Luke 4:  14-21

St. Luke’s Feast Day - October, 2008

There’s nothing like going home after being away a long time!  Jesus looked around at those vaguely familiar faces – some of them smiling, some of them just curious about this grown up man.  They had heard some good things about him, and they were eager to hear what he had to say – his first hometown sermon.

No pressure.

Some of you may remember your very first sermon after you were ordained.  In preparing for today, I looked through some of my old sermons. I actually came upon my first “public” sermon.  As a brand new deacon, I was invited to a neighboring church and I so wanted to make a good impression – truthfully, I just wanted to not make a fool of myself! 

That day I preached on this very gospel passage in Luke.  As I read over what I had written, I was mortified that I had actually said some of that stuff out loud! 

Those poor people.  As I was shaking folks out of the church after the service, I experienced first hand the grace of God at work in the Body of Christ!  One dear older lady so very generously told me that I “would make a very good preacher one day!”

These days in our diocese there’s a great deal of energy and time is being invested in dealing with questions like:  what is our mission in the Diocese?  How should the church live out it’s authority in the world?  What specific characteristics should we be looking for in a bishop, rector, vestry member?  What priorities should we be spending our money on?  How is our stewardship program going to succeed in this economic downturn?  These are all legitimate questions true enough!  Appropriate questions for us to keep posing and struggling to answer.  I have spent most of my life involved in some way in the life of my church – some of it as a staff person.  I love our Episcopal church dearly and  I confess, there have been moments when I’ve been guilty of thinking and acting as if the church is the essence of the whole darn thing.  Because so much of my time and energy have gone into the institutional church, I have sometimes forgotten that what really matters is the gospel itself – the Church with feet!

In one of his sermons, I once heard our Bishop Henry speak about the church being a movement rather than an institution.  He talked about the worship in our churches being opportunities, not just to make us “feel good”, but rather are designed to equip us for bringing in the Kingdom of God in our daily lives and in the lives of those around us.

Jesus seemed very clear that his work, and ours, is to be instruments of the Spirit to bring in the reign of God on earth!  The mission that Jesus set out upon and calls us to is a servant ministry – to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.  Jesus calls us into his holy movement of justice and freedom. He asks us to reflect the fulfillment of the Scriptures in our culture!  Sure sounds rather daunting to me, but isn’t that exactly why most of us felt the call to ordained ministry as Deacons?  True religion goes beyond the walls of our church buildings and so it is the work of Deacons to be the voice carrying the needs of this world back to our churches.  Further, it is the work and ministry of Deacons to encourage, inspire and support the ministry of the laity and the ordained to meet those needs!

When we pledge our lives to the way of Christ, we commit ourselves to confronting the great issues of our time:  poverty, disease, war, oppression of any kind, racial and ethnic hatreds, the survival of our planet.  Through this work, we are reminded that all of life is holy – not just what happens during our worship services. When we are looking for the Holy, we find cathedrals and Christ in the faces of those struggling to overcome the perils of life.  Our worship services are meant to renew, inspire and sustain us spiritually as we carry our ministry out into the highways and byways of life – into that world that God loved so much that he sent Jesus to us.

Many of you have heard this old story about a man who came to a Quaker meeting and was puzzled because everyone was just sitting there in silence.  After waiting patiently for what seemed like a long, long time for something to happen, he finally whispered to the person sitting next to him and asked:  “When does the service begin?”  The answer came back:  “When we leave.” 

And this is so for us, too, isn’t it?  Our service begins when we leave the structures of our buildings filled with the Holy Spirit.  In the deepest part of our hearts, we know this to be true - we are called to go forth into the world to love and serve the Lord and to proclaim the Lord’s favor.  The next time you offer yourself as God’s servant, I ask you to pray that the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon each of you so that you may be a fulfillment of the Gospel!