St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church
  • Home
    • Noticias (Newsletter)
  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • NEWCOMERS
    • FAQs
    • LGBTQ
  • Worship
    • Sunday Morning >
      • Sermons
    • Weekday Services
  • outreach
    • Pastoral Care
    • Outreach & Social Ministries >
      • Immigration Sanctuary
      • Navajoland Partnership
      • Senior Ministry >
        • Elder Care
    • Arts & Music >
      • Art >
        • Stained Glass
      • Music
    • Literature >
      • Library News & Book Reviews
  • FORMATION
    • Family & Youth
    • Adult Formation
    • All Angels Episcopal Day School
  • leadership
    • Job Postings
    • Meet Our Clergy
    • Meet Our Staff
    • VESTRY PAGE >
      • ByLaws
  • giving
    • Annual Giving
    • Stewardship
  • Contact

Sermon, David Martin, April 27

4/27/2014

0 Comments

 
It is always an honor and a privilege for me to talk about the word of God, the love of Jesus, our faith…and my doubts.  Today, I am truly grateful to have the opportunity to do so here at St. Michael and All Angels.  This is the parish which warmly welcomed my husband and me in 2008.  This is the place I was finally able to settle down and listen to the Spirit’s call for me to ordination.  This is the place where I was able to discern this call and you as a congregation lifted me up to that calling.  This is the incredible spiritual community that supported us with love and prayer while I was very sick with cancer two summers ago.  And this is the place where – exactly one year ago tomorrow – you all celebrated with us at the Blessing of our Lifelong Covenant.    Today I stand before you as a postulant on my path to becoming a deacon.  I am so grateful to be here.

Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Doubting Thomas!  Do the kids these days use the phrase “doubting Thomas”?  I’ll have to check my non-existent Twitter account for #doubtingthomas.  Many of us have probably encountered the story of Doubting Thomas before.  I know I’ve heard many sermons on the poor guy.  I wondered what more I could add to the mix.

In the interest of full disclosure, Thomas isn’t the only person in the Bible who doubted Jesus had risen from the dead upon hearing the news.

Matthew, Chapter 28: Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and tells her to instruct the disciples to meet him in Galilee.  They go.  But verse 17 says:  “When they saw him, they worshipped him but some doubted.”

Mark Chapter 16:  Jesus again appears to Mary Magdalene.  She tells the disciples what she saw.  Verse 11 says:   “But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.”

Luke, Chapter 24:  Mary Magdalene and the other women return from the empty tomb and tell the disciples what they have learned.  Verse 11 says:  “But these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.”

So why is all the DOUBT dumped on poor Thomas?  Each of the four Gospels tell us that many, if not all the disciples, could not believe their Lord had risen until they encountered him face to face….and in the story from Matthew, even THEN some of them were doubtful.

My best guess is that Thomas is singled out because he can represent each of us.  Instead of a group being doubtful, this is one person standing against a group of believers.  He doesn’t succumb to peer pressure.  Like many of us (all of us?) he wants to investigate for himself.  And when Thomas’ doubt is turned to belief, Jesus has something to say to him.  We’ll get to that later.

Doubt.

There is a fantastic stage play called Doubt.  It was written by John Patrick Shanley and premiered on Broadway in 2004.  In 2005 it won the Tony Award for Best Play of the year and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  I did not see the original production in New York City, but I saw an amazing production of Doubt right here in Albuquerque in 2006.

Spoiler Alert:  I’m going to tell you all about the play and how it ends.  If that concerns you, please feel free to tune me out now….if you haven’t done so already.

Doubt is a four-person play set in 1964 in a Roman Catholic Church and School in the Bronx.  Father Flynn is the progressive, popular, charismatic, attractive priest in charge.  Sister Aloysius is the mature, stern, stereotypical nun who rules the school as principal with an iron fist and steadfast convictions.

Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius are like oil and water.  She distrusts his ideas to try and make the church more accessible to the people.  She likes the old way of doing things.  She has her rules.  She follows them exactly.

The conflict of the play arises when Sister Aloysius learns from a novice nun and teacher, Sister James, that Father Flynn had a private meeting with one of the young male students of the school.  Mysterious circumstances around that meeting lead Sister Aloysius to accuse Father Flynn of sexual misconduct with the boy.  Father Flynn explains he was cousneling…helping the child, not hurting him.  Sister James is relieved and believes the priest’s story.  Sister Aloysius is not swayed and makes it her mission to have Father Flynn removed from the parish.  She is like a dog with a bone.  She will not let the matter go.  She hounds the priest about his actions and even asks the boy’s mother to join her crusade.

In the climactic scene, Father Flynn threatens to have Sister Aloysius removed from her position if she doesn’t back down.  The nun counters by saying she had spoken with the nuns at Father Flynn’s previous parish and learned of other improprieties in his past.  If he doesn’t resign, she will share this information with the bishop.  Father Flynn immediately applies for a transfer and is reassigned – actually he receives a promotion.

Later, alone with Sister James, Sister Aloysius admits she had not contacted the priest’s pervious parish.  She didn’t have one shred of proof that he was guilty of anything. Alone with the novice, Sister Aloysius cries the final line of the play:

“I have doubt.  I have such doubt.”

Doubt?   Doubt?  How could a woman…A NUN…with such strong convictions and determination have any doubt?  During the play, she showed not one ounce of doubt. But once she achieved her goal – the thing she had been fighting for all along – the thing she believed to be right….she had doubt!

And Thomas traveled with Jesus for three years.   Thomas saw the miracles he had performed.  He had listened to Jesus preach and knew what the future held.  And still Thomas didn’t believe the news of the resurrection without some proof.  He had doubt!

So where the heck does that leave us?  Here you are sitting in church with our smart phones, a bible full of encouraging words and a guy up here talking to you who sometimes has enough doubts of his own to fill a U-Haul trailer. What are we supposed to think?

Let’s look at Sister Aloysius.  I think once her mission was accomplished, her conviction to the problem was removed – she had nothing left.  Father Flynn – the real or imagined problem - was gone.  The thing Sister Aloysius had clung to most fervently was no longer pertinent.  Now there was a big, gaping void….filled with doubt.

Perhaps I could liken it to some Christian churches that spend so much time and energy on social issues – telling people what is right and what is wrong.  What to do and what not to do.  If you can concentrate on simple do’s and don’t’s – sexual morals, homosexuality, marriage equality, abortion, wholesome entertainment – then you don’t have time to dig into the deep mysteries of our faith.  Take away those banner issues and then you have to start thinking.  And once you start thinking…..well, look out.  Doubt arrives.

And at the end of Thomas’ story today, Jesus doesn’t rebuke the doubting disciple.  Instead, he encouraged Thomas to touch him, to place his hand in his wounds so that he might be able to believe.  Then Jesus says these amazing words:

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

He doesn’t condemn those who have doubts.  He doesn’t discourage the non-believers.  Jesus knows it’s a big leap of faith and listen to what he said “Blessed are those who have not seen and YET HAVE COME to believe.”  Jesus knows it going to be instantaneous.  He knows we have to come to believe.  We are human.  We have minds.  We need to see things.  I am from Missouri….the Show-Me State!  Seeing is believing as they say.

Back in the early 80’s there was a series of black and white posters aimed to attract young adults to the Episcopal Church.  Two in particular I remember were these:

“He died to take away your sins.  Not your mind.”

“There’s only one problem with churches that have all the answers.  They don’t allow questions.”

In fact, think about faith.  Without doubt, there would be no need for faith.  If we didn’t have questions or doubts then faith would be called….um, fact.

And listen to these words from the first letter of Peter from today’s epistle.   “The genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold, though perishable, is tested by fire.”  Peter didn’t say the strength of your faith is more precious than gold.  He didn’t talk about the having not one single doubt is more precious than gold.  No!  He compliments the genuineness of your faith – the honesty with which you want to believe.  That’s all anyone can ask of us.

So how do we wrap all this up?  How about exactly where we started – with what a wonderful, loving, nurturing, faith community we have here. That’s the very reason we come here - however often it is you might come here.  Together we can share our doubts and our problems and our sometimes wavering faith.  Together we can work on coming to believe.

Own your doubt.

It’s a process.  And that’s OK.  God is patient.  Jesus is patient.  The Holy Spirit is patient.  Let’s be patient with ourselves as well.

Will it happen overnight?

I doubt it.

But can we work together and help each other come to believe?

Certainly.  Without a shadow of a doubt!

0 Comments

Sermon, The Rev. Kristin Schultz, April 20

4/20/2014

0 Comments

 
Audio:  "Now the Green Blade Riseth," 1982 Hymnal #204, followed by Easter Sermon by the Rev. Kristin Schultz.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
            The Lord is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

How many of you are back to eating chocolate today –
            did anyone get into the kids’ Easter baskets already this morning
for that first taste of chocolate in forty days?
Or back to drinking coffee?
What else are you going back to this morning?

It is easy for us to think of Easter as getting something back.
In celebration of Jesus coming back from the dead
            we go back to the little luxuries we gave up for Lent –
            we go back to singing “Alleluia” –
In some ways, it feels like going back to “business as usual,”
            after the various ways we’ve observed Lent.

But Easter is not about going back.
When Jesus died,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
saw the life they’d known in the years they followed Jesus disappear.
So what did they think,
when they came to the tomb that first Easter morning and found,
            not a quiet burial place,
            but an angel with amazing news?

And what about the rest of the disciples?
What did they think when Mary and Mary came to tell them the news:
            Jesus is alive! He will meet us in Galilee!
Did they believe that Jesus would be there to meet them?
Or did they just go on to Galilee with some slight hope –
            because they didn’t know what else to do next?

Once they understood that Jesus was alive,
I imagine they looked forward to resuming the life they’d known
            as disciples of Jesus.
But that life was no longer an option. 
What Jesus has in store for the disciples      
            -- the gift of the Holy Spirit,
            living, and for some, dying as apostles telling the story of Jesus –
is nothing they’d ever imagined.

Easter isn’t about going back.
Jesus doesn’t come back to take up where he left off,
returning to his life as a traveling preacher and healer.
With Jesus’ death and resurrection,
God has done something completely new.
Jesus died as a sign of God’s love.
Jesus was raised from the dead as a sign of God’s power
to grant new life in the face of evil and of death itself.

Jesus’ resurrection is not a return to the good old days,
to the way things used to be.
The resurrection we celebrate at Easter is a promise of new life,
beyond our expectations –
but it is not a chance to go back.

Easter is a day of joy and celebration.
But we did not come easily to this day.
This week we heard the story of the Passion of Jesus –
his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion.
It is not an easy or comfortable story –
            but it is a part of the story we need to hear.
New life follows loss and grief.
There is no Resurrection without a death.

These past years have been difficult ones at St Michael’s.
We grieve for beloved leaders who have moved on –
            Fr. Christopher, Fr. Brian, and Rev Sue
We wonder what will happen next.
We wonder who we will be without Fr Brian,
            who shaped this congregation with his ministry for 30 years.
Some of us struggle with what it means to be the Church in
            a time of change and turmoil.

Many of us here also struggle with personal loss and change.
I know of grief that has left some of you reeling these past weeks and months,
            and there is so much more pain and heartache carried here today
            than I could possibly know.
Perhaps the celebration of Easter is hard for you today,
            and the cries of Alleluia ring hollow in your ears.
Perhaps you wonder what will be next,
            how you will pick up the pieces and go on.

Some years ago I was at a churchwide gathering,
            and each of us in attendance received one of these lovely glass angels.
The Bishop of the Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land was our speaker that day, and he shared the story of the angels.
During an Israeli military strike in April of 2002,
            tank shelling and air strikes on Bethlehem broke hundreds of windows.
Broken glass became a symbol of the town’s destruction.
More importantly, the broken glass symbolized
            the broken hopes and dreams of so many people.

A group of artisans began to gather the glass shards
            and transform them into these glass angels.
The artisans worked with the International Center of Bethlehem –
            a group that provides vocational training for unemployed Palestinians.
In their arts program, they ‪encourage human productivity and creative skills
            to enable people, through their own work,
            to participate in shaping their future. 

They could not change the horror of war and violence.
But they could move through that horror,
and transform symbols of destruction and war into symbols of hope and peace.

In the words of my mentor, Pastor Melody Eastman:
Resurrection promise isn’t about getting back what we’ve lost.
It is about being offered a new hope and a new joy that is different from anything
            we anticipated or expected or could have hoped for.
Sometimes that makes it hard to reach for.
Sometimes to reach out for a hope that we do not understand is a difficult thing.
It would be much easier to reach back to a hope that we remember,
            to claim something that was,
            but that is not what Jesus offers you today.
Not the chance to go back to what was,
            but to claim a new hope that exceeds your expectations.

My favorite Easter hymn is the one we sang just before the Gospel reading.
The bold Alleluias are fun to sing –
            but what speaks to my heart are the gentler strains of
            Now the Green Blade Rises.

            Now the green blade rises from the buried grain
            Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain
            love lives again, that with the dead has been
            Love is come again like wheat that rises green.

Sometimes, some of us get a bold, bright miracle in our lives -
            new life and revelation with a blast of a trumpet.
But I think Easter comes into our lives most often like this hymn – slowly, gently.
We tend the ground patiently
            in the hope that green shoots will again peek out from the earth.
We gather shards of broken glass that could cut our hands and feet –
            and maybe they do, and we bleed, and we weep.
But we hold the glass out to God, and with God
            we shape it into something new and beautiful and full of hope.

            In the grave they laid him, Love by hatred slain
            thinking that never would he wake again           

Sometimes in our lives we reach the end.
And that is where God meets us with the promise of Easter.
A promise of new life.
A promise, not that we will get back what has been lost –
            but that we can have new joy, new peace,
            new life beyond what we have imagined.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
            The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
0 Comments

Sermon, The Rev. Deacon Judith Jenkins, April 17 (Maundy Thursday)

4/17/2014

0 Comments

 
The moment when Jesus kneels down to wash the disciples feet, (EVEN THE FEET OF JUDAS) is in one sense a tragic farewell, a night so bleak, so dark ------YET, we see the foreshadowing of great hope – of the light from God’s unconditional love!

With less than 24 hours left on this earth for him, Jesus gathers his disciples together away from the crowds to an upper room.  The noise from the street below is somewhat muted --yet there is something different about tonight.  Though they are gathered together for a meal, there seem to be no servants around making preparations, no one waiting to wash the disciples' dusty feet before they recline together for a meal.

Jesus knowing that His death is near, THAT HIS HOUR HAD COME TO DEPART FROM THIS WORLD, rises from his place, takes off his robe, and proceeds to tie a towel around his waist.  The sense of uncertainty in the room rises.  I can almost hear the disciples, turning to whisper to one another --"What is He doing?"  Jesus explains to Peter, "you do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

Jesus is kneeling in front of his disciples and washing their feet.  I can picture in my own mind, when Mary is kneeling and anointing Jesus feet, or even if the story was about Peter washing the feet of the Master.  But for Jesus to kneel tonight, if He were here at St. Michael's and to wash MY FEET!!!!!  Would I understand?  Would I, like Peter, be reluctant to participate in this- the most tender act of Jesus?

 "So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you."  Jesus spells it out by giving them a new commandment, "that you love one another….as I have loved you"!   They are to humble themselves (We are to humble ourselves) and to SERVE one- another.

"You do not know now what I am doing -- but later you will understand. " Jesus knew that his death was near and "having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end."  Jesus girded himself to perform a menial act of service in spite of the concern and objections of Peter, who is puzzled and offended to see Jesus in the role of a servant.  And like Peter, tonight, we have to face our inner reluctance to serve and to be served.

We are called to wash each other's feet because that is precisely what Jesus did at the first Eucharist, at the Last Supper.  Both the Eucharist and the Foot Washing are meant to send us out into the world -- ready to give expression to Christ's love, Christ's hospitality, and course Christ's humility.  What is so unexpected, and so radically loving, about this foot washing, is --not just that it is the Teacher and Master doing a servants work.  What sticks out in my mind is that Jesus held their dirty feet (which undoubtedly they were dirty indeed)…and in that moment of intimacy --- he HELD SO MUCH MORE.    Jesus held their untrusting hearts, their weakened spirits, their calloused and embarrassed egos, and their unwillingness to be so vulnerable!

TONIGHT ----We ALLOW Jesus to serve us through one another!!!!

As Jesus has stripped his outer garments --- we will strip the altar this night, preparing for our journey to the cross tomorrow.  

Listen now to a poem,  by Ruth Mary Fox:  Stripped Tree 

Alone it stands and silent, a stripped tree,
         Robbed of its leaves, its nesting birds all flown.  
         Round it and through it bitter winds have blown,
         Testing its strength by stern adversity.
         Serene it stands tonight, all sorrow-free,
         Silvered with starlight, its branches radiant grown.  
         Had it been green with boughs, I'd have not known
         This rarer beauty now revealed to me.
         I am that silent tree upon the hill:
         Strip me of all my leaves, even of my song,
         If stark against the sky I can fulfill,
         My quest for ultimate Beauty.  Not for long
         Endures the darkness of earth's bleakest night.
         Serene the stars break through with silver light.

Serve one another this night, knowing that as we participate in this sacred act, we are experiencing God's love for us through one another.  Christ becomes present with us as surely as He is in the breaking of the bread -- Washing away the GRIME of all our frustrations, our struggles, our mistakes,-- tenderly touching us! 

Let us open our hearts to RECEIVE GOD'S LOVE, and to GIVE CHRIST'S LOVE, as we participate in the rest of our service tonight.  

AMEN

0 Comments

Sermon, The Rev. Dr. Robert Clarke, April 13

4/13/2014

0 Comments

 
0 Comments

    Archives

    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    August 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    May 2008

Picture
   SEE THE WEEKLY PARISH NEWSLETTER     
Questions about the life and ministry of St. Michael's?
Contact Us!
Click here for information on
​legacy giving.
Picture

505.345.8147                601 Montaño Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107                  office@all-angels.com

  • Home
    • Noticias (Newsletter)
  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • NEWCOMERS
    • FAQs
    • LGBTQ
  • Worship
    • Sunday Morning >
      • Sermons
    • Weekday Services
  • outreach
    • Pastoral Care
    • Outreach & Social Ministries >
      • Immigration Sanctuary
      • Navajoland Partnership
      • Senior Ministry >
        • Elder Care
    • Arts & Music >
      • Art >
        • Stained Glass
      • Music
    • Literature >
      • Library News & Book Reviews
  • FORMATION
    • Family & Youth
    • Adult Formation
    • All Angels Episcopal Day School
  • leadership
    • Job Postings
    • Meet Our Clergy
    • Meet Our Staff
    • VESTRY PAGE >
      • ByLaws
  • giving
    • Annual Giving
    • Stewardship
  • Contact