The "Jesus Movement" on All Saints Sunday
Category: Discipleship, Sundays after Pentecost, Christian Community, All Saints Sunday
Speaker: The Rev. Shearon Sykes Wiliams
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Today is All Saints, a major feast day in the Church. It’s the day that we reflect on what it means to be “knit together” in Christ with Christians across the ages, those who have died that showed us what a faithful life looks like. Some saints are capital “S” saints and some are everyday saints, parents, grandparents and mentors who shaped our spirituality and helped us see that we can be saints too, that we can live a faithful, joyful life following Jesus on the Way. Today I am thinking about my grandparents and my father who have joined the communion of saints and I give thanks for the everyday ways that they taught me how to follow Jesus. And on this very particular All Saints Day, we think about what it means to be “knit together” as “saints in the making” at Saint George’s with the larger Episcopal Church of which we are an integral part.
Today is a momentous day in the life of our Church. Today at noon, at the National Cathedral, just a few miles away, the Right Reverend Michael Bruce Curry, Bishop of North Carolina, will become the Most Reverend Michael Bruce Curry. He will be installed as the 27th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church after having been elected by the General Convention in June of this year. Our very own Bob Prichard, Lyn Crawford and Nathan Harpine were all at General Convention in June and were part of that historic election. Bishop Curry is the first African American to hold this office. His predecessor, the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, was the first woman to be elected Presiding Bishop.
The Episcopal Church is on the move, evolving over time as the Holy Spirit leads us into the future with joy and prophetic vision to embody the new heaven and new earth that John foresaw in the revelation he received from God.
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth…And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…And the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new….I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 21: 1-6a
These words have sung in the hearts of Christians throughout the ages, giving them hope that “the way things are” is not the way things will always be. God will make things new. There will come a day when all things are perfected. All of humanity will be gathered around God, and we will finally SEE and KNOW that God is in our very midst, we will finally see and know that all of God’s people are equal, and not just equal, but cherished and beloved. Beloved, unique individuals, of every tribe and race and nation, finally standing together in all of their diversity as the beloved community.
But this vision is not just a far off reality that we imagine we’ll finally have one day, some day in the distant future. No, it’s a vision that we are called to make a reality in our own day. Christians across the ages have understand these words to be God’s lively, life-giving Word in the present, giving us hope for the future AND the courage to live them out in our own day and time. God is creating a new heaven and a new earth through us right here, now, today. God is active and calling us to continual renewal and transformation individually, and most especially, most especially, as the COMMUNITY of faith.
The Episcopal Church has not always thought of herself in such prophetic terms. Until fairly recently, we have been known as the church of the rich and powerful. The founding of our country and the founding of our denomination happened side-by-side. Most U.S. Presidents in the past have been Episcopalians. We had an image that wasn’t very open and welcoming. But that really started to change during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as our corporate conscience was pricked and we began to become much more aware that our faith has an outward societal dimension, that we are called to work for justice and peace, to create that beloved community that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr preached about and that the writer of the Revelation to John prophesied.
What a wonderful and glorious thing it is to realize this day, in our own day and time, this very day, the installation of an African American Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, something no one would have foreseen only a few years ago, a Presiding Bishop installed at the National Cathedral, some 47 years after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr preached from that imposing pulpit just a few days before his assassination. It was the last sermon Dr. King ever preached. And the text for his sermon, interestingly, was from the Revelation to John, “See, I am making all things new.” (What a wonderful “Alpha and Omega” connection for us on this All Saints Sunday.) Martin Luther King, Jr. saw that same vision that John saw. And Dr. King called us to LIVE that vision, to work to realize that vision in the here and now. He believed that God was active and engaged in the world and empowering us to make it a reality. And in today’s service at the cathedral, just a few steps away from where that prophetic sermon was preached, Michael Bruce Curry, a beloved child of God is being raised up from the beloved community to lead us and inspire us to continue the work of creating a world of hope, justice and love through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The Episcopal Church has come a long, long way. We have truly come to understand ourselves as God’s pilgrim people, on a lifelong journey of making the unimaginable, imaginable, and not just imaginable but achievable. John’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth is what sparks our creativity and inspires us to continue God’s reconciling work in the world, always hopeful, always expectant.
We are blessed, here at Saint George’s, to be the beloved community within our diocesan community, the larger Episcopal community and the universal Church. We are blessed that within our diocese we are known as a church particularly committed to social justice. You called your first female rector 5 years ago. I am really happy about that. We were one of the first churches in our diocese to begin offering same gender blessings 3 years ago. Our racial reconciliation committee is leading us forward in that important ministry. This puts us at the forefront of change in the Episcopal Church as a whole. Whereas in the past, when people thought of the Episcopal Church, they often thought “privileged conservative white people” now we are becoming known as the open, inclusive, welcoming church. That’s a big change in 50 years. The Holy Spirit has been working on us and we are responding. We are never finished, we still have work to do, but we are on the Way with Jesus, making all things new and being made new in the process.
Saint George’s has a very important ministry. We are called to be that open, inclusive, welcoming presence of Jesus that the Episcopal Church strives to embody here at Virginia Square, reaching out to our neighbors and inviting others to join us as we become the beloved community together. Our new Presiding Bishop loves to remind us that we are part of the Jesus Movement, that we are always moving forward, and we are never finished.
It’s important for us to remember that we are part of the Jesus Movement as we consider our pledges of time, talent and treasure this stewardship season. Next Sunday, we’ll all get our pledge packets for 2016. The following Sunday we’ll be asked to return them and place them on the altar, alongside the bread and the wine. We’ll ask God to bless them and use them to bless the world around us.
Our pledges of time and talent are absolutely essential to continue our vibrant ministries – outreach, pastoral care, buildings and grounds, Eucharistic Ministers, acolytes. The list goes on and on. There are literally hundreds of people needed to man our ministries- from feeding our hungry neighbors every day to teaching our children to the teams of intercessors who pray with people every Sunday. YOU make Saint George’s go. We ALL create the beloved community that John envisioned every day, 24/7 at Saint George’s. It’s a beehive of activity around here, and not activity for activity sake, but activity for a very specific purpose, working for the new heaven and new earth that God is always, always calling us to. Each of our individual pledges of time and talent are absolutely essential for God’s work in this place.
And our gifts of treasure are also vitally important. We are part of the Jesus Movement and the movement has to be funded, just as the women who followed Jesus in the Gospel of Luke supported Jesus and the 12 disciples. Our monetary pledges go to our yearly operating budget that funds our ministries and the upkeep of the building. The biggest part of the operating budget is for salaries for the clergy and staff. And every single clergy person and staff member is ESSENTIAL for supporting all of YOUR amazing ministry in this place. We have a small group of clergy and staff, but they do so much and are extremely dedicated and we want to keep them and pay them appropriately.
Some people get kind of squeemish talking about money in church, but Jesus talked about money a lot, more than any other topic in the Gospels. I think that was because he knew how money or concerns about money can hold us captive. But Jesus calls us to the path of freedom. Generosity is at the heart of the Gospel. And cultivating a spirit of generosity is what sets us free.
Last year, as the offering was being taken up by the ushers, a mother gave her 3 year old daughter a dollar to put in the offering plate, trying to teach her what it looks like to be faithful. And when the plate got to the little girl she hesitated. Her mom encouraged her to put it in and she responded, rather loudly, “But I don’t want to give my money to Jesus!” I am sure a lot of us feel her pain. It’s hard when we first start giving to church to make that sacrifice, but with practice it gets easier. There is a redemptive part 2 of this little girl’s story. A few church services later, as the plate was being passed, the mom looked in her purse and realized she didn’t have a dollar to give her daughter, and the little girl exclaimed, “But I HAVE to give something to Jesus. It’s important!” That’s how it works. Giving to church is a spiritual practice and spiritual practices require practice.
Giving to the Jesus Movement is really important. I learned it from my parents and grandparents. Before they paid any of their bills, they took 10% of their pay and put it in their pledge envelope. They were Baptist and it was a clear expectation in the Baptist Church. We don’t tell people how much to give in the Episcopal Church, but we do hold out that biblical standard of the tithe and it’s important to work toward it. If everyone tithed, we would have no problem whatsoever funding our operating budget. We could even increase our budget. It’s just a fact. Pledges of treasure enable us to live out the vision of a new heaven and a new earth. They support our ministry of being that open, welcoming, inclusive presence of Jesus at Virginia Square. We are the local embodiment of the Episcopal Church. Our particular expression of Christian faith is such a gift to a world very much in need of our way of being church.
So as we prepare to baptize Caleb Theodore into the universal Church today, we are mindful that we are all knit together in the mystical communion of saints who have gone before us. We give great thanks that he will grow up in the Episcopal expression of our faith here at Saint George’s. Caleb will teach us and we will teach him. He will learn that he is a beloved child of God in this joyful, beloved community that is always evolving and never finished. And we give tremendous thanks today that Michael Bruce Curry, who was baptized as a baby in an Episcopal Church in 1952 and grew up during the tumult of the Civil Rights Movement is about to become the first African American Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth…And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…And the one who was seated on the throne said, See, I am making all things new.”… Revelation 21: 1-6a