January 30, 2000
It is wonderful to be with you at St. Margaret's, to be with my friends Robert Certain, Dan Rondeau and Sean Cox, all the lay leaders of this congregation, my colleague Bishop Burgreen and so many faces I recognize from my previous visits.
I am delighted that things are going so well here at St. Margaret's. Here is an enormous class of people who are going to commit themselves to discipleship by confirmation, reaffirmation and reception. The service will take a little bit longer, but for a good reason — we are making disciples. That is exactly what we should be about.
I thought I would share with you some thoughts about the piece of the service that we usually skip over, or perhaps do not give enough thought. Let me begin by asking you a question to ponder — not to ponder during the sermon perhaps, but to think about during the week. The question is this: What are you going to do after the service? I do not mean are you going to go for coffee hour and reception having a chance to say hello to me or to one another — that is good, or indeed, to the wonderful display by African Enterprises who have all these wonderful things to sell. Nor, after that, to go home and have brunch or play golf, or I understand there is some sort of football game this afternoon. I was asked to pray for the St. Louis Rams, but I said I am not going to take sides — I mean more than that.
What are you going to do after the service? Our scripture and our liturgy are as very much concerned about what happens next, as about what happens here and what brought you here. I recall about 15 years ago when I was privileged to have Bishop Desmond Tutu come to the church where I was rector in Santa Barbara. We had a glorious service. He preached an incredibly powerful sermon. It was a wonderful worship service as he said afterwards, "That was a good service." I sort of pressed him for an even better compliment. I said, "Bishop Tutu, what part of the service did you like the best?" He replied, "The end, when it was over." What he meant was, "I loved the way you finished the service, the prayer at the end and those words — `Go in peace to love and serve the Lord' — what a wonderful send off!"
God is always sending us; that is an essential part of the Gospel. We have a mission as a church, from the Latin word "mentare" meaning "to send." All Christians are missionaries — "sent ones." In fact, Jesus was always sending his disciples to practice being missionaries. He made the statement, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray the Lord of the Harvest to send laborers into his harvest." It was the sending out of the apostles after the resurrection of Christ that made the church a force to be reckoned with. It was not just their holiness, it was their going out, servicing and changing, and so you and I are apostolic. That does not mean we have an ecclesiastical pedigree, so much as it means we are followers of the apostles — the "sent out" ones. We are meant to move this way; that is what Jesus taught throughout the Gospel stories. "You are like salt," he said, "to bring flavor to the holy. You are like a light, a city on a hill. Everyone can see you, they are drawn to you, they are attracted to your light."
whole bread, giving energy to the dough. So you have got to step out, said Jesus, you are going to take risks, take chances, be vulnerable. So that is why we ask the question. Now you are here, what are you going to do after the service? That challenge is beautifully raised in part of the closing prayer which is so beautiful. Listen how we end our service, "Now Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord."
Send us out to do the work you have given us to do. I want you to think about this. What is the work that God has given us to do? Think of it in the context of the life of this congregation; or individual commitment in confirmation and discipleship; or perhaps in a larger scope, in terms of the church family.
Let's begin with the personal level, an individual's response to the question — send us out to do the work to have given us to do. God has placed you in a particular situation, in a set of circumstances that are unique to you. God knows that you can do something no one else can. God knows you are facing something that no one else is facing. God has something for you to do based on who you are, where you are and what he has given you to work with. That is a fact. Perhaps that something is to grow closer to him. Perhaps what he wants you to do is to put something right, to narrow the gap in your relationship with others or with God. Perhaps he wants you to confess to something, to get it off your chest, to seek forgiveness and to start over.
But perhaps there is a special task. You see, we all have ministries, not just Sean and Dan and Robert and myself, not just ordained people. Everyone has a ministry, either missionary or as a minister of the Gospel. God has something special for you to do. What is your ministry? And not just in your church life, singing in the choir or being an usher. What is your ministry in the world? What has God placed within close proximity of your life that you can change? That only you can change? You can make a difference for God.
That is what we are going to pray today when these special people come up to be received and confirmed. For those being confirmed I will lay my hands on them on behalf of all of us and I will say the words: "Strengthen O Lord your servant with the Holy Spirit, empower him for your service and sustain him all the days of his life." Empower for service. In other words we are setting aside these people to do something. We are sending them out to do something. And later in the service there is a wonderful prayer I pray over all the candidates on behalf of all of us. "Send them forth in the power of that spirit to perform the service you set before them." What is that service God is setting before you who are to be confirmed or received or baptized? Something special.
I recall preaching a sermon along these lines in Santa Barbara and somebody really was touched by God in that service -- a retired executive from an airline who had moved to Santa Barbara and was having a good time playing a lot of golf. He was touched that he should be using his life more effectively. He started a little organization called Independent Living, a simple little group. With his friends he gathered a bunch of men and they would go around and work with Family Services Agency and fix up houses so that seniors could remain in their homes rather than go to retirement places. Simple things. They made steps that were easy to climb. They made ramps to go up to the front door easier. They made hand rails for bathrooms and stairways. They made little steps to reach cupboards. Simple carpentry things, but changing people's lives. God touched him on the shoulder and said, "Do it."
Now you know what I am talking about. God has been begging you to do things, hasn't he? And you have been putting it off. We are so good at procrastination. I confess I am a great procrastinator. I live by the motto, "Always put off till tomorrow what you succeeded in putting off until today!" But God says send us out to do the work you have given us to do. Pray what that work is, so that through your prayers and your efforts you may make a difference for Christ as an individual.
Then there is a parish response. You as the people of St. Margaret's have been asked to do what God has set before you. And what is that? It is many things! — to be a faithful congregation and to grow the church; to witness to the power of God in this community. But you know and you are going to hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks and months, that your rector and clergy and vestry have been praying and studying; and they have come up with something called Fulfill the Vision.
They have a vision for St. Margaret's congregation, a wonderful vision. It involves fund raising to some extent; but it involves everyone joining in the effort of being one with them. They want to raise money so that some of the debts you have can be done away with so you can put all your energy into current programs and reaching out and being more effective. It is a dream to expand the school. We have always wanted a middle school. There is a dream for that, and a dream for more ministry. A wonderful Fulfill the Vision campaign.
Without a mission (vision?) A church can't go anywhere; and you have a wonderful one. And I know the people of St. Margaret's will come through as they always have. The choir can say it better than I have in an anthem they will sing at the offertory A Vision of St. Patrick's Breastplate: "Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Be all else but naught to me save that thou art." It is a beautiful setting. It makes me cry when I hear it. I am sure it will move you.
Vision. When churches lose their vision, loses the reason of why they are and what they have been sent out to do, something dies. Another story of the business man who used to go to church every Sunday even while he was traveling. He was in a big city and he looked up a church in the yellow pages and he found in the directory "Church of God, Barbecue and Grill." He was so fascinated he called the number and found from the person who answered the phone why they got their name. Apparently they were the Holiness Church of God. They met and they struggled; it was an urban setting; and in order to make things go they had a little fried chicken and brunch after church and it was very successful. Neighbors would come and join in and they made a little bit of money. Eventually so many people came that they got rid of the ten o'clock service and just had the eight o'clock so that they could have two sittings of the chicken dinner. And before you knew it they dropped the eight o'clock service as well, but they kept the name Church of God Barbeque and Grill because it was sort of a tradition.
Churches must have a mission (vision?) And the Fulfill the Vision campaign is exciting and exactly what God is setting before you as a congregation. When you pray that prayer, "send us out to do the work you have given us to do," your vestry and your clergy leadership have a great vision of what that work is.
Finally, just to widen picture there is another level, the Diocesan level, because you are part of the 52 congregations that make up the diocese of San Diego, and we have a vision, too. We are entering into what I call the Season of Transformation. That, too, involves fund raising and calling on the churches to do what they can to strengthen their witness and their ministry. We live in a very fast growing area of the country; we need to plan more churches, to expand the ones we have; to hire more missionaries a lot of exciting things, and you are going to hear more about it in the coming months. At our convention next week I am going to unveil the whole dream, our vision as a whole diocese.
What I am most thrilled about is that here at St. Margaret's you have taken the lead in that vision for the diocese. You have promised that in addition to raising money for your Fulfill the Vision campaign you are going to share some of that in a large amount, three quarters of a million, for the wider dream of the whole diocese building churches, doing Hispanic work in the Cacalia Valley, lots of wonderful things. Thank you for that. You always come through for me.
But I would remind you also that the diocese has been there for you, too. We came across some papers one time from the early 70's. In the diocese of Los Angeles (we were part of them at that time) they voted to allow a little part of money to three struggling missions in the Coachella Valley area, for they were barely making it. And so they voted some money so that they could start. Those three churches were the Church of the Good Samaritan in San Diego, St. Bartholomew's in Poway, and St. Margaret's in Palm Desert three of our largest and strongest churches that add so much to the life we share in community.
So basically our Season of Transformation is saying let's do the same; let's put energy into the places that are going to be very big some day. Temecula, for example. If you have driven through Temecula recently you can see the growth there. We hope you will be as excited about this as we are.
So God has set before us this vision of being useful. He is claiming it through our Baptismal covenant, through our Confirmation, through our commitment that we pray the prayer that God will use us. Pray it faithfully: "And now send us out to do the work that you have given us to do." As an individual, pray about it and see what God has for you to do, starting today. It is a family work in terms of the parish. Pray that St. Margaret's will fulfill its vision, an exciting vision. And I pray that with God's help and your cooperation and encouragement the diocese can fulfill it's vision and be a more vibrant dynamic entity in this fast growing society which is springing up all around us.
And God who has called us to serve him will without a doubt do what he promises when we say that lovely prayer at closing: "strengthen your servants, O Lord, with your Holy Spirit, empower them for your service, sustain them all the days of their lives." Amen