Rector's Annual Address 2008

Annual Address 2008
(Isaiah 9: 1-4; Ps 27: 1, 5-13; 1 Cor 1: 10-18; Mt 4: 12-23)


I used to have a business model approach to Annual Meeting, as if it’s time to drop the “God-talk” and get down to “practical matters”—budgets and policies and votes and Robert’s Rules. When I did this, I felt like a sweaty-palmed CEO convincing the shareholders that he’s really worth keeping around for another year.

But I’ve changed: I think it is vital that we don’t suspend who we are—called by the living God, animated by Holy Spirit—for the sake of “business”. I will speak to our life in light of God’s Word which we heard today. That’s our “business”.

“There will be no gloom for those who were in anguish…The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…”

We are a community of hope. We have a great, scary, edgy gift here in that we have no wealth or status to fall back on. We live on God’s kindness, expressed in the gift of our active membership who seek to follow God with their money as well as with their hearts and minds and hands and time. And we trust in the vision of passionate life in Christ, the welcome of pilgrims, and the service of our neighbors in need in order to draw others into our community. As one long-time member put it, “Compared to other churches, we are very lucky. We struggle with the right things—how to better serve, how to draw others into a fuller life in Christ.”

This past year we took a leap of faith and suspended our big fund-raisers. This was a way of taking care of our generous “usual suspects” who had exhausted themselves. It also allowed to concentrate on what is most important—our life in Christ, welcoming those who are drawn to that vision, and truly opening our life to them. And we have been blessed—in Advent alone we welcomed eleven new households among us. Many of these new pilgrims are moving right into positions of leadership and service.

Hope was visible and tangible in new projects this year—in the search to make our space fully handicapped-accessible, in the new Spanish Mass, in a renewed adult formation program, in a new vision for children’s ministry and a brand-new youth group, in the fascinating people who now seek us out to speak about God and pilgrimage and hope. And this hope has been publicly affirmed in the recent Living Church article about the parish as well as in ongoing interest in my book.

We struggle with great pain and suffering—among our own membership, and among the people who walk this gritty street. I know something about everyone here, so some Sundays I look out and my empathy for the burdens you bear almost overwhelms me. Gazing out at the people of this street, I feel the same. But we are a community of hope, and we are meant for joy. Sometimes that joy comes spontaneously, when we take simple delight in being together. Sometimes that joy comes from a deep and silent place, when we are at quiet prayer or at sacred song or listening to Scripture or tasting the Eucharist on both tongue and heart. We are a people of joy.

“I appeal to you…that there be no divisions among you…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

After all these years, I still can’t name what keeps us glued together, except what is said in these words of our co-patron Paul.

It’s tough at the best of times to live together, to share one altar and one life. Church is not the place where we always live in harmony and peace. Church is where we live together, and sometimes struggle together. But we struggle together, not to test who will impose their will or to prove who is “right”. Church is where we engage one another under the power of the cross. Under the cross’ power we dare to be vulnerable to one another, we dare to speak but also to listen, we dare to seek reconciliation and give and receive forgiveness from God and one another. It’s supposed to be different in here, different from the angry and anxious world which shouts first and does not listen, which runs to courts and even to guns rather that giving the power of the cross so much as a try. I feel at peace that we try in our brokenness to be such a community, and I pray that we continue to do so. It’s a tough time for the world, for our own lives, for the Episcopal Church and for the Anglican Communion. In whatever challenges await us, I pray and trust that we shall deal with one another in the right way—under the foolish-seeming power of the Cross.

“Follow me” In the Gospel Jesus calls, and in today’s Collect we prayed that we might answer that call.

We are called, by a personal and living God. We are called to proclaim and live that intoxicating, life-giving vision of hope and liberation and common life and forgiveness and God’s “Shalom” that Jesus called the Kingdom or the Reign of God. So we can risk and we can dream that God may make true the hopes of our hearts. That is our life. I pray that we may continue to grow for the right reasons, and that all that we do and say be done in the light of Christ.