Sermons

Sep 30 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor - Our parish birthday, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

Our parish birthday, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels
Sept. 30, 2007

Today is, in a sense, our parish birthday party. And so I’d like to indulge in a little story-telling about our life, and give thanks.

Churches traditionally celebrate their own birthday on the day that is appointed for their patron saint. In 1950, our founders met for the first worship service in the last week of September. And so when they came to decide upon a patron saint, they looked at the church calendar and found at close hand the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, September 29. And so voila! we came under the patronage of the angels. (I find it a wonderful coincidence that at the same time when they were conceiving of this parish 57 years ago, I was also conceived in my mother’s womb.)

St. Michael’s began as a mission congregation of St. John’s Cathedral. You can see one of the original pews from the cathedral in our parish hall. Just as we recently began San Gabriel’s mission on the West Side, the cathedral began this as an outreach to the wild frontier of the North Valley. We began in a Baptist church on 4th Street, just south of Griegos on the east side, right behind El Festivale Restaurant. You can still see the old church in the back.

When we got this land here and began to build, Montaño Road was a dirt road and this land was alfalfa fields. Parishioners helped build the original church – now our parish hall – with their own hands. The cost for materials was about $30,000.

Many parishes in the diocese gave us furnishings. The bishop’s chair – over there in the corner – was given by St. James in Mesilla Park, where our first Rector, Paul Saunders, was ordained. The bell we ring every Sunday, cast in 1860, was given by the long-gone St. Peter’s Church in Rincon, NM. The stained-glass windows were created by the local artist John Tatschl, who has quite a bit of art displayed at the University.

At the time, Albuquerque had 96,000 citizens. The North Valley was an odd mix of traditional semi-rural Hispanics, wealthy Anglo land-owners, and bohemians who liked the cultural diversity and rustic charm of dirt houses and chickens in the front yard. You want to know how we got to be the way we are today? Just look at our founders: the weirdos who couldn’t fit in at the Cathedral!

Ever since, we’ve had people from all levels of income and education, an urban Indian ministry, a Jewish congregation, a strong gay and lesbian presence, an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox congregation, Hispanic ministry, Zen-style contemplative prayer, and displaced and refugee familes from Cuba, Poland, and Vietnam, not to mention all of the angels. Truly a motley crew.

St. Michael’s hosted the very beginnings of what became the Albuquerque Academy. Classes were held in our old parish hall, now the location of our library and preschool. We’ve hosted other schools too: the Tuller Day School, a Montessori school, and for the last 20 years, our own All Angels Episcopal Day School.

Besides education, St. Michael’s has been known for its excellent and consistent programs in spirituality, outreach, and the arts. Our liturgical style was really set by my predecessor, Peter Moore, who in the 1970’s was a national figure in promoting and educating Episcopalians about worship that is deeply traditional and yet contemporary in style, creative, well-designed, and grounded in sound history and theology.

We’ve been tested by fire, once literally, when we survived a major conflagration set by an arsonist in 1990. Then, for 15 years, we were tested by figurative fire in a painful relationship with our diocese. In both cases, we grew stronger in the process, confident that we can handle difficulty, and clearer about what is most important to us.

We’ve had several building campaigns along the way, including the last one when we constructed this building 10 years ago. Today we are poised to begin another major building campaign, which you will be hearing about in the next few months.

As in other campaigns in the past, we’re just trying to catch up with the growth in membership and ministries that we have. We’ve run out of room for classes, meetings, outreach, storage, administration, music, cooking, playing, you name it! And so like our forebears, we in our generation will do our part to provide a place for worship and ministry not only for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren that will come after us.

From a small, rural church in the 1950’s we have become the 2nd largest in the diocese, and within the top 10% nationally in terms of attendance, budget, programs, and staffing.

But there is something far more important than all these historical memories and facts. And that is the work of the Spirit of God through this community. In ways that we cannot ever measure or even know, God has touched, healed, comforted, challenged, and changed thousands of people here. As so many have observed, this is the real deal. The presence of the holy is palpable. We have the privilege of being a part of something where the living God is truly among us, called upon by authentic prayer, responsive to our needs, and supportive of our efforts to serve others around us.

As we pause on our birthday to take the long view, we reflect on what this parish means not only to us, but to those upon whose shoulders we stand, those who will come after us to stand on our shoulders, and so many others in our city and state who are affected by all that we do and all that we are.

We ask one another in this season to support the ongoing presence and work of this extraordinary community with financial pledges for the year ahead – we are our only source of income, and we need to raise $700,000 to pay for what we do here.

But beyond financial commitment, we also ask one another to pray for the work of the Spirit among us, and to participate regularly in worship. And we ask that each person find ministry that they can engage in or initiate, so that all of us end up creating the good work that makes this place so lively, so full of energy.

This is not a clergy-dominated, top-down institution. We have become a community where ideas and activities bubble up from the ground level, where real dialogue and debate about our life takes place, where consensus is sought and usually found, and where everyone is expected to take responsibility for our continual renewal. For being a member of a church is not like joining a club and then passively consuming some of the offerings that the staff provides. We are the living Body of Christ, with every one of its members taking a part in a shared experience of teaching, learning, growing, worshiping, and serving.

Today is our 57th birthday. As step forward into our future, we are blessed with a dynamic and creative Associate Rector and Deacon for Social Ministry, many gifted lay and ordained leaders, a strong financial position including growing capital and endowment funds, a master plan for facility expansion, and more exciting ideas for ministry that we have the time to develop. Like any parish, we are far from perfect, and we have our shortcomings and habits that sometimes frustrate the work of the Spirit. But we are healthier than most, and therefore have a solid foundation to meet the challenges ahead.

Speaking of which, most of you know that our bishop has announced his resignation because he feels that he cannot proceed in the progressive direction that the Episcopal Church is going. You also may know that the clergy of the diocese just spent a couple of days with him and our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. I was left with the impression from Bishop Katharine that like our parish, our Episcopal Church is healthier and stronger than ever, and that we have nothing to worry about in our future. We will continue to be an amazingly diverse and creative bunch, consistently finding new ways to challenge our own thinking, serve the suffering, and carry out a credible contemporary witness to Jesus Christ in this world. I am honored to be a part of this congregational and national family of faith.

So thank you, thank you, all of you who help make this a reality, through your time, prayers, worship, friendships, money, and service. It is no small thing to be the living Body of Christ in this world. The world needs Christ, and we are the only hands, mind, feet, and heart that he has on this earth. Keep up the wonderful work, and happy birthday!