I am delighted to participate
in this morning's worship with you. Though a few years my junior, your rector
and I shared the same Connecticut college campus well over a quarter of a
century ago. Fr. Penfield was (and is again) a resident of the Connecticut town
in which I served for many years. For some strange reason, I keep running into
Fr. Gushee - from his initial Connecticut curacy to my past three years on his
cathedral staff in Hartford as - in his words - a "loose ca(n)non" of sorts. I
extend the warmest of greetings from Christ Church Cathedral to him and all
others of this congregation, where Connecticut clearly has special ties and
affections.
In recent weeks I have noticed
in some news magazines a certain kind of discontent, a hunger, if you will.
"Who Are We?" asks a July issue of Time. Elsewhere, a week later an
historian of religion is quoted saying, "There is no common agreement today
about who we are, what our culture is and where we are going. People are asking
questions that traditional churches can no longer answer for them." On the
front page of Wednesday's New York Times, an article reports that
monasteries are filling up this summer with guests seeking inner peace, quiet,
and an undefined spirituality. This need for a sense of who we are, where we're
going, and inner quiet is nothing new. "The Search for Something Else" was the
name of a television documentary several years ago. In 1983 a magazine cover
story entitled "A Search For The Sacred" included these comments: "There's an
authentic hunger in people, a feeling that something is missing in their
spiritual depths." I suspect such hunger and quests are perennial. However, I
reject totally the historian's judgment that traditional churches cannot
answer the questions people are asking about who we are and where we're
going. It is precisely in traditional churches such as the Parish of
Bethesda-By-The-Sea and Christ Church Cathedral that answers to ultimate
questions and sustenance for these hungers are offered over and over again.
Think of what we do here! In
the words of another priest, "We wash a lot (at the font), and we eat a lot
(around the Table)." We baptize, and we break bread in a special way. In these
sacramental acts together, the perennial questions are answered
profoundly. We affirm repeatedly that each person is a unique,
worthwhile child of God among - in St. Paul's words "fellow citizens with the
saints and members of the household of God..." Individuals are named and
received into this household, the Church. How often we have heard "I baptize
you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" -- the
imprinting of an identity (who we are) on a child or adult. Regrettably, soon
afterwards, with baptism compartmentalized as a ritual nicety, we ask children,
"What are you going to be when you grow up?" - implying that they have no
significant identity until they do something. Consider a similar approach with
adults: we enter a new social gathering; our name is given, and what's the next
question on the agenda? Yes, "what do you do?" - not asked just as a
conversation opener, but often as evaluations of one's fundamental human worth.
Tragically, we might even basically value ourselves by our resumes. Recognizing
this danger, a writer in Wednesday's Palm Beach Post cautioned
"Don't define yourself by the job you choose." When this is done, something's
missing; people remain hungry.
Countless Americans attempt to
establish who they are by idolizing an activity. For some, the Super Bowl has
become what one observer has called "the American spectacle of Folk religion,
the festival of the folk celebrating their faith, their practice and their
history." Many recreational events have become the sacramental expression for
the American way of life complete with their stories, rituals, sacrifices,
commitments, saints, priests, congregations, and very expensive temples; they
foster a sense of identity and community with others sharing the experience. No
longer casual recreation for true devotees, the activity has become an
addiction; an imprisoning cult governing their lives. A mayor quoted this month
in a national newspaper puts it this way: "We need places we can go to
understand our commonality in a very lively way. Baseball can do that." In the
same article a television producer preached, "Baseball tells us who we are; it
is a barometer of our country." Yet, I suspect they remain hungry.
We could go on examining our
many roles, our varied responsibilities, and our leisure activities - each of
them basically all right, unless we look to them for the answers to who we are,
where we're going, or for inner peace. Predictably, they will all leave us with
a search for that something else which we know as our common identity and
ongoing life as baptized persons not just as a nice idea, but as a heartfelt
reality. However, to realize this as a vital relationship with God and each
other, we must be nurtured, w e must be fed; this is in part why we're gathered
here this morning: to eat, to be nourished in our identities, to journey toward
an inner peace, by Word and Sacrament.
I suspect our Episcopal Church
will remain small in numbers with fewer congregations; I say this because we
will not become a “McChurch” offering mere platitudes and half-baked
bread. Attracting more adherents than ourselves will be the folk religions of
leisure activities; the superficial spiritualities; providers of entertaining,
feel-good pap; fantasyland religions with magical quick-fixes; prepackaged,
simplistic, mindlessness (televised and not); and rigid, unchanging churches;
these fast-food centers and museums do not have the courage or the will to live
as does the Episcopal and a few other churches, with the creative tensions
resulting from perpetuating tradition while simultaneously creating the future
with new information and reconsiderations.
When I accepted pastoral
responsibility of a very small, declining, rural congregation, I asked the
archdeacon whether I was expected to increase membership; he wisely replied,
"Our Lord said, 'Feed my sheep.' He didn't say, 'Count them.'" During my 14
years there, the parish did not grow numerically; nonetheless, we were all fed;
we lived out who we are and we knew where we were going. We became stronger and
more vital as a community, and we offered the town appropriate ministry, most
importantly the ongoing invitation to come through the doors to satisfy the
deepest of human hungers. Centered on worship, the parish built up a steady,
balanced ministry of religious education and pastoral care, consciously
avoiding the latest well-intended "hype." Moreover, we refused to measure who
we are by how many we have! We "declined" into an effective, quality
congregation.
Today's Gospel reading is a
beautiful parable teaching us that in all our circumstances - not just in
emergencies or when all else has failed - we will be fed to our hearts content
by the Bread of Life we share this morning. Amidst the challenges, victories
and defeats within the church and beyond our doors, this sacred space can be a
wonderfully "lonely place" - a place apart, where above and beneath all,
together we may rest quietly - a place in which our minds can be enlightened,
our wills inspired, and our hearts warmed becoming truly at peace with who we
are and where we're going. We can leave fortified for whatever ministries we
are called to do within and beyond this sanctuary, and all of this available
from the traditional, mainline, controversial, imperfect, "declining" Episcopal
Church! This is some "decline'." This is some Church!