Let us pray.
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Last Sunday, Patti would have appreciated the incarnation of that prayer in two announcements I made at Christ Church. The first was that our beloved Director of Children’s Ministries, Melly Turner, had died after a long battle with colon cancer. The second announcement was that our Curate Josh Walters and his wife Emily had just given birth to their first child earlier that morning. Two parish events, one heartbreakingly sad, the other heart-fillingly joyful. It was hard to know whether to laugh or to cry, and so we all did both. In my mind it was illustrative of that prayer we’ve just offered, “Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery;….” It’s always a sacred ministry to me how God arranges these things, but also how privileged you and I are to make the connections.
Tonight we are about another “sacred mystery.” We are about lifting up things which are “being made new.” We are about making the connections between life and death, sacred moments and opportunities, and what Christian people have to do with one another. It’s Patti’s night, to be sure, but Patti has been very clear that it’s also your night, that The Celebration of a New Ministry is extraordinarily inclusive. And yet, it’s also God’s night, a kind of insistent murmur and vibration under our feet and in the air, so let’s just stop for one second and take a deep breath. The Holy Spirit is not just a good idea, but is infused into all we are about tonight. Forget the cicadas, and listen for God Listen to your breathing, calm down, slow down, don’t worry about what’s coming next or even what’s gone before, for that matter. It’s Patti’s night and it’s your night and it’s God’s night. We’ll rest with that for one minute.
O.K., enough resting. So let’s figure out what’s being made new here. That’s what the prayer says, it’s also what our scripture says, and, it’s the title of the drill: The Celebration of a New Ministry. And yet, the history of New Ministry goes way, way back. Perhaps there is “nothing new under the sun,” but we’ve just heard the Bible’s account that over the course of recorded history, God is requiring something new under the sun and that God’s people need to be attentive and a part of the program. Take, for instance, Ezekiel’s insistence that God will give his people a new heart and a new spirit. We might want to remember that these were a disheartened people who had had their parish destroyed and who had been deported, completely uprooted, at sword’s point. God knows they needed a new heart and a new spirit, because the old heart and the old spirit had no more “college try” left in it. Remember too, that Ezekiel was the one who talked about the dry bones coming to life. God saw that his people were like bleached bones and Ezekiel has this incredible vision of “Oh dem dry bones” clinking and clanking together to become new so that God’s house could be renewed, so that God’s house could be rebuilt, better than ever. (Of course you’ve already got your new house but maybe the new thing is paying for it.)
And then in 2nd Corinthians and in John there is presented a new vision of God’s kingdom and how any of us can be a part of that newness. It had been some 500 years since Ezekiel had pointed God’s people in the right direction, and I suspect that no one really could have guessed that Jesus would have embodied God’s plan, that God’s kingdom could have been so focused in the life, much less than in the death of this one itinerant albeit charismatic rabbi. But Paul says that in Jesus everything and everyone is a new creation. And John says it’s like being completely reborn.
Now I for one don’t like having John’s gospel hijacked by everyone who thinks they know what being reborn really means. And I want to assure you that your new rector has no intention of getting hijacked by biblical fundamentalists or whomever. But your new rector does have every intention of helping us understand that this new thing God has in mind has everything to do with the promises we make and the life we live, as all of that is focused in baptism. Actually, you didn’t know that you were secretly getting a new rector who was a Baptist—well, not denominationally, but Patti’s doctrine of how the Church becomes a new creation is rooted in our connections to God and one another by water and the Spirit. In fact, those lessons from Ezekiel and 2nd Corinthians and John are all from those appointed for Baptism. And this scriptural insistence is that we are a people who find our heart and our soul defined by being the body of Christ.
So what else is new? I’ll tell you. With Patti and Tom and Danny and Anna and Amy and Ollie, there is a chemistry of care that does not need to be held up for scrutiny but nonetheless serves as a model for what the kingdom of God can look like. But that may not be a novel thing for St. Lawrence but you surely recognize the gift of stability and commitment you have received. And it also has to be said that you’re getting the gift of an absolute “J.” (That’s Myers-Briggs terminology for the organized among us.) When Patti first came to Christ Church in her first year of a five-year enrollment at Seabury-Western, she was at least three years ahead of the rest of us in planning for the future. The rest of us on staff were all “P’s.” (That’s Myers-Briggs terminology for those of us who tend to be more open-ended.) None of us have a clue what’s happening a week from now, much less three years! So when Patti became the curate after her graduation from Seabury, she was still a “J” minority because Betsy Fowle and I continued to be “P’s” in spades. Then Betsy left and Patti became Associate Rector and Lane Hensley became the curate, and I shudder now to remember that Lane was also as much a “J” as was Patti. All of a sudden I was outvoted. All of a sudden staff meetings needed an agenda. No more of this loosey-goosey “Well, who’d like to preach on Sunday?” We had a plan. Now I don’t know whether Jed was a “J” or a “P” and it doesn’t matter because all comparisons between former and present rectors, whether at St. Lawrence or anywhere are odious, but only to say that when I had the privilege of meeting with those of your calling committee to discuss Patti’s candidacy I could tell you that with Patti Snickenberger you would receive a number of gifts that whether “J” or “P” have to do with the process of being a new creation. Consistency, reliability, carefulness, all combined with a love for God and God’s people and God’s story are to be found in Patti’s candidacy. That, and a very organized Palm Pilot.
But I said earlier, this is not just Patti’s night. It is your night, and it is God’s night. The kingdom of God which is the object of what we’re all striving for can be found in the variety of gifts that make up your common life as leaders and followers, as young and old, as newcomers and old timers. Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, to which I would dare add gay nor straight. This new creation we are about takes the risk of being the broadest possible circle of love and welcome and—thank God—forgiveness. None of us earn it—it’s a gift. The Church today is often portrayed as fractured, as politically toxic, as ambiguous about its identity. But from my vantage point, the vantage point from this pulpit as well as from my own pulpit, I’m not seeing a fractured Church and I’m not seeing the fearfulness that comes from a lack of faith or a cynicism we can be so tempted to take on. I see, right here, babies who are being baptized into an amazing spiritual place of safekeeping. I see young families who are attracted to worship that has integrity as well as tradition and who also know that they will find a place where they count, where they are valued. I see single persons who may not have an immediate nuclear family who find themselves cherished. I find people who are facing the ravages of cancer and other diseases who have found healing and hope and who know that even at the end they will not be abandoned but will be forever connected to that kingdom we realize now in part, and taste and see in part, but will know forever because in Christ we are a new creation. That’s what this celebration of a new shared ministry is all about, and we could not be more pleased, Patti, that you’re smack in the middle of it. Amen.
