The Gospel hymn today [#608] is one that we sang a verse of at the Culver Academies every Sunday before the Gospel was read in the Protestant service. There we called it “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”
This version of the hymn had these lines in the verse we sang
O Trinity of love and pow’r,
Thy children shield in danger’s hour;
From rock and tempest, fire, and foe,
Protect them where-so-e’er they go;
We also sang this hymn at my father’s funeral, and it was listed as the Navy Hymn. As I have mentioned before, my father was in the Navy during WWII and Korea. He had earned a law degree after WWII, and went to seminary after Korea. His military service was important to him, and it did more that provide a little punctuation in his going to college.
This is Memorial Day weekend, and the Navy Hymn seemed appropriate as we remember those who gave their lives for our freedom. When I was a youngster – probably 6 or so, I went with my father to the side chapel at All Saints’ in Sewanee. My father showed me the list of names, and it was page after page. There was a set of them for each of the wars, and I flipped through the pages looking at them and not completely grasping exactly what I was seeing. There were so many names there. We found his name on the list.
I remember asking him why some of the names had stars by them. He explained that these were the students who had died in the wars, and he identified some of them. There was the guy with the sense of humor in his English class. There was the one who was always so serious.
The lines I have been thinking about this week, are at the end of the first verse.
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea.
We think about peril. For sailors there is very real peril from storms and torpedoes. This is concrete enough. There are other perils, and it is easy for us to think of a few of our own. It is quite possible to sing this hymn having never been on a boat, and understand what we are singing about.
We face temptation. People are in lines of work that expose them to danger. There is illness and being over-invested in high-risk stocks. Things happen, and they don’t always go the way we intend. There are lots of perils we would like to be delivered from.
In many ways we can identify with the image of sailors on a ship being tossed around by the storms of life. We want Jesus to wake up and calm the storm.
Right now at St. Thomas, we are facing a challenge. This is our storm. The vestry meets Tuesday at 6:30 to formulate a plan for next year. Our resolution has been to live within our means as a matter of good stewardship. If we can’t afford what we are doing, we need to find a way to spend less. In all likelihood, they will recommend that I move from full-time to part-time as part of this plan.
There has been some concern about this move. While I will confess I would like to know what the vestry will decide, I am confident it will all work out. We have work to do in Plymouth. God has given us the gifts we need to be successful. Our task is to discern those gifts and exercise them.
In many ways it all comes down to discernment. It is so hard to pick God’s voice out of all the garbage out there. We have to be grounded in Scripture and committed to each other in community to make it all work.
I was at the Baptized for Life residency in Maryland all week, and the themes of the week were the waters of baptism, the baptismal promises and discernment. We want Jesus to calm the storm. He is telling us we have what we need. We need to rethink what we are doing and listen to Jesus.
In today’s Gospel, there is a man who is an invalid, and he is unable to get to the pool of healing waters when the waters are stirred up. He has been there 38 years. He has excuses. He can’t get there fast enough. People rush ahead of him. Jesus heals him and sends him on his way.
I am going to call that pool the waters of baptism. Lots of people attend church for 38 years waiting for the healing waters to be stirred up for them. They want the Holy Spirit to move in their lives. They wait, and they try the same thing over and over. It is not working.
Jesus heals the man, but he gives him things to do. He is to stand, take up his mat and walk. That is not what the man was waiting for. He was waiting for someone to put him in the pool. It does not always turn out the way you expect. The important thing is that the man has been healed and has a new life ahead of him.
I think St. Thomas is waiting for someone to put us in the healing waters as well. Jesus is giving us things to do.
How do we know what we are being called to do? That is the question, and we are back to discernment again.
There is a church in what is now Greenwich Village, but when it was founded in the early 1800’s it was literally in the fields. This area was a refuge from the yellow fever at the time, and the church was named for St. Luke, the gentile physician disciple.
This area of town has gone through many changes over the years. At one time it was a place for wealthy residents of New York City to get out of it all and go to the country for the weekend. In the 1600’s tobacco was farmed there. There were later tenement houses and a blue collar workforce for the docks. This was a center for the Beat Movement and many artists and musicians of the 60’s lived there. There were safe houses for the Weather Underground here, and Bob Dylan lived in Greenwich Village.
Housing costs went through the roof, and currently there is a upper middle class set of residents in Greenwich Village. This is an area of the city which had a concentration of the early deaths from AIDS, and there are many gay couples who live in this area today.
This church as you can imagine had to reinvent itself more than once. It ministered to refugees from Yellow Fever in the 1830’s and it ministered to the dock workers in the early 1900’s. It ministered the victims of AIDS in the 1980’s.
The former Rector of St. Luke in the Fields was one of my teachers at Virginia Theological Seminary when I was taking classes there, and he talked about a sermon delivered after a period of re-visioning and construction during his tenure. They had a preacher who asked them “St. Luke, where are your fields?” This was a challenge to them, and it was a call to action.
The fields for St. Luke had changed over the years. The church stayed vital and was true to its mission in a variety of ways. At one point it ministered to the gentry. At another point, it ministered to immigrant dock workers. At another it was the first church in the State of New York where someone who had died of AIDS could get a Christian burial.
We need to ask ourselves “Where are our fields?” We need to discern the work our Lord has given us to do.
Jesus is telling us to “stand, take up our mat and walk.”
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas Episcopal – Plymouth
May 26, 2019; Sixth week of Easter
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9