| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost For me it's a great irony that I have been the Rector of the Church of the Epiphany for the last 10 years, because I was one of those odd individuals that never wanted to be a Rector. The word "Rector" comes from a Latin word that means "to rule". It is used in the Episcopal Church to mean the priest in charge of a parish. A Parish is a self sustaining church that above and beyond sustaining itself also sustains the Diocese and smaller congregations. A mission church is a church that needs help from the Diocese and the priest in charge of the congregation is called a Vicar. But enough of church organization. When I came to this church 10 years ago, I was 44 years old and had already been ordained for 15 years. I had already made several decisions about my strengths and weaknesses in the service of my Lord. I knew that I was a "parish priest". I gain my greatest spiritual peace and sanity by serving a congregation of human beings all trying to find their way to God. Bill Warburton coined the metaphor of The Church of the Epiphany as a Pirate Ship. We are all floating around together, a motley crew, all expressing our own opinions and all thoroughly convinced that each of us is in charge of the ship. Well, I find that I have a high tolerance for pirates. I have always found diversity of opinion and behavior to be enlivening and I have always wanted to share in the journeys of those around me, which brings me back to my second decision about my ministry and the irony of being a Rector. I was always afraid that being a Rector would pull me away from where I found life in ministry, that being a Rector would make me a manager, not a pastor. There is a funny and slightly profane sign at a coffee bar and restaurant on Westheimer just east of Lanier Middle School, The Empire Café. It says, "Corporate Coffee Sucks." I guess it's a dig at Starbucks, but it expresses my attitude towards religion. "Corporate Church sucks". I am profoundly suspicious of the church as business and the church as overly organized. There is a sign in my office that reads, "God so loved the world that he didn't send a committee." No God sent his son, a son that bore a name, Jesus, Yehoshua — God saves — and he lived and died as "one of us." And to the poor be proclaimed the good news and to the down trodden he gave hope. The ministry of Jesus was a far from "corporate church" as anything I can imagine. In last week's gospel lesson, Jesus tried to teach his disciples what God had sent him to do. He spoke quite openly about how the world would treat him. And as the disciples followed, their minds drifted. They ignored his teachings and fell into an argument about who was the greatest among them. Later when they were alone, Jesus asked them what they had talked about on the way and they were silent because they were embarrassed about their argument. And Jesus said, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." And to make his point, he picked up a little child, maybe the toddler of one of his followers and he put the little one down in the middle of the disciples and said "Whoever received one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not just me but the One who sent me." It seems to me that the very possibility of receiving God into your life has to do with a kind of leadership that is quite different from what we usually see. The Old Testament and gospel lessons today are all about the difference between how God sees leadership and the world sees leadership. The first story is a wonderful story about Moses. God had found Moses in the middle of nowhere and sent him to lead the Hebrew slaves to freedom. The way out of Egypt had been long and hard and every step of the way Moses had had to prod, cajole, encourage, shout, jump up and down, wring his hands and generally just about kill himself to keep everything moving. And in spite of their freedom from the Egyptians, the Hebrew people complained and whined about how wonderful the food used to be in Egypt, the spices, the melons, the garlic.... Reminds me of a friend in England I went to visit. He was teaching Mathematics at the Imperial College in London. He missed Mexican food so badly that I took a 6˝ pound can of Trappeys' "jalapenos with carrots and onions" through British customs. Today, they would think I had a bomb and in a way I did, a jalapeno bomb. Well Moses' "worn paper thin" patience finally snapped and he had a full tilt, hissy fit, melt down. He exploded in an orgy of "feeling sorry for himself." (I love the wonderful honesty of the Bible.) He says to God "Why did you lay the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive this people? Did I give birth to them? They come weeping to me and say, 'Give us meat to eat!' I am not able to carry all this people alone; they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, just kill me now! Don't let me wallow in my misery!" Wow! Now that's a lot more honest prayer than you're going to hear from most Rectors, isn't it? Well, God has no use for either the whining or the people or the whining of their leader and so he tells Moses to gather 70 lay people to help do the ministry. When the 70 are gathered, God gave them his spirit so that they would share ministry with Moses. But two men whom Moses had not picked also seemed to be given God's call to leadership. And Joshua, Moses' lieutenant said indignantly to Moses, "My Lord Moses, stop them!" But Moses said to Joshua, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets!" Likewise in the Gospel reading today, Jesus has sent out his disciples 2 by 2 and given them authority to teach and to heal, and John the son of Zebedee (the same disciple who argued with his brother James about who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of God) said to Jesus, "Rabbi we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us." And Jesus' response is very like Moses. "Do not stop him. Whoever is not against us is for us." Both Moses and Jesus have no "jealousy" about their authority. Jealousy for what? Jealousy for God? Does authority come from a license or does God give it from within? Both the Moses and Jesus stories are about sharing the leadership, sharing the authority, sharing the ministry of God and not trying to hoard or control the gift of God's Spirit. And if we are going to share that leadership, then it must come from within all of us also. And it is a leadership that is not stationed "behind the lines" or in a corporate boardroom or a far away executive office or a palace high up on a hill. It is within the congregation. Jesus used over and over the image of the Palestinian Shepherd. They went ahead of their flock and then called them to follow. They did not drive the sheep; they led them. The Anglo Saxon word that lies behind "lead" is "leader". It meant to guide someone or something by being in physical contact, like holding a hand or leading a horse by its bridle. Jesus on the night before his death, in the gospel of John, tells his disciples "Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God. Trust in me. I am going on to prepare a place for you and I will come again and receive you to myself so that where I am you may be also." The other day I got the oddest fortune inside a Fortune Cookie. It said these words: "A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn't go by yourself." Why? Because you trust them and because they in turn trust you. Jealousy destroys this kind of ministry because it destroys trust. The better anyone of us is, the better we all are. Believe me, it's true. Ten years ago, I was afraid of being a Rector because I was afraid of being isolated from the congregation. I have seen it happen over and over again as I have observed good men and women called to serve God who end up jealous and alone. But I was a fool. The quality of leadership has nothing to do with a title; it has everything to do with trust. Jesus asked his disciple to trust God and trust in him. He is the model of the leader, the pastor, the Rector, the minister, the person who would serve. If perfect love casts out fear, so perfect trust casts out jealousy. I know I do not yet possess perfect love or perfect trust. I know that fear and jealousy are how the world works and they are present in our lives every day. But I do not want to spend my life ruled by them. St. Paul in the letter to the Colossians long ago wrote these words to a church struggling to survive: "The secret is this: Christ in you the hope of glory." The "hope of glory", still mostly unrecognized in this world is that we are all called to lead, all of us. So here's to the last 10 years of my ministry and yours. Indeed, here's to the last 50. Here's to Pirate ships and the sacred beauty of trust. May we follow our shepherd Jesus and looking back may we realize we are being followed. Christ in all of us, the hope of glory. Amen. The Reverend James T. Tucker October 1, 2006 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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