The Centering Point of Sunday

I haven't really had much of a chance to stop and reflect here on the blog about our Sunday services, the last ones with Fr. Lupton P. Abshire as rector. We did something interesting and appropriate: instead of doing the Prayers of the People, as is customary after the Nicene Creed, we did a prayer out of the Book of Occasional Services called "A Prayer for Ending a Pastoral Relationship". It was a moment of formal, public acknowledgement that we are parting ways. There is a moment in the prayer where the congregation is asked if they will accept the resignation. The answer is the first-person, "I do". Apparently, someone refused to accept this and responded, "No!" I think it must have been the woman who exited out the center aisle as we knelt to pray.

Oh, well.

Besides the sadness mixed with tiredness and maybe even a dose of relief from all of this, I found God was back to poking me in the ribs, plunking me on the forehead, and otherwise making the point that the center, the focus, of all things is not on a rector, but on God. There was an interesting juxtaposition that all of our Easter music was celebrating the joy of Christ's resurrection from the dead... amidst a situation that felt like a death. But, almost like a hand placed upon the shoulder, our processional hymn contained lyrics for reflection:

Not throned above, remotely high,
untouched, unmoved by human pains,
but daily in the midst of life,
our Savior with the Father reigns.

In every insult, rift, and war
where color, scorn or wealth divide,
he suffers still, yet loves the more,
and lives, though, ever crucified.
("Christ is alive", Hymn 182, 1982 Hymnal)

I wanted to halt the choir and the organ and tell everyone to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest this information... please!! These words not only speak to the situation on hand at St. John's, but it speaks to our broader world. It is the music to counter the mayhem caused by Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church goons every time they show up in a town with their lies and deceit about "God Hates Fags". Such "insults, rifts, and war" that we commit against one another are nothing short of nailing Christ back up on the cross... and refusing to live into the resurrection. And it is the resurrected Christ that is the one who has redeemed us, all of us, no matter our color, wealth, sexual orientation or any other label we can come up with to divide ourselves.

It is that resurrected Christ who turned Saul from a persecutor of the church to one of the most prolific writers in praise of Christ in the New Testament. It is that resurrected Christ who the disciples encounter on the shore and gives them the instruction to drop their nets on the other side of the boat and--voila--fish for breakfast! It is the resurrected Christ who takes the terrified and ashamed Peter aside, and in an act of loving him more than Peter could imagine... asks him three times to say that he loves Christ... an undoing of the sin of having denied knowing Christ three times. And in so doing this, in so acknowledging and deepening his "knowledge" and love of Christ... Peter is given the most important task: to feed the sheep and tend the flock and become the first ordained priest for The Way.

Wow!

These acts of turning us from persecutors or self-pitiers into pioneers of the faith are not just the stuff of tales from our Biblical ancestors. These things continue to happen to this day. God continues to work on people for the purposes of achieving a greater good in the world. So, as I contemplate the observation that "St. John's lacks a center", I think that the starting point for finding that center is right before our eyes in the resurrected Christ... in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. May the scales fall from our eyes to see that truth and live for that as the center from which all blessings flow. Amen.