time I saw a flash of light I was to
press the button. At the end of the test
a map of my field of vision would be produced.
I am
pleased to report that my perception differs significantly from the test
results. My peripheral vision is quite
good. What I need to do is to trust what
my eyes are telling me rather than worrying that something is wrong. I will say, however, I am doing a lot more
shoulder-checking these days when I am driving.
And I don’t have any intention of letting up on doing so.
Today both
the writer of the letter to the Hebrews and the evangelist Luke are asking
Christians to check out our pastoral peripheral vision. When we gather around this table to listen to
the Word of God and to feast upon God’s life so generously offered to us in the
bread broken and the wine poured, do we notice who may be on the fringes of our
community and who may be entirely absent?
To be sure
we often comment on members of our community who are not here on a given
Sunday. All of us know far too well that
our congregation is older and that younger folks are a rare but welcome
addition to our numbers.
In some
areas our pastoral peripheral vision is superb.
This small, vibrant congregation has always shown a commitment to
ministry beyond our walls. We’ve
generously supported the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund as well as
the residential schools’ settlement fund.
We collect and distribute thousands of dollars every year to
organizations, agencies and initiatives locally, nationally and
internationally. Our Community Pastoral
Resource Centre and our collaboration and support of food ministries at Saint Augustine’s
and Saint Mary’s are widely known and appreciated.
These are
some of the lights that pop up within our field of pastoral vision. But what lights elude our sight?
In three
weeks’ time, on Sunday evening, the 18th of September, we shall
celebrate the return of Saint Hildegard’s Sanctuary, an expression of something
that has appeared on the fringes of our pastoral vision. As a contemplative, arts-based worship
service within the Anglican ethos of Word and Sacrament, our hope is that Saint
Hildegard’s will reach out to those on the fringes of our vision for whom
traditional ways of worship do not engage.
Saint Hildegard’s may well speak to some of us who already call Saint
Faith’s home but who seek, from time to time, a quiet place.
On that
same Sunday I plan to begin a new ‘Coffee Hour Seminar’ series. We’ll be using a new resource, Wrongs to
Rights, that looks at the rights of indigenous peoples, whether here in Canada
or elsewhere in the world. As a
worshipping community located on unceded First Nations’ land, we need to be
better informed about our neighbours and how we might participate more actively
in reconciliation.
As we begin
our seventieth year of ministry in this part of Metro Vancouver, expanding our
pastoral peripheral vision is central to whom we are and to whom we wish to
become. As we expand our vision to the
fringes, we may discover, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, that we are entertaining
angels, God’s messengers, without knowing.
As we strive to bring to this table those who have not always felt
invited to be here, we will glimpse the banquet promised to all God’s
children. Working together, we are able
to broaden our corporate field of vision.
So let us
keep our eyes wide open. The flashes of
light on the fringes of our vision may just well be sparks of the light of
Christ and flashes of the glory of the kingdom.
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