St. Patrick: Intimacy with God

Why I am Episcopalian:

Ascension Mission

Epiphany 1C, Jan. 10, 2016

1. Episcopal Jokes.

Three men in hell.

After a few thousand years, they start talking –

Why are you here? What did you do?

Hindu – vegetarian for life, but hungry, ate a half-pound burger at Bad Daddy’s.

Muslim – no pork allowed, but oh, that sweet smoky bacon – dipped in maple syrup … I couldn’t resist, and well …

Episcopalian – he just sighs, and looks dejected. There I was at a dinner party – everything laid out perfectly – china, crystal, flatware – they served the salad, and not thinking, I ate my salad with the wrong fork …

**You know you’re Episcopalian when the preacher says something funny, and you smile real loud …

You know .. when you’re willing to pay up to $1 for a church meal …

Seriously … Why am I an Episcopalian Christian?

2. This past week, I found my self reading excerpts from several authors I’d read in the past -

·      Rob Bell, for one. Bell is an evangelical that evangelicals like to hate.

o  In his book, Love Wins, he argues that hell – if it exists at all – is much smaller than we can imagine – because love wins in the end, God’s grace, that God, and Scripture testifies to this fact repeatedly, plans to bring people from all the ends of the earth into the fold – which by the way, is what Acts hints at with Samaritans – outsiders – receiving grace.

·      Philip Yancey – another evangelical, in his book, What’s so Amazing about Grace, tells the story about one of his best friends, Mel White.

o  White disclosed to Yancey that he was gay. Yancey doesn’t understand. He hadn’t really known anybody gay …

o  But Yancey watched and learned. He observed and had conversations with other gay Christians – these people lived and worshipped and prayed and sang hymns just like you and me – and finally Yancey realized God’s grace shows-up there, too – is far more extensive than Yancey had imagined.

·      Presbyterian Frederick Buechner, in his memoir, The Sacred Journey, spoke about his own father’s suicide, when Buechner was just a boy.

o  Buechner would tell people, My father died of a heart attack. But he wrote, That seemed at least a version of the truth. He had had a heart. It had been troubled.

o  One day he walked by his brother’s door – his brother was weeping openly, something Buechner had not really been able to do – and hearing his brother’s tears pinged his own soul – and he realized the depth of his own loss and despair – but also that God equal in pain over both his and his father’s pain. Again – the grace of God.

RECAP: The evangelical discovering only a tiny hell.

                  Another evangelical who gets that God accepts everybody.

         and a Presbyterian who realizes God feels the pain we feel –

3. When I was a new priest, non Episcopalians would remind me that the Episcopal Church was formed because of divorce, and I would bristle.

You remember - Henry VIII, and all – wanting a male heir, and thus a divorce, he abandoned the Roman Catholic Church so he could leave his wife.

I would answer our critics defensively, and say, no, that’s not it at all – It wasn’t Henry, but Elizabeth who finally separated us from the Romans.

But these days I have to ask, why should I be scandalized because of Henry and divorce? Wouldn’t I rather be in a church borne of human failure than in one that is built upon the illusion of perfection? Wouldn’t I rather serve a God who accepts and understands my failings, and believe me when I say, there are many?

4. Jewish scholar and Rabbi Abraham Heschel distinguishes between one’s sin and one’s relationship with God:

sins affect God’s attitude temporarily – [sins] do not alter your relationship with God radically.

God’s love … is eternal – so it is inconceivable that sin, the work of humans, could destroy what is intimately divine and eternal? Your relationship?

5. We call God Father, and so we should. Parent, and what parent among you would deem your relationship with your child irreparably fractured because of anything your child has done?

Why do we insist as Christians on sending those we don’t understand to hell?  Scripture repeatedly speaks to the universal nature of God’s salvation –

         that it is for all the world to see.

And the same the Holy Spirit that, as a dove descended on Jesus at baptism –

is the same Spirit of flames on the heads of

the disciples at the day of Pentecost –

And the same Spirit the outsiders – the Samaritans – so scandalously received -  

And the Same spirit that seals you in

baptism as Christ’s own forever.

Forever. Christ’s own, and neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities, nor the present nor the future shall separate you from the love of God.

Not temporarily, not until you do the next bad thing, not until you doubt – but forever.

The old Latin – dictum …

vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit

… whether you call on God or don’t call 

on God, God will be present with you. … 

6. Why am I an Episcopalian? or at least why do I stay Episcopalian?

Baptists are literal about the Bible.

Catholics are literal about authority.

Episcopalians are literal about grace.

We believe God loves us no matter what

7. Your Vestry and I met in retreat this weekend. We talked about Ascension, and who we are and where we are going.

We reminded ourselves of how far this congregation has come – how much healing has taken place – and how much love and compassion happen here.

All Grace, all the time – and now, the question is, whatever will we do with all that grace …

 if not look for ways to give it away. Intentionally.

To those in this community – who are bound by a faith without love.

Knoxville is a religious place – the very buckle of the Bible belt …

         But is it a town of grace?

We have a mission, here. A purpose. To give grace – free grace – away.

And your vestry and I plan to look for ways to do this. And I hope you will, too.

So yes, Episcopalians love to sing in four-part harmony.

        

Yes, Episcopalians think their priests should visit them in the hospital even when they don’t tell the priest they’re in the hospitals.

Yes, Episcopalians believe in prayer but hate praying out loud.

But most of all, Episcopalians are Christians who live the love of God – imperfectly, but persistently. Grace.

Whatever will we do with all that grace?