Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,

given by Rev. Eliza Linley/May 13, 2007

  The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share

Christ's love in the world.  We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to other

Today the preacher has a wonderful opportunity to talk about the great blessing of mothers in our lives. And while we all join together in hearty and humble thanks for the women who made lour lives possible and raised us up in the way that we should go, I’m not going to preach that sermon. I’d like to talk instead about Rogation Day. How weird is that? Rogation Days are one of those pre-existing pagan customs that the Church blessed and made its own. It’s when, in earlier days, people prayed for a fruitful harvest. In England on the Sunday before the Ascension churches would “beat the bounds”, making a procession around the parish and sprinkling holy water on the fields. Some churches today process around the property lines of the church, praying for God’s blessing on the work of the church. We could do that. Only…we don’t actually own this property. We ARE the church. We own another piece of property, only we don’t have a church there. Yet. So what, exactly, are our boundaries? What are the limits of our ministries, collectively and individually? What can we do, and what is not ours to do, and how can we tell the difference?

Last Sunday we had a wonderful celebration here when people were confirmed, and received, and reaffirmed in their faith, and we said goodbye to Bp. Romero, who is still our bishop, but not for long. He has guided this diocese through a time of healing with as light and loving touch, and we will miss him. Although he isn’t gone yet, we don’t know who will follow him. There is a list of five candidates whose qualifications seem excellent. We’ll get to meet them at a series of “walkabouts” in early June. We will be faithful to the process. We will listen, and pray, and discern. And we will probably end up with a wonderful new bishop. But there’s a cautionary English nursery rhyme my father used to quote, called “The Lion and Albert” that went, “always keep ahold of nurse for fear of finding something worse.” A watchword in our family, but probably not good theology.

We worship in a building we have known and loved, and part of us is totally on board with plans for the new church, and gung-ho with the capital campaign, but we don’t really know what it will look and feel like to be in a new building. We worry if “green building” is something we can afford, or an extra, like European plumbing fixtures.

Our own parochial concerns, though, may be easier to confront than the world around us, where a late second term administration in Washington seems unable to rise above its own rising corruption scandals to break the stalemate with Congress and address the morass of the Iraq war. Where protest is widespread about genocide in Darfur, but real action has yet to be taken. Where corporate interests stonewall the scientific consensus on global warming. All around us, it seems, the world waits for decisive action. It seems there might be some, but when?

This morning’s readings describe two kinds of visions. In the first, Paul dreams of a man from Macedonia asking for help. Needing no more confirmation than that, he sets sail immediately for Macedonia. On arrival, he asks around, finds out where the women go to pray, goes there and talks about Jesus. Lydia, an independent businesswoman, hears him eagerly. She, too, is open to a vision, in this case, of what the world could be like under God’s reign of justice and love. Her whole family is baptized, and she welcomes Paul to stay in her home. These are visions that prompt immediate action on the part of those whose hearts have been opened. 

Then there’s the kind of vision we hear about in Revelation, a description of the heavenly Jerusalem that needs no temple, no sun or moon, but is lit by the everlasting light of God. The crystal river of the water of life flows through it and groves of the tree of life grow on either side. It’s such a beautiful vision it could bring tears to your eyes. But it’s not like any Jerusalem we know. Maybe that can bring tears to our eyes, too: the vast chasm between apocalyptic visions of the reign of God, and the way life really is. Remember, though: this is the kind of vision that has sustained communities through the worst kind of suffering: through slavery, starvation, oppression, through all kinds of injustice. It’s not the kind of vision that makes you jump out of bed and set sail for Troas, but it’s the kind that keeps you going through the bad time. 

What Jesus describes in the gospel of John is not so much the bad time as the in-between time, a time when we need both kinds of vision. The disciples are heartbroken to think that Jesus will leave them. He sets before them a vision of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. It’s a way of saying that the very life of God will be in you, and that love is the identifying marker of the life of God. This is a vision that incorporates both the practical and the sustaining. It’s so beautiful that it, too, could bring tears to your eyes. But it is also a description of how to live life every day, of how to know what to do in a given situation, of how to keep from giving up in despair. 

How do we know where our boundaries are on property we do not own? That’s the big question, isn’t it? As Christians, of course we know that ministry begins, not ends, with the property line, and there is no way in which this truth does not impact us. The climate in Darfur is getting drier and drier, so there is less and less arable land – not enough to sustain the population. So the Janjaweed burn villages and murder their inhabitants. Global warming contributes to this and to other struggles where scarcity of resources make people do things to one another that are unimaginable to us. “Green building” means using technologies that reduce our carbon emissions. If we use less energy to heat our new building, that slows global warming. It models good stewardship. It sets us moving in a direction in which we show love for creation, love for our neighbors by conserving the environment and helping to distribute resources so all may become whole. It does not take dollars away from program – as a congregation with such great blessings, can’t we find a way to do both? That’s a vision that can sustain us. 

In these days between Easter and Pentecost, the lectionary describes what it means to live in a world where the things we know and love will be no more, and what will be is something we cannot know. All we have is today, which is much too short to spend worrying. Our model is love, and our boundaries are the work God puts in front of us.