November 17, 2024 - The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Martin Luther argued any man could read and understand the Bible. I’ve always thought that a dubious proposition and Jim and John and Janet have demonstrated there is more to the text than the text. I’m going to do the other and tell you what the text says to me.
Hannah is accused of being drunk because she prays silently. Counter-intuitively, praying and reading aloud were the common practice in the ancient world not praying and reading silently. Hannah was a religious innovator. So Hannah, one of Elkanah’s two wives has a closed womb. Being barren is, you’ll recall, a common malady among prominent women in the Old Testament. Yahweh, acting once again as gynecologist in chief, opens her womb, after an endorsement from Eli the priest. The text presents a theological mystery. Is it Hannah’s long-term suffering or Eli’s benediction that prompts Yahweh to act? Highlighting priestly intervention is always a good thing in a priestly religion. Or is it Hannah’s quid pro quo, give me a child and I will make him a nazirite, which moves the Lord?
The Psalm is a paean to the power of God, and an endorsement of the gospel of wealth. “The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He raises up the poor from the dust to make them sit with princes.” The current government of Israel may take comfort in the verse: ‘The Lord! His adversaries shall be shattered, the Most High will thunder in the heavens,’ like Israeli aircraft over Gaza and Lebanon.
In Mark the disciples in their usual guise as yokels, are admiring the size of the stones used in building the temple when Jesus, like a breaking news update says, “Now a few words about the coming apocalypse.” This is fertile field for many sermons. An apocalypse is always coming. To mention two: the 1930’s began with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl when bits of the West blew across the country. Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Japan invaded China. Spain had a civil war, and then Neville Chamberlain went to Munich and sold out Czechoslovakia.
Appeasement was in the political lexicon as a dirty work for three-quarters of a century. Or when we were children, there was duck and cover, Russia testing the A and H bombs, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was out with friends who were deer hunting the first day of Kennedy’s embargo. There was a brilliant light, no sound, from what I took to be the Sault, and I was convinced the end had come. For apocalypse junkies, there’s the notable book The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn which chronicles multiple returns of Jesus and doesn’t get past the Middle Ages. Sooner or later someone will predict the end is coming and will hit the jackpot. Of course, he may not be here long enough to accept congratulations
The Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus spent 40 days there. Epiphany split the difference at 4 years. Michael Ryan departed at the New Year 2020 and then Covid arrived. We were told not to hold services in the building. While we lost our church, we did not lose our community. Telephone trees were organized so that we could keep in contact, ready to offer comfort and aid in those dark times. In the summer, we could not have Eucharist, so we held Morning Prayer in the parking lot and stayed together at the mandated distance.
Your Search Team assembled over Zoom that Thanksgiving. Somehow yours truly, a recovering Catholic, was selected to head up the search committee. I didn’t know a canon missioner from a cannon muzzle. Luckily, Janet, our expert on all things Episcopalian, was there to offer advice and direction.
Some of what we learned would serve as fodder for a comedy routine like ‘Who’s on First?’ Take the three letters OTM. OTM means the Office of Transition Ministry. It also refers to the documents Epiphany prepared for the OTM, called an OTM, and a candidate for the position of rector also prepares and submits an OTM to the OTM. Later, we discovered another document, the TMC. which is submitted to the Transition Ministry Conference, or the TMC.
The Diocesan Official receiving all documents is the Canon Missioner. The Canon Missioner is charged with distributing the news that a parish is searching for a rector at state and national meetings of Canon Missioners. The search team’s view in biblical terms was "narrow was that gate of canon missioners" especially when we were reminded there were 26 candidates for 100 parishes conducting a search. We worked with some wonderful canon missioners, four to be exact, in four years, and the diocese was in flux at the top. The office of canon missioner is also the springboard for ambitious individuals looking to move up the ladder of church offices, which means his or her interests may not be aligned with yours.
We had been working with one canon missioner for over a year. He visited Epiphany and knew the parish and our aspirations. At a Zoom meeting scheduled to consider how our search should proceed, he suddenly proposed we share a rector with two other perishes. Our agreement to the proposal would have solved his problem of having three parishes without rectors. "No," we replied.
Shortly thereafter we began advertising in the Episcopal News Service, which went nationwide. Who knew there was an Episcopal News Service? Well, that was another part of the steep learning curve.
Janet, Mary and Michelle prepared the parish profile, which is the parish’s central document in the OTM. We had a line item for the rector’s compensation. At first glance it appeared to be satisfactory, perhaps even generous. Then we learned, or I learned, the term compensation included salary, retirement, housing allowance, and health insurance for the rector and the rector’s family. At that moment, our compensation appeared to be almost approaching adequate.
Money. We didn’t have much. It was proposed on a number of occasions that we seek a part-time rector. The actual amount of compensation wasn’t urgent for two years as we didn’t make any offers, but the budget was there, like Jaws under the surface. A fierce advocate for a full-time rector was the late Max Van Zoeren, Epiphany’s treasurer, who proposed we take money from Epiphany’s endowment on the assumption a full-time rector would grow the church. Discussions about money were passionate but never acrimonious. Epiphany’s finances were put on a firm basis through pledge drives like this one, but also when Father Jim, our part-time interim priest put Epiphany on a firm financial basis by soliciting pledges from a willing congregation. "Sometimes," he said, "all you have to do is ask."
Our chief frustration was the choke point of the canon missioner. How could we reach more candidates? We decided to approach candidates directly through their seminaries, did so, and discovered placement officials at the seminaries were not helpful. Next, we determined to reach beyond the placement officials and beyond the canon missioners with an illustrated brochure that could be distributed at seminaries, left in the back of churches, and taken back to home parishes by our visitors. To prepare this bit of hard sell we turned to Susan Trabucchi, a PR expert who had some experience with Epiphany.
In my first communication to Susan, I referred to the brochure as ‘rector bait.’ To navigate this project called for skills beyond mine, and Marty Zwolan took over as leader of the search team. Marty oversaw creation of Susan’s document and managed what proved to be the final group of candidates. Father John told me he’d seen our advert in the Episcopal News Service with the appended brochure, and that combination first caught his and Abbey's eyes.
In retrospect, Epiphany probably received more than our share of candidates; who wouldn’t want to be our rector? Our first was an experienced and, in our judgment, gifted priest who wanted a half-time position and would commute to South Haven. No. Another possessed remarkable media skills but seemed more interested in promoting himself than the parish. No. Another admitted she loved Epiphany but if a call came to move up the hierarchy, she would do so. No. One came from a parish not far from here and did not volunteer why he sought a change. No. Another was married, but came without his wife and admitted when gently questioned, they were separated. He never asked a question about the parish. No.
After we consistently rejected candidates, the canon missioner, the fourth canon missioner, asked, reading between her lines, "Are you people crazy?" But Father Jim kept us to the task with the admonition, "Don’t settle." And we didn’t. For we, in the words of St Paul, "held fast to the confession of our hope," to continue Epiphany’s tradition "of provoking one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together."
Church, our future is now.
Yorumlar