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The Reverend William J. Eakins on June 29, 2014, Proper 8, Year A
The Collect we prayed this morning begins: “Almighty God, you have built your church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.” I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of the Church when there has been greater difficulty in understanding what such words mean.
What is the “foundation of the apostles and prophets?” In what way is Jesus Christ “the chief cornerstone” of this foundation, and how is the church built upon it? How we answer these questions will determine how we approach issues that affect the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and our relations with other Christian denominations and with other faiths.
Within our Church there are those who think that the “foundation of the apostles and prophets” is a deposit of revealed truths enshrined forever within the pages of Holy Scripture. These truths are expressed in doctrines about God and God’s relationships with the world and in moral precepts about what God expects of us. Above all these truths are focused in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as recounted in the Gospels and expounded upon in the New Testament letters. For the Church to be built upon such a foundation requires a faithfulness to the text of Holy Scripture and to the doctrines and commandments taught therein.
Anglicans who think this way have a lot in common with protestant fundamentalists of other denominations who hold up the bible as the guardian of the true faith. A somewhat different point of view is held by many high church Anglicans, and by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians. For them, it is the Church which is the guardian of true faith. The Bible is still fundamental, but it is the Church which interprets the Scriptures and through councils of Bishops, or the Pope, informs the Church’s members what they are to believe and do.
It is precisely because some Anglicans here and abroad believe that the Episcopal Church has not been faithful to Holy Scripture that they have criticized and distanced themselves from our Church. In particular they strongly condemn the decision of our 2003 General Convention approve the ordination of an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as Bishop of New Hampshire. They also protest General Convention’s decision two years ago to provide for the blessing of same-sex unions. They cite verses from the Bible which take a negative view of homosexual activity and claim these as the proper foundation for the Church’s decision-making about actively homosexual clergy, homosexual relationships, and homosexual unions. For example, they turn to the first chapter of the letter to the Romans where Paul identifies homosexuality as “degrading,” “unnatural,” and “shameless” and pronounces God’s judgment upon it. Given such a passage, how could the Episcopal Church approve the ordination of gay people and even consider blessing same-sex unions?
The answer to that question is that there is another way of viewing the church’s foundation on the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. It is a way that sees the Church as built not just upon a deposit of doctrine and teaching enshrined in the Bible, but upon a living relationship with the God who is always leading us into a deeper understanding of what is true. This is the way that treasures as holy the story of God’s people as recorded in Scripture. But at the same time this way recognizes that the treasure of the Bible is bigger than the earthen vessels that contain it, the words that reflect the limited understanding of men and women. It is a way that requires grappling with Holy Scripture to figure out what is of God and what is a merely human attempt to describe God. It is a way of understanding the Bible that enables us to look carefully at a story like the one we heard today from Genesis and hear more than a horrifying narrative. It is a way, in fact, that is profoundly like the journey of the people of God told in the Scriptures, a story of revelation and discovery, an unfolding realization of how deep and how wide God’s love is. It is a way that is founded on apostles like Peter. You remember Peter – always a step or more behind his Master, slow to catch on, who needed a special sign from heaven to understand that the Gospel includes everyone, not just the Jews. It is a way founded on prophets like Jeremiah and Amos who dared to challenge the status quo at the court of the King and to speak an uncomfortable word from God. Or consider John the Baptist who announced the new thing that God was doing in Jesus. It is a way also that places the priority in decision-making on obedience to the law of love revealed in Jesus Christ.
I believe that the delegates of our Episcopal Church’s General Convention looked at Scripture this way when they have met to consider issues of human sexuality. In approving the ordination of a gay man as Bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions, our Church has concluded that God is calling us to change our view of homosexuality, to see homosexuality not as “degrading,” “unnatural,” and “shameless,” but as capable of being the means for loving, responsible, faithful relationships as heterosexuality. The real issue is not our sexuality but what we do with our sexuality.
In arriving at such conclusions, the General Convention did not disregard St. Paul’s words in Romans but decided that St. Paul’s views of homosexuality are in the same category as his teaching about women keeping silent and women covering their heads in church, about his acceptance of slavery, and about always obeying civil authorities because they are God’s appointed agents. It is worth noting that in previous ages, Paul’s words on these matters were used to deny women the right to vote, let alone be ordained, to defend slavery, and to denounce rebellion against tyranny and unjust laws. And while there are still opponents to the ordination of women who quote St. Paul (including many of the same people who oppose gay ordination and gay unions), no one still argues that the Bible is against the emancipation of slaves, the equality of women, the Civil Rights movement, and the American Revolution. Those voices are long silent.
As Jeremiah pointed out more than two millennia ago, the only way to distinguish a true prophet from a false prophet, one who speaks the word of God rather than the word of human beings, is whether the prophecy turns out to be true. The proof is in the pudding. Or as a familiar hymn puts it, “new occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth; they must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth.” And this fact, even the most conservative of Biblical fundamentalists knows full well. I don’t know of any Christian, however Orthodox, who believes that the instruction in Leviticus to stone a disobedient son to death should be literally obeyed. Nor do the conservative Anglicans of Africa, with their strict view of the inerrancy of Romans 1, have an equally strict view of 1Timothy 3 where St. Paul lays down the rule that Bishops must be the husband of one wife. The decision was made at a Lambeth Conference many years ago that this text does not apply to men who were polygamists before they became Christians. Hence there are African Bishops who in fact do have more than one wife.
And there are other laws in Scripture that even the most fundamentalist Christians disregard. Leviticus forbids wearing fabrics that contain both cotton and wool, eating shellfish, having tattoos, shaving off the corners of beards, and charging interest on loans. And what about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount? If we took that seriously, our country wouldn’t have a Defense Department, let alone troops in Afghanistan.
What is increasingly clear to me is that the Church’s foundation is not a set of doctrines, not a text. To be sure, Holy Scripture mediates God’s presence, purpose, and power to generation after generation, and doctrines and creeds are valuable attempts at putting the truth about God into words that we can understand. But God is not and cannot be confined to a set of words, no matter how ancient and revered the text. We the Church get ourselves into trouble when we forget that this is so.
Abraham Heschel makes this point in his book God in Search of Man. He says that organized religion has declined, not because it has been refuted by modern science or secular philosophy but because it has become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, and insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by words, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of preoccupation with the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.
That is why God calls us to be apostles and prophets ourselves. God calls us to be watchful and alert, to see the new thing God is doing, to have ears and hearts open to what God is saying to us today, trusting that God, as Jesus promised, is indeed leading us into all truth.
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Sermon preached on Easter V, May 18, 2014 by The Rev. Bill Eakins, Grace Church, Great Barrington
Gospel reading: John 14: 1-14
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
What are Christians to make of such a text in a pluralistic age? The assertion that Jesus Christ is the way to God is scandalous in a shrinking world where we are increasingly exposed to people of other religions and where many are beginning to realize the importance of understanding and appreciating the insights of such religious diversity. In the United States, Jesus as “the, way, the truth, and the life”has always been an issue in our relations with our Jewish neighbors. But now we have a growing American Muslim population for whom Christian exclusivism is equally offensive. What are we to do?
Well, one possibility, of course, is to eliminate the scandal and the offense by backing off from any exclusive claim. We could say that for us as Christians Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, our path for knowing God. For others the path is the Buddha, or Mohammed. And maybe that position makes sense to you; I know it does for many. But I have to tell you it just doesn’t work for me. I think it takes the guts out of the Christian faith and leaves us with nothing but a hollow shell of ethical propositions.
Another possibility is to adhere with renewed rigor to Christian exclusivism. Those bumper stickers you may have seen express this attitude: “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”Jesus is the one way to God. So whoever you are, give up the errors of your ways and believe in Jesus, or else.
Well, I am not happy with that position either. I think its arrogance and its judgementalism are in direct conflict with the very Jesus it claims to honor.
What I would propose is a Christian attitude toward other religions that upholds Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life”and at the same time respects and seeks to learn from religious diversity.
The reason for Christian particularity, for upholding the singular importance of Jesus, is the conviction that in Jesus of Nazareth, God has acted in a way that is of vital importance to all people everywhere.
What gave Stephen the courage to bear witness to Jesus as God’s anointed one in the face of an angry mob armed with stones? What changed Saul, a bystander to Stephen’s stoning, into Paul the ardent mission of the early church? What motivated Paul and Peter and the other apostles to risk their lives in spreading the Good News about Jesus Christ? It certainly wasn’t a burning desire to disseminate the Beatitudes or the Golden Rule. Rather it was a conviction that God had acted in the world in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Those who were witnesses to what God had done could not remain silent. Such good news had to be proclaimed not only because it had happened but because of what it means: God is King and Jesus is Lord, we are loved and we are redeemed. Or as St. Peter puts it in today’s Epistle: we have been “called out of darkness into light.”
I believe such apostolic conviction is the hallmark of authentic Christianity. It not only honors our heritage, but empowers Christians to be bold in being about God’s business. Wish-washy Christian belief can be a cop-out, an excuse for capitulation to whatever is the dominant ideology of our age. For example, during the Nazi era, the so-called German Christian Group chided the evangelicals of the Confessing Church in Germany for the Confessing Church’s resistance to the totalitarianism of Adolf Hitler. Why couldn’t Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the others loosen up a bit and see all the good that Nazism was doing? In response Bonhoeffer and other Christians of the
Confessing Church quoted today’s gospel: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me, says the Lord.” In other words, no one but Christ can claim our total allegiance.
Sometimes religious relativism can lead to moral relativism. And sometimes strong, definite Christian conviction can produce heroic saints who are brave enough to challenge the status quo and change the course of human events for the better.
Authentic Christianity dares to invite all people everywhere to believe in Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. And yet if Jesus is the way to God, it is certainly no straight or narrow path because Jesus is neither straight nor narrow. Rather, Jesus is full of a broad love for humankind, and Jesus has a rich appreciation for the complexity and ambiguity of the human condition.
Note well that our text does not say, “Beliefs about Jesus are the way to God”or “Having the right opinions about His teaching is the way.”It says, “Jesus is the way”The way to God runs right through what you see of God in Jesus. So, “I am the way,”(I who am not always easily understood), “I am the truth”( I who am never simple), “I am the life”(I who am always moving one step ahead of my bewildered disciples, reaching out to surprising people.) I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
Jesus is the one who told those parables about a recklessly extravagant God who sows seeds everywhere just for the heck of it, who allows the wheat to grow along with the weeds, who sends rain upon the just and on the unjust, whose kingdom is like a fishing net full of fish of every kind. Jesus also told how God is like a father looking down the road for a glimpse of a lost son, God is like a woman searching all the night through for one lost coin, and God is like a shepherd going out in the dark of night to find one straying sheep. And speaking of shepherds, didn’t Jesus, after calling himself the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, go on to say, “And I have other sheep who are not of this fold; I am going to bring them in also?”And likewise, in the very same “one way” Gospel that we heard this morning, doesn’t Jesus assure us, “in [God’s] house there are many dwelling places?” The God that Jesus reveals is a big and generous God whose love is overflowing, and whose compassions knows no limit.
So if any are looking for a text to make them feel smug as a member of the exclusive “Jesus club”, something with which to beat over the head the Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhists, a cleaver to separate the saved from the damned, you’d better think twice before quoting, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”The shepherd who leaves the sheepfold to seek the lost sheep and to seek the sheep “not of this fold”-He is the one way. And those who pride themselves on being members of the elect within the true Church and fail to reach out to love their brothers and sisters of other religious beliefs would do well to confess that they have simply failed to see the nature of God revealed in Jesus.
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”I do not think we Christians should shy away from the conviction and from the promise of those bold words. They invite us to a particular and a certain faith that has the power to change our lives and our world. And they invite us to be a people whose understanding and compassion are as broad and as deep as the God Jesus reveals.
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Sermon preached on March 16, 20144, the Second Sunday of Lent, Year A by The Reverend William J. Eakins
“What matters is not so much who’s a believer and who is an unbeliever, but whether the Spirit of the God whose love is so generous and enduring is living in me.”
He was a traditional senior warden type if there ever was one – a person of distinction and probity, a pillar of the religious community, respected by all and prosperous as well. His name was Nicodemus, and one night he set out to find Jesus and engage him in conversation. In that interchange, Nicodemus got far more than he had bargained for. “Rabbi,” Nicodemus began, “we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things that you do unless God is with him.” Now here is the voice of confidence, the voice of one with power and tradition on his side. “We know” are the words that flow naturally from Nicodemus’s mouth, as he, a leader of the Jews, begins a chat with the new rabbi. And what do Nicodemus and those he leads “know?” Well, they are sure that they have Jesus all figured out. They know the source of Jesus’s power. They know how God acts in the world, what can and cannot happen. They know the limits of things, what is possible and impossible. They also know the immutable facts about human beings: that people are born, grow old, they die. They have God and life all figured out, the theological boxes filled in. Nicodemus and his ilk know much or at least they think they do.
“No you don’t,” says Jesus. “No one can really know what is possible with God unless one is born from above, born anew, born of the Spirit.” Thus with his opening response to Nicodemus, Jesus moves outside the boxes, the familiar categories and theological assumptions of Nicodemus’ established, orthodox universe. And poor old Nicodemus is left stammering in disbelief, “How can these things be?” Nicodemus is actually not so very different from us.
There is a human tendency to shrink our religion down to a manageable size, to fit it into the small boxes of our inherited presuppositions and limited imaginations. We boil the richness of our faith down to slogans like “What would Jesus do?” and reduce the mystery that is God to something that fits on a bumper sticker, “Honk if you love Jesus.” We think we know much when we actually know little. We suppose we know the way things are, the limits of what can and cannot be. To us, as to Nicodemus, Jesus comes and says, “Think again. The wind of God’s Spirit blows where it chooses and it is beyond your knowing. If you want to be my followers, you must be willing to have your categories redefined, you must be willing to be blown by the Spirit into places you never would have dreamed of going.”
God’s Spirit has led to some surprising and significant changes in my own religious thinking over the years. Take, for example, my understanding of the famous verse from today’s Gospel, John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” I remember the time when this verse pinpointed the crucial importance of being a believer. You see, in the particular Christian culture in which I grew up, the world was divided into two great camps – the “born again” and the “unsaved.” The born again were those who believed in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. The unsaved were those who did not so believe and thus were perishing.
As I have grown older, I have come to a different perspective on John 3:16, a perspective in which the emphasis is not on our believing or disbelieving, but on God’s “so loving.” As the very next verse, John 3:17, makes clear, “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” From this perspective, the perspective of God’s abundant love, the world is not divided into the saved and unsaved but all of us are enfolded in God’s saving embrace. What matters is not so much who’s a believer and who is an unbeliever, but whether the Spirit of the God whose love is so generous and enduring is living in me.
I blush to say that there was a time when I was opposed to the ordination of women. I remember back in the early 70’s running for election here in Western Massachusetts as a deputy to General Convention. My platform included putting a stop to what I saw as a strange departure from the plain teaching of Scripture and the tradition of the Church. It seems a blessing to me now that I was never elected. What were once such self-evident, critical and eternal certainties about the proper role of men and women in the Church’s ministry, I now see as cultural excess baggage quite rightly set aside. If in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, what were we doing when we limited the ordained ministry by gender? How much the ministry of the Church has been enriched by having our full humanity, male and female, represented at the altar. What a welcome change from the Church I knew when I was ordained 45 years ago – when only boys could be acolytes, only men served on the vestry, and girls and women wore veils on their heads as they polished the silver and cared for linens in the sacristy. But if you had described the changes then in the offing to the Bill Eakins of 1969, he would have been astonished as he exclaimed, like Nicodemus, “How can these things be?”
There was also a time when I would have asked how it could be that the Church would ever consider blessing same-sex unions or ordaining practicing homosexuals. Surely “we know” that such things are wrong! But – do we? I have come to realize that sexual orientation is simply a fact of the way we are born – like having brown hair or blue eyes. If so, then why should the Church limit the blessing of Holy Matrimony to heterosexuals? Why wouldn’t God want homosexuals as well as heterosexuals to “love and cherish” each other “until [they] are parted by death?” And if people of the same gender are expressing their God-given sexuality in committed loving relationships, why can’t they serve throughout the breadth of the church’s ministry? Answers to these questions are, of course, being vigorously debated in the wider Anglican Communion. Some seem to find the very questions themselves to be objectionable and wish they had never been asked. Could it be, however, that the challenges raised to what we once thought we knew about homosexuality are not aberrations but the unfolding work of God’s Spirit?
And while I am at it, let me ask why it is that “we know” that only the baptized may receive Holy Communion at the Lord’s Table? There was a time when it was self-evident, when “we knew,” that the family meal of the Church should only be eaten by those who had become full members of the family by Confirmation. Then that restriction was changed to allow Communion for those who had been baptized. But now, I am not at all sure that this limitation is what God wants. After all, none of the apostles who partook of the Last Supper were baptized. They were Jews, not Christians, and they certainly had a faith that was far from either formed or firm. And yet Jesus gave them the bread and gave them the wine and said, “Take, drink, eat, all of you.”
Who are we to say who is worthy of coming to the Lord ’s Table? Does not the Lord invite all without distinction? Should not whosoever wishes to be fed come and eat? “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe,” Jesus asked Nicodemus, “how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” Jesus was not urging Nicodemus toward a new theology but toward a new life, a life of wonder and worship. Jesus wasn’t trying to get Nicodemus to replace his little theological boxes with slightly larger ones; Jesus was trying to get Nicodemus to do something far more profound – to surrender the “we know” attitude of presumptuous thinking and let himself be born anew.
There is a place, of course, for doctrine and for discipline, for thinking seriously about what we believe and the consequences of such belief for how we live. There is a time for saying “we know.” But let our affirmations of faith always be tempered by a large dose of humility, by the realization that our knowledge is partial and imperfect and that God is always bigger than our theology. So what of Nicodemus? We are not told in so many words what he made of his surprising conversation with Jesus that night. We do not hear of him again until the end of Jesus’ life. Jesus has been crucified, his body taken down from the cross, and there is Nicodemus now coming to prepare Jesus’s body for burial. This time, however, Nicodemus comes onto the scene not as a questioner but as a disciple. Now he does not say, “We know.” In fact he says nothing; he simply comes, bearing a precious gift: a mixture of aloes and myrrh, a sweet-smelling ointment whose perfume fills the air and is carried by the wind that blows where it wills. Note: The preacher acknowledges his debt to The Reverend Tom Long for some of the ideas expressed in this sermon.
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Sermon preached by The Reverend William J. Eakins, our supply clergy, on January 12, 2014, The Baptism of Christ, Year A
Do you realize how important it is to know who you are?
Having our Say* is the memoir of two Afro-American women, Sadie and Bessie Delany, who both lived to be well over 100 and died only recently. Their father, Henry Delany, was born a slave on a plantation in Georgia on the eve of the Civil War. After the war, he successfully pursued an education during the reconstruction era and eventually became the first black man to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church. Bishop Delany and his wife had ten children, Sadie and Bessie being the second and third born.
Their biography gives Bessie and Sadie’s own accounts of what it was like to grow up in the Delany family and in the racially segregated South of the Jim Crow era. In spite of tremendous obstacles, both women became successful and respected professionals – Sadie, the first Afro-American high school economics teacher in New York City, and Bessie, the first Afro-American dentist in that city. What was the secret of Sadie and Bessie Delany’s success in the face of the fierce racial prejudice with which they had to contend? Well, here are Bessie’s own feisty words: “You see, I think I’m just as good as anyone. That’s the way I was brought up. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret: I think I’m better! Ha! I remember being aware that colored people were supposed to feel inferior. I knew I was a smart little thing, a personality, an individual – a human being! I couldn’t understand how people could look at me and not see that, because it was sure obvious to me.” Note what Bessie says: she thought she was as good as anyone (if not better) because that was the way she was “brought up.” It was from her parents that Bessie Delany learned to know and appreciate herself. Bessie and Sadie tell us that their mother and father instilled in all their children a pride in being a Delany. It was a pride that was rooted in the Christian conviction that dignity and worth are the inalienable birthright of being a beloved child of God. What greater source of confidence and courage can there be than that of knowing you have such an identity?
On this Sunday of the Church year we commemorate the Baptism of Christ. The Gospels make it clear that it was this event which marked the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan, and from that day Jesus took up his mission of proclaiming the good news of God’s reign. The journey that would lead to Jerusalem, to the cross and to the empty tomb, that journey began with his going down into the muddy waters of the Jordan. And it is of enormous significance that the journey should begin with Jesus’ strong experience of his God-given identity. Matthew describes it like this: “And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” “Beloved Son” was the identity that sustained Jesus through the rest of his journey to the cross.
“Beloved Son, “Beloved Daughter” are the identities that sustain us too. The Good News that Jesus proclaimed is that every one of us is the son or daughter of God, we are the beloved, the ones with whom God is well pleased. At our baptism, that identity was claimed for each one of us personally. A cross was marked on our foreheads and we were given an everlasting identity: you are a child of God, one for whom Christ died and rose again, a member of God’s household, an heir of eternal life.
Do you remember your baptism? Probably you don’t, if you were baptized as a baby. But you do if you were nineteen years old and a college sophomore like I was. Since my parents were Baptists when I was a child, I had been “dedicated” as a baby, not christened. Baptism was postponed until I was old enough to decide for myself. But when I reached that age, I decided baptism was not for me. I became a rebellious, non-church-attending adolescent. It was not until I went away to Trinity College that I started going to church again. I had my first experience of Prayer Book worship in the college chapel, and I was hooked. I fell in love with the Episcopal Church and started attending the chaplain’s inquirers’ classes.
So it was that I was finally baptized as a young man a few days before my Confirmation. And to please my parents, I was baptized by immersion in the tank of a Baptist church in Hartford. The minister there was a friend of the Trinity College chaplain. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon in late spring. I remember the bright sunshine, the fresh green of the grass and leaves, the pink and white blossoms on the trees, and the somber gloom of the big, empty church. The only witnesses to the event were the chaplain, my parents, and my college roommate. I put on the white Baptismal gown with its weighted hem to keep it from floating up, and I waded out into the warm, waist-deep water to meet the minister. He asked me if I wanted to follow Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. And I said “Yes,” knowing full well all my questions and reservations about what such a commitment might mean. But, nonetheless, following my profession of faith – my barely-burning dim wick of faith – I leaned back into the minister’s arms and was lowered beneath the water. I was then raised back up to my feet, water streaming off my head and sodden gown, and the minister declared that I was one of Christ’s own and welcomed me into the Church of God. I had hoped that I would feel dramatically different, that there would be some zap of divine energy coursing through my body, confirming the reality of the words being said and the rightness of the decision I had made. The heavens did not open for me; I heard no voice saying, “This is my beloved son.” Yet still I remember and I treasure my baptism because, looking back through the years, I can see that it marked the beginning of my adult Christian life.
God took my decision seriously, and God has been with me and for me, using the events of my life to shape me into the person God created me to be, a transformation still unfolding. Above all, I remember my baptism because it gave me and still gives me the identity I hold most dear. It reminds me of who I really am: Bill Eakins one for whom Christ died and rose again; Bill Eakins, a person with purpose, the beloved child of God.
We need to remember who we are and whose we are because we have been baptized. We need to remember because the world around us is continually bombarding us with identities other than the one bestowed in baptism. There are the obvious identities defined by social and economic status, age, gender, race, education, sexual orientation and the like. But there are also more subtle identities. “You are a sensual being” say the movies, soap operas, and pop songs. “You are a maker and spender of money” say the ads and vendors; you are a consumer of high-tech sound systems and SUVs, of condos in gated communities and time-share vacation homes. “You are an independent, self-made being” says the modern secular world, “nobody will look out for you but yourself, so look out for number one.” And over against all these and other identities, God wants to remind us that our true and original identity, in the light of which all other identities must take their place, is beloved child of God. It is that identity which must inform and guide how we behave.
You, the congregation of Grace Church, need to remember who you are, especially as you search for a new priest for this parish. Like all Christian communities, you share in the great mission of proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ. Like all churches, you have a share in God’s mission of restoring a broken world. You have good news to proclaim and to put into action, good news of God’s reconciling love in Christ, love that breaks down barriers of race, class, and clan, overcomes fear, resentment, and shame and unites us into one new family. Like all churches, Grace is a missionary society, not a religious club. But freed as you re from the responsibilities of real estate, Grace is in a particular position to devote the resources of its members to its mission.
You are already involved in the work of feeding the hungry through food pantries and soup kitchens and through the labors of many young people raising two acres of vegetables for the poor every summer. What else is God calling the people of Grace to do? Search for a priest who will join you un considering that question and who will inspire and sustain this congregation in its focus on mission. The Delany sisters’ parents were always saying, “Remember who you are, Bessie Delany; remember who you are, Sadie.” And those girls did not forget, and the memory made them the happy, energetic, and productive people that they became. So, too, God is saying to each of us in our worship this day, “Remember who you are. Remember who I made you to be. Remember the identity I gave you at your baptism. Remember all of you, dearly beloved, remember who you really are.” *Delany, Sara, Bessie Delany, and Amy Hearth. Having Our Say. Kodansha America, 1993. Print.