Sermons

"All things being made new."
The Rt. Rev. Richard L. Shimpfky
December 16, 2007

Good morning. There was an old bishop - just like me - who got up to speak one morning. Adjusting his glasses and sermon, he touched the microphone and, sort of under his breath said, "There is something wrong with this microphone," to which the entire cathedral congregation replied, "And also with you."

I am very glad to be here with all of you; with Emily, Judith, Kurt, Daniel and Tracey, your Dean. It is my considered and well researched view and testimony that your dean is the very finest urban priest in the whole of the American Church.

The Gospel and Psalm today sets our "marching orders," do they not: to build up a broken world, to feed those in need, to clothe the poor and free those in prisons of fear, injustice and oppression. We need to talk about all of that, but first a story:

In the course of Eugene O'Neill's stage play, Great God Brown, Brown is putting his children to bed and he says the strangest of things:

Margaret, a little glue; gentlemen, a bit off paste, a little glue, here and there, and even broken hearts can be made to do a yeoman's service." And then, as Brown reaches for the light switch - the children wide-eyed with amazement - he puts his finger to his lips and says, "This is daddy's bedtime secret for tonight: it's a broken world; men and women are born broken. They live by mending, and the grace of God is the glue."

I believe in the grace of God and I believe it is that which lends whatever gluing there is to be found in this tragically broken world, and I offer O'Neill's words to you as Gospel truth. Besides, my very insightful wife says that people don't need a lot of hermeneutics, they need something to take to work on Monday!

Our nation faced the broken-ness of the world six years ago and we have not really begun to regain our equilibrium from that great break. Some are saying we've simply dropped out of history and useless to God, or we've become like a raging goliath: flailing and hurting anyone or anything in our path. It is a broken world, and we live by mending.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine fell into a depression. He called his mother to inquire if there had been any history of depression in the family that might help explain the fearsome thing at work in him. "NO!" replied his mother, her voice betraying a distinct edge. "No one in this family has ever been crazy and neither are you. Now, get your act together and get on with your business!" My friend said that he knew right then that this was something to keep under his hat; and proven when those he did tell soon stopped calling, and when he called them they most often didn't call back. It's a broken world, and we live by mending.

Last week we saw the church's broken-ness in the decision of the Diocese of San Joaquin to leave us, especially hurtful because it perported to be a statement of anti-homosexuality when, in fact, it represents a transparently cruel smokescreen to cover the real agenda in a now-very-old-process set into motion in the late 1960's: a rebellion against women in ministry, especially a woman Presiding Bishop; It is, indeed, a broken world but we will live by God's grace, through even this rupture.

In light of God's grace, I am really tired of Episcopal hand-wringing. We do better to celebrate mending by remembering that this church of ours was called into being by God 600 years ago precisely to be a church for all people and not just a church of some people. By its creation, our's is house of prayer for all people; a church to which everyone is welcome, indeed a member by virtue of baptism. At the American Revolution we ceased to be "established," but we remained a "public church;" a church for all the sorts and conditions of people. After a too-long period of sleep and forgetfulness, we came to our senses in the likes of J.P. Morgan in the Industrial Revolution, who saw to the welfare of New York's immigrant was met at his beloved St. George's Church, Styesvant Square. Recruiting an astonishingly able Rector in Canada, Morgan put his fortune into the hands of the Rector's hands, thereby seeing to it that the New York people caught in the gears of revolution fared differently than their counterparts in Europe. It is said that Episcopal pews today are full of people whose antecedents' lives were spared, enhanced and spiritually served by this old church of ours. We need to remember and celebrate that grace!

We need to celebrate, also, Presiding Bishop John Hines and the General Convention that in the 1967 decided to give $20 million-Episcopalian-dollars (a whole lot of money then) to the poor, no strings attached, for self improvement. I was not without controversary but proved to be our very best shining moment in a moment of national danger from racism and hunger. All this, and more, as we've wakened to our true nature as a church for all people in a transformation in which God has God's full way with us: born anew as the Nation's public church.

And just look at us! God's grace has worked in us an indelible place of honor in the American civil rights movement, in the likes of Jonathan Daniels who gave his life in Alabama in the struggle for racial equality. Our record of opposing racism is also sanctified by symbolized in our leadership in South African divestment was very important in the illumination of apartheid. Episcopalian set the pace for church and state in the costly study, debate and now-established place of homosexuals in mission and ministry; a struggle accomplished and neither Canterbury nor any other foreign jurisdiction can set the clock back or retread the old stigma. We have been useful to God through our public charities, including your own Episcopal Community Services Foundation and Episcopal Relief and Development.

Here we are, broken but made whole anew by God's grace in our throughly Prayer Book in American-if-already-dated English, with our breathtaking host of women in sacred orders, with our schools, colleges and institutions; with our endowments of money and talent: here we are, and I tell you, we look might good! We have not run away and we are ready and equipped with power to be useful to God in this new era of the Lord's favor. The tomb is striped of its conquest; this old church of ours is loose in the world in the power and grace of the living Christ.

We - you and I - have no reason to fear; we have only, just like the disciples, to awake to the newness in the air. We are free!

• Free to build and model for the nation the sort of koinonia, Christian community, that is healthy; to place our problems in the context of our mission - and no longer the other way around - and to get on with our business of mission.
• We are free like old Abraham and Sarah to be young again; secure and well fed and no longer barren. We can be fruitful in God as God's public church once again: to win the kids and youth, to nurture them, to love them, to give them roles - not rules - to grow by and share the power of God.
• We can fill up our churches by our welcome to the stranger, no longer needing to fear. We can fill our seminaries, build schools, light candles in dark places, raise up leaders for church and state, and by God's grace, we can have fun along the way and - in John Wesley's words, get tired everyday doing good.

I date us today with the disciples; our hearts warm, the future assured, our broken-ness mending by the Grace of God. Today, dear people of Trinity, you stand as the outward and visible sign - the sacrament - of God's holy Spirit and Grace rushing through the church with great power. Though set in a broken world and nation that expects nothing from us save to be good consumers, God calls us today to participation in something with truly ultimate purpose.

It is a broken world and we are mended by the grace of God. My prayer is that we take hold of that mended-in-our midst: things cast down, being raised up; things grown old, being made new; all things being brought to perfection by him through whom all things are made, Jesus Christ our Lord. Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine!

Amen.