Episcopal Diocese of Iowa [ Sermon Convention Eucharist 2007 ]

SERMON FOR THE DIOCESAN CONVENTION EUCHARIST

Alan Scarfe, Ninth Bishop of Iowa

November 3, 2007

Isaiah 66:18-23; Ephesians 3:7-13; John 1:9-18

Thank you for coming back! (After last night’s U2Charist). We all know the common maxim, “be careful what you pray for.” You know how it goes—we pray for patience and an irritating person comes into our life, all set up by God!

Well I have always thought that an equally interesting statement is to “be careful with whom you pray!”

Patron saints can have a profound impact on congregations; just as Feast days that fall around the time of a Convention can influence a Diocese.

I once led a prayer tour around my home parish of St. Barnabas’, Eagle Rock, and had some interesting experiences. The prayer team did not particularly know the layout of the Church, which doors we used to come in and go out and that sort of thing, but we stopped to pray at a particular spot by a door. Someone in the group said, “I feel a peculiar spirit of deception here.” I said, “Oh, this is where people exit after the service and shake my hand and tell me what a nice sermon!”

Well, we moved on and removed a couple of flags which were obscuring a stained glass window. The next day we found out that that window caught an exceptional and brilliant amount of light. Any guesses as to who was in the window? Of course, we uncovered and rediscovered St. Barnabas. He even began to outshine St. Paul whose window was on the other side of the sanctuary.

So there was St. Barnabas, the son of encouragement who gave Mark a second chance even if it offended Paul to do so, the true patron saint of that congregation. When I first met this congregation, they told me that they suffered from a sense of collective low self esteem. A while later that was very not so. In fact I would say that their middle name was encouragement. I believe we live into our patron saints partly because we hear their story more often than most.

So a Diocesan Convention which falls around All Saints or is befriended by Richard Hooker might be assumed to acquire an identity that is as Anglican as they come on one hand, and as foundational in terms of baptismal ministry awareness on the other. There certainly is a call to comprehensiveness that covers all bases.

So what happens when a new feast day is added? Since the 2003 General Convention, William Temple has dropped in on our celebrations from time to time. And already this is the second time we have chosen to pray with him.

What rubs off on us? What of Jesus and the Spirit does he remind us about or influence with?

On a weekend where we are considering “The Great Turning—God’s earth—God’s people,” it is Temple’s powerful attachment to the incarnated Word of God that catches our attention. Readings associated with his day speak of our way of knowing God through Jesus Christ as the Logos of John’s Gospel, and as the mystery hidden before the ages in God now made known to the Church, according to the letter to the Ephesians. I added Isaiah, with its promise of revelation to all the nations, as an appropriate Hebrew Scripture.

Temple in some ways takes us back to the questions that might come straight from a political thriller like Watergate, not only what do we know about God and how, but WHEN did we know it?

The writer of Ephesians and John make much use of the word grace in their response to these questions. Paul writes of the grace given to him to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. John writes of the grace upon grace revealed in Jesus Christ.

We know what we know about God and salvation because of grace. It has been shown to us out of God’s profound love for us—let there be no mistaking that reality. “You did not choose me. But I chose you” are the words of Jesus in John 15. And that is the way it has always been.

This is the answer to the question of how we know. It is the gift of God, the grace of God, the choice of God to reveal God’s self to us in Jesus Christ. The “what” of our faith is found in things like the Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer—two things we might be able to commit to memory and to our hearts as long as our minds are with us.

But when did we know all this? That is an important and perhaps deeper question. For, that is the moment when we know that we stepped from darkness into light. That is the instant we actually fell in love with Jesus Christ, or became aware of our love. That is what attaches us to Him for ever, and though it may fade, it is a moment which will never leave us, for He will never leave us. In fact over times, one moment becomes many moments, and even a life journey.

Praying with Temple then is to learn to pray with someone who highly values that God initiates the welcome. God steals our egotism from us by the demonstration of His self-sacrificial love in Jesus Christ on the cross. God presses in on our self-centeredness with God’s own image of cruciform love, and refuses to take no for a response.

Temple is not a great law man. The law came through Moses, and that is okay and good. But grace and truth has come through Jesus Christ. For the law can over proscribe. It does not always have room for the diseased of body or mind. It can only offer ritual steps for restoration, and even then may leave us totally outcast from the holy community.

On the other hand, grace and truth look into the heart of each one of us and sees the whole person, finding room for us to stay around while the saving effects of grace and truth transform us and restore us into Christ’s own image. He never leaves us out of his sight and presence.

Is this soft on sin? I don’t think so. Rather, there is a sense of reality for who of us can stand perfect in every way before God. While we enjoy explaining one another’s particular sins, which of us can stand perfect? “I am the least,” says the Apostle Paul, “but grace was given to me.” “No one has seen the Father,” claims John, “but the Son has revealed Him” or made God known through grace upon grace.

So when did you first know that grace was given to you? How have you continued to know it? When did you stop believing it all depended upon you or your correctness and discovered the joy of believing and knowing it was all dependent on God’s love and grace? If we pray with Temple for a while, as a Convention of God’s beloved people, I believe we will learn to become bearers and those who experience the boundless riches of Christ that Ephesians speaks of.

At Convention we remember the whole body of Christ gathered as the people of the Diocese of Iowa, and we have untold examples of God’s grace, and of God’s people who know not only what they believe but when that faith came alive in them. We also give thanks to God for grace experienced through those who have passed on.

This past week our community of faith gave back to God one of God’s precious gifts. Twenty one year old Brandon, grandson of Wanda and brother of Matt, died. He suffered from a rare disease which shrunk his muscles over time leaving him in pain and disfigured. He had outlived his doctors’ prognosis by eight years. He never let his illness be his focus. I confirmed him in my first trip to Trinity, Waterloo and we spoke of his ambition to become a graphic designer. He was continuing through school to the very last.

He had signed up to be a support person for the Waters of Hope project and after his death it was revealed that he had asked that any memorial monies in his name be directed toward the children of St. Augustine’s orphanage and school in Mpaka. At his funeral, Mitch told a story of Brandon’s time in hospital over May 1—he asked for candy because he wanted to make baskets for the younger children with him in hospital.

I am sure he did not consider himself perfect, and probably his family could provide evidence to that effect, but he experienced grace, and refused to let things overwhelm him or have the last word. Rather, the last word was to be fashioned into that image from glory to glory which is the destiny of all of us. His last word was to be spoken not about himself, but about other children whom he considered not only in greater need than himself, but in special need to see the love of God demonstrated towards them in more than words.

If I was to be asked if God was at work among us fashioning us according to His will, I would say without reserve—absolutely! If I was to be asked if we are recipients of grace upon grace as the people of God, I would say—absolutely. Yet if I was asked if we spend enough time just hearing our stories of God’s grace among us, rather than our lesser preoccupations, I would have to say—absolutely not!

I memorialize Brandon because his life which has just changed, not ended, leads us to a moment—this very moment—when we can say through such a life witness that we know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the grace that greets us to be recipients of God’s revelation and leads us to become respondents to God’s Love.

It is to such a life and experience Archbishop Temple would desire for us. So be careful not only for what we might pray, but with whom we pray.