September 21, 2008
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6,37-45; Philippians 1:2-30;
Matthew 20:1-16
This week Maggie and I attended clergy day – as is required of all clergy in the Diocese – and our speaker, Tony Robinson, spoke of congregations facing change. And let’s face it, what congregation is NOT facing change? Change is a sign of life. When we stop changing we are dead. So it was a topic of conversation that held the attention of the audience, and the speaker was witty as well as instructional. Tony quoted this one statement in particular that made us all laugh, but as I have reflected on it and these lessons for this morning and our Fiftieth Anniversary, the profound reality of it also stuck me.
Tony Said, “It took one day to get the people out of
As we think of this lesson from Exodus this morning, this wonderful lesson of God’s abundance and provision for the people he so loved as they traveled in the desert, I think Tony’s phrase would be a fitting title to the story of the people grousing about the manna that God provided for them in the desert.
It might also be a fitting title for all churches at all times and in all places because it is a way of saying we all bring expectations and hopes and dreams and well polished memories, made into gems which they never were, to every situation we encounter. And when it comes to religions or churches or people in faith communities, letting go of what we used to do or have “always done” or “that doesn’t work here because we tried it ten years ago” is very nearly impossible.
I know you have all heard the joke about how many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? “What! Change the light bulb? My grandmother gave that light bulb to the church! We can’t change the light bulb!“ Or the other answer, “It takes thirty to forty! One to hold the new light bulb, one to hold the old light bulb, the crucifer, the torch bearers, and choir to lead the procession to its final resting place!”
I like all of these jokes, and I hope you do, too, because I think they point to a truth about human beings. We don’t much like to go through change. The past is always remembered more gloriously than the reality of it was!
Yet as we sit here this morning to celebrate fifty years of being a faith community in this place, we can probably only see change! The old days were pretty grand, but the current days are pretty grand, too, and certainly different from the first days when we met in the Town Hall and girls couldn’t be acolytes, let alone priests. One thing that can be said to be true is that God has provided well for this congregation, through you and your predecessors, of course. But it always feels like God never provides more than we need! – just like the manna for the crabby Israelites. Manna is a desert rarity that is created from the secretions of scale insects that feed on the secretions of the tamarisk bushes. This secretion is sweet and full of carbohydrates but it simply doesn’t keep. It needs to be eaten immediately and cannot be stored. It forced the Israelites to trust that God would provide more the next day. That has, if the old Annual Reports are to be believed, been the pattern here, too! Each year starting anew, with little left over that can be saved we have done marvelous things, with God’s help and in God’s name! God has more than provided. God has lavished gifts, talent, and resources upon us.
And we have beaten out the Israelites by ten years. They were in the desert for forty years and here we are celebrating fifty! And that is only so far; we’re still counting! And instead of being in a desert, we are an oasis in the woods!
We started as a few hearty souls who lived in
For almost forty of our fifty years what set us apart from other Episcopal congregations was that we had a Folk Mass. It began on Saturday, or was it Sunday, evenings. And was originally for the Youth but grew to be for people of all ages who loved guitars and pianos and folksier music for worship. Then the folk mass became “old fashioned” as far as youth were concerned. And we forget the Folk Mass was not a monolith of consistency! The folk mass it self went through several formats and musicians – we will experience two of those during Lent next year when we bring them back for a Sunday to show all of us “how it used to be.”
There was, also during all that time, always a “traditional” – for lack of a better word – service, with organ music, from this fabulous organ that we are so blessed to have, not only because the original founders were wise enough to buy it but because the fireman who arrived at the fire that burned Good Shepherd so drastically in 1985 was able to know what to do to save it.
I think in the last ten years we have developed a liturgical style, both in word and music that sets us apart from other congregations. That is due in no small part to the willingness of this congregation to look forward instead of back and of course to Jay’s incredible ability to find and lead us in so many different musical styles. I know there are some who would like to go back to Egypt (so to speak) and have folk masses and/or really traditional services that only use the blue hymnal and the book of common prayer, but just as the Israelites were, I do believe we are being called forward toward the promised land, which is ever forward and not back, however tempting it is to go back!
One of the stories I love most about Good Shepherd is the story of the kneelers, as I understand it – and you may correct me if I am wrong. They were taken home the night before the fire for some finishing work and thus were saved. So we have something from the old church that made it into the new, besides the organ of course, and the cross over the altar, which is noticeably different from what it was before the fire when Jesus was a white man!
In the last ten years – my tenure as your rector – I have seen things change much. Of course adding Jay to the staff and the music he has brought is one of the things I hold most dear and I know you do too. But when I think of what we have done in the past ten years, I think I have been one who has watched in amazement as you use your gifts and insight, your faithfulness and compassion, your passion to create and serve and lead us farther from the old
I have been privileged to work with incredible wardens, vestries, and treasurers. They have taken on, sometimes against popular tides, visions of how things might be and they have gone for it! Sometimes they/we have even been more than right. They have been brilliant. And sometimes it didn’t work out as well as we had hoped, like the Sheepfold project that never quite got off the ground. It was a terrific idea with potential witness to the community. And then there have been the things you have done, creatively, by faith and skill and talent, and sometimes by something others might call luck but I would call God’s grace, like trading the land we sold on Lincoln Drive, two lots, and eventually purchasing the land next door giving us almost seven contiguous acres of land. That was a real step toward giving future Good Shepherdites something they could never have any other way. The new land gives us options we never had with the old parcels, and offers a legacy to those that come after us, not to mention that we traded a non-producing asset into a producing one!
We have added a third service on Sunday mornings, not different in content or style, but to make room for more people. We have experimented with church school times, service times, and new “traditions” like the Epiphany Dinner and
I see all this change and growth, in the last ten years and before, built on the foundation of what the founders of this parish hoped for, I see all this change and growth to be a sign of God’s abundant grace and love, an abundance that provides for us just exactly what we need to go where God would lead us, both in these woods and in the world far beyond Acton! God has provided us manna enough!
One of the things I have noted with some sense of sadness and reality is that people come and people leave, for many reasons, of course. If we look at the founding membership, which we will at the service at 4:00 this afternoon, there are very few left here who were here to step over the threshold of the first church.
Which brings me to the story from the gospel this morning. It seems God values all of us workers, no matter when we arrive to work for God’s kingdom. Or at least that is what this lesson says to me this morning. I think one of the reasons this parish has thrived and grown and changed over the years is because we have welcomed new people and loved them, honored them as God would honor the workers who show up for the last hour of work. Only it is my fervent prayer that we are still at the beginning of the day when it comes to doing God’s work here, the welcoming of new people, new ideas, new ways of serving the larger community, deeper spiritual connections, continuing robust community relationships. It is my hope this is just the start of the day, and God will find the workers we need to take us to the places God will have us go. Probably the only thing we know for sure about where that is, is that we will find the manna we need to feed us along the way.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd