January 13, 2008: Rector's Annual Report
The Rev. Michael N. Ambler, Jr.
Today is our annual meeting, the day that we elect new leaders, consider updating our governing documents, and hear reports of what we have been doing and what we plan to do. The old year is over, and the new one is beginning. It's an important day to pause, to take stock, to ask if we have been on the right path and are doing what we hear God asking of us.
In the opening collect, at the beginning of the service on this feast day of the Baptism of Our Lord, we asked God to grant that "all who are baptized into [Jesus'] Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior."
So, how are we doing? Are we keeping the covenant we have made? Are we boldly confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Especially on this day, I can't think of any better standard to hold ourselves up against than the Baptismal Covenant, those promises made for us and by us when we were first baptized into the Body of Christ.
Parish life is a collaboration of souls and minds, so let's do this together. The Covenant is written out beginning on page 304 of the Prayer Book.
The first three clauses of the Covenant are essentially the Apostles' Creed, in question form. Do we believe in the Triune God, it asks; and we answer that we do indeed believe.
So, do we? Belief can be a shifty thing. Sometimes it's right there in front of us, we can grasp it and hold it tight and it will support us. Other times it is like a tree in the fog, a solid something that is not quite there. I believe, except when I am distracted. Do we as a parish believe?
I think we do. What it means for us to believe, I think, is for us to keep holding up the clearest, purest, truest faith we can-including all the questions that come along with it. I don't know what anyone individually believes on any given day, because each day is different for mortal creatures. But I think that we together proclaim the truth and the mystery of God's love and Christ's redemption as well as we are able, and so we encourage one another in the faith for which we have covenanted with God.
The questions of the Covenant continue:
Will you continue in the Apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
Worship is at the center of our life at Grace. I think probably every parish says that; it's theologically fashionable to be "Eucharistically centered," as they say. Maybe it's true everywhere. I know it's true here.
We gather every week, and every week I am uplifted by the sense of the Spirit's presence among us. There are mornings when the alarm rings at 6:45 and I really don't want to get up; the floors are cold, and the night was short, and I comfort myself that it's only six hours until the services and all the surrounding events will be over... and then I arrive here; Ann Lewis or Jane Chapin are always ahead of me, setting up for the eight o'clock coffee hour; altar servers and ushers arrive; the hum of greetings and conversations rises as everyone-you all-filter in, and finally the service starts. Every week, every single week, I feel the rush of energy and enthusiasm that tells me, God is here. This is exactly where I need to be. I'm not tired any more. Week after week we do continue in the Apostles' fellowship, in coffee hours and committee meetings, in parish suppers and home visits and pastoral counseling sessions. Week after week we do continue in the breaking of bread at the altar, and in the prayers. Week after week, God graciously meets us here-and in the Rite 13 room, where fifteen middle schoolers are working with Sara Wright, Mary Richardson, Carl and Sue Young to discover the reality of God. And in the Godly Play space, where Carolyn Meixell, together with Anne Soucek, is helping younger children discover how God lives and moves. And in the nursery, where Bethel Arbuckle is the long-term substitute for Ruthe Pagurko, caring for our very youngest members.
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
One of the things I am excited about in my own ministry is that I am beginning to join my lawyerly past with my priestly present, and offer myself as a mediator to congregations in conflict. I've just started this work, but I've already learned a lot. One of the things I've learned is that when you hurt someone, it makes all the difference in the world if you stop, you look them in the eye, and if it was your fault, you apologize. It's hard to do; the human tendency is to look away and pretend nothing happened. But you know what happens then: the person who got bruised goes and talks to all his friends; in the guise of asking for advice, he spreads his bitterness as far as it will go; and soon enough everyone is involved in what should have been over and done almost as soon as it happened. I see parishes where this sort of grudge-hoarding is the norm. I thank God we don't do it here.
We hurt each other all the time. Usually not very deeply, though sometimes it's been more serious. Yet even a scratch can get infected. That's why it's so good that we don't ignore or hide from those hurts, but deal with them promptly and cleanly, so they'll heal up and go away. Here's my promise to you: when I do something that upsets you, I will come talk to you about it as soon as I realize what has happened. If I've done something wrong, I'll apologize, and try to make it better. If don't call, it's because I just don't realize- maybe I need you to help me understand. If you all make the same promise to me, and to one another, and to everyone you know, well, that will be a bad day for the devil.
Will you proclaim by word and deed the good news of God in Christ?
Here we get nervous. The formal corporate name of our church is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society; yet words like "evangelism" and "mission" tend to make us remember that we have urgent appointments elsewhere.
And yet we do proclaim the good news, without even being aware. Every time we purposely take the church outside our doors, or invite the world in, we are doing it. When we bless the animals in Library Park, we are doing it. When we advertise the Blue Christmas service on cable TV, and a lonely soul comes in from the dark, we are doing it. We did it just the other night at Supper at Six, when we invited the people of Elim Church from up the street, and almost the whole congregation came. You know what the most powerful testimony of the evening was? Not the prayer I offered here, nor the singing we gathered for over there, good though all that was. The most powerful testimony was from Sue Musk, and Cynthia and Fran Fontanez, serving beneath a carved image of loaves and fishes, facing at a line with about twice as many guests as they had been primed to expect, and deep doubt about whether the chili would hold out-and looking happy. The most powerful testimony was the fact that not one person put on a sour face and said "toljaso." Everyone smiled; John Grant and I set a speed record from Grace to Domino's Pizza and back; and sure enough God multiplied the fishes and the loaves so that even without the pizza, there was still a little chili and some corn bread left over. That is the testimony of hospitality, of Grace, of God's love.
It made me so proud to be part of you.
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Well, no. Let's be honest. We do a lot we can be proud of, but it will always be shadowed by the needs we don't meet, and we'll always have to admit that we could be doing more, and should be.
Yet what we do matters, a lot. Last week was Sign-up Sunday, when we commit ourselves to serve at the food pantry, the soup kitchen, the clothes closet, the Tedford Shelter, the Habitat ReStore, and more. We saw that our neighbor was in need, and we deployed ourselves to help offer-think about it-food, clothing and shelter. A month ago, we spread Christmas cheer with the Giving Tree. We make offerings every month for the food bank. We give frequent, discreet and significant help to our neighbors-who are sometimes ourselves-through the Rector's Discretionary Fund, which lets me pay for heating oil, groceries, and other necessities. There are lonely people living a block from where we celebrate, and they are the ones we think of as we live into the idea of a regular free public supper. There are bitter, angry and shut-down people to help learn to talk to each other, and that's what I am learning to help with as an ecclesiastical mediator.
It's a both/and thing, as my seminary professors liked to say, and we need to keep both parts in mind to get at the truth: we do a lot for our neighbors; and we must never, ever let ourselves think it's enough.
Finally, Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I've been realizing in the last several years that the world is an organism. It's a system, infinitely complicated, intricate beyond knowing, and completely interconnected. I read this week in the Economist about how global climate change is already causing some people to migrate from what has become the desert into the cities of richer countries; poor people are becoming destitute people as their lands turn to deserts, and destitute people are desperate. Similarly, low-lying places are increasingly seeing flooding as climate patterns change. So Johannesburg is crowded with sub-Saharan farmers, while India is walling off Bangladesh, whose land with its millions and millions of people is generally at a hair's breadth from sea level. Martha Kirkpatrick's environmental ministry turns out to be a social justice ministry, and a peace ministry; the old categories are breaking down because now it seems everything affects everything, and it feels as though the margin of error is almost used up.
There are old wrongs to be acknowledged, as the diocesan Indian Relations Committee is seeking to do, with the help of people like Henry Bird and Bill Freeman. There are new wrongs to be protested, as the Episcopal Peace Fellowship is doing in partnership with people like John Beaven. There are unjust disparities to be bridged, and the Haiti-Grace partnership is a way to try; we've realized that being pen pals isn't working, so a group will go and get acquainted first-hand this spring.
Some say the church shouldn't be political. I agree that the church shouldn't be partisan; we won't be doing election-related sermons this coming fall. It's important that there be a place where elephants and donkeys can be friends. But we have to be political, because the polis, the City, is where God has put us, where we pray for pray for peace, where we must work for justice. When we say "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," those have to be more than just words.
So, how are we doing?
We're doing beautifully, exuberantly, inspiringly. We are letting our light shine so that all who see it can glorify God. Literally as well as figuratively-our building is in better shape than ever, and our pathways and sign are illuminated every night.
At the same time, we come to confession every week accused by all those we didn't help, every need we didn't meet, every child of God who watched us pass by on the other side, every prayer we didn't take the time to offer.
The answer to every question in the Baptismal Covenant is the same: "I will with God's help."
None of what we have done was on our own. None of what we will do, would be imaginable without God's gracious help.
It's been said that the more one knows of God's ways, the tinier one's knowledge begins to seem.
My prayer is that we will so grow in faith and in faithful living, that we will see ever more clearly both the importance of what we are doing, and the magnitude of what we could do-together with the abundance God pours on us to make it all possible.
Amen.
