A Sermon Preached February 20, 2011 Epiphany 7A

by Lee Cheek

One Heart At a Time

“…you should become fools so that you may become wise.” 1 Corinthians 3:18

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

It is so hard to stop fighting. It is so easy to start. Here’s the scene: A room full of toys. A child is playing with one of them. Enter another child looking for a toy. What happens next?

Right. You all know: a fight over the only toy (among many) that the first child has. Punches are thrown. Tears. Screams. Parents enter. Blame ensues: I had it first! She hit me first! But he pulled my hair! She bit me!

This is so common among children AND adults that one might suspect we are hard-wired to ramp up our responses in the heat of conflict. In 2003 researchers in London discovered that, indeed, we are.¹

Pairs of volunteers were connected to a mechanical device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other’s fingers. Although they were instructed to take turns applying equal amounts of pressure, the machines recorded that each volunteer typically responded with 40% more force than they had just experienced. Each partner was convinced that he was responding with equal force. A game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate, then hard pokes.

Commenting on this study, Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, wrote that the research teaches us that “our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.”²

In other words, the pain we receive seems to be more painful than the pain we produce.

Frankly, I find this personally sobering. I know from life experience, that conflicts can escalate quickly, but I usually think it is the other person’s fault.

As the study would imply, the truth of this is much easier to see when we are not personally involved. I think this knowledge of tit for tat escalation is what had us on the edge of our seats for 18 days as we watched events unfold in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Who was going to respond with the additional force that would set off an all-against-all conflagration?

It is unclear what is going to happen in the delicate negotiations to restructure Egypt’s government. But we are beginning to learn a little about what has happened so far.

After a failed effort in 2005, leaders of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement began training in non-violent activism which prepared them years in advance for the events in both Tunisia and Egypt.³ Rather foolish in the face of repressive regimes you might say.

But like Gandhi, King, Mandela, and their followers, the democracy activists were whole-heartedly and fearlessly committed to meeting their enemies without returning the harm they perceived they had received. Even if it meant they would lose their lives.

To be sure, not all non-violent action succeeds in ways measured by the world. People die, regimes stay in place. Worse repression or worse tyrants may follow. But, as a Christian, I believe like Mother Teresa that I am not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Faithful to the practice of opening of my heart to all my brothers and sisters, especially those with whom I disagree, and especially those whose actions I must oppose.

In today’s reading from Matthew, the centerpiece of the Sermon on the Mount, we are asked to respond to provocation not with equal force—which research tells us we cannot do anyway—but with the bravest generosity beyond any requirement of law that we can muster.

Not in order to shame or expose the baseness of the other who has wronged us. But in order to change ourselves that we might live creative lives, uncontaminated by resentment and angry self-righteousness.

The very extravagance of these instructions wisely takes into account our desire for distorted payback that gives our tormentors way too much real estate in our soul.

As Christians, we are given the freedom to judge for ourselves what that might look like for us in any given situation. On some occasions, a smile might be our most generous response, the bravest thing we can do. And who knows. It just might be enough.

Sometimes all we can do is pray. Yet know this: when we take time to pray for our enemies and include them in our circle of concern, we admit them into our hearts and are eventually blessed by the liberating truth that the rain and sun are equally theirs.

So here’s the question Paul is asking us today: Do you want this foolish, extravagant, wholehearted generosity towards others to be the foundation of your life? If so, then relax into the Company of Fools, he says, and it’s all yours. As you build your temple with care on this foundation, you will begin to experience a world beyond tit for tat for ... boom!

Now I can’t end without addressing the troublesome last sentence of the today’s Gospel: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I know many of us have been damaged and emotionally crippled by exhortations to be “perfect.” In fact, according to Dr. Brené Brown who researches vulnerability at the University of Houston, perfection as it is known today is actually one of the ways that we use to avoid opening our hearts and becoming vulnerable to life’s experiences, including love and connectedness.⁴

So I’m going to offer up a contemporary paraphrase of what I think Jesus understood as the heavenly Father’s “perfection” that we are to imitate. If you like, gaze at the screen upon the beautiful 6^th century icon--which happens to be from Egypt, St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. It is the Christ Pantocrator, “Christ, Ruler of All.” And then, if you like, imagine Jesus speaking these words, taken from an Abbey Lincoln song:

"Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life each and every day ... And keep your hand wide open. Let the sun shine through, 'cause you can never lose a thing if it belongs to you ... Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life each and every day ... And the hand's unclenched and open, gifts of life and love it brings, so keep your hand wide open if you're needing anything ... Throw it away, throw it away. Give your love, live your life, each and every day.”⁵

Live foolishly. Live generously. Amen.

---

¹ Sukhwinder S. Shergill et al. “Two Eyes for an Eye: The Neuroscience of Force Escalation.” Science 11 July 2003: 18.

² Daniel Gilbert .“He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t.” The New York Times July 24, 2006

³ Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution.” The New York Times February 16, 2011.

⁴ Brené Brown. “The Price of Invulnerability.” TEDxHouston. YouTube video. 2010

⁵Abbey Lincoln. “Throw It Away” Track 4 from Golden Lady. InnerCity Records 1117, 1981. Link

A Sermon Preached February 13, 2011 by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Text: Matthew 5:21-37, Epiphany 6 A

Today’s Gospel kind of makes me wish the disciples hadn’t been listening so carefully that day. Maybe they would have missed some of the incisiveness of this part of the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Seems like Jesus has just gone from preachin’ to meddlin’! Why couldn’t he have just stuck to “religion” instead of getting into all these “little things”, which turn out to be the nitty-gritty of everyday life?

But the Sermon on the Mount turns out to be an amazing teaching in which Jesus instructs us on what it means to be a disciple, in the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives. As his followers, Jesus wants something really BIG for us. He wants us to live our everyday lives to the fullness that is possible. He wants us to have abundant life! And he wants us to choose life!

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus interprets the Law, handed down from Moses, in a new way. Jesus’ way does not negate Moses’ Law. It gets inside it! Jesus’ way takes the Law to a deeper level of compassion. ‘Gets at the real Spirit of the Law, which is Love. 

For example, instead of being just concerned that we don’t externally murder, commit adultery, or swear oaths, Jesus is also concerned with what our inside motives are behind murder, adulterous behavior, and swearing oaths. To follow him means we need concern ourselves with the powerful, God-given, human emotions we all have, because these emotions can lead to our acting out in ways that can be devastating to ourselves and the people around us…our Neighbors.

So, here we are, several weeks before Lent begins, and we’re talking about sin!

In his Confessions, St. Augustine writes, “Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were the most important goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs.

And that sin is magnified when, for these lesser goals, we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals. So when we ask ourselves why, in a given situation, we committed a sin, the answer is usually one of two things. Either we wanted something we didn’t have, or we feared losing something we had.”

What a great “rule of thumb” this is, just to ask ourselves, “What do we want or what are we afraid of losing that somehow has become more important to us than our higher values?” ‘Probably at least as effective as and maybe even faster than, that I-Phone app that came out this week that helps people prepare for Confession. (BTW, I join with the Roman Church in reminding you that app is not instead of going to confession, it’s just a preparation tool!)

 Jesus wants us to go to a deeper level of compassion in our lives. That’s the real Spirit of the Law. He wants us to get inside our powerful feelings to help us avoid acting out uncompassionately and forgetting our higher selves.

So, for example, let’s think about anger. Imagine a wet, hungry toddler who, understandably, flies into a rage. The rage is natural and self-preserving and expressed unselfconsciously. It doesn’t need to be repressed. If we try to suppress it, it can do emotional-spiritual harm to the child. Now big people, even followers of Jesus like us, will get mad, as children do. It’s natural, normal, and not sinful in and of itself because anger is a God-given emotion that helps us know when we are threatened or in danger. However, we are called to feel the anger (as Jesus did in the Temple at the money-changers), express it (if there’s a way to that’s not harmful), then let it go. Give it to God. And then move on…to the highest good

and finest goals. The more we can do this, the more we come to see: We human beings are more alike than different, and then forgiveness really becomes possible. This is the Spirit inside the Law about not committing murder. It’s the antithesis of nursing grudges. It’s not letting “hot” anger turn to “cold” anger, which freezes into hate and takes years of unthawing and healing (and psychotherapy), and sometimes the hate never unthaws. When anger freezes into hate, we’ve missed the inner Spirit of God’s Law, and our lives are not abundant. We are not free. We have chosen Death, instead of Life.

I read an amazing story this week about the way one woman dealt with her feelings of anger and fear.  (Story by Joe Slevcove in The Sun, 8-07 as quoted in Synthesis) The story was written by a man about his wife, Beth. In the midst of her anger, I think Beth really got inside the Law and found the Spirit of compassion and love. Beth and her husband had moved from the suburbs to a warehouse loft in a big city. Beth embraced the urban life-style, even the sirens, the parking problems, and the car alarms that went off in the night. The husband admitted the homeless people made him uncomfortable, but Beth always talked with them and learned their names.

The only thing that really bothered Beth in their new neighborhood were the guys who ran the tattoo parlor across the street.

They were noisy, got into fights. harassed women on the sidewalk and intimidated men. They were the reason Beth never walked on that side of the street. For two years Beth glared at them out her window—That row of men who sat in the front of the shop shooting out people’s tires. Well one day Beth called her husband at work and announced she was getting a tattoo. He thought it was a bit odd, since she’d never wanted any body art. When she got home, she called him again and happily reported, “I did it!” When he got home she excitedly showed him the delicately inscribed words on her wrist, “Love thy neighbor”.

She told her husband she had marched across the street and gone in the shop.

She saw walls covered with drawings of skulls, bloody knives, naked women, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Manuel, the owner, was working on someone when she arrived. Beth introduced herself as his neighbor across the street. After awhile she went outside and sat down to wait with the guys in front of the shop. The guy next to her asked what she was getting done. “Love Thy Neighbor.” “Why that?”

She explained, “Well, you guys are my neighbors, and I’m having trouble loving you. You kind of scare me—you know, with all the loud music and fights that break out over here and all.” He ushered her back into the shop and announced with complete sincerity, “Manuel, dude, we’re scaring our neighbors! We’ve got to stop fighting.”

At first Manuel was defensive until Beth explained she didn’t want to change him, she just wanted to get this tattoo. Manuel showed her a picture in a magazine of  “Love thy neighbor”. It had bloody knives in the background. Beth told him that wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. After they settled on the design, Manuel began to do his art on her wrist. Then he stopped, “How do you spell THY?”

He explained shyly, “I didn’t go to school”. The other tattoo artist piped in, “Dude, it’s not because you didn’t go to school, it’s because you don’t read the Bible!”

After that Beth always waved to the tattoo artists as if they were old pals.

The music from across the street was not so grating to her nerves. No more fights broke out. The sidewalk felt safe.

Four months later, Beth took the car in for an oil change and saw Manuel having a friendly chat with the repairman behind the counter. As she started to remind him

who she was, Manuel stepped forward and gave her a warm hug.“Hey,” he said to his friend behind the counter, “This is my neighbor, the one I was telling you about.”  Amen.

Parts of this sermon were adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 6A, 2011

A Sermon Preached Sunday, February 6, 2011 Epiphany 5A

by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Text: Matthew 5:13 - 20

About 10 years ago my sister-in-law gave me a two-pound bag of pecans.

They were grown in Texas and advertized as being “the world’s best pecans”, and they were! Now, I don’t bake much, so I put the pecans in the freezer and over the years would get some out to add to salads or other recipes. When I moved here 3 years ago, I transported the pecans (about one-half-pound was left) and put them in my new freezer. I thought, “Gosh, those will be nice for when I need some pecans”.

So this past Thanksgiving, I decided I needed some pecans to add to the spinach/orange/pomegranate salad. I got them out of the freezer and discovered they weren’t exactly stale, they just didn’t taste like pecans anymore. In fact, what had truly been “the world’s best pecans” didn’t taste like much of anything anymore.

So when we came to this scripture about our being Salt and Light to the world,

I got to thinking about those pecans because, frankly, I’ve never heard of real salt somehow losing its taste. . .Except in this scripture passage. So the metaphor is always hard for me to relate to.  The pecans help me think about what it means when something doesn’t have the flavor and other properties that God intended for it. The pecans also help me see what happens when we hide our lights under a bushel, or in the freezer. It does no one any good, and eventually the light and the flavor are gone. What a waste!

Now I wonder if, to some degree our Faith isn’t like this. We have it but maybe we don’t “use” it much, and so it goes flat. Maybe sometimes we even hide it away so no one can see it. So it does no one any good and finally becomes worthless.

I don’t know about you, but I think that the particular “flavor” of Christianity that we are blessed with as Episcopalians is something the world desperately needs. We have a way of being faithful that’s different from many other Christians. The Episcopal way of being followers of Jesus is inviting and inclusive. Thoughtful. Biblically based. It focuses on a loving God, who is here to set us free and give us life!  Yes it’s “rank” with authority but structured with significant checks and balances and some real autonomy built in as well. And it always encourages people to use their God-given minds: We know life’s often more gray than black and white, so we learn to live faithfully in the tension of that. It’s steeped in 2000 years of tradition, yet flexible enough to be open to the ways God’s Spirit is moving in our world now. And it is spiritually deep and broad, grounded in common prayer and the sacraments, but concerned as well that believers find the best ways to pray as individuals and families.

Now this is NOT the image of Christianity that the media often portrays, but it IS what the unchurched see, and it’s what people see who maybe left the church when they were young adults. Is THAT what we want all those children of God to think about what it means to follow Jesus? It’s no wonder so many remain unchurched!

Meanwhile we’re over here with this great treasure: A religion of great saltiness and flavor. We should be a light to the nations, but for some reason we Episcopalians don’t seem to know very well how to shine our light and serve up the flavorful word. Now I wish I had a clear plan that would get our light and flavor out there, but I don’t. As Episcopalians who hold this great treasure, I hope we will all be thinking about this. Maybe it would help just to think about what our religion means to us personally so we can articulate it when we have the opportunity. I do know we already have the spiritual qualities we need to get out the word. We have SALT and LIGHT.   

 (The following section is adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 5, 2011, H. K Oehmig)

We’ve been “salted” with God’s Holy Spirit…Not to be shaken over popcorn, added to soups, or spread on icy roads. Instead we’ve been “salted” for godliness and Holy Spirit-uality, so we are the ones called to bring Jesus’ flavor to this world. ‘Question is, how do we use this salt we’re given?

Someone (Cardinal Suhard, quoted in Oehmig’s article) suggested a fresh way of being salt

without resorting to dogmatism or moralism:

“To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, not even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

So we live in ways that make people ask questions about our lives. We live in ways that make people scratch their heads and somehow turn to God for the answers. Being salt is not being a magician or flashy showman. After all, salt is an inconspicuous and ordinary substance. It is minute and is usually mixed with common things. It’s earthy and does its work in unobvious ways. It flavors, preserves, heals, or sharpens SILENTLY. I’ve noticed it does no good at all to my French fries, if it stays in the shaker. It’s effective only when used.

         

When salt can be tasted, touched and sprinkled—Like in our willingness to speak out and do something to eradicate violence and injustice and to attend to our own day-to-day relationships, at home, school, church, and work. By grace, in these places, we can become really alive, warmed and lit by the Holy Spirit, and we can shine and refract the light of God to others.

(End of section adapted from Synthesis, Epiphany 5, 2011, H. K Oehmig)

This is our calling: Not to hide the light but to put it up high for all to see.

Remember we are God’s salt and light. As Episcopalians, we have something really wonderful that the world desperately needs. Let’s figure out how to share it…Lest we become like that half-pound of “the world’s best pecans”, which, by the way, ended up in the trash.    

Evangelism, the Episcopal way

I have been thinking a lot lately about the general decline of main line protestantism and especially the Episcopal Church which I happen to love very much. Francie spoke about this last Sunday. Christianity has a big image problem in this "Post Christian" age. It is not normal or necessary any more for people to belong to and attend a church. And many see our faith and our God as mean, judgmental and just downright unnecessary and irrelevant. How can we change our image? How can we show the face of Christ, the real Christ to the world? In the summer of 2009 at General Convention in Anaheim I was very moved by a sermon given by Ray Suarez at our daily Eucharist that really gets to the heart of who we are and where we need to go as a church. I invite you to read it here . Please read digest and comment if you like.

John Cheek

Sermon for January 30 by The Rev Ted Cobden

The scriptures for today invite us to consider a subject we
may have ambivalent feelings about: Humility.
Mic. 6.8 !God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
! ! and what does the LORD require of you
! but to do justice, and to love kindness,
! ! and to walk humbly with your God?
Five or six years ago, I had to go to physical therapy to try
to loosen up my shoulder. The muscles had become so
tensed up I could hardly move my arm. The therapist said
we are going to fix your shoulder, but you may experience
some pain as we massage it, exercise it and stretch some of
the muscles to loosen it up. The therapist did help my
shoulder to heal, but she was right, there were some
painful stretching moments. And even now after exercise I
have to firmly stretch my arms to keep the shoulder
flexible.
Practicing humility is like that. It requires painful stretching.
It challenges the way things are.
Jesus captures that unpleasant challenging tone in his
teaching which we read today. He enjoins us to be poor in
spirit and to be meek. That is his way of telling us that God
wants us to be humble.
It’s hard for anyone to be humble. The dictionary defines
humility as having a modest or low estimate of one’s own
importance. It is, I think, especially challenging for
Americans. We don’t want to be humble. We want to be the
best. On this Superbowl weekend we see the opposite of
humility. When a player scores a touchdown he does all
sorts of antics to display his hubris slamming the ball,
pounding his chest and hooting in pride.
There may be a place for this unrestrained exuberance on a
playing field. But we have seen how ugly this arrogance can
be. Francie spoke about it last week when she mentioned
the way public rhetoric can be divisive and caustic
suggesting to unbalanced people to do horrendous acts as
one did in Tuscon Arizona a few weeks ago. She said this
arrogance can do bad things in the church also. For
instance, we anathematize others who do not believe just
as we do. We have divided the church into factions.
So what is the payoff for humility? In the biblical perspective
humility allows us to take God more seriously and ourselves
less seriously. When we take ourselves too seriously, we get
all puffed up with our point of view, with our agenda. We
can’t hear others. We have little room to be open to God’s
surprises and God’s possibilities.
When we are swollen up and rigid with self, we have a hard
time laughing at ourselves. A good sense of humor is a
barometer of humility.
When we take ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously, we will be open to the way God cares for us even
in the darkest places. We need not sulk alone or cower in
dread, we will be looking for the companion who knows the
way of the cross.
When we take ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously, we are less likely to make an idol of our religious
preconceptions. As if we know it all. When we are poor in
spirit, we are open to the huge mystery of God. We stand
before God poor in spirit but rich in awe.
When we tale ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously, we plan for the future in a broader way. I have
been a planner. I enjoy it. I have succeed by doing it. But the
experience of these past 2 or 3 years as a member of St.
James have humbled me.
I used to plan this way. I would confer with stake holders in
an enterprise -- often an aspect of a ministry or mission of
the church. We would state the goal and steps to reach the
goal, and then we would ask God to bless our goal.
Now in the process we at St. James are in, we are trying to
take God more seriously—to see the goal as God’s goal. We
have to stretch to be humble and open to God because the
situation is in flux, the components are changing, and the
opportunities are opening up in wonderful ways.
We have been blessed to have Crissy Farm in this interim
period, but we see the limitations here and we know we will
need to press on. We have been blessed to have St.
George’s congregation join us on this journey as they are
going through their exodus. We have begun to explore the
future mission of the Episcopal Church in the South
Berkshire deanery, and we ask what strategy does God want
us to undertake in the next five years. We will be
celebrating the 250th anniversary of St. James next year. We
are presently making plans for that. It will be a wonderful
opportunity to look at our past and ask how St. James will
fit into God’s mission in the future.
Then last Wednesday evening the Men’s group had the
privilege of hearing from Fred Harris how the plans for St.
James Place are progressing. Fred gave us a very impressive
and encouraging report of their vision and the outline of
the steps they will take to meet their goals. St. James Place
will renovate the buildings and provide opportunities for
many non profit organizations to use this inviting space.
I won’t say more because my hope is that Sally and Fred will
give our congregation as a whole the opportunity to hear of
their vision and the progress they are making.
One thing I will say is that in the face of all the challenges
and opportunities God is opening up for us, God wants us
to be humble and see the future as God’s future and that he
will guide us into the future. God will guide us as long as
we love kindness and justice. That is that we respect each
other and our various view points. Recognize that each of
us is doing the best we can to do God’s will. That by
conversing with one another and giving each other respect
and kindness we will make more room and comfort for new
possibilities to emerge.
Lastly when we take ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously we are open to the dimensions of kindness and
justice. When we walk humbly with God and allow ourselves
to be shaped by God’s desires and will, we love as God
does. We begin to see more vividly the needs of others. We
see those whom society has demeaned and marginalized --
women, blacks, Latinos, gays and lesbians, the mentally ill,
the addicted, the poor--in humility we ask what would
Jesus have us do to stand with them.
One of the acts of kindness and justice we take as a
congregation is the support of Gideon’s Garden. It is a
humble act undertaken largely by the youth using simple,
straight forward work in the soil with seeds, water and
manure. The fruits of the labor go to help those in need
through the People’s Pantry and Breaking Bread Kitchen. Yet
this humble effort is a model for all of us to remind us how
God wants us to do justice, and to love kindness, and to
walk humbly with our God.
And don’t forget to stretch.

Rector's Report--Annual Meeting

Jan. 23, 2011
The Rev. Frances A. Hills

Well, I can’t say it was just another ordinary year here at sunny St. James…

What a year we’ve had together!

If your remember a year ago we had Three Committees gathering as much information as possible in a necessarily short period of time, To help us discern a way forward. The committees were very well-run and did good work. We heard their final reports at a parish meeting on Feb. 23. At that meeting, everyone had an opportunity to write what they thought was helpful and not helpful about each committee’s plan. Everyone also had an opportunity to write what they felt God was calling us to do. We had so hoped that through that process a way forward would be clear. But it wasn’t. About half the congregation was interested in trying to restore the building, and the other half, although they had various solutions, did not want to restore the building. The idea of taking down the building was almost too painful for anyone to think about for very long, although our insurance would most probably have covered the costs of demolition & clearing. Given our financial situation, either restoring the building or building something new seemed out of reach. It was a terrible place to be, and all the while, the insurance company was breathing down our necks threatening to cancel our insurance. On top of that, the Diocese would not let us keep the building up, if it wasn’t insured.

To keep the insurance company from cancelling our insurance, we had to make a monthly report to them during 2010, telling them the progress we’d made toward resolution. By working at a resolution and sending in our reports, we negotiated three extensions on the insurance last year. Then on Feb. 24, we received an offer to buy the building from an anonymous non-profit. Of course now we know the non-profit is St. James Place (SJP), headed by our own Sally and Fred Harris. The spring and summer was spent in negotiations…Lots of back and forth. The sale price was going to be $390,000, until, as a result of the survey, we discovered there was ½-acre less property than the Town records had indicated. We went back to negotiations and settled on $300,000. The sales price was derived from the value of the property cleared (~$700,000) less the cost of demolition and removal f the building (~$400,000).

Although there was quite a bit of conversation early on in the negotiations

about this being a Purchase-Sale-Lease Agreement, when the Vestry received

the actual documents, it was only a Purchase & Sale Agreement. There was no part of the agreement that included the parish of St. James leasing back the building.

You need to know that.

There is a possibility of the Parish leasing the worship space for worship or perhaps for weddings and funerals, if we decide that is the best thing to do.

But I also know that SJP is exploring at lots of exciting ways the building might be used otherwise. The Vestry has invited SJP, when they’re ready, to present a power-point about the building use options they are exploring at Crissey Farm after church. At this time it seems  there would not be space for parish offices or storage or classrooms that we could leave set-up in the Parish House. There are lots of questions, and certainly one of them is a time frame for when the building might be useable.

Now I’ve mentioned that our insurance would most probably have covered the $400,000 demolition of the building and clearing of the lot. Had we gone that route, the parish would now have a prime piece of cleared real estate valued at $700,000. But the Vestry of this congregation did not choose to go that route. We didn’t take that option because we know the importance of that 150-year-old building to the people of this parish and to the Town. So, as a parish we sacrificed perhaps $400,000 because we very much want SJP to succeed—regardless of whether this congregation uses the building again or not.  You need to know that.

And I also want you to know there was the possibility of another option. In June a person came to me and said he would very much like to buy the property for about $700,000, as is. That was at a time when we were in good-faith negotiations with SJP. Again sacrificing about $400,000, the parish supported the dream of SJP and did not pursue this informal offer, because we want SJP to happen—regardless of whether the congregation ever uses that building again. You need to know that.

         

Now I know I’ve talked a lot about the building sale today because I think those things really needed to be said, and I hope they were heard.

The year 2010 had a lot of other things happening in the life of this congregation

as well. At our Vestry Retreat in January, we drafted a Missional Challenge Question:“How does St. James become a Christian community relevant to youth, young parents, and the next generation by taking God’s gifts of nurturing and hospitality out to the unchurched?”

We worked on this through Gideon’s Garden. There we found God’s mission in a variety of surprising ways. In 2010, with the leadership of Pennie Curry and Brendan Farnam, our church developed some amazing relationships with the WIC Program (Through Community Health Programs); with  B.R.I.D.G.E., especially through their multi-cultural children’s camp; with the Rail Road St. Youth; People’s Pantry, and Breaking Bread Kitchen.  With several community organizations, we helped write and sponsor a grant to help eradicate hunger in South County. If you were at the Sunday service on Oct. 10, you heard about the kinds of Friendship, Growth, Knowledge, Mentoring, Compassion, and Responsibility that’s being cultivated in that missional garden, as well as vegetables to feed hungry people.

In 2010 during Lent at Crissey Farm, we shared “A Season of Common Worship” with Christ Church Episcopal-Trinity Lutheran, St. Paul, Good Shepherd, and St. George. Many thought this was a wonderful coming together of Episcopalians from South Berkshire County, so some of us joined together again during Advent.

St. George and St. James were the “regulars”, and CCE-TLC joined us for one Sunday. A highlight of Advent was our joining St. George in Lee for their last service with their Rector Donna Trebilcox and the last Sunday service in their church. Since St. Paul and Good Shepherd are listening to God’s Spirit and finding their way in a new relationship together, they did not choose to interrupt that by being part of the Advent worship. However, we did join St. Paul in Stockbridge on Christmas Day and the Sunday following. During Epiphany we have extended our common worship with St. George Lee, and they will be worshiping with us for the time being.

We will continue our conversations with St. George and see how the Spirit leads us in terms of our possibly coming together in a more formal way. For now this is just a conversation. Nothing has been “decided”.  You need to know that.

It is a joy and privilege to welcome the people of St. George into this community, as they grieve the loss of their rector and eventually their buildings; and look forward with vision and courage to what God has in store for them next.

Something else about 2010 I’d like to highlight is the Artist of the Month Program.

We have just completed three-years of this wonderful, life-giving program that came to us as a gift from the creative soul of Charlene Peet. The Artist of the Month Program is now having a little “hiatus” as the Spirit helps it regroup.

Back three years ago, Charlene came to me with a dream that it would be wonderful to invite people in the parish to share their art, and to ask them to tell us how they felt God might be working through their creativity. I don’t think any of us could have imagined…First of all how much incredible talent there is among us!

And how many people were willing to grace us with their gifts. Or what a rich addition to our Coffee Hours the artist program would be. Or how many of us started getting to get to know each other in a very different, deeper way---Seeing art and talking about it. I imagine some of you have worshipped with some of these artists for years and had no idea they created such beautiful things! Charlene, my prayer is that the Artist of the Month program will find the new life, direction, and leadership you are hoping for. But for now…THANK YOU. THANK YOU for blessing St. James with this amazing program!

You know it’s really incredible how we have carried on here at Crissey Farm . . . for 2 ½ years now.  That is thanks to each one of you who faithfully continue to worship with this community and participate in God’s work.

I especially want to acknowledge the choir and our Minister of Music Charles Olegar for bringing us the Good News week after week in song and music, bells,

horn, drum, harp, strings, and even kazoo! We are indeed blessed by such remarkable, faithful and creative musicians.

And behind the scenes our Parish Secretary Bonnie Weiland continues to work at home to produce our bulletins and coordinate our ROTA schedules.

Thanks go as well to Fairview Hospital for letting us do most of our copying there (many hundreds of dollars) and for hosting our Executive Committee  and Vestry meetings.

Now just think about what all it takes to create our worship experience here at Crissey Farm! Our thanks to Gary and Andrew, the owners, who make this space available to us. We’re also really thankful this year to Rick from Crissey Farm, who is helping us with the heavy set up and take down each week.

Then there’s our great Hospitality, Altar Guild, Ushers, Greeters, Lectors, Prayer Writers, Acolytes, Chalice Bearers, Healing Ministers. Those who help set up, take down, and clean up. And those yummy coffee hours! ‘Special thanks to our Christian formation teachers, who quietly give up their own worship time to nurture our children in the faith.

We also owe our thanks to Wheeler & Taylor who provide a space for our Thursday Eucharist free of charge.

And I want to say thank you to the Vestry for their time, talent, wisdom  and dedication during a very challenging year. Finally, our Executive COMMITTEE.

There’s no way to tell you How many hours, How much talent, How much grace

These four people have given to this parish this year. It is not many Vestries and Executive Committees that ever have the experience of selling a church. Now we all know more about insurance, appraisals, and attorneys than we ever wanted to know! These four have been so FAITHFUL and LOVING and GOOD SPIRITED and WISE, that I hope you will join me in a huge show of thanks….

         

As St. James Episcopal Church, Great Barrington, we enter 2011 with lots of unknowns. The world around us has seen seismic changes in areas from technology to globalization. The world of the Church—Not just St. James, but all Churches—has also changed immensely. I’m reading a book now (Missional Map Makers, Alan Roxburg)h that talks about how strategic planning, which many of us are very experienced and good at, just doesn’t work anymore. The kinds of challenges and questions that need our attention just don’t fit into a neat box of Goal and Objectives.

But although the world and church  are changing in unprecedented ways,  we can face the future with courage because God has brought us through some really hard times, and we can trust God will continue to be with us and guide us as we continue to seek the future God has in mind for us. That’s what missional thinking is all about…Realizing it’s God who has the mission, already, and we don’t have to invent it (what a relief!). What we are called to do is to listen to scripture, each other and our community; and to discern God’s mission in our own time and place…AND THEN TO JOIN IT!

We’ve already experienced this through Gideon’s Garden. We’ve seen the Spirit move there in mighty ways. So I charge all of us to keep our eyes, ears and hearts

open and listening to the next place God calls us. Related to this, I’d like to leave you with a quote I just read, “It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission that has a church in the world…God is on the move and the church is always catching up with him. We join his mission. We should not ask him to join ours.” (Quoted in Dwight Zschelle paper p. 167. From Journal of Religious Leadership)

My prayer for St. James in 2011, as we prepare for our 250^th Celebration in 2012,

is that we will gladly join God’s mission of forgiveness, reconciliation, hope and love and be signs of these to this sinful and broken world. Thank you.   

A Sermon Preached January 23, 2011, Epiphany 3A

By the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

What happened in Tucson a couple of weeks ago is baffling. It’s hard to believe

someone’s insane frustration and anger can lead to something as devastating as that. . .Killing and injuring many and mostly innocent bystanders. We can’t begin to imagine the physical, spiritual, emotional and financial suffering that’s involved. No doubt the pain, suffering, fear and other repercussions will go on for a very long time. This incident has shaken the core of the people in the U.S. We’re horrified to realize (once again)…It CAN happen here. In the blink of an eye. Sane or insane, self-will was run riot in Tucson. Someone could only see the world through their own eyes, through the lens of their personal agenda; and people were killed. People were hurt.

                            

Now it’s good that kind of self-will and personal agenda never happens in the Church, isn’t it? But, of course, it does. We know it, and St. Paul knew it 2000 years ago when he wrote to the Church in Corinth. It seems they were fighting because of the loyalties they’d developed towards the persons who’d baptized them. Somehow they’d become competitive about which one was better. Obviously in doing this, they’d gotten off-track from the faith they were actually baptized into, and they’d made into idols the ones who’d initiated them into the faith of the crucified Christ. They were promising allegiance to Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, and arguing which was better…

Paul gets a report of these quarrels through Chloe’s friends, and calls them up short: “(So) Has Christ been divided?” In other words, “Have you just decided to cut up the body of Christ, which you yourselves are as his Church?” Then Paul calls them back to a unity of focus and allegiance: “What you are about as the body of Christ is living into the message of the Cross.” The important focus here is about Jesus, about his dying and rising. That’s what you’re baptized into! That’s what you must be in agreement about, and you must be united in the same mind and same purpose….‘None of this quarreling about these unimportant things, which you start to worship as idols, instead of Christ crucified and risen.

Now I must say St. James, it’s been reported to me (but not by Chloe) that there are some quarrels among you. So we must really take this scripture to heart, because we are bound together by the love of God in Christ and in the Cross of Christ. At St. James, we have (at least) two visions going on here among us: One is to go back and worship at 352 Main St., to try to reclaim life as it was in a beautiful, well-restored place. The other vision is to do something new and to be open to more possibilities: To let the Spirit lead us in our conversation with St. George Church, to become more and more a church that’s listening to God’s nudges to understand the future God wants for us.

Although there are these two visions, which may or may not intersect with each other, we are not free just to slam each other. We are not free just to complain and snipe about one another. When these things stay underground or to the parking lot, they poison us as Christ’s body. They divide the body of Christ, which is intended to be whole.  Now it’s not that we won’t have our differences, but as followers of Jesus, we’re called to a higher ground. We’re called to place our common commitment to Christ above anything else. So if something else is more important to us than Jesus, it becomes an idol—a false god, and conflict will inevitably escalate. Now an antidote to this is to really listen to each other so that giving and receiving forgiveness becomes possible. If forgiveness happens, it is a gift from God, but there are things we can do to help create an environment for it to happen. The contemplative Richard Rohr sheds some light on this when he writes: “Do not judge. To see clearly, we cannot start with ‘no’…We must start with ‘yes’. This is a ‘yes’ of basic acceptance, which means not too quickly labeling, analyzing, or categorizing things as ‘in or out’, ‘good or bad’, ‘up or down’. You have to leave the field open, a field in which God and grace can move.” Rohr continues, “The judgmental mind prevents you from being present to the full moment by trying to ‘divide and conquer’. Instead, you end up dividing and being conquered.”

 

As Christians, we are called to cultivate a life in common…It’s not about divide and conquer.  How we are with each other IS what matters. And the distraction conflict causes takes away precious energy from God’s work that needs doing. Like those first century Christians, what we are about as the Body of Christ is living into the message of the Cross.

My hope is that we can move to a place of deeper listening and understanding,

So that God’s Spirit has a chance to show us an even better vision than any we may already have—so God’s Spirit has a chance to help us find consensus, a way forward that serves the common good, regardless of our personal agendas. On this day of our 249^th Annual Meeting, I invite us to consider the One into whose name we are baptized, the one who calls us to lose our lives to save them… Is his Cross foolishness to us? Or is it the very power of God?  

A Sermon Preached January 16, 2011 by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Epiphany 2 A
John 1:29-42

This morning I invite us to think about the best teachers we’ve ever had.
What were they like? I’m remembering especially my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, Ed.


Now Ed had a PhD in psychology, and he was theologically well-trained at Duke Divinity School. He was brilliant! He could have taught didactically all day long, with learned lectures and charts and graphs and immense knowledge. But he didn’t. He told stories. ‘Used metaphors. ‘Asked us to reflect on our experience. And he listened. And he asked us (the students in my CPE group) to tell stories...
The stories of our experiences as hospital chaplains with our patients, and the stories of what was going on in our lives and spirits as we did this work. Then he’d ask us to think of a Bible story that might have the same dynamics as we were experiencing in our lives and ministries. It was a real challenge and discipline to learn to think theologically like that about our lives and work and how they might be related to the Bible narrative.


Now if we students asked Ed a question he usually asked us one back…Along the lines of, “What do YOU think about it?” Or instead of giving us a direct answer, he’d tell us a story. (Kind of like how Jesus told parables to answer questions.) Somehow in his stories and open-ended questions there was always room for our own thoughts and associations to move around freely. He wasn’t too interested in our just learning facts and therapeutic techniques (although those were important).What he really wanted was for us to become very honest about and observant of human nature. He wanted us to “listen” to the human stories and to Holy Scripture and to appropriate the deep truths of the Gospel into our very beings. This takes time…a lifetime, to be exact! And it took learning to trust the people in our CPE Group enough to share the stories that really mattered. It took a lot of story-telling and listening before we really came to know ourselves and each other. So, if anyone ever asked me about my CPE supervisor, I would say FIRST and foremost he was a gifted teacher (”rabbi”).


Now remember in today’s Gospel when Jesus asked Andrew and the other what they were looking for (What was their heart’s desire) they didn’t answer the question directly. I wonder if perhaps, like John the Baptizer before them, they did recognize in Jesus exactly what they were looking for, and so named it by calling Jesus, “Rabbi” (Teacher). And then to advance their cause of learning as much as they could from this rabbi, they asked him, “Where are you staying?”. They must have known they were not going to learn all they wanted from this man in one easy lesson. They needed to get to know him. And Jesus wisely knew they were not going to learn all they wanted from him with a few simple answers. So he responds to them with this great invitation, “Come and see”. My guess is
Jesus wanted to get to know them too.


In the Bible study class Tuesday, Susan Frantz observed about this story that Jesus had used a “wise-teacher technique”. Instead of giving a closed answer that shut them down, he opened the door even wider for their deeper questions when he said, “Come and see.” So they went to where Jesus was staying and no doubt talked. And listened. And told stories. They got to know each other better. Unlike John the Baptizer, who called Jesus “the Lamb of God”, Andrew calls him “Messiah”. After first recognizing Jesus as a great Rabbi, then being with him and knowing him better, Andrew’s first response is he wants to share this great joy with his brother Simon. After all, he’s found the “Messiah”! Of course he wants to tell his brother, and he wants to introduce Simon to Jesus in person. He wants to share his joy!


So the dynamics in this Gospel are about recognizing Jesus, then coming to know him better, and then bringing others to know him. In a sense, this is a pretty good description of the work of the Church! Certainly this recognizing, inviting and welcoming, and spending time with Jesus, is essential to us as individual Christians and as a parish community. And this can happen in many ways. Hopefully it happens in our worship, both corporate and individual. But it also happens by our helping to name where we see God in our lives and in the lives of others. If we start watching for God to show up in our lives, I think we will not be disappointed. And when we recognize God in our lives, it’s good just to spend time there…Enjoying God’s presence and savoring the story of how it all happened.


And then enthused by our experience, we ourselves, like Andrew, have the opportunity to become the teachers and the ones who invite others. By sharing our stories in ways that leave the other lots of space for their own thoughts and experiences, we become the wise teachers, who, like Jesus, know it’s not so much about the “correct answer”, “right plan” or the “quick fix” as the process of the relationship. This is the process of recognizing and coming to know each other by telling our stories and listening to each other.


We become teachers who “Know how to open the doors even wider so that the deeper questions can be asked.”


This is what today’s Gospel offers us… “Come and see”. Amen

Anglican Covenant

Dear St James and St George's parishioners,
The diocese will be gathering information on reactions to the proposed Anglican Covenant now in its final form here Anglican Covenant.

Any comments or opinions concerning this would be much appreciated. We will be considering the covenant at General Convention in 2012.

John Cheek
Lay Deputy General Convention 2012

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Donna Trebilcox, Rector St. George on the Fourth Sunday of Advent - December 19, 2010 On the occasion of her last Sunday and the last service at St. George Episcopal Church, Lee, MA with the combined congregations of St. George and St. James Great Barrington.

Well, it’s been quite a journey we’ve been on through this Advent season; quite a journey the congregations of St. James and St. George have been on these past few years. And I have been thinking that our congregational journeys share many things in common with the themes of Advent: themes of HOPE, PEACE, LOVE and JOY.


Scriptural themes around God’s end time on those last Sundays in Pentecost spilled over into our first Sunday of Advent. We heard more warnings about how God would bring to an end to life as we know it in this world. Chaos would rule our ordered world, and our ordered lives. Our hearts would be filled with despair and fear for our future for the coming of our end. Nevertheless, on that first Sunday of Advent, we lit the candle of HOPE. Because scriptures also assured us that God’s end time would mark the beginning of something new. Our scripture lessons invited us to believe that everything could be redeemed. They brought us to hope that the endings we experience in our own life might also be places where God is redeeming us; places where God is making all things new.


I believe our scriptures for Advent 1 were teaching our congregations of St. George and St. James how to live in hope in the experiences of our own end times. But they do not promise that it will be easy. Because while God gives us hope, God also gives us hearts to feel our loss for things that come to an end, he gives us tears that express our pain, and he gives us words to speak our thoughts and feelings about the life we leave behind. We grieve those things that will no longer give us meaning and purpose, comfort and joy. And we fear an uncertain future. But all our scriptures in Advent remind us that God would not have us dwell in our grief and loss. God has given us the gift of hope. And it is our hope, our patient hope in God’s promise that God is doing something new IN us, and WITH us, and THROUGH us—hope that brings new meaning, new purpose and new direction for our future.


So, even with the warnings of end time we heard on Advent 1, we lit the candle of HOPE. Because hope is the antidote for our grief. It is hope that can move us through our sadness and despair. It is hope which enables us to anticipate the new life that awaits us in the new life we receive at the manger. For both our congregations this new life is bound to take us on new roads as we journey toward God’s preferred future. And it will not be helpful to yearn for roads which take us back to the places we once lived and the life we once knew. The road we travel with God will not take us there. Because once we leave behind the houses we inhabit, “you can’t go home again.” Now, if that phrase sounds familiar, perhaps you are remembering a novel, by the same name, written by American author Thomas Wolfe. You can’t go home again, even if you try. Because things change, and things come to an end. Life goes on. And God’s future awaits those who dwell in HOPE.


But don’t be deceived; hope is not a passive experience. As we await the future God has in mind for us, we also begin to live in hope and act on hope. Our focus turns to discerning God’s plan and purpose for us. We begin exploring the ways we might move forward, even as we look back in sorrow and regret. At the same time it often feels as if we are standing still. Not doing anything, really. Perhaps even shuffling our feet for a time. That’s because we are in our own time of Advent, waiting and watching for that new thing to happen. Preparing a space for God to enter into the chaos of the moment, if only just to be present with us in it. That’s when hope begins to creep into our feelings of sadness and uncertainty, and we begin to experience the gift God gives us on the second Sunday of Advent—the gift of PEACE.


Now, my experience of this peace we hear about on the Sunday of Advent 2 feels a lot like the peace Paul speaks of, I think—a “peace which passes all understanding.” It’s the kind of peace which comes to us even as we are living in the midst of sadness and uncertainty; even as we suffer the anger and tears of disillusionment and despair; even as we are subjected to the desire of those to manipulate, or manage, and control our future—we can find our peace. Because our scriptures assure us that God is with us; he will not abandon us. And knowing that God is present with us helps us find the peace we need; the peace of Advent 2 as we dwell in the hope of Advent 1.


So, on the second Sunday of Advent we lit the candle of PEACE. The kind of peace which comes from accepting that we cannot know what God knows, and we cannot know how God will do his work in us, and with us, and through us. The peace which comes from letting go of our own plans and schemes and agendas for engineering our future, so that we might discern God’s preferred future for us. It’s the peace which comes from surrendering our limited wisdom and vision for our future to Gods greater wisdom and vision for that future. It’s that peace that awaits us at the manger, whenever we are ready to surrender the chaos of our life to God. Yes, God loves us that much. God will take our fear and anxiety from us and carry us through the chaos of our moments. God loves us that much.


So we are not surprised that on the Sunday of Advent 3 we light the candle of LOVE. And love is so necessary for our journey into God’s preferred future for us. Because only God’s love for us can remove the fear which keeps us from living into the fullness of our life. Only God’s love can relieve us of fears which keep us bound to our past, or imprisoned in the dead and dying places of our life. Only God’s love can enable us to surrender our fear of letting go and trusting God to be in charge of our personal life, and the communal life of our church.


Our scriptures for Advent 3 provide a road map for our journey out of fear—into love. As John the Baptizer sits in a jail cell fearing that his prophetic role has come to naught, Jesus assures John that he IS the One God sent to redeem the world. Isaiah shows us that nothing can be born in us when we fear. In fact, our life shrinks by fear. It becomes a desert that will not blossom. On the other hand, everything is born in love. We grow by love. God’s Spirit nurtures us in love. Love keeps us open and receptive to God’s possibilities for us in creation. It is only by knowing and living in God’s love that we are able to take the risk becoming the persons God created us to be, and the church God yearns for us to be.


I especially love Isaiah’s image of the highway which can take us to our God. He makes it clear that the rough and narrow and crooked roads we lay down for ourselves as we journey through this world will not lead us to God’s plan and purpose for our life. The maps we make for our own journey through this world will not get us where God wants us to go. Only love will take us where God will lead. God’s risky, demanding, forgiving, inclusive, nurturing and, most of all, God’s unconditional love. And so on the third Sunday of Advent we lit the candle of LOVE in anticipation of the love that will be born TO us, and IN us at Christmas. And anyone who has loved, or been loved knows this: Love brings us our greatest joy.


Which brings us to the candle we light on this fourth Sunday of Advent; the candle of JOY. And what an irony it seems to be to light the candle of JOY on this final Sunday of worship in this beautiful and historic building, a building which has housed the congregations of St. George’s for more than 150 years. Then, again, the people of St. James have been homeless for some time. So, I don’t even think God would be too hard on us for not feeling overly joyful in this moment. And yet we light the candle of JOY today to anticipate the joy of God’s coming to us in the vulnerable body of an infant boy; our God who will not only NOT be born in a home, he will not have a place to lay his head, a place to go home to, throughout his entire ministry on this earth. And it seems to me there is a message for the church in Jesus’ homeless ministry. And we already know what that message is, and we also know how difficult it is to accept.


We know that God does not dwell in the buildings we build. God dwells in us, and God is everywhere out there in our world. This is why, at the end of every Eucharist, we are sent out of this place of worship, into the world to love and serve the Lord. Because God is in the world, and God is in us. We also know that church buildings are not everlasting. Bricks and mortar are vulnerable to the forces of nature; walls crumble and fall away, fires burn them to the ground, storms and volcanoes rip them apart. But congregations who see themselves as the body of Christ in this world continue to live on, and they move on to the new place God is calling them to. We know all too well that church buildings are also vulnerable to social and economic forces which bring them to close their doors. Congregations dwindle, financial support falls away, buildings become too costly to maintain. And so, buildings come to an end. But churches can never come to an end, as long as faithful people continue to gather in the name of Christ in homes, in parks, on street corners, in restaurants and coffee shops, and yes, even in pubs. We know in our hearts that God does not depend on dwelling places to live in. God doesn’t depend on parish churches and cathedrals to do the work of his church. God depends on us to be the church. God depends on us to represent him to the world wherever we are and wherever we gather in his name.


In today’s epistle lesson Paul tells that people of God become a community of faith and a force for God’s good in our world by God’s “grace and apostleship.” We find our greatest joy by the ways we grow in God’s grace; we find our greatest joy in doing the work he gives us to do by our apostolic inheritance. And our greatest joy will come to us once again, this year, on the day we celebrate his incarnation. God with us.


I believe our journey through Advent has been particularly helpful this year. It has provided us with a pathway and a compass for moving through this period grief for buildings we no longer inhabit, for the vulnerability we experience at being, in a sense, homeless, and for the uncertainty we feel about our future. God has already brought our houses of worship to their end time. The back wall of St. James Church has fallen away making the building inhabitable, and today we will close the doors of St. George’s Church building for the last time. And now we find ourselves in a time of Advent. Waiting, watching. And doing something very important for the life of our congregations; coming together for common worship.


This Advent both congregations of St. George and St. James are waiting in hope, anticipating once again the peace, and love and joy which God promises to us by his incarnation. We wait in hope for God’s revelation of his preferred future for us, we wait in the peace which passes our understanding of what that future might be, we wait in that love which will take away our fear of risking a new vision for our churches, and we dwell in the joy of becoming the church God is calling us to be, a strong church and a vital presence for God in our Southern Berkshires, and in the ways we are called to mission and ministry throughout our world.


Yes, what an Advent journey our churches have been on over these past few years. And it is not over yet. In fact, we are likely to experience our Advent for some time to come. Until that day when the new thing God is doing in us becomes born in us, and borne into our world. In the meantime we wait and watch, and continue to be the people of God’s church in common worship, and in mission and ministry to our word. We wait with patience for the new church which will emerge from the church buildings we leave behind. We watch with eyes that envision God’s preferred future for us. We listen with hears to hear what God is saying to us each step along the journey. We speak careful and caring words to people in whatever place of mind, or body, or spirit they are in. We touch each other with hearts that do not fear the demanding promises of love. We grow in relationship with God and with each other in common worship. We garner the strength and courage to do the work God gives us to do. And we continue to take great joy in doing it.


Like Mary, we bear the new thing God is doing for us in the womb of our hearts and minds until it comes time to be born. And until a child is born we cannot know what he or she will look like; likewise, we cannot know right now what this new church will look like, we cannot know what this community of faith will grow up to be, but like Joseph, we will name it, and by naming it claim it as our own. And we will take great joy and delight in seeing her mature in wisdom and grow strong in the faith of our ancestors, those people throughout our history who took their own risks to build a community of faith in Lee and Great Barrington—and buildings to house them in.


My hope for the congregations of St. George and St. James is that as you suffer the pains and joys of new birth is that you will follow that star which will lead you to that place you have never been. That you will take the risk of journeying together to the place where God is calling you. That you will bring your gifts and offer them to that vision. And even though I will not be with you on this journey, I share that vision with you. Meanwhile, I must move on, as you will move on. But know that where I go, you will be also. After all, you made a home for me here. And I made a home for you in my heart. Know that I carry you my heart. Know that I hold you in my prayers. And know that God is with us.

Sermon by The Rev. Annie Ryder Sunday, December 12, 2010

“Stir up your power, O Lord…” Dear friends always referred to 3rd Advent as “stirrup” Sunday, harkening back to their Texas cowboy roots. Others prefer the baking metaphor, so prominent in these late Advent days, as the flour is flying, butter is melting and sugarplums dance in our heads. But a metaphor is, after all, something that points us toward a larger truth. Today for this family gathered together, that truth is that God is always at work in us, hoisting us back in the saddle, creating a new recipe of life, forgiveness, service, faith and love. Will we participate?

This is the Sunday when we light the pink Advent candle and sing the Mary’s song. The lighter shade of the pink candle was meant to both honor Mother Mary and also to give us a little breather in the darkness that surrounds us. Christ’s coming is not very far away; we haven’t much longer to wait. Are we ready? Are we allowing God to use us to help lighten the burdens of others, to spread some hope where there is despair, to fill the hungry with good things?

The bookends of our readings today present two vastly different perspectives. Isaiah’s words are words of hope and transformation, of dreams coming true, of a future in God. There is no danger here, no one limps or aches; there are no predators. It is spring for Isaiah and God’s people are walking in harmony together along the Holy Way.

Matthew, however offers a bleaker perspective through Jesus’ words to and about John the Baptizer. Jesus cautions those who are expecting to wear the purple clothing of royal luxury without first enduring and learning from the trials and tests of faith. John has been imprisoned by Herod and his voice has been silenced in the wilderness but Jesus still recognizes and acknowledges him as a great prophet who is pointing the way for others.

The pairing of these two very different messages creates a tension within us that is quite familiar. We are waiting for the arrival of the Christ child, the return of our Lord Jesus Christ in glory and for the coming of the Kingdom of God that, at times, feel so near. We are children of the Light. We have died with Christ. We see God’s hand at work in the world around us. Yet, simultaneously we see and feel our own hurts and incompleteness, we feel powerless over the sophisticated troubles of our world, and we struggle to see and feel the hope we have been promised.

Good old Advent brings this paradox right home to us every year and each year we must discover new ways to be in this world but not of this world. Perhaps it is James who gives us the most practical advice on this subject.

Across the state of Vermont, from Quebec to Massachusetts, lies a hiking path called The Long Trail. Heading north from just east of Williamstown, The Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail converge. Somewhere just east of Rutland, the AT heads toward New Hampshire and The Long Trail winds its way through the Green Mountain National Forest, past ski resorts with names like Sugarbush and Mad River. It misses the home of Ben and Jerry’s by about five miles and heads relentlessly north, scaling Mt. Mansfield. It rarely goes directly through a town. In Vermont, we have the Long Trail and in Christianity we have the Long View.

Our brother James calls this patient endurance. Is it a virtue? A survival tactic? A cop out? It can be. For us, it is the spiritual fortitude, the muscles of faith that show us how to live in the hope that is God’s promise. We are to tame our hunger and thirst for immediate gratification.

And finding ourselves, as we do, living and worshiping in Christian communities, our patience gets put to work among one another. We are a living laboratory right here in beautiful Berkshire County! How we live together reflects Christ to all those around us. James tells us straightforwardly what to do: “strengthen our hearts.”

As we gather this morning we represent the Body of Christ in three states and at least ten different towns and villages and in at least two denominations. The reason for our gathering is to strengthen our bonds as brothers and sisters in Christ, to rejoice together in the light of 3rd Advent, to raise our communal voices in proclaiming the greatness of the Lord and to get to know one another a little better: to remember a name, to greet a child, to inquire about a friend, to pray, confess, and receive the bread of life together.

When I arrived in Sheffield almost seven years ago, this gathering would not have occurred to our lay or clergy leadership. Our coming together today is also the result of regional and national trends in our churches that include fewer members and increased costs of maintaining our buildings. Loren Meade, noted Episcopal author and priest, explains all this in detail in an article called Ministering in an Out-Going Tide. I think some of his points will prove helpful to all of us.

He writes, “It’s not our fault. Something big is going on. Work on your own faith (James would agree!) Find the things that feed your spirit---what are they? Whatever it is, be sure to make time for it, and do it. Don’t let anything get in the way of it. Get busy with some stuff you can do. Stand steady, no matter what happens. Remember our story. It’s not your denomination or your congregation. It’s a story that begins with Abraham, called out of Ur. It’s a story of a God who promises and keeps his promises. Live that story. You are not alone. You may not win out. Prepare for the long run. We’ve been called into a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t expect anything to be quick or easy. It doesn’t work that way.” [1]

Lest we despair, take heart. In our own Berkshires miracles are happening. Witness the one this month in Adams and North Adams, where two churches, St. Mark’s and St. John’s have voted to combine their churches into All Saints Episcopal Church. Ellen White, the former priest-in-charge at St. Mark’s wrote this on her Facebook page: “When I left St. Mark’s this was just a “twinkle in God’s eye” of a possibility. I know how much of a miracle this is: truly a work of the Spirit being manifested.!”

Not that their work is now finished. In many ways it is just beginning. That’s how God works. We never arrive, at least not for long, before we are pushed out in a new direction for the glory of God. The funny thing is that we never know where God is going to pop out at us and it probably won’t be where we are looking. “If you want to hear God laugh”, goes the old joke, “tell him your plans!”

We are gathered here together today to encourage one another, to worship together, to huddle in the winter darkness for the warmth and hope we know in Jesus Christ and in our imperfect communities of faith. Take heart!

There was a woman who had, in spite of a hard life and virtually no resources except her stamina and the strength of her faith, raised six fine children and sent them all to college. Asked how she did it, she replied, “I saw a new world coming.” Do you see it too?