Sermon for the Celebration & Blessing of a New Ministry, April 16, 2010
Church of the Good Shepherd, Granite Springs, New York
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Joshua 1:7-9; Psalm 133 - 134; Romans 12:1-16; John 15:9-16
 

Early last month I had a short trip to Spain, just six nights. It was a great break – no cell phone coverage, no emails. I went to just two places, Seville and Granada, first trips to these cities.

In Seville I learned that as the 1400s began, ninety years before Columbus set sail, the city decided to build the largest church in the world. When it was finished in 1511, it was the largest. Today, it’s third, after Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. But after being in it for several hours, it didn’t seem so large to me, or even as large as our own great cathedral.

Seville’s cathedral is full of stuff – altars, statues, floats for Holy Week parades, and places built specially for clergy and monks to sit. It’s been so filled up, that there is no place where a congregation of any size can gather for worship.

Seville’s cathedral is a great national treasure for architectural, historic and artistic reasons. But it is very, very far in every significant way from that Upper Room where, to use Dom Gregory Dix’s words, a young Jew gathered with his friends on the night before he died.[1] He told his friends to “Do This” with the new meaning for the remembrance of him. And then Dix wrote six words I cannot string together without the rise of great emotion, “Was ever another command so obeyed?”[2]

Eucharistic Origins is a book by Paul Bradshaw, an Anglican priest who is professor of liturgy at Notre Dame. It’s is a survey of Eucharistic texts from the first centuries of the Christian era. This is the last sentence of the book, “So momentous were these changes and developments in theology and practice in these first few centuries that they would not be surpassed even by those that were to come in succeeding ages.”[3]

Sitting in that cathedral, I thought about Father Bradshaw’s conclusion – certainly not word for word – but I remembered his general conclusion that the biggest changes in Christianity were already behind us. Again, sitting there, it felt as if there had been at least one big change that was as big as the fight over how to speak of the Holy Trinity, about how to speak of the humanity and divinity of Christ, a change that wasn’t and isn’t limited to renaissance Spain. In that cathedral, the congregation was no longer important to Christian worship.

Bradshaw doesn’t write about how church communities can get stuck along the way, sometimes for good reasons, but stuck nonetheless. A cathedral is a church where people gather with their bishop to break the bread and to share the cup. If there’s no place for the people, what is the building for?

I worked pretty successfully not to think too much about my own parish while away, but I was in Spain by myself. I had plenty of time to think about how I have been stuck personally in different ways across my life – and to wonder how I may be stuck today and unable to see, afraid to see God’s kingdom unfolding and my life in it in new ways.

In tonight’s gospel lesson, the disciples certainly are unable to see God’s kingdom in their midst. They’re stuck in a world where death is the end.

This gospel lesson is from John’s account of Jesus and the disciples he now calls his friends at the supper before the Passover. They have no idea what Jesus’ words will mean for them and for the world. 

After Holy Week, most of us can be counted on to remember John’s Passion is the longest account of Jesus’ death of all of the four gospels, but in John, there are almost twice as many words assigned to this supper than to the Passion – and John never mentions the bread and the cup. It’s all about the relationship of the disciples to one another, the presence of God with the disciples, Jesus the True Vine, Jesus overcoming the world.

Tonight we gather with our bishop to celebrate the call of the vestry of this parish and the Bishop of New York to Matthew Hoxsie Mead. He’s already your rector. Matt came to Saint Mary’s as a summer seminarian in 2003 at the suggestion of his father. In 2004, he brought with him a new wife when he finished seminary and became our curate. He and Nicole brought great joy to Saint Mary’s in so many ways. Their sons Liam and Nicholas were both born in the parish. We miss them all.

I don’t dare begin to tell stories on Matt because he has so many he could tell on me – and he’s a better story teller. But the presence tonight of his former colleagues John Beddingfield and Jay Smith – and so many members of Saint Mary’s in this congregation bespeaks much about the work Matt did at Saint Mary’s, the affection so many have for him and his family – and the wisdom of his father who sent him our way and our Bishop who gave his permission for him to serve. The Church of the Good Shepherd has one of the finest young priests I know as its rector. I think you-all are going to have a great time working together to build up Christ’s people, Christ’s kingdom, in this place, the Church of the Good Shepherd.

In John, Jesus is not looking for the lost sheep, he looks for the one who has been rejected by his family, his community and his religious leaders, the man born blind – rejected before and after he has been healed. 

In response to the lack of faith of those who have seen his healing of this man, Jesus explains, he is the Good Shepherd, the one who feeds those who are hungry, brings light to those who are in darkness, and to those who are die, he brings eternal life – or to put it another way, to un-stick those who have become stuck.

A few final words. I mentioned Gregory Dix who wrote movingly about how his friends shared the Bread and the Cup. In the Upper Room the disciples did not know of the things that would open up the world to Christ. Their lives stopped being stuck with Easter. They became more than friends; they become One with Christ. May we and all who call ourselves Christians be known not for our buildings, but for our love for one another. 

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 

Copyright © 2010 The Society of the Free Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York, New York.

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