Some people have asked about our fall stewardship campaign. This year it will be a bit more low key than in years past because we are also raising funds to support the renovation project. In terms of timing though, there’s nothing like a Gospel story about a rich man going to hell to help us kick off a fall stewardship program!

First some housekeeping items. This story is often interpreted as a teaching about what life after death is like. In fact the story reflects a Greek concept of souls going to the underworld (Hades) for punishment after death. Both Jewish and Christian concepts of life after death or resurrection of the dead are based on the return of the Messiah for judgment and not on the immediate death of the individual. As with much of his teaching, Jesus uses this story to tell us about the nature of the Kingdom of God and how we are to live the life we are given. Finally, this story itself comes from much earlier Egyptian folklore. Good teachers always recycle good stories.

Another assumption modern people make is that the rich man must have been evil and wicked to deserve his fate and that Lazarus must have been righteous in spite of his poverty. Not only is this assumption wrong (The story says nothing about either one of them.) but Jesus’ audience would have assumed the opposite. They believed that riches were a sign of righteous living and God’s blessing while poverty was a sign of one’s sinfulness. For all we know the rich man might have been a wonderful person who attended his synagogue every week. Lazarus might have been a scam artist conning people out of money so he could get by. Given that possibility, what was the rich man’s failure to deserve his torment?

Interestingly the rich man knows Lazarus by name. We might take a clue from the name Lazarus itself which means “God’s helper.” Could Lazarus be a kind of angel who helps those of us who have plenty better see the Kingdom of God? Could we say this of the poor in general?

Every day the rich man walked past Lazarus at his gate. How could one help NOT to notice the dogs licking the sores on Lazarus? Did the rich man learn the name of Lazarus from his guards at the gate or from the talk at the village well? We don’t know.

We do know that not only does the rich man never see Lazarus at his gate, even in Hades the rich man is still so blinded by his upper station in life that he thinks he can command Lazarus like a servant. He doesn’t see the truth about Lazarus or his own situation even after death. The rich man maintains his death grip on his wealth and social status in Hades where he is dead. Clearly he just doesn’t get it.

Stepping into God’s Kingdom is not something we do in the afterlife. We do it right here and now. To enter the Kingdom of God we must see others with the eyes of Jesus and respond to their situation with the compassion of Christ.

Perhaps I was lucky. I have struggled with hearing impairment and poor vision all my life. I survived a life-threatening illness as well as other situations that might be considered minor miracles. Looking at this story I identify much more with Lazarus than the rich man. Like any adult I can look back and count the blessings and the incredibly painful blows I have taken in life. Strangely I have discovered that with each blessing AND with each blow, my grip on security in the form of wealth and possessions loosens bit by bit.

Coming to Grace Church continues to be a rich blessing and affirmation of a true calling. My response flows from a deeply grateful and generous heart. The journey here and our time together even after only six months are changing me.

I do not idealize the poor or the wealthy. I see them as brothers and sisters. But I have discovered something universal that as WE learn to respond to the pain, the hopes and the needs of others, we become much more aware of our own human nature. And as we discover ourselves through the needs of others we learn that we just don’t need money and possessions like we used to.

God became fully human in Jesus Christ. There is nothing about our joys and our suffering that Jesus did not experience. Through Jesus God knows our every need, our every joy and our every pain. Through Jesus we experience love that surpasses understanding. Like Jesus we are called to discover ourselves in the needs of others. With each human need that we see, our grip on all that stuff that we thought we needed loosens bit by bit.

Stepping into God’s Kingdom is a process of learning to see and respond. It is learning to be like Christ. It is to be fully human, fully alive. I hope that in our time together we can enter the Kingdom of God one baby step at a time. I hope we can all learn to see and respond with the heart of Jesus.

One strong indication that we are going in the right direction is that your attitude changes about your bank balance and all the stuff you think you need. At some point you will smile and even laugh about the things you used to believe.

A math major friend of mine once joked that the world is divided up into two kinds of people: Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t. Likewise our readings today from Ecclesiastes and Luke enable us to divide the world into two kinds of people: Those who believe that when the lights go out, that’s the end and those who believe that when the lights go out marking the end of our earthly passage that something else happens and continues to happen.

For the first group there is no soul, no meaning after death, only emptiness. For these folks the rule of life is “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” Their image of death is terminal or as a famous cartoon character once said, “That’s all folks.”

The other group believes or at least wants to believe that when the lights go out something happens. We are united with God who welcomes us home. We become like the prodigal son after a long journey away. God rejoices that we have come home. Jesus tells us that “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” We may not think we deserve it. We may not think we earned it, but all of our misdeeds, all of our cruelties, all of the damage we have caused vanishes the moment we experience that final welcome home. Whatever physical and spiritual pain we have endured transforms into joy in our new dwelling place.

Like that clever ad on television lately that introduces the 57th president of the United States and then runs the tape of the person’s life back to the moment his parents met, let’s wind the tape back on these two kinds of people. You can find rich and poor in both types but let’s consider how they live and perhaps even why they live.

You would recognize many people in the “death is terminal” group. Some may give generously to charities because they think the cause is worthwhile. Some may give generously to their churches because they want to make their spouse happy or they want to fit into their community or even because they are not sure about all this Christian stuff so by giving they hedge their bets. This last category straddles both worlds. In their hearts they are saying “Just in case this Christian belief is 1, I want to at least have some possibility.” For this group, giving is strictly a matter of personal choice.

The book we call Ecclesiastes from the Hebrew Bible actually carries a Hebrew title of “The Teacher.” Martin Luther translated it as “The Preacher.” A seminary professor once told us that he thought the author of this book was clinically depressed. The book starts out with a lament of “Hevel, hevel … all is hevel.” The Hebrew word hevel means something ephemeral like a puff of wind, a mist that vanishes. It gets translated as “vanity.” “Vanity, vanity says the Teacher, everything is vanity.” The word hevel is found nine times in the excerpt we read today.

Now you might be thinking that this dour Middle Eastern writer who penned such well known lines as “Eat, drink and be merry” and “To everything there is a season” would fall in the death is terminal crowd but you would be wrong. Qoholeth or the Teacher as we know the author in English is arguably the most faithful figure in the Old Testament. What we don’t see in our reading today is that Qoholeth has spent his or her life trying to justify every action and every motivation by reasoning and she fails.

A few chapters later, the Teacher concludes “Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.” He has carefully considered all of our busy-ness and since we neither have control over when we die or what happens to the fruits of all our labor, all the output of human labor is ephemeral, it is a puff of wind, a vanishing mist, it is vanity. The Teacher commends us to mirth and merriment because once we understand that all of our labor and everything that we think we own is vanity, only then can we faithfully acknowledge that God is Lord and sovereign over all of us and all creation. In absolute faith we eat, drink and celebrate the gift of life that God has given us. We do this every Sunday.

The rich man in Jesus’ parable also wants to eat, drink and be merry to celebrate HIS accomplishments and the abundance of HIS land. Today we would call this kind of person a “self made man” because he believes that he earned everything in his possession. There is not much room for God or gratitude or giving from the heart. The very idea of a sovereign God threatens this world view. Faith in something cannot be seen is not possible. For the rich man in Jesus’ story, when the lights go out, that’s all folks.

So we have two lessons where we are taught to eat, drink and be merry. The key distinction is why. The life of faith leads us to die in faith. We know that everything belongs to God. We know the ultimately we have no control over our lives. We know that in spite of what trials and tribulations we may have endured, God has done so many good things for us that we are grateful for living and for what we have. The life of faith leads us to give of ourselves in faith.

We have a huge opportunity before us. The renovation of these buildings and grounds will take substantial giving from all of us. We also have a stewardship campaign coming up. This church has relied upon deficit budgets for years where the endowment was drawn down bit by bit. To continue that policy is to suffer death by a thousand cuts. I have asked the vestry to begin a three year process of getting out of deficit budgets through reduced operating costs and increased income. My job in all this is not so much to stand here and encourage you to give. My number one job is to help you grow in faith. Sit alongside the teachers both Qoholeth and Jesus and consider their teachings because when you do you WILL grow in faith. And where your heart and your faith go, your giving will follow.

A Hebrew professor in St. Louis told us about the university language department visiting rural school districts in Missouri trying to convince them to start a language program. In one meeting an elderly member of the school board patiently listened to the presentation, stood up and proclaimed “I don’t see any need for foreign languages. If the English language was good enough for my lord Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”

It is human nature to resist change. Sometimes we do it out of ignorance and sometimes for good reasons.

As you have observed this summer the Church of England and Episcopal Church have produced eight major revisions of the prayer book with each one embodying different language and different theologies, that is who God is to the community, how God is present in the community, how God works through the community and what is the role of human sin and divine forgiveness. At each stage of revision we have seen how many people clung to the old familiar service while charging the Church with committing heresy and using its position of power to coerce people into accepting new-fangled ideas.

People have resorted to violence in their strong disagreement with prayer book revisions and positions the church has maintained. The 1549 BCP changed some long standing medieval practices such as going from communion only once a year at Easter to regular congregational communion. The popular practice of a procession of the Blessed Sacrament through the town right after consecration was banned leading to widespread opposition and the church sending out commissioners to enforce the ban.

At various times clergy and lay people left England because of their disputes with revisions of the prayer book. After the reign of Elizabeth I, the prayer book was completely replaced with a book of instructions titled “Directory of Public Worship.” During these few years, the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 was used clandestinely in some English churches. When the 1662 book was released, nearly 1,800 clergy were unwilling to accept the changes in that book and they were “deprived of their livings.” They were fired.

The American prayer book revision in 1979 led to an enormous amount of discontent by people who felt offended or alienated by the new book. Of course American cultural upheavals of the decades leading up to 1979 fueled a great deal of anger and discontent among some of the same people. For five hundred years we have seen how revisions of the Book of Common Prayer become proxies for much wider and deeper political and cultural power struggles.

In the wider scheme of salvation and even the survival of Christianity itself, prayer book revisions are really really small stuff. In family settings we have all seen how children may fight over a toy when the real issue is they want the parent’s attention. We fight over the prayer book when there is a much more important issue at stake.

Through the prophet Isaiah we find that we must address the question “What makes our worship acceptable to God?” Here is how God feels about Jewish worship about 700 years before Christ, “Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me” Ouch!

This raises an important question about worship. Are the exact words, phrases, actions, even theologies important to God? You don’t hear God saying through Isaiah, “You know I really think the English language of 1552 is beautiful and defines what worship should be.” Fundamentally what should our community be doing for our worship to be acceptable to God?

I am suggesting what might be a heresy for Episcopalians – that there are only two things Biblically mandated and fundamental to our life together as a community of Christians: 1. that we grow 2. that our worship is acceptable to God. Let’s listen to God’s list of what the community needs to be and do in order for worship to be acceptable:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, I will forgive you. You shall eat the good of the land.”

God did not condemn the kingdom of Judah for bad worship. God condemned them because they used worship as a cover for their FAILURE to do good, seek justice and rescue the oppressed. Grace Church now has a terrific worship team that will be helping shape our worship starting in September. I am thrilled to have some good help. But even if we conducted our worship as well as some big city cathedral it would not be acceptable to God unless the WHOLE COMMUNITY becomes a justice-seeking community.

Grace Church has some good first steps in this direction. Meals on Wheels, Servings of Grace, Fr. Tamba, and our new Environmental Ministry are all good works of mercy and justice. Through Isaiah, God is telling us that we ALL need to learn to do good and seek justice.

September 12 we are going to have a ministry fair and fish fry. While you are enjoying the fish please ask yourself how you can make a difference for the oppressed in this community. Maybe you will help start a new outreach ministry at Grace Church. Maybe you will join an established ministry here or some social program in the city.

Walk down the streets of Muskogee. You will find people living in dilapidated housing, people living without air conditioners and some without fans. You will find a violent crime rate more than double the national average. You will find educational achievement needing lots of room for improvement.

Great worship that is acceptable to God is not just the product of the rector, a worship team, and a music department. Great worship that is acceptable to God starts with the orientation of YOUR hearts. When people’s lives are changed in the community because we care about the widow, the orphan, about justice and the oppressed, then your hearts are changed too. When people’s lives are changed in Muskogee because you care, God will hear our praise and prayers in worship and as Isaiah says, “You will eat from the good of the land.”

A Hebrew professor in St. Louis told us about the university language department visiting rural school districts in Missouri trying to convince them to start a language program. In one meeting an elderly member of the school board patiently listened to the presentation, stood up and proclaimed “I don’t see any need for foreign languages. If the English language was good enough for my lord Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me.”

It is human nature to resist change. Sometimes we do it out of ignorance and sometimes for good reasons.

As you have observed this summer the Church of England and Episcopal Church have produced eight major revisions of the prayer book with each one embodying different language and different theologies, that is who God is to the community, how God is present in the community, how God works through the community and what is the role of human sin and divine forgiveness. At each stage of revision we have seen how many people clung to the old familiar service while charging the Church with committing heresy and using its position of power to coerce people into accepting new-fangled ideas.

People have resorted to violence in their strong disagreement with prayer book revisions and positions the church has maintained. The 1549 BCP changed some long standing medieval practices such as going from communion only once a year at Easter to regular congregational communion. The popular practice of a procession of the Blessed Sacrament through the town right after consecration was banned leading to widespread opposition and the church sending out commissioners to enforce the ban.

At various times clergy and lay people left England because of their disputes with revisions of the prayer book. After the reign of Elizabeth I, the prayer book was completely replaced with a book of instructions titled “Directory of Public Worship.” During these few years, the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 was used clandestinely in some English churches. When the 1662 book was released, nearly 1,800 clergy were unwilling to accept the changes in that book and they were “deprived of their livings.” They were fired.

The American prayer book revision in 1979 led to an enormous amount of discontent by people who felt offended or alienated by the new book. Of course American cultural upheavals of the decades leading up to 1979 fueled a great deal of anger and discontent among some of the same people. For five hundred years we have seen how revisions of the Book of Common Prayer become proxies for much wider and deeper political and cultural power struggles.

In the wider scheme of salvation and even the survival of Christianity itself, prayer book revisions are really really small stuff. In family settings we have all seen how children may fight over a toy when the real issue is they want the parent’s attention. We fight over the prayer book when there is a much more important issue at stake.

Through the prophet Isaiah we find that we must address the question “What makes our worship acceptable to God?” Here is how God feels about Jewish worship about 700 years before Christ, “Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me” Ouch!

This raises an important question about worship. Are the exact words, phrases, actions, even theologies important to God? You don’t hear God saying through Isaiah, “You know I really think the English language of 1552 is beautiful and defines what worship should be.” Fundamentally what should our community be doing for our worship to be acceptable to God?

I am suggesting what might be a heresy for Episcopalians – that there are only two things Biblically mandated and fundamental to our life together as a community of Christians: 1. that we grow 2. that our worship is acceptable to God. Let’s listen to God’s list of what the community needs to be and do in order for worship to be acceptable:

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, I will forgive you. You shall eat the good of the land.”

God did not condemn the kingdom of Judah for bad worship. God condemned them because they used worship as a cover for their FAILURE to do good, seek justice and rescue the oppressed. Grace Church now has a terrific worship team that will be helping shape our worship starting in September. I am thrilled to have some good help. But even if we conducted our worship as well as some big city cathedral it would not be acceptable to God unless the WHOLE COMMUNITY becomes a justice-seeking community.

Grace Church has some good first steps in this direction. Meals on Wheels, Servings of Grace, Fr. Tamba, and our new Environmental Ministry are all good works of mercy and justice. Through Isaiah, God is telling us that we ALL need to learn to do good and seek justice.

September 12 we are going to have a ministry fair and fish fry. While you are enjoying the fish please ask yourself how you can make a difference for the oppressed in this community. Maybe you will help start a new outreach ministry at Grace Church. Maybe you will join an established ministry here or some social program in the city.

Walk down the streets of Muskogee. You will find people living in dilapidated housing, people living without air conditioners and some without fans. You will find a violent crime rate more than double the national average. You will find educational achievement needing lots of room for improvement.

Great worship that is acceptable to God is not just the product of the rector, a worship team, and a music department. Great worship that is acceptable to God starts with the orientation of YOUR hearts. When people’s lives are changed in the community because we care about the widow, the orphan, about justice and the oppressed, then your hearts are changed too. When people’s lives are changed in Muskogee because you care, God will hear our praise and prayers in worship and as Isaiah says, “You will eat from the good of the land.”

We often hear the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but in today’s Gospel, Jesus effectively tells us that what we THINK is fixed, he will break. How often do we have to break old things in order to let the Spirit in? How often in our quest to make the church into our rock of stability do we undermine the Spirit by shutting out every new thing?

For example Anglican worship relies upon deep symbols that work on us on many levels. Sitting, standing, kneeling, praying, singing, speaking, eating, drinking, hugging, reading, keeping silence, dancing, crying, laughing. Our worship engages the senses. It engages the whole person. There are people who believe that what is essential about our worship is the particular set of words used.

About twelve years ago I had a woman who was adamant about the language in the service, how it should be formal language in addressing God, how “King James English” (actually she meant Elizabethan English) is the official language of our church and on and on she continued. She was in her nineties so I tried to say something pastoral to her (remember I was a new priest) like, “I guess the 1928 prayer book holds a special place in your heart.” She looked at me with fire in her eyes. I know she wanted to say “No stupid” but instead she just shook her head and said “No I mean the 1895 prayer book.”

Jesus had that same fire in his eyes. Scholars have debated this enigmatic passage for centuries but there is one thing perfectly clear about it. When Jesus refers to the stress he is under until it is finished, he uses the same words which are the last words he utters from the cross – “it is finished.” This is not the cuddly Jesus we teach in Sunday school. No, this Jesus is on fire with a mission.

Unlike those whose passions are ruled by lesser things like particular versions of the prayer book, the latest theological hot buttons and political fads; the fire in Jesus’ eyes runs deep. It is about something primary; inescapable; fundamental to the universe. It must be shared, grasped, understood and spread before he is finished. How can he make the point so that everyone for all time will know how serious he is about it?

One of my favorite non-Episcopalian pastor-teachers is Bill Easum who wrote a delightful book titled “Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers.” Bill once asked the question why so many pastors claim to be burned out when they have never been on fire. In one question it sums up where our church has been the past 100 years. Clergy and lay leadership have been so consumed by lesser things that they are tired and claim to be burned out when they have never been on fire.

Jesus came to set you on fire. And that is my job too.

Local singer-song writer Garth Brooks and Jenny Yates wrote a song titled “Standing Outside the Fire.” Like so many songs about love it applies equally well to the religious-divine impulse as it does to more human aspects of love.

The song begins with a contrast between people who have no scars from life, who control and never risk – those our society admires as strong and independent; and those fools who “dance within the flame, who chance the sorrow and the shame, that always comes with getting burned.”

The refrain turns to the irony in this, “You’ve got to be tough when consumed by desire, ‘Cause it’s not enough to stand outside the fire.” The next two verses make the same kind of contrast but here the fools that get burned are explained as those who are “unable to resist the slightest chance that love might exist.”

Jesus was immersed; he was literally baptized in the fire. He got burned. He took on our sorrow and our shame. He was just like one of us and yet he gave up his humanity freely to a slow agonizing death so that WE might know that love does indeed exist.

It is a love that exceeds mother and daughter, father and son, friend and friend. It is a love that transcends life and death itself. It is a love that beckons to us from an empty tomb whispering to us we are free, we are whole, we are children, we are born again… If we will just stand inside the fire.

My beloved congregation (You DO know that you are beloved to me.) the world’s problems out there are immense and they are not getting better. Population is out of control. Violence and especially violence in the name of religion makes tears fall from heaven. Pollution has become just another word for “we are making money don’t bother us.” Disease spreads on the back of globalization. Poverty and income inequality surround this church only a few hundred yards in any direction.

Yet there are a few who are brave and tough and who cannot resist the chance that love does exist. Some call them fools. I call them, “my parishioners.” Jesus invites you to stand inside the fire. Because if there is any antidote to the problems of the world and the troubles of our hearts, it is not some politician in Washington. It is not a bottle of pills and a shrink’s couch. It is the fire. Stand in it. Love Does Exist.

Actor Robin Williams who is an Episcopalian, authored a set of “Top Ten Reasons to be an Episcopalian.” The final item or number one on the top ten list stated that “No matter what you believe there is bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who believes the same thing.”

His top ten list is truly hilarious and it is hilariously true. We don’t have dogma doctrine and theology filling acres of library shelves. We don’t have a “confessional” like some denominations. We don’t emphasize or preach one particular interpretation of scripture. As a result other Christians look at Episcopalians as either heretics who don’t read scripture or Biblical illiterates who have no church doctrine to underpin us. To many, Episcopalians are “Christian lite” and we don’t stand for anything in particular. But that is where they completely miss the point.

While Episcopalians may not be citing chapter and verse from the Bible, we go through a much more rigorous and long-lasting form of Bible study throughout our lives. The Book of Common Prayer and indeed the services you are hearing this summer including the modern one at the end this series are filled with scripture. ¾ of the words you hear in the service come straight from the Bible. We hear this every week and think it is just our prayer book, but it is scripture woven into our common life of prayer. This kind of scripture works its way past rote memorization and becomes part of our very soul itself. I have encountered people on death’s door in the hospital where the medical staff told me they were “unresponsive.” When I pull out the prayer book and read prayers from it or part of the Eucharist, often you can see the patient’s lips moving with me. The prayers from our Sunday services are beautifully written in English and come straight from the Bible. They may be the last thing on your lips too.

Back to Robin Williams’ point about Episcopalians not really standing for anything: If you study the early churches described in the Bible, you will find they are as diverse in their beliefs and Sunday liturgies as any group of Episcopalians or Christian denominations. It is an absolute myth that the early Church was somehow “unified” and over time the devil has driven us apart. We were diverse from the very beginning.

Jesus taught us in ways that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. It is unlikely there will ever be any agreement by Christian believers on what it all means or what we are supposed to do. But one thing is abundantly clear from the actions of Jesus. He gathered to himself a diverse group of believers from all walks of life. The people who followed Jesus were not 100% in agreement on what he meant, what they should do, or even why they followed him. They were not a community of like-minded people. They were a community of love. They were a group of people who said, “Jesus loves me and I choose to love you regardless of what position you take on any religious or political topic. … I choose to love you.”

The Christian community today that best follows Jesus is not about belief or practice, it is about choosing to love each other in spite of our differences. Yes Robin Williams’ number 1 is funny AND it is true. That is a good thing.

The faith of our founding fathers was as diverse as any group you could find. Although half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Episcopalian, Thomas Jefferson served as senior warden of his Bruton Parish in Virginia and still considered the religion “superstitious” calling the clergy the “one anti-Christ.” (ouch) George Washington also served as senior warden of his Virginia parish yet he never took communion considering it to be a “superstitious act.” He believed that religion was necessary to build up the virtues and morals of the public. At that time about 7% of the population attended a church of any kind, not much different than today.

Today you can find all kinds of material about the faith of the founding fathers. Be careful. One source will say they were deist, another theist and yet another atheist. One thing they did represent was a diversity of beliefs. They were unified in their common vision to build a new country. What will unify our community today?

The founding fathers believed that the concept of rights passed from God to kings to the people formed a useful way to forge a republic where the people enjoyed certain liberties and rights. These concepts of rights originated with the Magna Carta in 1215 and became prominent again during the Enlightenment period. The founding of the United States occurred during the peak of the Enlightenment era. Talk of human rights bounced from France to the colonies and back to England. In the end, our Constitution would be amended with the Bill of Rights. It is a necessary and powerful addition to our great nation.

But it has nothing to do with being Christian. The concept of human rights belongs to the Enlightment historical period and must be implemented by governments. As Christians however, God created ALL that we are and ALL that we have. How can we talk about possessing any “rights”? God owns ALL of our rights. God grants us limited means to live but not one of us who has been baptized possesses anything.

So what can we do? We can stand together as a diverse community of believers who choose to come together loving God and loving each other. We give thanks to God for the life we have been given. And we give thanks for this great nation that gives us tremendous blessings of freedom, rights and responsibilities. Amen

The pastor of a nearby church once fired a 12 gauge shotgun in the middle of his sermon in order to get the audience’s attention. He fired blank shells so no one was in mortal danger but a shotgun —– in a sermon!

My thinking on this whole area of “relevance” and “contemporary liturgy” has changed so let me try to frame this issue against the backdrop of Mary and Martha.

For the past two thousand years or more people look at each new emerging generation and talk about how they are different in terms of their needs, hopes, dreams and expression. At least for the past century the response of the church has been to look at the changing generation and say “We must make liturgy relevant and make it come alive speaking to the needs of this new generation.”

They said this in 1890, in 1927 and in 1977. The church continues to say it and I have said it. But now I am wondering if this is the right direction to go. I wonder if making liturgy seem modern not only drains the power from the timeless symbols we encounter, but it also makes the modern contemporary worshipper unable to encounter God in their daily life.

As a line of argument sometimes it is useful to take each proposition to their absurd extremes. In the shotgun, contemporary, let’s-make-worship-meet-the-needs-of-busy-modern-people line of reasoning, where do we end up if we push it to the extreme? Worship becomes a kind of Ed Sullivan show (if you are old enough to remember that) or an American Idol. “We’ve got a really big show this morning folks …” The celebrant becomes a master of ceremonies. The audience sits in plush, reclining theatre seats. If the Lord ’s Supper is celebrated, the bread and wine come to the worshippers in their seats packaged in little sterilized plastic cups and pre-packaged sterile wafers. You leave church every Sunday pumped up, feeling good, knowing that prosperity awaits because you are a true believer.

At the other extreme, let’s walk through the doors of the monastery of the Society of St. John the Evangelist on busy Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The SSJE is a monastic order in the Episcopal Church. Although the brothers do incredible work ministering to the needs of the poor in the Boston area, they gather to pray five times a day starting at 5:00 AM. At 6:30 AM on weekdays they celebrate Holy Eucharist.

You close the heavy wooden door from the street and step into the stone building. The feeling is as if you had stepped into the 10th century. The light comes from candles or the stained glass windows high up on the walls. There is a hushed feeling of reverence and awe. You know that you are in the presence of something big, something powerful. The service begins and follows our 1978 prayer book. All of the music is chanted. Most of the service is chanted. The incense only makes the nearby altar appear hazy like the cloud that led the Israelites by day through the desert.

In chanting the psalms through the Daily Office and Eucharists, the brothers have read or chanted all 149 psalms several times a year. They know them by heart. One side chants up to the asterisk and the other chants the remaining half. The service takes place at a pace that would seem slow to us. When they break at the asterisk in chanting a psalm, the pause lasts for one full deep human breath – 2-3 seconds. Yet the responding line is begun simultaneously by the brothers without direction. They know exactly when to come in. Some authors have remarked that when done well, the simplicity of this kind of chant sounds like the breath of God. You literally become transformed with the beauty.

The small congregation walks to the altar rail to receive the body and blood of Christ. It is real bread and real wine from a common cup. The brother presses the bread into your hands and looks into your eyes. Together in that glance you offer up your weaknesses and insecurity to God who has sacrificed something precious for you.

This kind of worship at SSJE could have been done in 1549 or 1049. Yes the language changes a bit as we have observed this summer, but the timeless symbols of worship are powerful. When I visited St. Petersburg, Russia a couple of summers ago, I was captivated by the Russian Orthodox service in the same way as I was at SSJE. Although it was in Russian I knew exactly what was happening throughout the service. The only people attending the service fell into two distinct age groups: People over 80 who were introduced to the faith as children before the revolution. And young people 35 and under. One of the priests told me that this was basically the same service celebrated when Peter the Great founded the city in 1709. It was amazing to see how many young people were truly experiencing the liturgy.

If we have failed in our liturgy I am not convinced it is because we have failed to make it contemporary or accessible to young people and newcomers. I have observed that people of all ages and of all levels of faith development will flock to the real deal when they find it. They flock to the real deal NOT because they leave feeling pumped up or they think they will get rich because they believe in God. (Those are heresies by the way.) They flock because they have encountered something divine, something bigger than themselves, something mysterious. These are what some authors call the “thin places” in life where we encounter that which is holy or simply God. People leave profoundly touched and transformed.

As I work with people pastorally when life throws them a curveball, people seem to divide into two groups: One group has had repeated encounters of God in the thin places of their lives. They carry with them an abiding sense of the presence of God. They face the curveball with grace and holy confidence. The other group does not seem to have this sense of God’s presence in their lives. When the unexpected calamity arrives they are often filled with dread and anxiety.

Grace Church may never be the huge place out on the Bypass. Whatever size we become, God calls us to be the real deal. Our worship needs to enable the timeless, powerful symbols to work on people. As we grow together our worship should leave people powerfully touched and transformed. It takes time. It takes people and dedication. We will do it and when we do, more people will begin to develop their own sense of the presence of God in their lives.

I wonder if Martha might attend the big church with theater seats, shotguns and plastic wrapped Jesus. For now it seems to meet the needs of her busy life. But I have seen Mary a couple of times. Once I saw her at SSJE. The last time I saw her was in St. Petersburg. Perhaps we should invite both of them to Grace Church.

Welcome to the year 1662. William Shakespeare’s works are almost a hundred years old. The English Civil War has ended and the monarchy restored. By 1689 the crown will liberalize church attendance in England. That is, skipping church without a valid excuse will no longer be punishable by a fine or jail time under English law. Once compulsory attendance was lifted, attendance dropped. Likewise up until 1972, cadets at US military academies were required to attend religious services. At St. Anne’s in Annapolis Maryland, a fourth 6:30 AM service had been attended by nearly 200 midshipmen for decades. Once compulsory attendance was lifted by Congress, the fourth service at St. Anne’s was dropped and only a handful of cadets nationwide continued to attend church or synagogue.

Why am I telling you this? Because the other night I had dinner with key lay leaders at several of the large downtown Muskogee churches and they shared a concern that seems to be universal for certain types of churches – attendance is down. Clearly some churches are growing and some are not. Since we are about to embark upon a major building program, it might be useful to understand why some grow and some do not. 

As I wrote and discarded three other sermons this week, I continued to mull over this question. What are the strengths of Grace Church I wondered? What are the strengths of these other churches? What do we have in common? How do we differ from the churches out on the highways that seem to be growing rapidly? Is there anything we can do to improve our situation? 

Grace Church and many of the venerable downtown churches are blessed with a strong social network that goes back generations. We are all blessed with substantial financial resources and a variety of social, business and family connections into the leadership of the community. We are blessed with our respective church traditions that emphasize thinking over blind acceptance of literal interpretations. We are blessed with church traditions that focus on the accepting, inclusive, loving nature of Jesus rather than a judgmental, wrathful God. So with all these blessings why is attendance down for our sister churches downtown?

These things go in cycles. We enjoy success and growth for a while, then complacency sets in, external factors lock the new pattern in place and decline becomes the norm. In that period of complacency we allowed our social connections to dominate the churches while our teaching and outreach sagged. Preparation for confirmation in the Episcopal Church has reached such a low point that there is a common joke about getting rid of bats in the bell tower. The solution is to have the bishop confirm the bats and they will never come back to church again. 

The 1662 prayer book traced the rise and fall of the British Empire. As the British Empire began to wane and church attendance began to fall in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Anglican evangelicals (lay people) launched an enormous range of social reforms in England including the abolition of slavery. While they were so engaged in reforming their society, their churches grew. This strong commitment of lay people in their churches to various social reform programs is what attracted others to attend the church and get involved. 

If you want some guidance as to where we might make a difference in this community, pick up the newspaper. The lead article on Saturday noted that more than 10% of 13 year olds in Muskogee have had adult relations. 13 year olds! On the bright side, the Salvation Army provides respite for people escaping the heat. What if we decided to tackle just those two problems? We could be a haven from the weather, winter and summer. We could also find ways to help in teaching families about life skills. We could make a difference right here.

The other reason those highway churches grow as well as the Anglican evangelical churches of the 18th & 19th centuries is that they emphasize teaching. First I need to let you know that the word “evangelical” is not reserved for a particular political or theological agenda. In some respects it was hijacked by a few who used it as a label in political contests. But the word simply means one who brings the good news to others. In England the evangelicals realized that in order for people to attend church they needed to have a better command of the Bible and church traditions. So they began schools that met on Sundays to teach these things. From this the idea of free public education was born. Their churches began to grow again.

Quite a lot has been written about very conservative, growing churches in America repeating the ideas of 18th century Anglican evangelicals but why can’t we reclaim our own heritage? I am not suggesting any political orientation, but the twin pillars of works of mercy and Christian formation is a proven approach.

Where is Grace Church going now that we know this? We started an environmental ministry last spring and I hope that will take off. It has enormous potential. This fall we will begin a pair of programs for adults and youth called “Confirm not Conform.” While it is not strictly a confirmation class, it addresses most of the shortcomings of traditional didactic educational programs. Confirm not Conform as the potential to breathe a lot of new life into Grace Church not just for those who attend but for the entire church community.

You have homework today. When you go home I want you to look over some of the questions being handed out. Please talk to your family and friends about them. The basic idea of church growth is quite simple: If you want your church to increase in size, then the members must increase in Spirit. Amen

This has been a great week for Grace Church. We had a very positive meeting with the bishop who asked some good questions, clarified some process issues and gave us a ground breaking date. [pause] Thursday June 10. He wants us to succeed.

The Capital Campaign Team is meeting again and making good progress. The diocese is providing us with assistance that will make our capital campaign successful. In fact we received another major donation this week pushing our funding over the $1M mark.

And the vestry retreat yesterday helped us become effective leaders of this Body of Christ in a direction God wants us to take. It’s no secret: Grace Church needs to grow. How are we going to do that? We will not grow in numbers until all of us grow in spirit. We would not be here if Peter had not been praying in Joppa. Peter’s vision enabled the early church to spread beyond the bounds of the Jews to the Gentiles. Peter’s vision enables us to be here.

I have asked the vestry to adopt two simple spiritual disciplines and I encourage you to do these as well: 1. Read scripture every day. You can read a selection of scripture in the Daily Office. If you need help finding the selection for the day in the prayer book, come see me. You can read it on-line. You can get it on your smart cell phone. Pick some method or book and just keep at it every day. 2. Pray daily. Pray for Grace Church. Pray for Muskogee. Pray for this Diocese of Oklahoma. Pray for your vestry, rector and bishop. Pray that God will send the people here who will find a home in this church. Pray that we develop the ministries and programs newcomers need to feel welcome and keep them here. When we are doing God’s will, God wants us to succeed. God wants Grace Church in Muskogee Oklahoma to succeed.

In a town with a church on every corner Grace Church offers so much more than “Just another church.” We are open and welcoming. One parishioner told me she was in line at the grocery store recently and when she mentioned that she was a member of Grace Church the person behind her said, “Oh, you’re the church that loves everybody.” Grace Church does not talk about other people’s sins. We leave the judgment up to God. In place of that we just love the people who walk through the door like a mother. And just like Peter was told in his vision to “make no distinctions between them and us,” people at Grace Church make no distinctions.

Do you know what an incredible gift that is to people? They walk in here sometimes hurting from the wounds of living in the world. They wonder, “Will this church be nice to me or will it hurt?” We make no distinction. We love ‘em all.

Others walk in here hurting from their previous experiences with a church. It is very difficult to get back on a horse after you have been thrown off. It is also very difficult to try attending a church again after you have been wounded by one. These people wonder “Will this church hurt me too?” We make no distinctions. We love ‘em all.

One hospitality makes all kinds of people feel welcome. Grace Church has that gift. It is one of the core strengths of this parish.

Have you ever considered a green on a golf course? It is what biologists call a “monoculture.” It is one kind of grass and no other kind of green plant is allowed to grow there. It is an artificial, unnatural environment. It requires an enormous amount of energy, fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides to make it look so pretty and uniform. But natural systems never look pretty and uniform like a golf green. Look in the woods or in some weedy patch. You’ll find dozens or hundreds of kinds of plants in a small area. The diversity of plants actually serves to support and strengthen the system. A natural collection of plants is a beautiful system.

In the same way a church of hospitality mimics a natural system. The church reflects diversity of every kind and the diverse groups of people actually stabilizes the congregation. You get diversity when you make no distinctions.

When Joan and I visited here last January, we sat in the back and observed. There were 63 people in here that day. That did not deter me. I do not know if I had a vision or if I was just imagining it but I looked at this worship space and I saw it nearly full with people of all kinds. I could sense the laughter, the love, the joy. The same things you have shared with me these first two months. I knew two things at that moment: 1. God wanted us here. 2. This church will be full again.

There are about 40,000 people in Muskogee. Less than 10,000 of them are in church on Sunday. Our mission field consists of 30,000 people who do not attend church. As a community, if we surround ourselves in daily prayer; if we ground ourselves in daily scripture; if we make no distinctions then we will be ready to welcome the people God sends to us.

The harvest IS plenty. Grace Church offers gifts to this community that no other church offers. Are you ready to deepen your relationship with God? Can you take on a new discipline of daily prayer and scripture reading? Can you pray for the leaders of this parish? Can you pray for the people out there to start coming through our door? Are you ready to get involved to make this vision a reality? After all, God wants us to succeed.

For me developing sermons is an act of discernment. Originally I started to write a touching letter from Lydia as a mother and a Christian. Then I looked at the passage from Revelation and I began to write about mothers versus the myth of redemptive violence. Finally as I looked at Lydia more closely an unvarnished sermon about evangelism popped out. For Grace Church to grow in this city all of us need to get some basic training on evangelism. Let’s see if we can get mothers, evangelism and the Good News in ten minutes.

In our passage from the Book of Acts, Paul receives another vision from God. He is completely ready to go east into the region of Asia Minor and the vision changes everything. God directs him to go west into the European continent instead. Arriving at the Roman colony of Philippi Paul meets a group of women and slaves reading from the Torah and praying at the river outside the city gates.

First Lesson: Our faith is spread by going where they are. They won’t just come to us. We must go to them first. Paul traveled over 40,000 miles on his missions. How far will we go?

Paul is filled with the Spirit and breaks social customs the same way Jesus did. The first thing he does after finding a group at prayer is to come to them, sit down and talk to the women who were of course perfect strangers to him. In the first century Roman Empire the idea of a man initiating a conversation with an unknown woman was unheard of. It was a breathtakingly bold move by Paul.

Second lesson: Our faith is spread most effectively by bold moves. Sometimes you just have to jar people out of complacency. You have to break a few rules. We have to act first.

Here we find the woman named Lydia who buys and sells purple cloth with the wealthiest people in the region. Because it was so difficult to make purple dye, purple cloth was as expensive as gold. Only the very wealthy could own it or wear it. Wearing purple was a sign you had made it into the highest levels of society. Lydia was the merchant who traded in this luxury good. She had some excellent social connections.

Lydia is there with her entire entourage: her household, her slaves, her children. They are all there for Friday evening Sabbath by the river. Paul sits down to talk with them. He doesn’t tell them their faith is all wrong or they will go somewhere bad when they die. He simply takes their existing Hebrew scriptures and uses that to show how Jesus is the messiah and the fulfillment of their existing faith.

This is more like Jesus opening the hearts and minds of those on the road to Emmaus than modern day evangelizing. The more I look at how the Good News is conveyed to Lydia and her group in such a bold yet seamless way makes me wonder in fact if Paul and Jesus weren’t really Episcopalians. Episcopalians don’t beat people over the head with their sinfulness. We invite them to come over for a glass of wine.

Third lesson: To bring someone to Christian faith you build on their existing faith. I wonder if we knew more about what other denominations really believed and if we really understood what those who don’t attend any church truly believe if we could build on that to bring them to Christ. I wonder.

Finally this brief story tells us that “the Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” The final lesson here is very simple: We must do as much as we can to bring people to the Christ that is present here at Grace Church. And then we must leave the rest up to God.

With her strong social and business connections Lydia must have served as a powerful witness to Jesus Christ in Macedonia. I find it more than ironic that the first convert to Christianity on the European continent is a woman yet the Christian religion that emerged there does not allow women to serve as priests.

Throughout history we find that men tend to engage in struggles over worldly powers of wealth, political power and physical power while women and mothers leave their marks on history and families through their quiet, persistent and strong witness of their own spiritual convictions. The sharing of faith and spiritual convictions is one of the gifts many mothers give to their children. We celebrate motherhood today and give thanks for the gifts our mothers have given us.

Perhaps Lydia was the first European Episcopalian too. After she and her household had been baptized she prevailed upon Paul and his company to stay with her. I am sure they had a glass of wine together. And the world has been different ever since.