Fr. Richard Nelson

12-10-06

 

Luke 3: 1-6

 

 

Last Sunday I presented a part of a vision for St. Thomas, and I’m going to complete my remarks this morning.  A vision is what God is calling us to be.  Last Sunday I talked briefly about two things that I think are important for our vision at St. Thomas.

 

One is commitment.  Commitment says I may trust God because God is utterly trustworthy.  I trust because there is so much more God desires for me.  I will only become what God wants me to be only by trusting God.

 

The second thing I talked about last time was community -- the real context in which commitment becomes reality.  To grow to heaven, we must be rooted on earth.  God calls us into the frail, human community of the church to confront us with what must die and for a place to let go of our death-dealing thoughts and actions.  There is perfect community.  Perfect community is the environment in which we grow most exuberantly.

 

So today, two more points of this vision.  The first thing I’d like to talk about is practicing love or charity.  I believe we are called to practice love.  Now, what is love or charity?  It is to care enough about other people to really want to help them., to be a blessing, helping those who are helpless.  We often think about charity in the context of helping those who are materially helpless, especially at this time of year -- giving to organizations like the Salvation Army or Episcopal Relief and Development -- and all of those things are good things to do.  And there are times when we are called upon within the community of the church to help our brothers and sisters who may not have the same material advantages that we have.  But it also entails helping the helpless who may be helpless in other ways ..... what we might call “spiritual wants.”  And there are always plenty in “spiritual wants,” including the one standing before you this morning. 

 

To practice love is not to desire to possess.  It is the unselfish desire to do what is best for the other, above one’s own desires.  What I do for myself is fleeting.  What I do for others is noted in heaven for all eternity.  What we do for ourselves will not last.  What we do for others will last through all eternity.  We are to practice love, practice charity.  And, in one sense, at least for me, the most important part of that term is actually the word practice.  I like that ..... to practice love.  The concept of practice implies that we are not perfect -- that we are on a journey of progress towards -- not perfection in.  Even the greatest athletes, even the greatest musicians practice.  At practice we are confronted by and recognize mistakes, faulty technique, and we do what is necessary for improvement.  I’m not a golfer myself, but I once heard someone who is an avid golfer say; “Really, every time I go out, I’m just practicing.”

 

Practice means mistakes are tolerated.  Indeed, we recognize that mistakes are the best opportunity for learning.  Repeated mistakes must be purged by the repetition of good actions which become habitual.  Practice means we need not be so hard on ourselves -- or others.  We can afford to take it easy, to live and let live, to forgive often.  After all, we’re practicing.  We don’t have it perfect.  Indeed we need to keep on practicing.

 

Practice says there is a way forward; we must want it.  Want to do the right, positive healing actions until they become in us holy habits.  To grow, love must be exercised; charity must be practiced, and we are to be the practitioners.

 

My fourth and last point is this: I believe that we are called to be expansive.  Now, at the early service when I said that, a lot of people started looking at me very strangely.  And I didn’t really understand why until after the service, and everybody said; “I thought you were telling us to be expensive.”  No, not necessarily:  expansive like expand -- an expansion.  You all know how much I like words, and so here are some of the synonyms for expansive and expand and expansion:  open, spacious, unreserved, unrestrained, roomy, wide, vast, growth, development, spread out, get bigger, extend, increase, enlarge, open out.  All of these words,when we look them up in the dictionary, are what the church should be.

 

Jesus’s last words to his followers are expansive.  He tells them and tells us,  “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.” 

 

We are to be an expansive community, an expansive people for Jesus sake.  Isn’t it interesting, Jesus did not say, “Go and make disciples of those who are just like you.  Go and make disciples of those with whom you have no disagreement.  Go and make disciples of only those you know.”  Jesus’s vision is wide -- as ours should be.  Go and make disciples of everyone.

 

The opposite of expansiveness is complacency.  Complacency says we are complete and neither need nor want anything from anyone.  No one, apart from us, can bring us or teach us anything of value.  The expansive church says every person is a child of God.  Every person is not only full of the promise of growth; each person brings growth.  We open not only our doors, but our hearts to the stranger, and the new comer, not simply because we have something to give them, which we do; we open our doors and our hearts and our minds and our lives to others, because God will bless us through them.  They will bring something we do not have.  They will bring something that perhaps we have forgotten or have never known.  They will gift us with a unique expression of God’s love which God has given them, and that God wishes them to share with us.

 

The expansive church says everyone, everyone is a gift.  Everyone who comes in those doors has answered the call of God in their life ..... if they know it or not ..... and we are to welcome them because they bring blessing with them.  We may not immediately recognize the blessing, and the blessing may be in the form of a challenge, but they are a blessing none the less.

 

We are called to be a church which opens out and spreads out and extends and increases.  We can do that only if we are willing, not simply to share, but to give all that we have.  To welcome, not just within the doors, but within our hearts. 

 

You’ve perhaps heard the story of the old monk and the young monk who sit down for tea.  The old monk has been in the monastery for many years.  The young monk has been in the monastery only a few weeks, and like so many who are young and eager, the young monk is anxious to impress ..... to share his spiritual depth, to share his vast experience.  And so he has been inflicting himself on the community since day one.  The tea is ready and the old monk picks up the teapot and begins to pour tea into the young monk’s cup.  The young monk is busy trying to impress the older monk with a bit of erudite theology.  The old monk keeps pouring and pouring and pouring until the tea is coming over the brim of the cup, and splashing onto the table top, and off the table top onto the floor.  Finally the young monk notices and says, “Father, Father you’re spilling the tea”.  The old monk smiles at the young monk with great love and says, “My son, you are so full, how can God get anything more in?  You must empty yourself, and God will fill you up.  But you must empty yourself.”

 

To be filled, we must be empty.  We must want to be filled.  We must want to be filled with every fiber of our being.  As individual Christians, and as a community of faith, this is what I believe is a right vision for the church -- not just for St. Thomas, for every church: to be a committed people, to be a people invested in our community of faith, because it is here in this rooted place on earth that God is growing us to resurrection.  We are to practice love ..... practice, practice, practice. ..... to keep on doing the actions of love and charity until they become holy habits.  And to give ourselves and others a break -- to perhaps practice, more than any other Christian virtue, the virtue of forgiveness.  And we are to be expansive.  There is no limit to what God will do with us, and for us, and to us.

 

Oh God, may we know your vision; empower us to be your people to the glory of your name.

 

Amen