December 1, 2024 - The First Sunday of Advent
Let us pray.
Come, Holy Spirit, come. Come as the wind and cleanse. Come as the fire and burn. Converge and consecrate our lives to our great good and your great glory through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Please be seated. Warren, can I prevail upon you to find me a glass of water from the sacristy, if you just have a minute. Thank you. Oh, it's good to be back and bossing people around.
I have been so nervous, actually, being back. Just terribly nervous. And I've continued to tell myself, you shouldn't be so nervous. That doesn't help. Me talking to myself is not the solution to my problem. And rather than sort of arguing with myself about, you shouldn't be so nervous. I've just been like, oh, what is the gift that God has offered? It's one of those gifts that I just assumed not have. I didn't sleep last night. I know, I thought I was coming down maybe with the flu or something.
The first time that I came, after I was ordained to the priesthood, the very first Sunday that I was supposed to be here to preach, because I had a scary experience, sort of an awesome experience during worship on Christmas Eve, I called in sick. This is a community that had been waiting for two and a half years for a rector to come. The first Sunday, I just said, you know, I'm just kind of worn out from the ordination. As you can imagine, Janet McKenzie was having none of it. She's like, "I appreciate that. But we've been waiting for two years for a priest to come. Why don't you just pull your little self together? Pull your little self together and begin." And I did. And I did. But one of the things that I need to confess to you is, I was afraid so much of the time. I was afraid so much of the time, because we came and there were 19 people. Not the most attractive 19, I just got to tell you that. No, I know it. I love you. You know, this wasn't like sort of the all the 18-year-olds were here. Four in the 19 were children. And one of the things that, so I want to first begin by offering some thanksgivings before I get too far down the road.
Fifteen years ago this December 20th, I was ordained to the priesthood in this place. At that time, Bishop Chilton Knudsen had come out, and she was going to preach. She was the bishop of Maine when I was there. And she was, to say she was a straight talker would be to really downplay that. She scared me. And some people, I don't know what your experience was Father John, but some people have, during the orientation process, some people have their bishop is just absent. They don't even know the names of the person. I was the one who, it was like, I wish she would forget my name.
So we had lunch here, and she said, I had picked the good shepherd reading, she said, "Why did you pick the good shepherd reading?" I said, "Because I want to be a good shepherd.” And she laughed. And during the sermon at my ordination, she had me stand up. And she said, I mean, I thought she was going to say, "This guy's the greatest thing since sliced bread." But she said, "You'll never guess what Michael told me at lunch today." I'm standing there. And she pointed at me and she said, now this is because we had a rector who had abandoned this community. She said, "This is not the good shepherd. I've set him straight on that at lunchtime. But he's the hired hand. He will run away. There will come time that he will be afraid and he will run away. We're all the hired hand. All of us face situations in which we'll run away." And then she did something remarkable. And then she charged this little broken group of folk, this little faithful remnant, with the formation of a priest.
She said, "You have everything you need to form this new priest." You have everything you need to form this new priest. And you did. And you did.
I want to thank you for forming me as you have. I want to thank you for loving me. I want to thank you for irritating me and frustrating me, particularly my grand plans. I thank you for forgiving me and for moving closer to me in love and reconciliation. I want to thank you for calling me to be my true authentic self as your priest. I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom, your faithfulness, your generosity. I want to thank you for loving me and for loving Susan and our good dog Maggie.
I want to share with you how deeply grateful I am to your witness, to the reality that God is the one who gives the church, the community that hears and inwardly digests the fullness of the good news, God's trustworthy power. I want to thank you for being the church, the community that embodies the love of God in ways that touch people and return people to their very best selves.
I had a wonderful visit yesterday with Rosie, and we were just sharing about how memory gets harder and harder. I find that to be the case. And it just occurred to me, and I said to her yesterday, I said, "How wonderful that we belong to a community that reminds us who we are, that calls us to be the people that God had in mind when he created us." People of love and care, people who have the capacity to listen, even to listen to those who disagree with us, have the capacity to attend to each other and to be with each other.
It is a marvel that this community, that you survived COVID. You didn't fall apart. You continued on as best you could. That doesn't happen by accident. And that isn't just because you're really special people because you are. It is because we follow a God in Jesus, who is just adamant about not leaving us alone.
"Would you leave us alone?" I mean, we'd just as soon, maybe like to sweep in and just as soon as not have to do this church thing during COVID or wear masks or whatever else. And God is, and Jesus is the one that says, "I ain't going to leave you alone.” Jesus is the one that says, "Oh yes, I call you by name. I call you to be the very best you that you can be."
We are the ones that are called to come together to remind us who we are in our very best selves, and to exemplify the love of God, to embody the love of God, to a world who could care less, a world who has no time for Jesus, a world that has no time for kindness and mercy.
Today is the first day of Advent, and it's the first day of the year for us. And it's kind of an odd thing. I mean, why don't we just wait 30 days?
One of the reasons we didn't wait 30 days is because the church is called to be that community of people who are out of step with the world, who are just a little out of step with the world.
There's a great story of General Lee, Robert E. Lee. After the war, he had very ambivalent feelings about the war, and he went on and was the president of Washington and Lee University. It was a military school, and the students would march every day. That would be part of their thing. And Robert E. Lee would march with them, but he'd march out of step. He would march out of step as sort of a way of saying, yes, this is a way to be, but there's another way, a deeper way of being. And so we're called to be that people that march out of step.
The readings that we have during the first few weeks of Advent are all about the end times. Now, it's a weird thing. Remember Austin's, the City of Austin's deal is keeping it weird? We're weird. Because we begin the story, not with the birth of Jesus, we begin before all that happens. And what are we reading about? The end of the times. We're already at the end of the story before we even begin the story. That's weird. That's weird.
But it is important to me, because rather than thinking we know the story, rather than Advent simply being about the story we know, we know how that part ends, we're called into a season, a liminal season, a season of threshold, in which we live in three different times. We are preparing ourselves to celebrate that which unfolded 2,000 plus years ago, when God did this crazy stupid thing of becoming one of us, so that we could dwell eventually with God, as image-bearing dignified human beings. Jesus came to us and made us new.
We know the Jesus story, but Jesus also is coming to us in the present moment. See, we can live in the kingdom of God, we can live at the end times in which God finally gets God's way. Jesus finally is going to get Jesus' way. And that way is Shalom, and it is community of Shalom, where competition is not the coin of the realm, but blessedness, a state of being blessed, of being blessed. It is available to us in this very moment, Jesus having Jesus' way with us. And it is also going to unfold and happen in the future.
I expect this community is not too different in many respects from all the communities in the country. There's not an absence of fear. There's not an absence of suspicion. There's not an absence of despair. And the great good news of Jesus is the faithfulness of God in the past, in the very present, and in a future that is assured.
Now that doesn't mean that we're not going to do stupid things to resist the grace of God. I spent Thanksgiving with the Moores at a neighbor's house up in Grand Rapids, and one of the things that one of the kids would do is he wanted to eat the cookie and run around the house, and mom said, "No." And the little kid was like, "Go away! Go, go away!" That's how I am with God. That's how we are with God. Go away! And God in God's grace says, no, just like that, Mom, not going away. I'm going to hold you in attention. I'm going to be with you. And that's who Jesus is.
Jesus is calling us from the future, saying, I see you, and all is well, and we will go through tough times, and it will be scary. But all is well, because we have this community called the church. Imperfect, a community that has existed through time, a community that hears the gospel of God's love for us every Sunday, a community that celebrates the sacraments (hold on to your hats), which bring the past into the present, where we receive Jesus in the present, for the sake of the future.
Our task as Christians is to not get distracted and reactive to all that happens, but it is to remember that we are called to live as though we really believe that the way of God is love and kindness and attention and patience and forbearance and forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. To remember that is the way of Jesus, and we are called to be a community that refuses to turn to fear and violence in response to what is out there.
We are called to come together and to practice being the people that God had in mind when He created us, when He fashioned us, each in our mothers' wombs. Living in expectation, all the good things that are happening.
I want to just say one other thing.
When there were 19 people here, there was a conviction that we had, and that I believe is a conviction that remains. And that is, and I'll try not to cuss, that God really, really, really, really cares about you, about our neighborhood, about our city, that God not only longs for goodness, but that God is always up to something good. When I heard the search process that you all went through, when I heard the good work that Jim was doing as your interim, and continuing to remind you not to settle... when we settle, we end up with something that we've settled for and not something that God has given us. And in the midst of all of that, I've known this. You said, yep. The right, the right fit hasn't happened.
And now you have Father John, and you have responsibility for the care and well-being of his family and him. You have somebody who, like Jesus, has set up his tent with you. He's made his bed with you, whether you like it or not! Sometimes they won't like you, and you won't like them! I could not be more grateful for this community, and I could not be more grateful and hopeful for the future of you and South Haven and Father John and his family.
Let us pray.
Holy One, is nothing too good for your people. Is there nothing you won't do to rescue us from ourselves, to pull us out of our fear and worry? Is there nothing you won't do for us? We thank and we bless you for the gift of Epiphany, the gift of Father John and his family. We thank you, Lord God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
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