Homily to the Council of General Synod on Sunday, November 17, 2013 given by Sister Elizabeth Rolfe-Thomas, SSJD

Homily to the Council of General Synod on Sunday, November 17, 2013

(Readings: Mal 4:1-2a;Psalm 98; 2 Thess 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19)

When I first looked at the readings for today, they seemed dark and foreboding. From Malachi: “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble . . .”. The writer of the 2^nd letter to the Thessalonians tells us to keep away from believers who live in idleness (or in another translation) those who conduct themselves in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us. . .” In Luke’s Gospel, the disciples are told that the temple will be destroyed: “the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” This leads into a horrifying description of the end times and all that will happen before the Son of Man appears. There will be signs such as wars and earthquakes, famines and plagues.” It’s no wonder that the end of the world has been proclaimed so many times in the past. I remember back in the 70's or 80's when I was teaching high school, some people were convinced that the world was going to end during our Christmas holidays. We had heard of people building underground bunkers in Australia. Some of my students asked if they needed to study for their exams in January. I told them it was their choice, but if the world didn’t end, there would still be exams so they might want to hedge their bets.

Things can seem as bleak today as they have in the past: we have become so familiar with wars and rumors of wars, with hearing about devastating earthquakes and famines, typhoons and tsunamis, with news of climate change and the effects of global warming and the pollution of our planet. And the sense of impending disaster is not limited to the outside world. We sense it too in our church; we see an aging population, fewer people attending church especially children and young people; less money in the bank and many churches closing. It’s almost an echo of “not one stone left upon another”. It’s so easy to become discouraged. On Thursday afternoon, however, during the World Café exercise, I was particularly struck by something that had been written on one of the paper tablecloths. “Actual circumstances are an obligatory push to mission . . . they are an opportunity for mission.”

Times of crisis are challenging but they can also be seen as opportunities for change, opportunities to take risks, to try something new, to experiment because in one sense there’s less to lose. It’s almost as if we sometimes need to experience major losses in order to envision something new. I can be extremely comfortable with what is until something terrible happens which eventually opens me to new opportunities. When my husband died of a brain tumor in 1992, it seemed like the end of my world at that time. I no longer had a great desire to live. Life was simply putting one foot in front of the other, doing my job as a high school teacher and administrator the best way I could. I couldn’t have imagined at that time that I would enter the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine five years later and embark on a new life that would be completely fulfilling.

When everything is going well, there often doesn’t seem to be the same need to cry to God for help or to listen so intentionally for God’s still, small voice. But when disaster strikes or life seems to be falling apart, we remember that God has promised to be with us always to the end of the age. We become more intentional about listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit within; we may even take time to go on retreat to be more open and attentive to God’s guidance. 

On Friday evening, I took some time to look at the sticky wall. Some of the words that attracted my attention were hope, trust, openness to the Holy Spirit, humility, vulnerability, risking together, flexible creativity and experimentation, celebrating our identity and strengths. And finally a question: What are others both inside and outside the church calling us and needing us to be?”  I think this is a question that is well worth pondering not just at CoGS but throughout the church family.

Phyllis Tickle, an Episcopalian lay woman from the southern U.S. who has written 2 or 3 books on the Emerging Church, believes that these are exciting times in which to live. Among the Anglican Religious communities in North America, all of us are smaller than we once were. Some are down to fewer than 5 members but at our annual conference in Racine, Wisconsin, this past May, there were representatives of about 15 new communities that have been or are now emerging. It was very exciting to hear about how they had come into being and what they are doing. Only a few live together in community or have a mother house as more traditional religious communities do, but all of them are finding ways to be community and to serve in their respective churches and communities. It’s so important to see this present time as an opportunity for new life, for the birthing of new ways of being church. Our readings this morning are not completely dark or without hope. There are positive signs in each of the readings.

The reading in Malachi ends with these words: “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings.” We saw a beautiful example of this in yesterday’s video [on the 2^nd National Native Convocation in Minaki in 1993].

Psalm 98 is full of love and joy:

“O sing to the Lord a new song, for God has done marvelous things. . . “

“Shout with joy to God, all you lands; lift up your voice, rejoice, and sing.

Sing to God with the harp, with the harp and the voice of song.

With trumpets and the sound of the horn, shout with joy before . . . the Lord.

We have heard this joy in the Lord many times over the past few days especially in the commemoration of Archbishop Michael Peer’s apology to the Indigenous peoples we had last night in the context of a communion service. The 2^nd letter to the Thessalonians tells us not to “weary in doing what is right.”

Even the passage from Luke’s Gospel has words of hope:

“I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”

On Friday, I so enjoyed hearing Melissa [Green] and Bp. Mark’s report of the World Council of Churches’ conference in Busan, Korea,. While I was saddened that our differing theologies about the Eucharist still prevent Christian churches from coming together around the sharing of bread and wine, I was profoundly moved by Melissa’s description of people coming together in the washing of one another’s feet. To wash someone’s feet or to allow someone to wash one’s own feet is an action of great intimacy. How wonderful that members of so many denominations could enact this sign of servant-hood and hope, providing us with a concrete way in which we can come together in Christian unity.

St. Francis is supposed to have said:

Proclaim the gospel and if necessary use words.

We can give thanks for what Anglicans have done in the past and seize the many opportunities we have to show  by our actions that we genuinely care for one another in the church and even more especially outside the church, not only in words, but in all that we do.

We have a message of healing and reconciliation for the world, a message that was proclaimed yesterday afternoon in such a powerful way. People need to be reassured that healing and reconciliation are possible, that “neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else is all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Jesus call us to feed the hungry, to provide clean water for those who thirst, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit those in prison, to care for the sick. We can’t do everything but we can all do something. We can look at our skills and areas of influence and choose where to focus our attention and our energies so that we can make a difference and have an impact on our world.

Our church may be much smaller than it was, at least in North America, but it can still make a difference. 

The Sermon preached on the Feast Day of St. Margaret of Scotland by The Reverend Frances Drolet-Smith

St. Margaret 16 November

Queen of Scotland, Helper of the Poor, 1093 — Commemoration

Matthew 25: 31-40

Today we commemorate Margaret, Queen of Scotland, a job description impressive enough, but I am more impressed and intrigued by the second notation given her in Stephen Reynolds’ compilation For All the Saints – Margaret is called “Helper of the Poor.”

Margaret was an Anglo-Saxon princess who married King Malcolm III of Scotland in 1069. Together they raised eight children (I’m sure they had help) and, also together, they promoted reforms in all facets of Scottish life: in the royal court, in the Church, and in the nation itself. But Margaret is chiefly remembered for her efforts on behalf of Scotland’s poor. She gave away large sums of money and also held institutions, already in place, accountable to their mandates of actually providing relief to those they purported to help: the homeless, hungry, and orphaned. Margaret also provided funds to buy Anglo-Saxons out of slavery, indentured by their Norman conquerors. It is for this merciful act that, to her title of Queen, is added the even greater title — “Helper of the Poor.”

This passage from Matthew’s Gospel marks and makes a resounding end to Jesus’ public discourse, making them extremely poignant “last words”. Here Jesus instructs his followers in “what to do next”, “what to be busy at” – in short, how to live their lives without him there to model it for them. The work includes attending to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the imprisoned – those in actual prisons, as well as those in economic or spiritual, prisons. In short, Jesus is instructing his followers, including us, to be busy sharing the gifts of Grace; gifts as basic as food and water, gifts equally basic to human existence as acceptance, love – solidarity with “the least of these” in every possible way. In doing so, we care for Christ who continues to live among us. Neglecting to do so....well, not to put too fine a point on it...fails Christ.

I’d like to tell you another old story:

It’s a story from the desert – a story from the earliest religious communities dating back to the end of the 2nd century. It’s a story that I think has something to say to us as we try to come to terms with how to live in a world where people are increasingly fearful, un-trusting, and apprehensive to express compassion,. to live compassionately.

A monastic community was in trouble and so the abbess went into the wilderness, seeking wisdom from an anchoress.

She said, “My community is shrinking in numbers, the Sisters are quarrelsome and grumbling, there are few visitors and our worship hardly ever gives me joy. What is to be done?”

The Anchoress said, “Tell the first Sister you meet on your return that the Messiah has come and is in the community.”

“What!” said the abbess, how can that be? They will tell me that I have gone mad.” The anchoress smiled that knowing smile, like anchoresses do . . .

So even though she felt very foolish, the abbess did as she was told. The word spread in the community, from one to another. One by one the Sisters began to change their attitudes, and their behaviour toward each other. Life improved for them all and the community once again became a center of love, peace and compassion.

This “old” story is really about living well in community. And where ever we find ourselves living, be it in families, in parishes, in the places where we work, or in the wider community, we are called to choose, day by day, sometimes minute by minute, how we will live – in harmony, or at odds with one another. Image how life would be if we really believed the Messiah was in our midst. . .

Jesus encouraged his followers to love one another, to care for anyone in need, whatever the need, but he was not naive – he knew that living together is hard work, that people don’t always get along, that we don’t always see eye-to-eye, so he also encouraged his followers to pray for their enemies, to do good to those who persecute or harm them. “Living well in community” is precisely what we ought to be about, whether inside these lovely walls or “out there” in the big world: living lives of prayer and service and welcoming strangers in Christ’s name. The community in that desert story had essentially forgotten “who” they were; they had forgotten how to live together with loving compassion.

In our retreat this weekend, we’ve been considering how God calls us to the task of making peace and in turn to offer peace to others. Despite evidence to the contrary, I’ve been bold enough to suggest that transforming the world is not an impossible task! Fundamental to our lives as Christians living in an often troubled world is the understanding that hope is a choice. Not-so-long-ago, this Millennium, now no longer so new, but remember when we started it? It seemed fraught with possibility and promise, and we had such high hopes. We’re only 13 years in and we’ve already witnessed several wars and rumours of war and in the process, we’ve convinced ourselves we cannot trust anyone, let alone, get along with or help them. The horrific events of September 11^th unsettled us to our core, awakening in us a whole range of primal emotions: fear, anger, disillusionment, revenge, helplessness. After seeing the unspeakable, some were moved to retaliate and we have seen acts of violence and vandalism unleashed on yet more innocent people. We may well wonder where this madness will end.

Well, that will be determined by how we choose to live: in fear, or in love. In anger, or in deeds of mercy. In revenge, or in peaceful pursuits. In helplessness, or in hospitality.

The Sisters in that old story were challenged to see the Messiah in their midst – we too can look for the Messiah in our midst, and see the change not only in others, but in ourselves. The Good News here is that there is no checklist of good deeds to fill out. Jesus is talking about our manner of living here, and it’s one that isn’t motivated out of the fear of Hell or the hope of heaven, for that matter, but a life that’s driven by an authentic love. In a world increasingly characterized by fear and suspicion, what is the Church called to be? How do we change hostility into hospitality?

Compassion is a spiritual practice. Theologian Carl Gregg says “The day-to-day practice of compassion and of love toward your neighbours (and he means, all your neighbours!) is much more important and difficult than simply believing a creed or a set of doctrines.” Think of it: if others are praying that the hungry be fed, the naked clothed, that peace will reign – maybe we can be the answer to their prayer. An exercise the participants in the retreat are doing is making Prayer Flags. Prayer Flags are seen all over the mountainside in the Himalayas. They do not carry prayers “to” God, as many think; rather the prayers are blown by the wind to bless the countryside – silent, powerful witnesses carrying messages of goodwill and compassion that can change the hearts of those who see them. Tomorrow we will each take a flag home with a commitment to somehow be the answer to someone’s prayer.

I am not so naive to think we can make it all better but we are required to make the world right in front of us a little more just, a little more merciful, a little more filled with love. With God's grace, our meagre efforts, however small, will spread from one to another, the world over. We may never see the fruits of the seeds we plant, but as any gardener knows, planting them at all is the thing that matters.

The Reverend Frances Drolet-Smith

Some of you may remember Timothy Matthews, the former Bishop of the Diocese of Quebec. If not, you may remember hearing a blessing he used often, that many have repeated over the years: May God bless you wherever you go, and may you see the face of Jesus in everyone you meet.

Frances Drolet-Smith is an Oblate of SSJD and  a parish priest in the Diocese of NS and PEI