Before beginning the sermon I have prepared for today, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the events that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend, as well as in other states this summer. For me, and probably for you also, these racist acts have evoked emotions of deep disgust, alarm, sadness and more. The sins of racism in both our country and in ourselves are there. Confessing these sins, confronting them and asking for forgiveness is necessary. I ask you to take the prayer book, turn to page 815 and pray with me.
           
For the Human Family
            O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on  earth; that in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


           
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning I have a question for you to think about. It is a personal question and you may or may not want to share your answer with others and that is certainly ok; here it is: “Where or when have you been most aware of God’s presence? If you have been involved with Cursillo you might recognize the question better in these words, “What has been your moment closest to Christ?” Or if Emmanuel’s summer read, “Being Christian”, is fresh in your mind, your answer might take the framework of Rowen’s book and fall into the categories of Eucharist, Bible, Baptism, or Prayer. I am sure there are all sorts of ways to answer and that our answers may be different at different times. So, take a moment or two sometime today to think about your response. Where or when have you been most aware of God’s presence?
            I heard this question and its answers running through the lessons today. Certainly Peter might have said—when I was walking on water with Jesus. Or perhaps St. Paul might have answered, “When I understood that the word of God is always near, on my lips and in my heart.” And Elijah might have said that God’s voice for him was not in the earthquake or fire, but rather in the sheer and absolute silence.
Each of these individuals in the morning lessons, Peter, Paul and Elijah have many answers to the question as we know their lives through what is written in the Bible; their interactions with God are well recorded. Each of these men is complex in character and interesting to study and get to know. Because of time, I will focus on just one today, Elijah and his experiences that we can know from scripture. I understand that many of you are well read in the Old Testament and know many of the characters and stories well. Forgive me if I bore you. However, like me, I imagine there are others who recognize the names but either don’t remember, or perhaps never knew, the details. I want to look more closely at the main character of this first lesson.
Elijah was a prophet; yes, probably the most popular of prophets. We heard his name mentioned in last Sunday’s gospel of the Transfiguration. For a brief moment the disciples who were witnesses of that experience saw Elijah as one of the two men with Jesus in his glory; he and Moses were there. There could be little doubt in those disciples’ minds that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, at least in that awe-filled moment of glory.
            In Jewish thought it was believed that Elijah would come to earth again to herald the coming of the Messiah. This is why some asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah. And this is why at Passover Seder meals an empty place is kept for Elijah in hopes of his return. Elijah had many accomplishments as God’s prophet written in the books of the Kings. Today’s reading is not one of those high points and for us to better understand it I want to back up a bit in Elijah’s story to learn what happened before his coming to this cave to spend the night.
            Elijah was a prophet in the time of King Ahab who ruled in the part of Israel called the Ten Tribes. King Ahab was married to Jezebel, a Phoenician princess. Her influence over her husband and over the kingdom was very great. She worshipped Baal, the god of the Phoenicians and because of her, many in that part of Israel adopted Baal as their god also. Elijah met with King Ahab to warn him of the dire consequences if this practice of worshipping idols continued. In particular he predicted a long lasting drought and famine, which did happen, as King Ahab rejected Elijah’s word. It was during this famine that Elijah was fed by the miracle of a widow’s oil and meal not running out for days. And after this that same woman’s son was miraculously healed by God through Elijah’s prayer. These times were certainly an answer that Elijah could have given to the times he felt closest to God. When he was personally fed by God’s miracle or when he participated in God’s dramatic healing of a young boy. Meanwhile during that famine, Queen Jezebel commanded that anyone who dared to speak the name of the God of Israel would be immediately put to death.
A side story occurs at this time with another prophet called Obadiah who was able to hide and sustain many other prophets during this time without this queen’s knowledge. Jezebel thought she had gotten rid of all of the God of Israel’s prophets except for Elijah. This set up a great confrontation. Elijah addressed the Israelis to let them know they could no longer waver between the two factions. They needed to choose between idol worship, of Baal, and worshipping the one, true God.  Elijah challenged Baal’s prophets to prove that their god was God. He called them out to Mount Carmel for the contest he proposed.  It was said there were about 850 of these false prophets of Baal and they, along with Queen Jezebel and King Ahab and a large mass of the Jewish people, were there to witness what would happen.
Imagine the drama.
Elijah had the people bring two young bulls for the competing sacrifices. First Baal’s prophets built an altar and sacrificed their bull as instructed. Then they prayed that Baal come and accept their sacrifice by sending fire to the altar. They prayed all morning long for several hours, and nothing happened.  Then Elijah built another altar using 12 stones to represent the tribes of Israel and put a moat filled with water surrounding it. He then sacrificed the second bull, placed it on the altar, and poured water over the animal as well as the altar and wood. He drenched it all. Then he prayed. “Let it be known this day that you are the God of Israel and that I your servant Elijah have done these things at your word.”
No sooner did he finish his prayer than God sent a fire that completely burned up the bull, the wood, the stones, the moat, everything! The people who watched, fell on their faces and praised the one true God. And Elijah had the false prophets of Baal killed. Very soon after this it rained and the three year drought was over. Certainly Elijah had received affirmation of God’s power and truth in a way that not many other people could attest to. When thinking of the time he was certain of his closeness to God this must have been at the very top of his list.
            And yet, the very next part of his story is so different from this dramatic high. In the first verses of the chapter just before today’s passage we find Elijah afraid; he is overcome with fear. Queen Jezebel vowed to kill him before the day was over in retaliation for the lives of her prophets. Elijah is so terrified he runs away and hides. He is despondent, alone, depressed, and suicidal. An angel provides food for Elijah and then for forty days he travels to Mt. Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai, the same place that God spoke to Moses.  This is where today’s passage begins. Elijah is still overwhelmed, exhausted mentally and physically, full of fear, having put out of his mind all the miracles that God had worked for him in the past. He still wants to be done with life and all it has brought him. He is unable to recognize God’s presence either then or remember it in the past.
He is at the lowest point he could be, feeling isolated and alone, and wanting the relief of death.
            How could this be the same man of just a few chapters ago?
            To me this is where this story becomes so interesting. We have heard of a great hero of the faith who led others to experience the truth of the one Lord and God. And yet he is unable to sustain the truth he has seen, for whatever reason. Elijah is a human being, not a god himself, complex in his emotions, contradictory in his actions and feelings. It is here we know him as a real person with many dimensions, both capable of being positive and negative, good and bad. And perhaps it is here that we can identify with Elijah, or at least with his experiences. Life has brought him wonderful times as well as some not so wonderful times.
            So what happens next, when Elijah is at his lowest, is that God comes to him again. God speaks to him and answers his concerns. He does not say, you stupid man, haven’t I always supported you? Rather God tells him the way out of the situation he is in at that moment. He instructs Elijah exactly what to do. Perhaps this would be the answer to today’s question for Elijah of where he has felt closest to God. It was when he was in his deepest despair and God came to him.  ]he God, who had been with him all along, in all the dramatic highs, was also right there with him in the silence of his anguish.
            This isn’t the end of Elijah’s story but like a good story teller I won’t remind you of the rest of it but rather encourage you to reread the last parts in the books of the Kings  to encounter this real human being, this multi-faceted man, Elijah, and his interactions with God.
            Remember the take away question? When have you been most aware of God’s presence?
            Know this from Elijah’s story today as well as in Peter’s and Paul’s that God is with us at all times and in all places. We are to seek God and we will be found.
            Amen.      
            

  At the risk of pointing out what is by now a tired cliche, we’re suffering from shorter and shorter attention spans these days. Everything is so immediate, so accessible, that there is little reason to sit with and work through the slow and the mundane. And so our fleeting attentions go hand in hand with our demand for instant gratification, which not only grows stronger, but there’s always more
efficient means of satisfying that demand. We don’t even have to wait for the technology that takes the waiting out of life.

Now, lest you think that I’m just wringing my hands about all this, I also believe that it’s not totally our fault. It’s not just our own impulsive lack of discipline that accounts for this state of affairs. In fact, part of the reason we’ve lost the strength of our attentions is that our world is intentionally filled with things that are not worth paying attention to.
Everything is convenient for the purpose of being disposable; it’s not supposed to be lingered upon, contemplated, or saved. Our inevitable discontent with this disposable world can thus be manufactured that much more effectively, and there’s a lot of money to be made off of our discontent.

Anyway, for me, living in a world like this means that I want things to be entirely straightforward and accessible up front. I want to immediately understand the whole of something before I devote my time and effort to it. Because I only have so much time and effort, of course. So when I’m reading an article online, to use a common example, I’ll often impatiently skim through the body of the text to the conclusion. Then, if the conclusion suggests something worthwhile, I’ll maybe go back and give it my proper attention. Maybe. But the point of this exercise is to actively avoid humbling myself to join the writer in the gradual development of his or her thought or argument. Because to do that would be to risk sacrificing the detached and disinterested position I occupy as a consumer, hovering over things instead of committing to them. After all, I might even be changed -- or, God forbid, transformed -- if I risk that commitment. And this risk goes right in the face of the dominant logic of modern life. We are conditioned in this society to demand the whole of something up front, immediately, so that what is relative and conditional is our commitment to it. In short, we insist on maintaining our control over what we give ourselves to and over the extent to which we give ourselves.

This perspective on life is the exact reverse of what we find in Jesus’ various parables about the Kingdom in today’s Gospel. There, we find that what is relative and conditional is not our commitment, but the Kingdom itself; it is like the
mustard seed that slowly grows from being the smallest of the seeds into a mighty tree which provides shelter to the birds of the earth; it is the yeast which is so incorporated into the flour that it becomes impossible to differentiate one from the
other, even as it as irrevocably transforms it. So while we’re accustomed to expecting fixed and definite objects for our own measured commitment, the Kingdom itself is what is measured.

Moving on, Jesus says that the Kingdom is also “like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” It’s “like a merchant in search of fine pearls,” who, “on finding
one pearl of great value... went and sold all that he had and bought it.” Again, our normal ways of engaging the world are being challenged. Not only is the Kingdom like something that roots itself within the processes of our world, thereby being difficult to comprehend in full, it nevertheless demands a full and unyielding commitment on our part. Our commitment to the Kingdom is to be decisive, total, just like the one who finds the treasure or the merchant in search of the greatest
pearl. And when you combine these analogies from Jesus, that we are to go all in on what can actually be difficult to discern, we are faced with the risk and the adventure of faith.
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Returning to the analogy of the mustard seed, whenever I have heard this parable in the past, my mind has often pictured a tiny seed that automatically turns into a giant tree without much attention to what it is that is actually be described. Trees
take forever to grow. Not only that, but they even remain latent and hidden in the ground as seeds for a time before they germinate. And then they’re just saplings. But Jesus says that the Kingdom is like this, which means that it’s not only like the
final maturity of a tree whose branches provide shelter, but also like every stage of the tree’s growth. The Kingdom is like the seed, the sapling, and the mighty tree. This is why we are to always be on the lookout for those “foretastes of the
Kingdom” that Mother Beth talked about last week, fully investing ourselves in those small little glimmers of redemption. In fact, the Christian life is this present age is nothing other than our participation in those foretastes.

So that, I think, is the take-away from the first few parables that Jesus tells us today. We never know at what stage of development we might encounter an outpost of the Kingdom. It might be a hundred years of prayer and devotion
saturating the very bones of a place, like here in this sanctuary of Emmanuel. How leavened must the flour of this community be with such longevity? Or, it might be a sudden sprouting of the most fragile and delicate possibility of redemption in
your life or the life of a loved one. But once we discern it, we are called to suspend all manner of shrewd calculation or keeping ourselves at a safe distance “to see how things pan out.” No, we’re to go all in for the life of the world as is
found in those foretastes, just like the merchant who sells all he has to purchase the
pearl of great price.

After this, Jesus moves to a different image of the Kingdom, that of the “net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.” Jesus continues that:
     ...when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into
     baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the      
     righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Not exactly as stirring of an image as the others that I’ve described already, but it’s no less important for a grasp of the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. It teaches us that the Kingdom is not necessarily found to be this discreet and clear-cut
phenomenon. It’s not necessarily something that we can clearly distinguish from something else. Because like Jesus says, the net of the Kingdom pulls in fish of every kind, both good and bad, and until the fishermen sort out the fish, the net is just one big mixed bag. And it’s not for us to do the sorting. This means that on this side of the final judgment, the Kingdom is never to be found in a totally pure or final state. For the time being, the Kingdom contains within itself the brokenness of the sinful world, even as it also contains the goodness of the saints. And just as a net full of fish convulses and squirms with the frantic movements of a thousand little fishes, so too does this present life in the Kingdom. We are joined together in solidarity with both the good and the bad -- we’re all in this net together
-- and somehow, this too is the Kingdom that we are to drop everything for. It’s complicated, this Christian life.
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Here toward the end, I want to close with some thoughts about some habits and practices that might aid us in discerning this mysterious Kingdom. Recall that our world today is one which actively trains us in patterns of living which make this
discernment more difficult than it already is. Consumerism, after all, is nothing other than the failure of proper attention, an habituated distractedness which is designed to keep our affections suspended from ever making any real commitments. So cultivating periods of single-mindedness, through prayer, silence, and solitude, can help overcome these vices. They help tune our gaze to the things above, the mysterious things of the Kingdom that we might not otherwise see. This is the point of fasting as well, as the lack that it creates becomes the very space in which contemplation can advance. You might find the
treasure that had been hidden. In short, unite yourself with the experiences of your day; don’t just pass through them as through the aisles of a supermarket, suspended in detachment.

All in all, remember that the Spirit blows where it chooses, and it takes the Kingdom with it, in and through all the corners of this material life. It rests for awhile where you’d least expect it, perhaps even suffering there by virtue of its faithful presence in a place that despises it. That’s why the Kingdom is the Gospel, for just as our Lord on the cross was flanked on one side by one who taunted him, and on the other by one who wished to join him in paradise, so too are we, as citizens of the Kingdom, surrounded at times by those who afflict us and by those who, like the birds who rest in the branches of the mustard tree, come within our fold for a relief that is found nowhere else. Amen.

July 23, 2017
The Rev. Beth Maynard

We’ve been using Romans for our Epistle all summer, so week by week we’ve heard Paul explaining sin and law and grace. And last week we moved into the emotional climax of that teaching, where we get three weeks reading Romans chapter 8, one of the greatest passages in the New Testament. So as far as our Epistle goes, we’re in the middle of a sort of three-week party, where Paul is celebrating all that is ours once we have been redeemed by Jesus Christ. Redemption is a big word, and Paul is a big thinker, and he lays out a big picture of what this means. And this morning I want for us to try to widen our vision out and think as big as Paul does.
 
Let’s start that widening by asking how two pieces of this reading fit together: you might have noticed, about four lines down, that Paul celebrates that if we are redeemed people, we are already children of God. He writes, “You have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" In that verse, our adoption is a done deal. Yet skip just a few lines further down; he’s still talking about our adoption by God, but here it lies in the future: “We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.”
 
How do those two things fit together? Are we already redeemed and adopted, or are we waiting eagerly for it in hope? Paul’s answer, and the New Testament’s answer, is both.

The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
Fr. Mac Stewart

The ark of the covenant must have been a marvelous sight to behold.  Acacia wood overlayed with pure gold within and without; on its four feet, four rings of gold to hold the poles of gold by which the ark would be carried; on its cover, a mercy seat of pure gold, flanked on either side by two golden cherubim, their faces turned to one another and their wings spread wide to overshadow the empty mercy seat between them.  A marvelous sight to behold…but one that was rarely in fact beheld, seen only by the high priest only once a year, and that only after he had covered it in clouds of incense.  This was, after all, the place where the LORD God of Israel, the one on whom no one could look and live, had promised to meet and speak with his people, between those two glittering cherubim above the empty mercy seat, in the Holy of Holies. 

We’re gathered together today as the Body of Christ to ordain and set apart for the priestly ministry of Christ’s holy catholic Church Caleb Scott Roberts.  The ministry to which you’re called today, Caleb, is not unlike the ministry of the priests of old who carried the Ark of the Covenant in the midst of the people of God as they made their pilgrimage through 40 years in the wilderness.  You are now to be a steward of the holiest things in the world, the Word and Sacraments of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for a holy people wandering through the wilderness of this world.  The chalice and Bible that Bishop Dan is about to hand you are signs of your stewardship, of the hot and holy things that you will preach with your lips and hold in your hands, as dangerous and explosively potent as the Ark itself.  You will bear in your hands and on your lips the ministry of reconciliation, the power that has been unleashed in the world by Jesus Christ, the very power that made all things and is now making them all new, bringing peace with God, neighbor, and self by the blood of Christ’s cross.  And you will be called upon to wield this power for your people both in the daily and weekly round of ordinary Christian life, and in the most extra-ordinary and intense experiences they’ll ever face: preparing them for baptism, confirmation, and marriage; counseling them through the paralyzing moral dilemma, the persistent sin; praying for them as they walk through the bitter familial battle, the trials of a wayward child, the devastating illness, the untimely death.

Would you rather wear a yoke, or carry a burden? You probably have no immediate answer to that dilemma, but the way those two images are framed for us today in the Gospel of Matthew may make it a little easier at least to understand the question, from a Christian point of view.  At the end of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus utters a verse that anyone who prays Compline out of our Prayer Book knows. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
 
This is an interesting image, and I can see why the church has installed it at Compline, the bedtime office. If we have taken Christ’s yoke, we often do need a reminder that he has already taken responsibility for all that we are carrying around with us. And when you open your Prayer Book and read that verse before bed, there is a sense of letting everything go into the arms of God. You may even find that making that act of trust each night means you sleep better. I recommend it, just as I recommend all the other aspects of the Prayer Book system. Page 127, before bed. Give it a try.

Good morning.  My name is Caleb Roberts and I’m the brand new curate here at Emmanuel Memorial.  Our short time here so far has been joyous and it’s been in no small part due to the overwhelming generosity and hospitality of your welcome of myself, my wife Julie, and our kids, Alice and Charles.  I want to again thank you all specifically for the bounty of the pounding on our first Sunday here.  We’ve put it all to good use and it’s made for a lovely little Y2K bunker down in the basement.

In any case, I am delighted to be with you all this morning for this first opportunity to preach to you all today.

It’s not generally common for Episcopal preachers to take up the Epistle appointed for the given Sunday as the text for their sermon, and there’s a good reason for this; it is, after all, in the Gospels that we are most immediately faced with the account of the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that so inspires our devotion towards him.  But when we come across a passage such as today’s portion from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, we are confronted by the bold exploration into the mystery of grace that only Paul can give us.

Of all the truths of the Christian faith, the one that intrigues me again and again is its embrace of the body.  Ours is a material religion, rooted not in some spiritual escape from the limitations of embodiment or the physical world, but rather in the midst of those particularities.  Being in Christ is about being fully, authentically human, which means that grace works in and through our bodies.  As Paul puts it, we are to present our bodies as instruments of righteousness by the grace and power of God.

You’ve no doubt heard someone describe him or herself as a “creature of habit,” but the reality is that each and everyone of us is a creature of habit simply by virtue of being human.  In order to survive in a world of things, we create patterns in our lives so that we can order ourselves towards continued life on earth.  These patterns are our habits, the routine actions by which we direct ourselves towards the goal of life.  And herein lies the challenge of being human, because it’s not a given that we always pattern our lives to achieve life.  We’re not mere creatures of instinct, we have free will which opens up the possibility that we can actually habituate ourselves towards self-destruction.
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So consider a bad habit in particular, because if you’re like me, those are the habits that I’m most conscious of.  There’s actually a good deal of paradox involved with a bad habit.  On the one hand, it feels like a negative imposition on your daily life; in your mind, you know that it doesn’t make your life better and that it might actually be a real obstacle to living life to the fullest.  You experience your bad habit as a sort of bondage; you’re enslaved to it, in a way.  And yet, is it not also true that to let yourself fully succumb to it yields a certain sense of freedom?  You certainly get to stop worrying about it for the time being, and to accept your bad habit feels like allowing yourself to do what you want.  On the other hand, to do the work of overcoming the habit is hard, and it might be more uncomfortable than just persisting in the bad habit.  Beating the habit leads you into another kind of bondage; you’re now bound to the new life of consciously maintaining your freedom from what has passed away.  This new life is defined by new habits which replace the old, and the so-called “freedom” you once had to pursue your bad habit now appears to be a pale comparison to the real thing you’ve now achieved.  You trade the false freedom that came with your bad habit for the true freedom that comes with good habits.

This is what Paul is getting at with his metaphor of slavery, slavery to sin or slavery to righteousness. And just to make it clear, as Paul himself does in our epistle today, the “slavery” being discussed here is merely a “human term” employed for the sake of our understanding.  By using slavery as a metaphor for human life, we are in no way underwriting or validating the abomination of slavery as we know it from the American story.
    
Rather, his point is to show that we are inescapably ordered by something external to us, some transcendent principle which is beyond our grasp.  We are not neutral, as nothing in Creation is.  We live, therefore, in the midst of a complex network of habits and desires, and somehow, we are tasked with navigating this network for our whole lives.  Sin enters this network when we redirect the desire that only God can fulfill towards some lesser thing.  It’s what happens when we seek a counterfeit form of transcendence by exploiting the things around us.  And these sinful acts accrue together to form what Paul calls the “body of sin,” which is not only the individual self that is fully habituated towards sin, but I’d say it’s also the entire corporate body of the human race, all of us together building up systemic structures of violence and oppression.  The body of sin includes the powers and principalities.  In any case, this is the slavery to sin that human life has come to be defined by.  We have the habit of exploiting ourselves and others to achieve a false sense of freedom which leads only to death.  And when grace comes into the picture, these habits of sin are revealed  to be the tyrants they really are.  Grace overthrows them and places us back into right relation and service to God.  For sin no longer has dominion over us.  And now we are able to present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.

In this new life of grace that we enter into by the waters of baptism, obeying the demands of righteousness can now be an act of freedom, and therefore of love.  The fear of the law which once compelled our obedience has been cast out by the love of the Son for the Father in which we now participate by faith.  His love is now our love.  And as slaves to righteousness, the only dominion that sin can wield over us is the dominion we choose to create again in ourselves.  This is why Paul is so insistent that the gift of grace is by no means a cause to sin that grace may abound all the more.  Sin only functions as a rival master; and so our willful obedience to it can only result in another slavery.  But what has been taken away by the work of Christ is the absolute bondage of that slavery to sin.  We can now resist it, resting in the true freedom of union with Christ.  So whereas we were once slaves to sin, our wills being bound to obey the demands of iniquity unto death, we now have died to death in Christ, and thus we are now slaves of righteousness, free to willingly obey the demands of justice.  

So as you go about your life with Christ, saying your prayers, sharing in the sacramental life of the Church, giving alms to the poor, rest in the knowledge that it is none other than the grace and power of Christ which guides you along.  For you are bound to him in his death and resurrection -- and thus bound to his Gospel -- so that you can present your bodies to God as instruments of righteousness.  

So thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

As we launch into green season today, we also launch into an extended presentation of the ministry of Jesus: his preaching, his healing, the ways he interacted with people, the stories he told. But before we really get going together on this new phase of the church year, let’s just note that it’s a quite different kind of season than where we’ve been so far. The Lent-Triduum-Easter cycle, as well as the Advent-Christmas cycle, which have dominated the year for us so far, are powerful and clear seasons that are meant to have powerful and clear results in us. During those seasons, we re-encounter the key landmarks in what Christians see as the central narrative of the universe.
 
Each year those cycles have work to do in us, which is to make God’s saving acts vividly present. And each year we have work to do with them, which is to let everything we are going through this particular year get brought into conversation with God’s saving acts and opened up to them. When both parts of that equation are in play, Christmas and Easter get some purchase right in the middle of our lives and are able to make specific changes in us. They do that incrementally, year by year, some years far more obviously than others; but that’s what can happen, if you’re willing to make the investment, in those powerful cycles we call Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter.
 
This green season is a bit different. It doesn’t feature dramatic landmarks like God taking on human flesh, or pouring out his lifeblood on the cross for us. The green season presumes all that has happened already. It presumes we’ve already done the purple and white and red seasons; we’ve met Christ among us at Christmas, we’ve put our whole trust in his death and resurrection at Lent and Easter, and we’ve been filled with his Spirit at Pentecost. The green season presumes we’re now ready to live out what God did for us in this year’s big landmark seasons.

Hello everyone, my name is Cameron Barnard. I am a cradle Episcopalian who was raised by the Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church family. I would like to share with all of you my story about being an acolyte at Emmanuel and how acolyting and this church have bettered me in a number of ways.

As many of you might already know, I have been an acolyte here for about seven years.  I witnessed my older brother Garrett acolyte plenty of times, and he always made it look so easy, so I was excited to learn for myself. At my first ever service as an acolyte, I was given the assignment of carrying the flags in, which unfortunately is no longer a position at the church. On that day, I remember getting nervous because I had no idea what to expect. My first hurdle was figuring out what to wear. For the first few services, I didn’t know which color robes to wear on which days, so I would always wait and see what other acolytes had on and mirror them. Then came the actual acolyting duties. I was glad to find out that first day that really all the flag carrier had to do was to process in with the flag and just sit at the altar all service long and then take the flag back out during the recession hymn.

It wasn’t until about a year later that I really had to face my first real challenge as an acolyte. I was given the task of being a server for the first time, which included many more jobs than being a flag carrier. I and another server accepted the responsibility of carrying the torches in, moving the book before the gospel reading, bringing the torches out to the middle of the pews for the gospel reading, setting out and cleaning up the bread and wine for the communion and carrying the torches back out during the recession. While these duties may sound easy now looking back, it was very intimidating for a shy eleven year old like me. My first couple of times were not perfect, but I continued to serve at the altar because I felt a certain responsibility toward my church.

Eventually I was assigned to carry the cross and to perform as Master of Ceremonies, MC for short. Both included completely new tasks that I had to learn and master every Sunday, and the latter role also required me to know all the tasks of the other acolytes because, as MC, I was tasked with being their leader. Learning to accept leadership responsibilities through my church service eventually translated well into my leadership roles as a class officer at Central High School and as a swim team captain.
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There have been many bumps in the road during this long seven-year journey, but freely accepting the duties of an acolyte here at Emmanuel has been the greatest decision I ever made in my life. Acolyting has taught me so many important qualities such as leadership, character, and responsibility just to name a few; in addition, serving at the altar has made me feel closer to God than any other experience at Emmanuel. I believe that Emmanuel has been one of the biggest factors for my success in life so far, and I would just like to thank Deacon Chris, the late Larry Bouton, and all the priests I’ve ever worked with for giving me the opportunity to come many Sundays and learn something new about myself; moreover, I owe each of them a debt of gratitude for their patience with, compassion toward, and care for me. I will forever cherish the help everyone at Emmanuel has given me along the way, and I look forward to taking all that I have learned here and continuing to better myself as both an Episcopalian and a college student in the next chapter of my life.

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place… and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.
 
If the folks who make up Emmanuel’s participating community were ever all together in this place, we would not be able to fit in the nave. But we never are. Any given Sunday, probably about 40% of us are actually together, and it’s different ones each week. This is less true at the 8:00, which is more stable as a sort of small group within the parish, but across both services, there’s never really a quorum on any one Sunday. I’m not talking the whole church mailing list, I’m talking people who are currently taking part in our life together in some way, but who have not had the experience of being all together in one place the way our first lesson describes.
 
That’s a situation many American churches are facing, and I think we’re right on track with national averages. Having a different group at worship Sunday to Sunday poses a lot of challenges for any church, but one of them is that the kind of unity in spirit and solidarity in mission that took place on the first Pentecost is becoming a rare experience for many Christians in the USA. The entire church at Pentecost was all together in one place, praying and seeking God, and that is when the Holy Spirit fell. Unity of spirit and solidarity of mission, with everyone on board.
 
But it wasn’t just that first feast of Pentecost. It has happened like that throughout the history of the church. There is something about groups of people who are really together that the Holy Spirit seems to find very attractive – if you’ve ever been part of a Christian community that was of one heart and soul, all in the same place, where a quorum was available to be deployed by the Spirit for God’s work, you know what I’m talking about. The Spirit falls on communities of people like that. The Spirit goes to work through communities of people like that. And being part of a community where that is happening is a life-changing experience for anyone who has had it.