Righteous Anger, Justice, Forgiveness and Unity, by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer

Trinity Episcopal Church

Hartford, Connecticut

Proper 7 – The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

June 19, 2016

It was almost exactly one year ago today (Sunday, June 21, 2015) when I stood at this very pulpit, in this very same place, and read to you the names and personal information about the nine victims of the mass shooting during a Bible Study at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Those who died were victims of their own Christian hospitality – inviting in a stranger who appeared to be a seeker, inviting him to participate in their sacred act of studying Sacred Scripture.

The anniversary of that event was two days ago on Friday. But that anniversary was overshadowed earlier this week by yet another mass shooting, this time at a club in Orlando, Florida, once again involving assault weapons intended for military use and not use by civilians. This time the establishment targeted was not exclusively Christian and the people targeted were not specifically African American. This time the targeted victims were members of the LGBTQ community during Pride month.  While the location was not a church this time, it was another type of sanctuary – a social club that served as a safe haven for members of the LGBTQ community. And there may have been another targeted community – the evening was advertised as Latin night, so most of the patrons were Hispanic. To magnify the sense of violation, it turns out the perpetrator himself regularly socialized at that very club, so he was known to the staff and many of the patrons.

The killer complicated attempts to figure out his motive when, in the midst of the attack, he proclaimed allegiance to ISIS, although there is no evidence that organization or any other terrorist group played any direct role in the attack. Ironically, although he claimed Islam as his motive, his violent act of hatred profaned the very faith he claimed during this holy season of Ramadan – a season of peace. It now comes to light that the man’s own father has been a persecutor of the LGBTQ community, and that the perpetrator himself has a long history of violence and behavior issues dating back to his kindergarten years. Who knows what some type of early intervention may have been done that might have avoided the events of last Sunday? Clearly this was a man fighting lifelong internal struggles and at war with the world.

So perhaps it is more than coincidence that this week’s Gospel lesson from Luke recounts the story of  Jesus’ healing of the Gerasene demoniac – a man plagued by so many internal demons that  he has assumed their name – Legion.  As I think of the perpetrator of the Orlando massacre, I think of the demons that he must have been wrestling with and how his way of resolution was mass murder. I wonder how the story of the Gerasene demoniac would be different if he had access to an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon.

As an aside, I have to echo what so many of my colleagues in the clergy and our political leaders have been saying through all of the vigils and press conferences of the last week. I am sick and tired of attending vigils after mass shootings. I am tired, frankly, of having to write sermons about a travesty to which our elected leaders pay lip service but do nothing about. You know, when those brave members of congress walked out of the seemingly mandatory “moment of silence” that their so-called “leaders” called following the shootings, I at first thought it showed disrespect. And then I said, no, these moments of silence, the now-routine statements that our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families have become almost pro-forma, done out of courtesy. It’s a routine that may seem genuine to those offering it but in fact makes a mockery out of the deaths of the victims when offered by the only people who can actually do something about it, but do nothing. Like the families of the Charleston church shooting victims, I find to my own surprise that I am more troubled by those who allowed a weapon like the AR-15 to fall into the hands of a troubled man than I am by the actual shooter himself.

 But let us return to the tortured man in this morning’s Gospel story. As the story is related, Jesus heals the man by calling the demons out of him. My colleague the Rev. Kate Heichler observed this week that Jesus had a gift for separating disease, sin and evil from the person afflicted by them. He did not confuse people with the problems that they manifest. “Confronted with this terrified and terrorizing man,” she notes, “Jesus saw inside to what was really going on, and addressed the forces of evil oppressing the man. He did not condemn him.”

How different is the way he had been treated by his neighbors for lo those many years. He wore no clothes and lived not in a neighborhood but among the tombs. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles – and the demons were so powerful within him that we are told the man could break the bonds. His neighbors dealt with him by seeking to control, subdue and isolate him.

So Jesus doesn’t do what conventional wisdom suggests; he once again becomes a source of grace and healing. He sends the demons into a herd of swine – which would have been unclean to Jesus – and the demons run the entire herd into the lake where the pigs are drowned and the demons are destroyed. And yet, the man’s neighbors can’t accept this new reality. Rather than celebrate the miracle, the surrounding community asks Jesus to leave! It’s interesting to note that while Jesus has power over the demons, he does not have power over the people. He who commands the wind and the sea does not even command their respect. What is it they fear? Is it that he disrupts their social order – “the way we do things around here?” They were unable to control the possessed man, but at least they knew his place and they knew theirs. They felt safer with the demoniac in their midst – and contained on their own terms – than they did with a miracle worker who could transform lives and change the social paradigm.

Who are the demoniacs in our time and place? Who are the people we feel more comfortable keeping out of our lives and at a safe distance than we do actually interacting with them? Yesterday many of us served at Church by the pond with the homeless, the mentally ill and the destitute – how might we, through the power of God, change their lives? Or is it teenagers hanging out on the streets of Hartford –their spirits diminished by years of poverty and failure, without any hope for a better future and angry at a world they see as unfair? Where as a society do we put our resources and energy? Do we allocate resources to keep them off the streets and in prison and, like the Gerasene demoniac, away from us? Or do we allocate resources to alleviate the conditions that make them that way in the first place?

Or is it perhaps the groups of people who are included in all of our “isms” and “phobias.” For Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, it was his HOMOPHOBIA, an aversion to the LGBTQ community, even though there is plenty of evidence that he himself struggled with issues sexual orientation. How might our own societal resistance to making the world safe for LGBTQ folks have contributed to the demons that Omar Mateen struggled with?

Or might it be another phobia, ISLAMIPHOBIA?  Somewhat ironically, the fact that Mateen is a Muslim who mentioned ISIS as he was committing his crime and whose family ancestry is Afghani (even though he himself was born in New York City) has led to an intensification of Islamophobia as political leaders and talk show hosts looking to gain political advantage among a certain segment of American society now look to separate out anyone who professes Islam as their faith. You know, the first person who reached out to me following the shootings last Sunday was Imam Sami Aziz from the Bloomfield Islamic community, inviting me to the vigil at the State Capitol.  And yet, for many in our country, people who profess Islam are the new Demoniacs.

Mateen’s parents emigrated from Afghanistan, though he himself was born in New York. What about the sin of Xenophobia – the fear of people from other countries. Immigrants and refugees, too, have become collateral damage of this latest mass shooting. Because the perpetrator’s parents were from Afghanistan, we are hearing all kinds of calls from those same political leaders and talk show hosts to stop accepting refugees from any country that, using various code words, has a significant population of Muslims. How sad that we hear this prejudice when tomorrow is World Refugee Day. It is this very prejudice that members of this congregation and other congregations are working to oppose in trying to support a refugee family in immigrating into the United States. Just last Sunday we heard the Hebrew Bible story of Naboth and his family: Naboth was killed and his family forced from their homeland by a ruthless king and his wife. Refugees from Syria, to some in our nation, are the demoniacs of our time, to be resisted and refused entry into our communities. Do we join that chorus – or do we instead become the instruments of Jesus’ loving, healing grace for those who seek to assuage the terror of being a person without a country.

 Let me be clear: As the new pastor of Emanuel Church the Rev. Dr. Betty Deas-Clark has said, forgiveness does not preclude feeling righteous anger, which is justified, nor does it remove the requirements of justice. Forgiveness IS a theological decision following the way that God changes the world. And here is where the end of today’s Gospel story is so powerful for us this morning. After his miraculous healing the now healed man wants to follow Jesus, and Jesus tells him, “No. Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.” In other words, let your neighbors see and be confronted with the fact, day by day, of how God’s love can change lives, how God’s love can transform the world.

WE, my friends, are those 21^st century neighbors of the Gerasene demoniac.  The fact is, we as a society are often more comfortable with the devil we know than the healing we cannot imagine. As Jesus ministry illustrates, changing society can be more difficult than calming storms or casting out demons.

Just as Black Americans felt unsafe after the Charleston shootings, so members of our LGBTQ community are feeling unsafe now. That club and others like it serve as a safe space for an LGBTQ community that too often feels unwelcome and threatened in our houses of worship and in many parts of our nation. Faithful, peace-loving Muslims also feel unsafe. Those who come from other countries, those whose cultural dress is not traditionally Western, feel unsafe, in this, the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” For people of faith in particular, Pastor Jim Wallis reminds us, this is a moment to consider our own complicity in a culture that “otherizes” whole swaths of our population. And that, when you come right down to it, is the denial of the image of God in those human beings we have decided belong on the margins, when we rather that they live among the tombs instead of living life to the fullest.

Our Scriptures this morning, read in the light of the events of the past week, pose the question to us, How can our Christian faith help us to understand and come to grips with our own fears, our own biases, our own unwillingness to fully embrace God’s people, God’s creation? How can we as a community of faith, along with other people of faith, transform a society that, rather than being rooted in fear and resorts to violence, seeks and serves Christ in all persons and respects the dignity of every human being?

          Our passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians this Sunday reminds us that Jesus calls us into oneness with God and creation: There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:28-29). You see, my friends, St. Paul is not saying that the unity we share in Jesus the Christ makes our differences disappear; it’s just that in Him they become sources of strength to unite us with God and all creation rather than sources of division. Lord Jesus, make us your instruments that it may be so. AMEN.

Graduation Sermon by Shakeem Williams, Manchester High Class of 2016

Before I begin, I would like to have a moment of silence for some close friends of mine that I
have lost in my four years of high school who have either been in college or graduating with me.
A moment of silence for Malvrick Donkor, Safwaan Dalal, Alex Reale, and Justus Joy...

Hello and good morning. My name is Shakeem Williams for those who don’t know me. I have
been a part of this church since as long as I can remember, actually my mom has told me that
I've been here since birth. I have gotten baptized here, I have learned about the world outside
from here, and I have created bonds with much of the congregation. I have created bonds that
will last a lifetime.

When Father Don emailed me telling me that I had to prepare a piece for Youth Sunday, I thought that I knew exactly what I wanted to say especially since I have been dreaming about this day every year since I could understand what a sermon was. However after all my life experiences and immense thought, I didn't know what to write about. I thought maybe I could talk about the many experiences I've been through; good and bad. I thought maybe I could talk about what the future holds for me and what I hope to get out of life. I thought maybe I could talk about the life lessons that my fellow peers have passed onto me. But then Father Don told me that I was going to be the only one speaking this Sunday and he said I could take as much time as I need, but the only problem was, “what was I going to spend my time talking about?” What was I going to base my sermon off of? And then as if God opened the heavens
and answered my prayers, Father Don gave me this week's readings and said I could base my
speech off of that. 

I was happy to find out that I had some sort of structure for this sermon
because the hardest thing about writing a speech is figuring out where to start. Now I mean I
could start off with the cliche sayings like, “life is a box of chocolates because you never know
what you gonna get”, and “when life gives you lemons you make lemonade”, but like I said that's
cliche, that's something everybody has been told at some point in their life. So I will take you,
the congregation, on a little journey of what it took for me to get here. The journey that I took to
get to this point in my life, the journey I took to get where to I'm standing today, nearly graduated
from high school.

Now it wasn't an easy journey, but whose journey is easy?
It all started on the day I was born: September 2nd 1998, right across the street at Saint Francis
Hospital here in Hartford. When I came into this world, I came into this world as naïve as any
child who came before and after me. Like those children I was clueless about the environment
around me and what the outside world had to offer. This baby didn't know, at that time, that he
would impact so many lives and that he would strive to change the world and that he would
have rough patches in life that were sprinkled with ups and downs along the way. This baby
didn’t know that there would be a roller coaster of emotions and then some. He didn't know that
he would live through the September 11th attacks in 2001, that he would live through a war on
terrorism and drugs, and a war that took place in the Middle East where people just like him
would be terrorized, killed and taken advantage of because of where they came from. He didn't
know that the world was cold outside those hospital doors. He didn't know that his mom held
him tight, physically and metaphorically, for dear life hoping that the world wouldn't take him
away from her. He didn’t know that dance moves like the dap, the milly rock, the dougie, the
jerk, and many more just like them would be put in circulation for young teens nationwide. He
didn’t know that movements like Black Lives Matter would be implemented in society not only to
talk about how black lives matter, but harp on the fact that they have almost never mattered in
human history.

But as an infant Shakeem grew older, he became subject to stereotypes and
prejudices that he was too naive to understand and pick up. The common one: the “you're black
so you cannot be intelligent” stereotypes, the “you’re black so you can’t be wellspoken”
and my personal favorite, the “since you're black you must eat fried chicken and drink KoolAid
and eat watermelon” stereotype. Which was funny to me because my mom is black and she doesn't like
chicken so you can imagine how that conversation went. People sharing the same skin tone as
myself telling me that my mother wasn't black because she didn't like poultry? How would you
feel if you were told you're not good enough to be this type of person because you don't reach
the standards or conform to the labels that this group of people have? Well let me be evidence
to you and society that standards are meant to be broken.The many stereotypes and prejudices
that precede us as human beings today is beyond astronomical; so much so that there's not
one thing you can find about a demographic of people that isn’t prejudiced or turned racist.

The things that I have seen as a child turning into a teenager is mesmerizing, the amount of good
and bad that exists in this Earth completely eludes me and continues to surprise me. Even
events of my own life have surprised me today when I look back on them, and when I do look
back on it, I'm always shocked and I always told myself that “that was a kid I used to be”. Some
of you may know that I went through two-thirds of my life without a father. I lived with both
parents until I was six when they got a divorce, and I used to always think it was my fault
because as a child I always got in trouble in school because I would always mess around and
clown around in class and get suspensions or detentions. and you know how our imaginations
as children like to run wild and grab whatever it picks up, so I thought my shenanigans pushed
my parents over the edge and caused them to get a divorce. A divorce that consequently
pushed me over the edge and caused me to act out even more than before. But years and
years went by and I started to grow as a person, as a human being. I started becoming a young
adult of young age learning that life isn't worth wasting time and my mom made sure to tell me
that everyday and every night when we used to pray the Lord's prayer before bed but as years
go by so does childish things I stopped praying because according to the site a prime wasn't
cool enough a lot of time was was lost trying to keep up with the trends and being relevant. Not
that I was ashamed of being Christian although that's what people would think by my actions,
that's what my actions show. But let’s jump a couple more years into high school, because after
all, you’ll be able to read about my whole life in my autobiography, because if I told you about
my life now, it would take up the rest of the church service to be honest with you. But actually
before we go into high school, I want to talk about why I wanted to become a chemist. As a
child, I used to watch cartoons and other things like that. I’m pretty sure your children and even
yourself, when you were that age, had one or more cartoon characters that you thought of as
your role models. Well, there was one cartoon that pushed me into becoming a scientist and
eventually into a chemist. It was Dexter from the cartoon, Dexter’s Laboratory that got me really
into science. The crazy experiments he would conduct, the weird chemical reactions and
mixtures he would concoct drew me into science. I even had (and still do have) ambitions to create a
secret laboratory underneath my house when the time is right.
But back to high school. High school was a hard four years for me. Not because of the work
load, but because there was so many events and life experiences that happened to me in high
school...alone. I have almost experienced everything any adult could experience in the real
world, which is why I guess, I really think I’m prepared for the cold world outside. When I was a
freshman, I lost a very close friend of mine, his name was Malvrick Donkor and he accidently
drowned in my gym class, and I put myself, still even today at fault, because he was in there
and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it, so that was really traumatic for me. Ever since then, I
have lost 3 more friends of mine, one friend for the next three years of high school and it hurts
every single time. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, God forgive whoever that person is.
But as a senior, our class lost a boy to suicide and it’s really sad to think that, this boy (named
Justus Joy by the way), had gotten this far and was going to graduate, but he had felt the urge
to kill himself because of the cruelty of some people. From these deaths, I became sad and
depressed and I also just didn’t care much about anything anymore. I started becoming cynical
and I started losing confidence in myself and in my life.

When my friends passed on, I didn’t know where to turn and I almost gave up, and there’s no telling what I would have done, but this church was there for me, when I felt vulnerable, this church was there for me. Father Don helped me in my struggle and he has been so supportive of me and he was the caring “father”
that everybody should have in their church. He did so many things for me, that I think that it is
almost impossible for me to do something in return for all the things that he has done, especially
in times where I was most “weak” in a spiritual and mental sense. In today’s Gospel, we heard
about Jesus going into a town and raising Lazarus from the dead. There’s more than one way I
interpreted this passage. One way is that, Malvrick, Safwaan, Alex, and Justus were gone but
Jesus has resurrected them in spirit just for me to help me become a better person. Another
way that I have interpreted it is that, I have died, my old self has perished when I went through
those perilous times in my life, but I have found the essence of Jesus in Father Don, you, the
congregation, and this church who have resurrected me into a new and improved Shakeem. It is
because of this church that I have become the person that I am today. Because of Mr. McAlpine
and Mr. Wilson utilizing me in the acolyte core, I have become a much better leader. Because of
Kevin Chick, Linda MacGougan and my mentor George Chien, I have grown a closer
relationship with God. Because of April and Mr. Clark I have learned the teachings of God and
was able to walk into my teenage years with a smile. Because of this congregation, I know now
that I have a second family that I could turn to, a second family that I could take care as well as
take care of me. Because of this church, it has been a safe haven and a second home for me, a
second home for me to vent out my feelings and ambitions and a place where I can be myself in
front of God, because that’s what God has intended. And with this home, I want to keep it in my
heart forever, which is why I will do everything in my power to preserve it.

Today is my last Sunday as a high school student, by next Sunday, the start of college begins and my life journey starts a new chapter. My name, once again is Shakeem Williams and in the fall I will be
attending the University of Connecticut to pursue a degree in chemistry while following a
PrePharmacy track.

And to conclude, I would like to share a piece of a rap song by rapper Childish Gambino that
truly highlights my life and what’s to come:
I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical,
hardened, and mature. But that’s not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off
the bus. I still haven’t...

Refugee Ministry: Serving the Descendants of Naboth, by The Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith

Today’s homily is a follow-up on a sermon from the first Sunday in January.  That one was about the possibility of our helping people who are refugees, families, who have fled across a border from their homeland because of the threat and fear of oppression and perhaps death. 

 There’s been lots of thinking and learning since January.  And now, our possibility is at a probability, and it is at a critical point.  So. Six months later, here’s sermon Part Two. 

 The purpose of today’s sermon is

1.  to bring us all up to date.
2. to call and encourage every single one of us to play a part so we can g forward.

 But first, let’s look at Scripture, which is filled with accounts of faithful people who in God responded to deliver persons in need beyond their control.

 Last week’s reading was about deliverance from famine and death:  how Elijah provided food for the widow in Zarapeth, and brought her son back to life.  Remember the gospel story about deliverance from a birth condition:  how Jesus gave sight to the man born blind.  From illness: the healing of Jairus’ daughter.  Deliverance from addiction to money:  the conversion of Matthew the tax collector.  From dead and being buried, the gospel from last week:  the raising by Jesus of the widow of Nain’s son. 

 What about deliverance from our cruelty to each other, beyond our control?  Today’s First Testament lesson        tells such a story.  Naboth’s farm was against the wall of the palace fortress in Samaria.  Had wanted the farm for a palace garden.  He sought to take it by eminent domain.  When Naboth refused, Ahab offered money.  Naboth replied, “It’s my family heritage; we belong here.”  So they got him on trumped-up charges of religious incorrectness and blasphemy (“You have cursed God”) and on political treason (“and the king”).

Imagine what the killing of Naboth, and the loss of their ancestral heritage of land and farm, meant for the Naboth family.  The head of the family, their father killed, his wife and family homeless, bereft and destined for poverty.  Again, they were victims in need because of powers beyond their control.  They did nothing to deserve it.

 If we had been Naboth’s relatives or neighbors, what might we have done?  Taken them in to our homes?  Given them money?  Divided our farm to give them a living?

 There are other such stories, not just from the past.  We know there are such stories today, and they are legion.  And just as we could read of Naboth and go home, so we can read of and even see their stories in the news and just go  back to our every-day lives.  But as people of the Book, of the Spirit, disciples of Jesus who gave us so many examples and his new commandments, we can’t just turn away. 

 It’s in our baptism promises which we will claim again today:  to proclaim by example the Good News of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and love our neighbor as we love our selves, striving for justice.  and peace.  to respect the dignity of every human being.  This is the life into which we baptize young Christopher and Grace Triano; it’s in our spiritual DNA to help.

So, from this parish community, since January a number people have met, have been working together.  We can’t help Naboth’s family, but we can bring deliverance to at least some refugees who — like Naboth and his household, through  no fault of their own, but because of powers and evil beyond their control, have not been able to stay on their ancestral land. 

 Many live today in temporary camps, with no work available, little food, tents for shelter, with nowhere to go, no promise for tomorrow — a definition of “purgatory” if every there was one.

 Here’s our report.   Core Committee seeking to provide for refugee co-sponsorship with Iris, Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, has formed, mainly within the membership of Trinity Church (Ask participants to stand).

 Now there’s a second community who’ve joined the Trinity Sigourney Street core — student, staff and faculty members of Trinity Summit Street, Trinity College    The Rev. Allison Read, Dean of Religious Life and Chaplain to the College, and Maryam Bitar, newly graduated from Trinity here today. (Four people stand)

 But wait, aren’t there others we should be helping?  Homeless veterans, People here living in poverty?   Yes.  Shouldn’t we be caring for them?  Yes, such persons are in need and need care, and there are agencies working with them.  For refugees, however, We Are the agents designated by our government to care for refugees; it’s the religious communities who are the means for resettlement;i    it’s who we are, and it’s our work.

 HEATHER’S KRAMER’S STATEMENT of her involvement  (summary)

          I do for others to get past doing only for myself.

          We have such abundance in this country, where we can choose sixty kinds of cereal in the supermarket.

          To provide an example for others.

          My parents and I were immigrants, welcomed to Meriden in the 1960’s; such welcome is our country’s tradition.

Refugees are our neighbors who when they arrive here in the United States, arrive as the family of Naboth would:  they have lost their homes, livelihoods, possessions, clothes, friends, extended and sometimes immediate family members, their future and heritage (even family graves are left behind), they have left their native food, their own language,often their sense of worth.  They arrive here with nothing, no money:  in fact, they arrive in debt for the airfare to come here.

 Imagine:  what if you had to build a new beginning for a family from scratch?  From nothing?  What would you have to provide?     (DIALOGUE WITH CONGREGATION:  housing, medical, education, etc. etc..)

 We have begun to respond to what the Lord has laid before us.  The task is large, but if the the members of the village take part, the task is easier by far.

 When might a refugee family come to be resettled by us?  First we have to satisfy Iris that we are up and ready to receive a family.  Probably within a month or so from then, whenever we are ready.

 How can you be part?

 !.  Among all the aspects of helping a family begin all over again in a strange land, for each of us to find some part we could play, a big part (helping secure housing)  or a small part (donating a lamp, table or microwave).

2.  Remember to pray for our new neighbors, and for all of us together.

 3.  Donate money.  Our goal is to raise $7000., and our hope, is that every person within our parish will contribute something financially  Some might give a thousand dollars, some might give one dollar.  Or a child a quarter from an allowance.

 When do we start?  We have a sign-up sheet in Goodwin Hall to begin gathering names and helpers today.  But Next Sunday, June 19, the day before Monday which is World Refugee Day, is when we want to begin to receive financial donations to provide the backing to move us forward.

 Why?  because as Saint Paul wrote in the Epistle to the Galatians,not because we are obligated, but because Christ lives in us.  And because like the woman who bathed Jesus’ feet with her costly ointment, and like the women who provided for the disciples out of their resources, as Jesus said, as we do it for the least of these our sisters and brothers, we do it for Christ.

 There it is:  We’re at a critical point.  Together, let’s move joyfully to Part Three.

Trinity: Relationship Powered by the Holy Spirit, by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer

Trinity Episcopal Church

Trinity Sunday 2016

May 22, 2016

Rector’s Annual Report

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity…

-        From the Collect for Trinity Sunday

This is my 13^th Annual Report to the congregation. It is a time of tremendous challenge for many of our Episcopal and other so-called “mainline” congregations, including our own here at Trinity. It is also a time of tremendous opportunity for us.

It has become a tradition at our Annual Meeting for the Rector to deliver his Annual Report to the Congregation as the sermon on this, our Patronal Feast Day. But you all received the Annual Report by email over a week ago, it was snail mailed to people who don’t have email, and there have been hard copies of the report available for the past week. If you did not bring yours today there will be additional copies available as we prepare for the business part of the meeting following Holy Communion.  I am also mindful that we have had two Town Meetings – one on January 31 and another just a little over a month ago on April 17 – where I have preached on the state of our congregation and we have had follow up conversation. And so this morning for my sermon, I would like to focus less on “stuff” and more on how I think we ought to be approaching the future.

First, a quick summary of where we are. As I said, it is a time of challenge for many congregations, including our own. Our particular challenge is one we have faced since long before I was called as your rector – that of spending more money than we take in and drawing a dramatically unsustainable amount each year from our once-substantial savings. To refresh your recollection, our diocesan leadership recognized that many parishes have been doing this, and so last November our Convention pass a resolution limiting how much churches can draw against their endowment over a three year period. This has left us with two choices: continue to spend at the same unsustainable rates and risk the diocese assuming control over our endowment, or dramatically reigning in our spending. We – your lay leadership and I – have chosen the latter course as we pursue a two-pronged strategy:

1. Seeking to share ministries or to effect a merger with one or more other congregations in the hope of creating a renewed and financially-sustainable community of faith; and at the same time,
2. Restructuring our administration and our programming to maintain our core strengths and carry out the ministries that further our core values as a congregation. The hope is that by God’s grace we will enter into new relationships with other congregations, strengthened to serve God’s mission for the long-term.

In the meantime, we have this interim period to get through when we have to come closer to living within our means.  As I said, this is not a new challenge for us; what is new is that we are admitting to our addition of living beyond our means --the challenge we have had for decades -- and now we are finally coming to grips with it. And that takes courage. It takes strength. It takes determination. It takes faith.

In this morning’s lesson from the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes: . . . we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in or sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. God has given us the tools to do this. Our challenge is to summon the faith that God’s promises to us are true.

We have begun to experience those sufferings in these first months of 2016, in the form of staff changes. As of February 1, I as your Rector have been paid at 80% of my salary in order to get us through the program year. You’ll notice I did not say I am working at 80% time. And in the past week – I may as well acknowledge what Kathie Wilson has called the “elephant in the sanctuary” – you all received letters from me and Bert announcing that after 11 years here Bert has accepted a new position at another, larger Episcopal church out of state. He would not have been seeking to leave Trinity if we had been able to assure him of continued full-time employment after this program year. But during this in-between time, we simply could not give him that assurance. This is part of the suffering we must endure now on our way to the brighter future that St. Paul promises.

We will discuss this and other aspects of our financial situation at the business portion of our Annual Meeting.  For now, I want to speak about God the Holy Trinity, and what that signifies for us as a congregation that bears its name. Because I think our hope for the future rests in our commitment to live in, and grow into, that relationship which is Trinity.

What does “Trinity” mean? I remember an occasion about 10 years ago when a friend of mine who is a priest in Puerto Rico called me up to exclaim, “I got it! I got the perfect analogy for the Trinity!” I said, “That’s great, Jose. What is it?” “3-in-1 Oil! It’s perfect!”  Trinity Sunday always presents a challenge to the preacher who is striving to come up with a new idea as a model for the Trinity. Written in part to rebut the ancient heresy of Arianism, the Athanasian Creed (although it most likely was not written by Athanasius) uses some 661 words to define the Trinity.

It seems like such a natural thing for we mortals to want to “define” the Trinity.  We want it to make sense, to be able to wrap our minds around it. Like the disciples after witnessing Jesus, Elijah and Moses on the mountaintop, we long to preserve the memory in a snapshot and package it up nicely and neatly. And yet it is not the province of mortal beings to place boundaries around a limitless God. We don’t get to define it.

We are a congregation that takes its identity from the Trinity. And so I invite you this morning to focus on a key aspect of what we believe about the Trinity: That our God is above all a God of relationship. God’s self is a unity of God the Creator, the source of all existence; of Jesus, the Christ, the object of the Creator’s love and Mediator of that love in creation and redemption; and the Holy Spirit, the bond of union between the Creator and the Redeemer, who guides us, sustains us, who leads us into all truth and enables us to grow in the likeness of Christ.

The passage from the Gospel of John that we heard this morning does a wonderful job of describing the work of the Holy Spirit in advancing the teachings of Jesus in the earliest Christian communities. And that’s where we as a congregation need to be today as we prayerfully discern where the Holy Spirit is guiding us in the days and months to come.

In verses 12-15, Jesus is speaking to the community, and it is in the community that the Spirit works. Yes, the Spirit comes to individuals, but that is not what John is talking about here. The beneficiary of the Holy Spirit in John’s theology is primarily the wider community, which will be “led into all truth.”

This brings us back to Pilate’s famous question: What is truth? We tend to think of “truth” in terms of “facts.” Is it true or not, we ask?  It is really a search for certainty. But that is not how “truth” functions in John’s Gospel. In John 14, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” “Truth” for John is found in the life and teachings of Jesus – what Jesus actually taught, what Jesus actually did. And we can’t absorb all of that. Jesus tells the gathered community in this morning’s passage, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all truth; and he will declare to you the things that are to come. That’s what we celebrated at Pentecost last week, that’s why Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, so that we could gradually come to understand what Jesus lived and died to tell us. The story is still being told; God is STILL speaking, and we are a dynamic part of the story.

Every Christian community has to function this way. It was true even when Jesus was alive. In all the Gospels, and especially in the Gospel of Mark, what Jesus has to tell them is too much for them to bear: Jesus’ warning of his imminent death, for example, or his teachings about humble servant ministry. They didn’t get many of his teachings and they couldn’t handle others. And here’s what they didn’t see or comprehend: Jesus himself was the teaching – not the written Word of Scripture, but the Living Word made flesh.

Right now, we are bearing a lot that we are afraid we can’t bear. The old solutions – which were really just band-aids – are failing us, the old solution of kicking the can down the road is not available to us, and we are not sure where to turn. A beloved and faithful staff person – who has been a central figure in our worship and community life these past 11 years, who has been a friend and a rock on whom I have leaned – is about to depart. At this very early stage less than one week out from his announcement, it is not clear who will succeed him or how we will approach the task of finding a successor, and how we will pay that person once we have identified him or her. To many of us, it may seem like a reverse jigsaw puzzle – a masterpiece that we have always experienced as fully completed, and one by one it seems like the pieces are falling out, leaving a gaping hole in our common life together. And it might even feel like the disciples felt the night Jesus was taken into custody – like God has abandoned us.

If that’s how you’re feeling, then Jesus has a comforting word for you.

Earlier in Chapter 16 (John 16:7) Jesus tells his disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away then the advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you . . . Do you see? Jesus promised us that we can rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that if we trust that promise, our community will get to where it needs to be. We need more than an intellectual understanding of God, the Trinity and Jesus’ teachings. John’s text seeks to assure every Christian community that Jesus’ promise holds true in every time and in every place: The Spirit will come, not with new truth, but guiding us into new ways of understanding and living out the eternal truth that was – that still is – embodied in the life and teachings of Jesus.

In John 14, Jesus says I am the WAY, NOT I am the PROBLEM SOLVER, or I am the MAGICIAN  or perhaps , I am your Fairy Godmother who makes it all go away.  We ourselves created this situation; Jesus, the mediator between God and all creation, has given us the framework in his life and teachings to approach it, and every other situation we can ever encounter. The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is the one Jesus the Christ has sent to lead us into that truth that will set us free. All we need to do is to let go and let God – to step out in the faith that we proclaim each and every Sunday but which we are so afraid to really trust.

As we continue to grow in faith and vitality as a congregation, I would like us to focus on the Trinity as a model for our relationships with one another and with the world around us. I love the fact that Trinity Sunday immediately follows Pentecost Sunday. The Book of Acts teaches us that the Holy Spirit  arrived with the sound of a rushing wind. On this Trinity Sunday, the eternal God – Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer – invites us to hold up our hands like the masts of a great ship in the hope that having unfurled our sails, we might catch the wind and be guided by its mighty power.  On this Trinity Sunday let’s forget about trying to “define” or “understand” the nature of the Trinity, and instead allow ourselves, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to be transformed by it.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me;

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. . .

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

 Second verse – “Us”

Sermon Easter 7: Dante Tavolaro, Seminarian

The Blessing and Curse of Water: The Rev. Dr. Frank Kirkpatrick

Sermon Easter 5: April Alford-Harkey

April Alford-Harkey • April 24, 2016 • 5th Sunday after Easter

In today’s reading from Revelation we are told the heaven and earth that we know will pass away and be made new. In the story of creation in Genesis, God created heaven and earth as two separate places – the heavens above and the earth below. God dwelled in heaven and God’s creation dwelled on earth where there is pain and suffering.

In John of Patmos’ vision in the book of Revelation heaven and Earth will no longer exist separately. In John’s vision, both will be connected in a web of mutuality and reciprocity. Because in this new vision of heaven and earth, God dwells with God’s people, there is connection with God’s people and the realm of God – or heaven. The vision of a perfect world is one in which humanity is intimately connected to God.

The one thing that will not be changed is the profound love God has for us that has been manifested since the beginning of creation. In the creation story, we are told that God created humankind and declared us very good. God also provided a garden for human beings to live in that contained animals and plants of every kind. This was a place where humanity could flourish and grow.

The new order in John’s vision is a radical process of restoration to this kind of perfect union with God - the type of union that human beings had with God in the garden of Eden. John sees a new world where God is renewing all of creation. In this new world God will wipe every tear and eliminate death, pain and sorrow. It is a vision full of hope, possibility and human flourishing. It is a vision of God’s goodness with, in and among us.

Hildegard of Bingen articulates this union of God and creation best in a poem she wrote after one of her visions in which God speaks to her…

“I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.”

In Revelation, there is a flow between heaven and earth. In African theology, the village is seen as such a place. In African theology heaven and earth are woven together with God in the midst of humanity. Some African theologians see the village life as a metaphor for how God is with and in people. The village is a place where people love one another and help each other. People depend on the community. It is a place where people, animals, and plants are cared for and cultivated. The village also a place where the ancestors walk with the living. This makes the village a place where all humanity is gathered (those who are living and those who have gone before us) with God.

Mary Getui, an African theologian, states, “It is the responsibility of the village to care for all life, especially of young and old. It is also our responsibility to help all of creation toward restoration and wholeness.” This village is a place where God’s people are gathered… Getui’s explanation allows us to see how all people can be co-creators with divine. We are God’s partners actively helping to bring in the new kingdom – the village of God.

Our gospel reading for today is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse. Farewell discourses were a common literary form in the ancient world. A farewell discourse has several pieces…Usually the person tells of their approaching death, offers some words of comfort and predicts what is to happen after they are gone. Farewell discourses in the Hebrew scriptures and the apocrypha come from Moses, Enoch, Rebecca, Isaac, Samuel and Noah.

In Jesus’ discourse he leaves directions on how the disciples were to be as a community and with each other. Jesus gives the disciples the commandment that they are to love one another as he has loved them. This is different from the commandment that Jesus gave earlier – to love God with our whole hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

This commandment is specifically for Jesus’ disciples, and deals specifically with how Jesus followers are to treat each other. The love commandment focuses on community and relationship. The community of disciples were to continue to enact with each other the kind of love that Jesus had for them. The idea that the world will “know we are Christians by our love” speaks to the particular kind of love and care for each other that is evident to the rest of the world.

New Testament theologian Helmut Koester says that Christianity established a realm of mutual social support for the members that joined the church. He argues that the success of Christianity is not based solely on the fact that Christianity has a great religious message, but that it is also in the establishment of institutions to serve the needs of the community.

Without that love for each other, the Christian message of God’s restoration and renewal would be empty and shallow. It is the Christian community that should be the model for the restored and renewed realm of God of which John’s Revelation speaks. This is why Jesus has modeled love for others and love for one’s community throughout his ministry.

The love Jesus speaks of is radical and goes beyond feeling. It is a love that motivates people to do simple and even mundane tasks for each other. It can inspire people to lay down their lives, and to fight for justice for all people, not just themselves and their communities. This kind of love calls people into action. This is a love that allows us to be recognized as Christians. This type of love fundamentally changes the nature of how we treat others. It breaks down barriers of gender, class, race, economic status, and sexuality. It is a love the welcomes all of God’s creation.

In the village of Trinity Episcopal Church in Hartford, we take care of each other. We have a community that in many ways models the love that the disciples had for each other in Jesus’ time. We care for each other in profound ways, showing up for each other in times of celebration and in times of grief. This is a community that knows what it means to “love one another as Jesus loved us.”

And this is a community that has to continue to learn how to love one another and the rest of the world as our communal life changes. We may not know exactly how that will look, but it is certain that we know how to care for one another.

What we learn from the vision of God’s realm in Revelation and Jesus’ command to love each other, is that God dwells in us, in the gathered community and that the power of that love can bring about God’s realm here on earth.

A Sepherd Who Guides Us, by The Rev Donald L. Hamer

Trinity Episcopal Church

4th Sunday of Easter

April 17, 2016

  Psalm 23           Rev. 7:9-17        John 10:22-30

           Three of our four Scripture passages for the 4th Sunday of Easter take up the imagery of sheep and shepherds when describing our relationship with God. I think God is trying to get our attention here.

Psalm 23 has given comfort throughout history to all the Abrahamic faiths. We Christians picture a smiling Jesus with a cute little lamb around his neck, and we feel good. The Psalm, taken as a whole, exudes a feeling of confidence, of being cared for – a feeling that no matter what the circumstances, God has our back.

But Psalm 23 is so much richer than that! In verses 4 and 5, note that the writer goes is speaking directly to the Lord, making it more personal. It is the moment when the Psalmist lifts his eyes and meets God face to face.

It is in that same verse that the psalmist writes Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The “rod” carries a sense of chastisement; it is used for steering the sheep back on course.  The staff, on the other hands, carries the meaning of a stick to lean on for support and protect the sheep. Now sheep aren’t the brightest of animals – left on their own they do not recognize danger and often wander into it. What’s more, once in danger, they are totally defenseless – they are not exactly known as great fighters. In using both words, the Psalmist is affirming that the shepherd has two roles with respect to the sheep – to protect and comfort, as well as to guide and correct.

When we read Psalm 23, I think we usually focus on the aspects that assure us of God’s protection and comfort--- that’s one reason it is often read at burial services. And we should take comfort in God’s protection in troubled or changing times. But we often forget that as we navigate those troubled times in which God is protecting us, God often is guiding us onto new paths that will draw us closer to God or helps to experience God in new ways. And new or strange paths can make us uncomfortable or unsure in the meantime because we aren’t seeing what God is seeing.

Let’s take a look at the passage from Revelation, which also emphasizes this dual role of the Shepherd as both protector and guide. The writer asks, Who are these robed in white? To which the elder responds, These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Even though the Lord is our Shepherd and assures us of protection, pain and suffering will still be a part of any Christian life (v. 14-17). The assurance from the Shepherd is that any pain and suffering is only a part of the story, and it is NEVER the end. As Christians, we are conquerors NOT because we escape suffering or difficult times, but because in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, we overcome those challenges and difficult times. Like those in John’s vision from Revelation, we recognize our shepherd in the Lamb who is on the throne (v. 17), who will guide us to those springs of living water where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

If you have been attending Trinity church any time in the past 5 years, you will probably know that the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and virtually all church denominations, are facing changing and challenging times. Along with many others, this congregation is in gradual recovery from an addiction to drawing operating support from an endowment that is not sustainable. After kicking the can down the road for decades, we are finally, and bravely, taking on this challenge of making this congregation financially sustainable for the long term. Today’s Town Meeting is one more opportunity for us to engage this challenge: Our Vestry leaders will provide updates on what we have been up to since we last met on January 31, and it will give all members of the congregation an opportunity to share our ideas, concerns and questions. As we approach that, I would like to share some personal observations and then share one possible vision of where Jesus, the Good Shepherd, might be guiding us as members of the Body of Christ. First, observations.

          In the past two weeks, I have been present at or witnessed no fewer than 4 public events at which the challenges of the present and the ambiguity of the future were the principal focus:

          Two and half weeks ago, I attended a brainstorming, soul-searching meeting of church leaders in The Episcopal Church in Connecticut, gathered for the purpose of discussing how we as Episcopalians might work more collaboratively within our regions in the future. There was significant angst about what this might look like, and considerable ambiguity about how individual congregations fit into this structure. AND there was great enthusiasm for the possibilities we came up with. Please mark your calendars now for Friday evening June 10 and Saturday morning and afternoon June 11 for our North Central convocation. More to come on this after our planning meeting this Thursday.

          Last Sunday, we hosted Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, himself a fellow Episcopalian, who shared with us the dire circumstances that confront the City of Hartford. As bad as it is this year it is projected to be far worse. He pointed out during our Adult Forum that one issue is that the challenges of the entire Metropolitan area – in terms of poverty, social services, schools and other human services – are centered in this small geographical area known as Hartford, while many or most of the resources to address them hop over the artificial political border to the more affluent suburbs.

          This past Tuesday, I was invited back to the Annual Meeting of the Connecticut Probate Assembly at the State Supreme Court. There we heard an address by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Probate Court Administrator. Guess what the main topic was. . .  Court consolidation. This is a system that when I entered it had 134 different probate courts, and as I was retiring to come to Trinity, we were about to shrink it to 54 courts, which serve the mission of the Probate Court system every bit as well – and far more efficiently and cost-effectively – as the original 134 courts did.

             And this week, you must have heard on all the newscasts and read in all of the newspapers about the budget crisis in the State of Connecticut. Like the City of Hartford, the state is facing horrendous budget deficits this year, and even greater ones next year. Not only is the state facing massive layoffs, but it is cutting aid it gives to local cities and towns. The cities and towns, in turn, are saying they see no alternative but to either cut needed services or raise taxes. Noticeably absent from their remarks was acknowledgement that there is another, very clear alternative: To let go of our New England Puritan fetish about local control and begin to talk earnestly about the benefits of consolidating and coordinating local services so we don’t duplicate efforts, administrative personnel and expenses.

Do you see the pattern here? Economists have forever noted the benefits for businesses of “economies of scale” – providing the maximum service or product for the minimum expenditure of cost and effort. But at least here in Connecticut, the government and the church have seldom paid enough attention to that concept.

How does this concept affect the Episcopal Church? Well, for example, within 10 to 12 miles of this church, there are more than 20 Episcopal Churches, very few of them vibrant and financially stable. In an effort to address this overabundance of congregations, we are presently in the process of re-writing the map of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, doing away with the old and dysfunctional Deanery system and consolidating into 6 regions.

The new regional convocations offer us a remarkable opportunity to apply the age-old “economies of scale” model to the work of the church in serving God’s people and God’s mission. As a major resource in the City of Hartford, Trinity has a unique opportunity to serve as a leader in this transformation of how our Church serves God’s mission. So I invite you to consider: What might it look like if:

n We talked about how to more effectively share clergy resources among our congregations, eliminating the duplication of administrative effort, and maximizing the time clergy spend on pastoral care and mission outreach.

n We Episcopalians in the North Central Region reconsidered our attachment to our more than 20 parish church buildings and began to talk about how we might bring our communities together in new ways? We could talk about abundantly providing for a rich variety of worship styles and settings. If it can be made financially sustainable, how can this magnificent and flexible worship space be a resource for our entire region?

n We considered what the Psalmist meant when he wrote, “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” What if the House of the Lord is a state of being that describes our relationship with God and communion with each other, and not a place or a building?

n The Episcopalians in the Hartford area shared what they are doing in mission and together decided to make a difference – a real difference in the world. What if we stopped settling for he limited impact that individual congregations can have? What if instead we decided to consolidate our missional efforts to promote fundamental changes that support hurting people in moving from a culture of need and dependency to a more complete sense, along with us, of being valued Children of God?

n A renewed, strengthened and, indeed, transformed Trinity Church might share its excellence in the ministries of music and the arts and education with others in our region. What if others in our region had a greater opportunity to join us in our ministries such as the Choir School of Hartford and Trinity Academy?

What if? What are your own, “What ifs?” With an infinite God, the possibilities are endless. As we seek to transform our church into a sustainable resource for God’s mission, our challenge is not thinking too big – it is not seeing the limitless possibilities God sets before us. IF, that is, we are open to follow fearlessly where the Shepherd is leading.

In this morning’s Gospel from John, Jesus tells his demanding followers that he has already told them all they need to know and they have not listened. He has not told them in words, but by his example. In Verse 25, he tells them, The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. His role – as Shepherd and Guide – cannot be described in words or a title. It can only be experienced by following where he leads us.

The Lord is our shepherd – we shall not be in want. He makes us his sheep – we don’t make Him our shepherd. He enters our lives at our Baptism, and where he leads us is being revealed to us each and every day of our lives. Last week, Bishop Drew spoke about how Jesus entered into the lives of Simon and Saul, soon to be renamed Peter and Paul, in dramatic, though very different and unexpected ways. Both men encountered the living Christ face to face —to be bearers of the good news of the risen Jesus, leaders of the believers, nurturers of the faith. But as Drew noted last week, often, Jesus prods us more gently and subtly to move into a new place, sometimes so subtly that we might miss the message, the invitation, the nudge. This morning, Jesus tells his questioners that “my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” In the midst of our own financial uncertainty, are we listening for Jesus’ voice leading us to a resolution? Or are we instead wallowing in the dread of change to what is familiar and comfortable?

As Drew said last week, changing the place where we are and the things that we do —whether from outside or from within — is a hallmark of knowing God in the resurrected Christ.  For Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does call us always, often moving us out of our comfort zones, sometimes, like Peter, guiding us to go where we are afraid or reluctant to go. 

          I want to close with a meditation that I heard on Friday evening along with our confirmation class as we attended a Shabbat service at Congregation Beth Israel on Farmington Avenue. It spoke to me about where we find ourselves: This is an hour of change. Within it we stand uncertain on the border of light. Shall we draw back or cross over? Where shall our hearts turn? Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister, or cross over? This is the hour of change, and within it, we stand quietly on the border of light. What lies before us? Shall we draw back, my brother, my sister, or cross over?

          Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is calling us into right pathways for his name’s sake? Can you hear his voice? We need to be listening for God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever. Amen.

Sermon Third Sunday of Easter: The Rt. Rev. Andrew (Drew) Smith

Readings for the Third Sunday of Easter can be found here.  Learn more about our preachers here.  

Third Sunday of Easter  Year C April 10, 2016  Trinity Church Hartford

Let’s think today about the word “occupations.” 

“Occupy”  comes to us through French and Middle English the Latin verb occupo, occupare (I looked this up), whose root meaning is to seize or take control of something or somewhere.

Think:  Occupy Wall Street, the Occupied Territories,

Variations include Occupant:  someone who has taken (maybe not seized, but taken) a place and is in it:  a seat for instance, or a public office, an apartment or house.

Another variation:  the word we’re interested in this morning:  Occupation, which denotes  a position one has “taken” and which one “fills” — usually in the sense of doing something which is productive and provides income and/or meaning for one’s own life.  My occupation is as bus driver, and what I do is move people from one destination to another and I earn wages and benefits to support my family.  Occupation = Sense of place, work, focus, and one would hope, significance.

Look at two of this morning’s Scripture readings, one, earlier in time, from the Gospel of John, the second, later, from the Book of Acts:  they are about two men who are engaged in their occupations — what they do — and how that got changed.

Story One, the Gospel of John.  It’s strange to me:  Lots of the story after the Resurrection is missing  At some point the disciples returned to Galilee, and at some point, they went back to their day jobs, back to work.  Peter: “I am going fishing.”  The other six said, “We will go with you.”  It seems as if they were unoccupied; was the Jesus moment is over?  We don’t know, in any event they returned to what their occupation had been before Jesus recruited them at the beginning of his earthly ministry:  they were commercial fishermen, and so they set out to fish during the night.

Here the gospel picks up.   Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.  Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’  They answered him, ‘No.’  He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’  When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake.

Jesus was cooking breakfast — (he had fish and bread — it reminds us of the feeding of the 5000) — and, as before,  he fed them bread and fish. 

Then he fixed on Peter.  He put to him three direct questions:  (notice Jesus used Peter’s original given name, not the nickname Jesus later had given him), “Simon son of John,  do you love me?”  “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  (which reminds us of his three denials in the high priest’s courtyard)  And Peter’s hurt and exasperation:  “Yes, yes, yes, you know I love you.” 

And then Jesus gave him a new occupation:  tend my lambs, feed my sheep.  When you were young you could come and go and occupy yourself as you chose, but now, follow me, and I tell you, when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’  (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would die.)  Just, he said,  ‘Follow me.’

Fisherman no longer, but now follower of Jesus.

Story Two, the Book of Acts:  Some time later, there is the account of Paul and Jesus. 

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.’

Saul was doing his job:  he was a pharisee and his occupation was as a professional heretic hunter; his work was to root out wrong religion, and he was on his way to Damascus to round up heretics, arrest them and bring them to Jerusalem for trial.

And then Jesus got him.  Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you doing this?’ He asked, ‘Who are you?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.

As Peter threw himself out of the boat at seeing Jesus, so Saul was thrown off his horse.  As Peter lost control of what he wanted to do, so did Paul.  “Get up.” said Jesus, “and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

Both men, engaged in their regular occupations,  both men encountered by the living Christ face to face — in very different ways — both men moved by God into new occupations — to be bearers of the good news of the risen Jesus, leaders of the believers, nurturers of the faith.

All through our history, God’s has had a habit of moving in on people, and changing their occupations, what they do. 

Moses from fugitive sheepherder to leader of the Hebrews. Samuel from boy servant to Eli to a major prophet, David from child shepherd to king, Mary from a girl in a backwater village to the Mother of God.

These stories, like those of Peter and Paul we read today, are striking.  Burning bush, voice in the night, angelic annunciation, Breakfast in Galilee, blinding flash on the road, are dramatic, sudden, undeniable overwhelming flashes of God’s presence and power.

Often, though, God calls us more quietly to move into a new place, sometimes subtly that we might miss the message, the invitation, the push to change our occupation — what most occupies us — altogether.

Sometimes there is a voice that arises from within.  Or an urge, a nagging inside us, a sense that something is amiss from the love of God, and that we might be — are — the ones to be the presence, do the work, of God right now.  Maybe not the kind of Christ-encounter to make us jump out of the boat into the water, or to knock us off our horse onto the road, but God’s call always is there, if we but keep our eyes,  minds, hearts open to Christ’s cal to change what we are doing.

Some of us here in this church which is running out of resources with which others have endowed it — are responding to new calls to engagement and leadership.  Maybe for you it is here in our City of Hartford, itself also facing fiscal cataclysm; you could be the one to respond to residents caught in systemic poverty, families in hunger, kids needing mature adult engagement, gun violence, the crying need for regional co-operation. 

Perhaps you are moved by the reality of refugees and feel nudged to join others among us and become occupied with helping refugee immigrants create new homes and lives here in the Hartford area.  Or it could be some special occasion you’re facing in your own family — helping raise children, responding to a sibling’s addiction — “I didn’t expect to be spending my time doing this.”  These of course are only local issues. 

Changing your occupation — the place where you are and the things that you do — what occupies you — whether from outside or from within — is a hallmark of knowing God in Christ Jesus.  For God does call us always, to occupy ourselves in new ways, often moving us out of our comfort areas, sometimes like Peter having us go where we do not want to go.  And like Paul, some may ask us, “What are you doing here?”  But to go where the love of God is needed.

So, then from all this, three questions: 

Think back:  Has it ever happened to you — the call of God to change how you are occupied, where you are, how you spend your time?

And:  Is there somewhere now you are feeling that gentle push of the Word and Spirit within, in response to something or someone you have read of or heard or seen or know who needs you, that would be a new occupation in Christ?

And in the future, will you look for, and seize the call, get occupied in new ways, to bring Christ into the world?

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known in so many ways to his disciples, Open the eyes of our faith, that we may see him in all his redeeming work, and follow where he leads; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Sermon Second Sunday of Easter: The Rev. Dr. Frank Kirkpatrick

Trinity Church Hartford

April 3, 2016

The Rev. Dr. Frank Kirkpatrick

Second Sunday of Easter

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

Psalm 150

As we begin what the poet T.S. Eliot called the cruelest month, it is impossible to avoid the volatility and passion that are roiling the political life of our nation. Now some of you will say that it is no business of the church or of our faith to get into things that are called political. And the reading this morning from the book of Revelation might support your fear of contaminating the purity of our faith with the sordid and profane world of politics. According to current biblical scholarship, the book of Revelation “was composed in the context of a conflict within the Christian community of Asia Minor over whether to engage with, or withdraw from, the far larger non-Christian community: the book of Revelation rejects those Christians who wanted to reach an accommodation with society.” Christian communities certainly had been and were continuing to undergo martyrdom and that penalties would be imposed on it should it withdraw from Roman society. The vision of John that is the core of the book of Revelation promises a new world for those under distress and persecution. If offers an escape from this world by providing an apocalyptic alternative that would take the Christian community beyond politics and worldly entanglement.

I suspect that for many Christians today, when they see the depths to which our politics and our politicians can sink, such an escape from politics seems very attractive. But is that option really a viable one for most American Christians today? I think not. Christians in 3^rd century living under Roman domination were virtually powerless politically and economically. They had no economic or political influence; they were thoroughly marginal people as far as the empire was concerned even though their refusal to worship the Emperor was seen as sedition punishable by death. In that situation an escape from politics was actually an escape from a world in which the Christian minority was often the victim of political power, not its purveyors. As the reading from Revelation makes clear they could dream of being a kingdom created by God through the death of Jesus.  Praise is to be given “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom,” a kingdom in which Jesus, not the political establishment, would be the ruler of the kings of the earth.

But it was an otherworldly kingdom, one out of reach through the mundane machinations of politics and the worldly exercise of political and economic power.

There is a powerful reminder here, that though our circumstances have changed, whatever kingdom we still aspire to is never to be identified with whatever kingdom we can actually hope to bring into existence through our worldly political efforts. The greatest form of the sins of idolatry and of self-righteousness is to believe that we can, in our sinful and fallible condition, actually build the kingdom of God on earth to its purest and divine specifications by using the flawed and fallible tools of politics. Politics will always be captured to one degree or another by the forces of corruption.

And yet an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness is to believe that we can attain moral purity and do God’s will on earth by relinquishing what limited power we do have on earth by opting out of the political realm. The very real human struggles to combat oppression and work for justice and peace require us to use as best we can the fragile vessels that comprise what we call our political order.

Our dilemma as Christians today is that as citizens of the United States we are now the ones who have the power to actually enact or implement in society, with the help of multiple secular allies, some of our basic moral values through the judicious and restrained exercise of political power. Many Christians did just that when they used the tools of the political process to advocate for policies that would end racial discrimination. Many Christians did just that when they advocated for the guarantee of affordable quality health care for all our citizens. While the healthcare bill that was ultimately passed was flawed in many respects, support for it was driven in no small measure by Christians using their political freedom and power to advance what they believed to be a moral goal. They would not have done this had they taken the book of Revelation’s option of withdrawing, in the name of spiritual purity, from the less than morally perfect world of politics and the wise and tempered use of political power and influence.

And so we are caught as Christians between the allure of washing our hands of the muck of politics even while we are in position to use the political process for moral ends, and the allure of thinking that we can control that process so completely that we actually fulfill all the hopes and ideals of the kingdom of God on earth here and now. Neither of these two extremes is a real option for responsible action now in the messy, often sordid, even toxic world of politics as it is actually being practiced. Responsible action requires us to use what power we have (and it will differ depending on where we find ourselves in the economic and political hierarchy) to help those in need without idealizing or sanctifying the political realm, in which that help is given concrete form.

Responsible action may well do nothing more important than to be on the alert for demagogues who would exploit the political realm to advance agendas of hate, exclusion, and fear. Recently New York Times columnist David Brooks, citing Psalm 73, wrote of political demagogues,

 “Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. … They scoff, and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance.”

And yet their success is fragile: “Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin. How suddenly they are destroyed.”

The psalmist reminds us that the proper thing to do in the face of demagoguery is to go the other way — to make an extra effort to put on decency, graciousness, patience and humility, to seek a purity of heart that is stable and everlasting.”

In the current climate of political shamelessness, of vituperation, slander and coarseness, and the proposals to isolate and marginalize the oppressed in our own country, calling out the demagogues, no matter what party they affiliate with, and patiently and with humility pointing out the idolatry of identifying a political agenda with the kingdom of God may be the most important moral imperative that falls on Christians at this time.

     Politics is always a flawed and limited practice as are the people who engage in it because we all are, at bottom, flawed persons. But retreat from politics is also deeply flawed because it would relieve us from the moral responsibility to use what power we do have (and whether we like it or not Christians in America have tremendous social and economic power) to serve the common good. We are not granted the right to absent ourselves from the struggles of securing justice for the oppressed and persecuted whether here or abroad just because the means of justice are less than morally pure.

     We need to take politics seriously but without becoming enthralled or seduced by it. It can accomplish, when done wisely and judiciously, more good for real people suffering from real injustices than withdrawal into spiritual pieties can do. Politics cannot bring in the kingdom of God but it can challenge the most egregious forms of systemic and structural violence and inhumanity.

     And since we are free, thanks to Jesus’ life-giving spirit, from having to protect ourselves at the expense of others, we are now free to use all our resources and power, whatever they might be, to at least help clear away some of the barriers to the true justice and equity that will eventually fill the kingdom of God on earth and the work of politics will have come to an end.