The goal for this special time of spiritual creativity and renewal that we have together is for St. Paul’s to become even more St. Paul’s.
The Second Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-25
In our Gospel reading we are told that while Jesus was talking, a father interrupted him saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” In so many of the stories of Jesus, we find life and death side-by-side. Perhaps then it is not so surprising when they all lead in their own way to Jesus himself dying on a cross with his disciples–and all of us–praying that life will win out yet one more time.
All of us who live in New England as committed church goers these days from time to time find ourselves–once that is discovered about us–having to explain what that is about? It is no longer self-evident. When I’m asked what a priest does I often enough find myself saying, “Well, I fight death in all its forms.” It’s only my first week with you at St. Paul’s and I don’t even know where all the light switches are, but I’ve already come across AA meetings with people right here encouraging each other to courageously choose life over death repeatedly in 24hr segments. Tomorrow I’m doing my first funeral for the Dedham community at a nearby funeral home and doing my best with the help of Jesus to help those mourning to find their own way from death to life. I’m at the very beginning of my time with you, but I can already tell that I am going to discover that as St. Paul’s gathers here and goes forth from here, that there will be nearly innumerable ways where this church brings the gospel of life to all kinds of people and places. I’ve heard of the sacrifice so many of you made to save the bell tower for future generations. Those bells ring out with the good news of life to be found here. We’ll never know all who may hear them and what it may mean to them. Sound travels in the darkness no matter how dark it may become, much like Jesus walking around Galilee, force of life that he was and is.
I’m honored to accompany you in the next chapter of the life of St. Paul’s. Some of you have already stopped by to welcome me. Those conversations have often turned to how much you are going to miss Melanie, her energy, her kindness, her pastoral care. Part of why we have an interim process rather than moving directly to calling the next rector is so that you can have those conversations and grieve. As much as any of us may want to skip over grief, doing so is exactly what prevents being able to welcome the genuinely new. You’ve probably already learned that hard lesson in your own life, but it applies here as well. So we begin by grieving together, with goodbyes and hellos, death and life, brushing uncomfortably close to one another.
Having walked this path with many other parishes, I can tell you that that grief eventually leads to the discovery that Melanie did not take her substantial gifts with her. You’ll discover that you still have them and they remain as valuable as they ever were, and with that insight will come great confidence and dare I say, joy.
No matter what you may hear from others, don’t think of this time as one of merely standing by or treading water. Think of it instead as a special time of spiritual creativity and renewal that does not come around too often. With the help of Jesus, we’ll do great things together! No one makes good decisions when they are too sad, or afraid, or in a hurry. Our work together is one where everything good about St. Paul’s continues and St. Paul’s will be able to call its next rector unhurried, without fear, with everyone feeling like they have been seen and heard in way that a vision for what is possible here in the next decade bubbles up as it were from open hearts.
Whenever a parish has a new rector, even an interim one, there are always worries about what is going to change? The answer is that nothing that is truly alive and loved here needs to change. We’ll talk about any number of things during my time, and I’ll ask 1) Do you love it? and if you say, “Yes,” I’ll ask, 2) “Do other people love it?” and if you love it and other people love it, then the priest’s role is 3) to bless that love. That’s what priests do. And that is where life is to be found.
After all, this is what was happening in the Gospel about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were particularly hated in Jesus’ time for this reason. When the Romans conquered a territory with military force, they made the people there pay for the cost of their own occupation through taxes. Of course, the Romans didn’t know who had money and land and who did not, but some of the locals did and with the right incentives could be persuaded to collect the taxes from the right people for the Romans. As if that betrayal and treason were not bad enough, they paid themselves by commission, that is, the Romans set the rates and whatever they collected above and beyond that, they could keep for themselves. Land, in families for generations, would be forfeited because of such taxes and the treasonous tax collectors were hated. They were hated for their complicity with all that meant early death for a people living under occupation.
Jesus, indeed, did eat with such people and also with the other sort of people happy to associate with them. The scandal was that it appeared that Jesus was giving his approval to their evil deeds. He never was. What he was doing was being there looking for whatever love could be found there. For he knew that if he could find even the smallest, barely visible, genuine love, he would bless it, and it would grow and grow. As he was known to explain, “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed… it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree [spacious enough] that the birds of the air come and makes nests in its branches (Mt. 13:31-32). That’s what Jesus does to love. He grows it and makes it alive and spacious. When he was dining with sinners and tax collectors, Jesus was fighting death. Matthew was one of the people who connected with Jesus in that way and eventually wrote the gospel that bears his name, the first book of the New Testament, but he made sure to put in there that he once collected taxes from his own people for the Romans so that all would remember that he, too, was saved from death by loving Jesus.
As we get to know each other, it can be tempting to focus on this or that problem. There are always problems as Jesus says, “Each day has trouble enough for the day” (Mt. 6:34). What is more helpful to me–by far–is for you tell me about what you love at St. Paul’s and beyond. Oh yes, we may solve some problems, but none of that will ever matter as much as each love that we manage to nourish, grow, and make more spacious; each intrusion of death pushed away; each life connected more and more to the source of life and made more fully alive. In this way, the goal for this special time of spiritual creativity and renewal that we have together is for St. Paul’s to become … even more St. Paul’s, and for everyone here to be able to say what that is, not only to their own heart, and to each other, but also to the next rector, and to friends and neighbors both near and far away. Each time coming here, like every other encounter with Jesus, is connecting with what you love, and connecting with what you love is energizing, renewing, and lifegiving.
Almighty God, for whom all things are possible and who makes all things new, grow your love in each of us and in this church, make it large and spacious, as we believe you can do in us more than we can ask for or imagine. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.