beloved community Archive

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For The Rev. Christy Laborda and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Sebastopol

By
Linda
– July 2, 2011Posted in: authority, beloved community, Diocese of No. California, mystery of the church, Sermon, St. Stephen's Episcopal, The Rev. Christy Laborda

A couple disclaimers – I was not Christy’s first choice for offering the homily at her installation. But others couldn’t do it – and the advantage of having another priest in your family is that you can back each other up! Actually, I was delighted that she asked me – thrilled in fact. But then I realized I actually needed to offer something more than testimonies as to how wonderful she is! The other disclaimer – her fiancé is my son – so Christy and I are friends and colleagues and come September we will be related to one another.

The truth is, she and I are already related to one another – in the same way that you and I are related to one another and it is the deepest relationship of all, because it exists eternally in God through the Body of Christ. This is the profound mystery of the Church; that above and beyond human welfare, human likes and dislikes, human attractions and alienations, we draw our life from the common bloodstream that is Christ’s. We have many faces, many races, many personality types, many anxieties and dysfunctions, we like each other, we don’t like each other, some of us drive Prius’s and some of us have no clean drinking water – but in Christ, we are one Body and we given this new common life for one purpose – and that is to Love – to love God and to love one another and to serve the world God loves so dearly.

Is the church particularly good at this – Loving and Serving? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the truth is, the church, you and I are not the subject of the verb Love. God is. God is the subject of our sentences and our lives. God is the one who loves and who woos and who calls and who engages us and who gifts us with this unique way of life – this life whose purpose and whose life source is one and the same – that is, Love.

Of course, I’m not speaking about warm fuzzy feelings – although that happens more often than you might think when the music is good – as I hear it is! – and the worship has integrity. So, I’m guessing that warm, fuzzy feelings happen fairly often here at St. Stephen’s – as things feel right, things click, and the place feels safe, like a place where you can be who you are and know that you are accepted. I’m guessing that you have already wrapped Christy up in the good arms of this parish, and that you know, already, that she carries you in her heart and in her prayers.

She thinks of you – a lot. I know this. I know she loves you – and besides being young and attractive and intelligent and sunny – she has a heart that is trustworthy, because it is a heart that has long been given to Christ.

I also know she is lucky – mostly because she is organized and she thinks things through. When Christy and Kai were packing for Hawaii, a trip she had won through a Bishop’s raffle, she and I went to REI because she wanted a cold carry case the right size for carrying sushi on a hiking excursion she’d planned for one of their vacation days! Right then, I knew she was perfect for my son – and God knows, the Body of Christ can use such detailed strategic thinking!

I know she wonders about the future of the church – about how to bring the good news of God’s compassion and love to an almost wholly secular culture, one that often sees no real need for the Christian God. I know that she struggles with how to message the Gospel for people in their 20’s and 30’s – she thinks about this, she reads about this, she consults with friends and colleagues who are also trying to figure this out. In other words, she brings her whole self to the church – her frustrations, her longings, her dreams, her hopes, her labor and her heart.

Still, even with all of her gifts and abilities, I’m guessing that it felt slightly risky to call Christy to be your Rector. She does not have years of experience – although the experience she does have would take years out of anyone! She has dealt with many difficulties, with aplomb and grace and humility. But the Spirit led, and you listened, and you made a courageous and visionary choice in calling this young woman to lead you into the challenges of tomorrow.

So my hope and charge is that all of you join her at the cutting edge where she lives – between culture and church and that, along with her, you commit your labor and your heart and your resources to continuing to courageously follow the Spirit in moving God’s dream forward into a future that none of you can predict and for which none of you can adequately prepare.

But take heart! You are the Baptized Body of Christ here in this place, and each of you has a God-gifted function that is essential to the working out of God’s purposes for St. Stephen’s at this moment in time. It is tempting of course, to think of the person in the collar and the ones who are most visible to be most important – but from apostolic times forward it has been the church’s witness that there is no one gift that is more essential or more perfect or more valuable to God and to Christ’s Body than any other gift.

This is another of the profound mysteries of the Church and it is one of the distinguishing marks of a Christian gathering – our functions make some of us more visible and give some of us greater authority, but for the mission of the church – which is to Love and to Serve – for this mission to be fulfilled – all must continue growing into the gifts and callings God has given them. Doing that means being ok with some awkwardness as you learn new ways of doing things together, new ways of reaching out, new ways of telling the old, old story of Jesus and His Love.

So, at this inauguration of a new phase of ministry for all of you – a ministry that now embraces Christy as your pastor, priest and leader – I want to direct myself to Christy for a minute.

You cannot possibly do this on your own. I know that seems obvious, but it is amazing how quickly this simple truth can get lost amidst the dozens of balls that you juggle every day. Your life that is hidden in Christ is the single most valuable resource you have to offer – and it must be protected and fed and trusted to be enough.

That means deciding what is essential to your ministry and what is not essential – and learning to be ok with not doing what is not essential. That is harder than it sounds – but doing this one thing – deciding on the essentials and putting those first and foremost will keep your spirit lively and vivacious, because you will be continuously transformed and renewed by the mind of Christ – you will be a green tree planted by streams of living water.

May this be so, now and long into the future.
With all my love. Amen.

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A Way Forward

By
Linda
– September 17, 2008Posted in: beloved community, Bishop Marc, empire, global warming

Pentecost 19A

A Way Forward

The Rev. Linda Campbell

The scriptures say that the pillar of cloud came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. Putting these two armies together in the same sentence almost makes you think that they were comparable. But the army of Israel consisted of rag tag slaves, men, women and children, oppressed by years and years of massively hard work, intended to cow them into utter submission – while the army of Egypt consisted of battle hardened soldiers, equipped with the finest and latest weaponry the Empire could afford – and as it was a very rich Empire, it could afford the finest and most modern that were available.

While we may read this as a metaphor for spiritual battle – spiritual freedom from fears or addictions – for the slaves – this was no metaphor. There was real water in front of them and a real army behind them and no way of escape – no way through. Can you imagine the terror? The mother’s with their babies and toddlers, the men who had nothing to fight with, the weeping of this people who were now certain of their death.

This morning’s reading continues the central organizing story of Judaism – the exodus from slavery into freedom, THE STORY of protection and power wrought on their behalf by God.

The account began when Pharaoh ordered the slave boy babies killed because he was afraid of the growing strength of his slaves. But one baby’s mother hid her baby and set him afloat on the water, hoping for a miracle. A miracle did happen – and the boy lived and grew up in Pharaoh’s courts. As a man, he awakened to the plight of his people, became enraged and killed an overlord and then escaped into the desert – trying to put all the misery of slavery and ill fortune behind him. But God would not let him go – he called him back from the desert to lead his people. Then the multiple disasters of pollution and death befell the Kingdom and there was much mourning throughout the Empire – but these disasters opened the way for Moses and his people to escape. God inspired and God protected they hurriedly packed what they could carry and lit out, in the dark of night.

But they did not get very far before they hit a stone wall – which is where they are in this morning’s reading - the sea in front of them and the pursuing army of their captors behind them. The raucous joy of their escape must have died in their hearts when they saw the impossibility of their situation.

There is nothing about our lives or our nation’s life that comes close to approximating this position – or is there? I visited this week with Michael Barlow, who is the Diocesan staff person in charge of congregational development – and he said that he had just had a conversation with Bishop Marc in which the Bishop said that we had about 100 months left in which to address global warming before the planet reached a tipping point in which nothing we do will stop the disastrous effects. 100 months. And the headlines that grab the news have to do with lipstick and moose hunting. Does this make you feel crazy? Does it make you feel doomed? Honestly, sitting in the beautiful offices at 1055 Taylor Street in San Francisco, with a fellow Christian, and hearing him say this – I wanted to reach over and say, well, Michael, that can’t really be the case. Surely the Bishop didn’t actually mean 100 months to doomsday. And of course, at one level, he didn’t. Doom doesn’t usually arrive all at once –

unless you are in Haiti living in cardboard and a wall of water washes over your island – or you are in a marketplace with your friends in India or Baghdad or Kandahar and a bomb goes off and you are left standing, but you cannot find your friend anywhere. Or you are one of the 90,0000 Iraqi non-combatants killed in the last six years, or one of the 4,000 American soldiers ripped apart by a roadside bomb or mortar fire. Doom can arrive suddenly and swiftly.

As it is about to for these Israelites.

But then, “The angel of God moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night.” Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea – and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land…The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground…”

A way opened. A way where there was no way. A path where there was no path. A road to freedom where there had been no road, no way, no path, no escape. God acted, intervened, on behalf of an impoverished, powerless people. God acted before they were a people, before they had been formed in faith. God acted on their behalf before they were even capable of praising him. Their response of faith and praise would come later. First, they were only able to put one foot in front of the other, carrying their children along with them as they took their first steps forward, driven as much by fear and the impossibility of going back, as by anything else.

That God acted on their behalf before they could properly respond has been the good news carried forward for millennium by the Judeo faith. It is a gospel that cannot afford to ever, ever be lost. It is the Gospel that Christ carried forward in his own body as it was nailed to the cross. “Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.”

I have no idea what to do about the 100 months left to stop the rapid warming of the planet. I have no idea what to do about moose hunting headlines rather than substantial debate on issues. I have no idea what to do about terrorist bombings or massive civilian casualties. What I do know is what I am fed on week by week – the Word of God carried in the people of God, the scriptures and the sacraments. I am fed by the Gospel that God acts on behalf of the poor and powerless. And that I am called to do so as well. That God, through Christ, forgives us poor sinners who can’t tell our right hand from our left. And that I am called to do so as well. I am fed by the Gospel of praise and thanksgiving that the people of Israel sang on the far side of the sea. And I am called to do so as well.

We belong to a beloved community that follows whatever pathway God opens up into what looks like an impossible future. We belong to a beloved community that forgives because that’s what Jesus did. We belong to a beloved community that sings in faith and praise trusting in God’s overarching goodness and salvation.