St. Peter's By The Sea
The Episcopal Church in Narragansett, RI
June 29, 2008
St. Peter’s Day
Good morning. It’s good to see you all and to welcome you to the celebration of the Feast of St. Peter. It is especially meaningful to me this morning because it will be my last St. Peter’s Day with you, and next year at this time there will be a whole new exciting thing happening here.
I’ve had the privilege of preaching on St. Peter’s Day twice before. The first time was in 2004 and it was my last Sunday here as an Assistant Priest with Russ. It was a special day for me and it was difficult to leave a parish and a people who had opened their arms and hearts to me, and who had come to mean so much.
However, the Spirit works in strange ways, and after two years as Priest-in-charge at St. John’s Ashton and St. Martin’s in Pawtucket I found myself back here as your Interim Rector. And last year on St. Peter’s Day we had a very special service, as Russ came back for a visit and for the formal dedication of Ruffino Hall, and we celebrated and remembered his 17 wonderful years here as your Rector.
So this is my 3rd St. Peter’s Day with you, and it too is special in it’s own way.
You may notice that the altar looks different this morning than it usually does for St. Peter’s Day. Some years ago Russ started the custom of having bowls with live fish for St. Peter’s Day. However, last year after the service and after the fish were returned to the fish store and the bowls were cleaned and just sitting in the kitchen, suddenly one of them simply burst apart.
Now, I believe that God or the Spirit speaks to us in many different ways and even in simple things or strange coincidences – what the psychologist Carl Jung calls synchronistic events, which is the meaningful significance of causally unconnected events. In this instance I took it as a sign that it is time to move on – so there are no fish bowls this morning.
Now, that may annoy some of you, or even anger you, and I can understand that change is difficult and often emotionally very painful, and sometimes it is the small things, like no fish bowls, that trigger those feelings.
It was a real privilege and honor for me to work with Russ at a key time in my life when I was returning to parish ministry. I will always be indebted to him for his many kindnesses and for all that he taught me, both directly and by example. I treasure Russ as many of you do, so believe me that I mean no disrespect here.
So this morning I would like to share a few thoughts with you about change and about the Spirit working in our lives and in the midst of us here. And about the future of St. Peter’s-by-the-Sea. Now, as I’ve said, change can be difficult, but what is coming is so exciting.
My three year old daughter Ava captured this wonderful sense of anticipation of what is to come when she announced at dinner the other day, “I don’t want to eat too much of my dinner, so I don’t spoil my treat.” Now there is a girl with priorities.
And the treat that is coming is the new thing that God will be doing in this place, and even more than that, Jesus’ whole life and ministry was to tell us and to show us the treat that is coming, the Realm of God, the Kingdom of God.
We read in the 43rd chapter of the prophet Isaiah, “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters. Who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior: they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.” (Isaiah 43:16-17)
Clearly the reference here is to mighty acts of salvation that God has done in the past when he led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt and he parted the waters of the Red Sea so that they could escape from the army of Pharaoh that pursued them. This is one of the most significant events in our sacred history – but then God goes on to say to Isaiah: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19)
What a remarkable statement: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.”
Does that mean we are to forget the history of God’s relationships with mankind? Does it mean that we are to forget what God has done in our lives, and specifically what he has done here at St. Peter’s in the past?
I think the answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, of course we are to remember the past, to honor it, learn from it, and be guided by it. Not to remember the past is to forget who we are and where we came from. Can you imagine God telling us to forget about Jesus, or the crucifixion and resurrection? Or, on a more personal and parochial level, are we to forget the past here at St. Peter’s? Of course not!
Yet as it says in Ecclesiastes, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” (Eccl. 3:1) What the Lord is telling us in Isaiah is that, as there is a time to remember, there is also a time not to: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.”
That doesn’t mean to disrespect or to diminish in any way what has gone on before. No, it means that there are times in our life when we need to make the effort to let go of the past for a bit so that we can look to the future, we can anticipate with hope what is to come, and we can begin to perceive a whole new thing.
For God said to Isaiah and he is saying to us today, both individually and as a parish, “Behold I am doing a new thing: now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19)
I believe the reality is that God is always doing a new thing in our lives, but we get stuck in the past, or in the way things are, or worse, we may think we have all the answers, or even worse, we become like those who Ezekiel calls “The fat and the strong.” The fat – that is us when we fill ourselves with everything but God; and the strong, that is us when we are temporarily in positions of power, and we think we are somehow better or more deserving than other people.
The new thing that God is doing, that God is always doing, is seeking us out, seeking the lost, the injured, and the strayed, and calling us back into relationship with Him.
This is what is so wonderful about the example of our patron saint Peter. Peter is a lost soul. As Jesus told him he would do, he denied him three times, and he goes back to his old life as a fisherman, all his hopes and dreams shattered by the death of Jesus and his own personal failures and humiliations.
But Jesus seeks him out, Jesus comes to him and calls to him from the beach while he’s fishing and he says to Peter “Come and have breakfast.”
In our reading from Ezekiel this morning we heard “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out … I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.” (Ezekiel 34:11, 14)
So God is always searching for us. Jesus, our shepherd is always here and he is always calling to us and issuing an invitation to come to him. “Come and have breakfast” or “Come to me you who are burdened and heavy laden and I will refresh you.”
But the problem is, we have to recognize that we are lost, and injured, and weak, or we never hear him calling. When we think we are okay you know, on top of things and pretty pleased with ourselves, well then that’s being fat and strong, and as God tells Ezekiel, “The fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.”
Sounds scary and awful, but necessary. You see, our illusions of superiority have to be destroyed. Then we see we are all of us in the same boat – we’re all a bunch of Peters – screw-ups who are in need of being found, and loved, and fed.
So I think that’s why we have to at times forget the former things, so we can see the new thing that God is doing in our lives right now.
And I think that is where we are at St. Peter’s right now. God is here, and God is already doing a new thing, and our job is, like my daughter Ava, to save some room for the treat that is to come, even if we have no idea what it will look like.
In His Name. Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 7:15 am
Category: Sermons