Sermon Annual Meeting February 23, 2020

2019 was indeed a busy year for us at St. Paul’s Church and we celebrated our 250^th anniversary. Many extra things were done during the year, and our anniversary gave a special tone to most of the things we would have done in a regular year. I won’t go into the details now, but I can commend to you the Annual Report, it is a detailed account of the fabulous year we’ve had. No one person can take credit for it, it was certainly a community effort and I am deeply thankful to everyone who helped in any way.

Even financially, it was a fabulous year. I don’t know how, but again this year we have, as they say, ended the year in the black. Well, I do know how actually, it is by your generosity. Thank you!

I confess to you that I am not all that interested in this Annual Report, I am far more interested in what next year’s report will say… and the year after that…

Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. We are invited at that time, to observe a holy Lent by self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and by reading and meditating on the word of God.

I admit that I worry about us, I worry about the Church, I worry about this Church – are we too busy? – are we busy for business sake?

And Paul asks in our lesson today, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

That’s as true about each of us as individuals as it is for our community. And so, we take time to rest. And rest we will. With what seems like a bunch of extra stuff in Lent: self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, reading, meditating.

At first, it doesn’t seem like a time of rest… Ah, but Lent is a kind of Sabbath-time too, it is a time of rest. The goal of Lent is to make us whole, to take the broken, bruised, separated pieces of ourselves and re-assemble them – to restore, to heal, to make whole, to make holy. There’s a pun there, I hope you got it – there a connection between being made whole and holiness.

As a part of the Sermon on the Mount, from which our Gospel lesson is taken this morning, Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I’m more careful what questions I ask in sermons these days, but many years ago I asked, “who here is perfect?” And a lone voice piped up, “my ex-husband thought he was.” {pause}

We think of being perfect as being without fault, blemish or crack. But the word we translate in the Bible as “perfect,” more closely resembles the word “whole.”

There’s no other force in the universe that can make whole the broken, bruised, separated pieces of ourselves than love. Wholeness is possible, especially when we understand the transformative power of loving our enemies. Just as Jesus asks, “love your enemies.” A transformative request. It is by love, and only by love that enemies (or strangers) are transformed into friends… and that transformation begins with a prayerful transformation in me.

Yes, we rest this Lent, we seek wholeness, we seek holiness so that we can continue serving our Creator by serving others; loving God by loving others; loving Jesus by loving enemies and strangers; so that we are free to show the Transforming Love and Justice of God in Action, in all that we do. And that is why I am looking forward to readings about it in next year’s Annual report. Amen.