First of all, concerning the whole subject of what it means to have, or to receive, or to be filled with the Holy Spirit—there are a couple of things we need to get clear on from the beginning. Number one, just as Jesus breathed on the disciples that first Pentecost and gave them the gift of the Spirit, so has he breathed on us. By our Baptism and Confirmation, through the Eucharist, and by the free grace of God Almighty, we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is ours. We don’t need to get it, or find it, or be filled with it, or anything like that. That gift is given. It is there.

Now, this gift may still be in its original wrapping paper and sitting on a shelf somewhere—just because we have a gift doesn’t necessarily mean that it is all unwrapped and ready to go. It may not be. But we do have it; it is ours. That’s first. That is an article of our faith.

The second thing has to do with feelings and emotions—and it’s kind of tricky. Sometimes our experience of the presence of God is a very strong, very clear, very emotional, and very a unmistakable thing.

That sometimes happens to some folks, and it can be a good thing, and an exciting thing, and a valuable thing. At the same time, not every exciting, emotional experience is religious, and not everything that people call religious experiences really are religious experiences. There are all sorts of events and behaviors that get blamed on God the Holy Spirit that are, in fact, from a variety of other places.

The active, living presence of God the Holy Spirit is not defined by our emotions. Often the Spirit is present secretly, or is known and revealed, not by how we feel, but by what we find ourselves able to do, or able to choose, or able to endure, or able to discover. The point of all this is that sometimes there is a connection between our emotions and the presence of God the Holy Spirit, and sometimes there isn’t—and vice versa.

What is central with God the Holy Spirit is not our feelings, but God’s work. And the work of the spirit is primarily to build up and strengthen the Body, the Christian Community, and to lead us to reach out to others. That’s what it’s for. This is where the business of languages, and overcoming the barriers of language, comes in.

After all, there is probably no better sign and symbol of human isolation, separation and loneliness than all of our different languages. They constantly remind us that we are not naturally together, that we cannot by nature understand each other, that making community work requires help. (Remember how the Tower of Babel story underlies the reading from Acts?)

And it is the work of the Holy Spirit to overcome these differences and difficulties, to bring all of us human beings into a circle with God at the center. What the Holy Spirit does is make community possible, and make living the Christian life possible, and make reaching out possible, and so make the life of the Church possible.

It is when and as this happens that the Holy Spirit is present and at work, regardless of what anyone feels like, or does with their arms.

Notice how all of today’s lessons connect the Spirit to building up and to reaching out. At that first Pentecost, the important thing about the disciples speaking in other languages (besides the imagery with the tower of Babel) was that it provided a starting place for Peter’s preaching and the occasion for the first converts to Christianity. In the same way, Paul’s wonderful section on the gifts of the Spirit makes it very clear that everything the Spirit does is for the "common good", for the sake of the mission and ministry of the Church.

In John’s Gospel, the giving of the Holy Spirit is connected with Jesus sending the disciples out into the world as witness to his resurrection, and to the ability to forgive sins—which, if you stop and think about it, is just about the one thing that any community, or any relationship, has to have if it is going to survive and thrive. Again, the Spirit is about the life and ministry of the Church.

Putting these two things together gives us something to do. First, we have received the Sprit; each of us, that is a gift that has been given. Second, the work of the Spirit is building up and reaching out, strengthening the life and ministry of the Church. So, if we want to unwrap the gift we have, if we want to bring to life and energy what we may only have dormantly, then the way to do that is to seek to do the work that the Spirit is about doing.

We know this. We know what it’s like to try to do something that we are certain we just can’t do, and to discover that we can. We know what that’s like, whether it’s a personal goal, or a parish goal. There is just a whole lot more that you can do, and there is just a whole lot more that we can do, than we can ever realize—especially at the beginning. That’s because we have been given the Holy Spirit, and the work of the Spirit is about building up and reaching out.

Now, this is not a short-cut—it’s the main road. The Spirit does not make building up and reaching out easy, or automatic, or simple, or guaranteed successful every time. God respects our freedom too much for that to happen. But the Holy Spirit does make such ministry and mission possible, and challenging, and rewarding beyond our imagining; as we become willing to take the risks involved in attempting it.

God the Holy Spirit doesn’t really have much to do with waving and shouting (although that’s not always a bad idea); but God the Holy Spirit does have a lot to do with us. It’s about being challenged to reach out, and to build up; to set about the work of the Church—not later, when something new and special has been added to us, but now—because something new and special has already been added to us, and is here within us and among us; and awaits our unwrapping. And we unwrap that gift by trusting that it is there, and acting like it is there, and living as if it were there. And, when we need it, it will be there.

Also, Bishop Ohl will be meeting with the Vestry later this month to begin making plans both for interim ministry and for the search process for a new Rector—a process that will begin after I leave. (Remember, we’re not gone yet, and this is not a farewell sermon.)

These past few weeks have been both very difficult, and painful—but also exciting and hopeful as I look towards where I am convinced God is leading me in my vocation as a Priest and as a person. So all of that will hover over this sermon.

At the same time, today is Trinity Sunday, the day the Church has set apart for paying special attention to God, and to God as we Christians have come to understand Him—as Trinity, as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God.

It is also, quite ironically I think, the Sunday we hear Jesus talking about how his leaving the disciples to go to the Father is a good thing, because Jesus will then send the Spirit to guide his Church. Well, I’m sure not Jesus, and I’m not going to the Father—only to Midland (which is not the same thing); but there are a couple of things in all of this that I want to talk about, without getting too theological (which is always a temptation on Trinity Sunday—one that I just can’t altogether resist.)

First of all, it is important to remember that we Christians believe not only that God is God’s fullness is understood as Trinitarian, we also believe, as the first letter of John says so clearly, that God is love. We need to put those two convictions together.

Although the ancient Greek philosophers thought of God’s love as being somehow the force that propels and moves all of the universe (and they had that part right), they also saw this as an indifferent love, one that sort of blindly and unintentionally radiated from God, like heat from the sun. And they thought that God was unaware of, and indifferent to, the consequences of his own being, and of his own love.

It took the religious genius of Israel, joined with the insights of the early Christian Church, to see God truly as the one who loves deliberately, specifically, and personally. The Trinity reminds us that God’s whole self is built on love, the love of the Father for the Son, of the Son for the Father, of the Spirit for each, and of each for the Spirit, thereby bringing into God’s very nature a unity of love and fellowship that somehow preserves the differences and distinctiveness of each of the persons.

A unity of love and fellowship that embraces and respects differences and individuality—that binds together without destroying the identity or the particularity of the ones who love. This is how we understand God to be in his very heart. And this is the model, based on the nature of God himself, for every community that is formed with God in its center; and this unity in difference is God’s dream, and God’s goal, and God’s will, for all of his creation.

And this love, like all love, like all communities formed around this love, indeed like God his own self, this is always at its heart a mystery, an adventure, and a great risk, always a risk. (After all, there can be no mature commitment to love without a commitment to grieve.) So love, like God, can never be frozen, it can never be all there, or completely known at any given moment—it is always on the move, always either growing or fading.

Jesus makes this clear when he says, in the remarkable words we just heard from John’s Gospel, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth." Even Jesus, even the incarnate Son of the Father himself, has not left us with a static, unchanging, and carved-in- stone total deposit of truth. (Islam believes that, Christianity doesn’t.)

Instead, Jesus, at the end of his journey with the disciples, promises that there is such a richness to God that the end of this journey will also be the beginning of another—a new journey into even deeper truth. This new journey into truth is shown to be the life of the Christian community, in all its different but very particular forms—a community rooted in love, a community to which, over the centuries and as we have become able to bear it, more and more of what Jesus has to say to us has been revealed. And so it will ever be. God, who is love, will never freeze our lives, or our journey, or his gift to us of himself and of his truth.

And this means that, for each of us a person, and for each body of us as a parish, and for all of us as God’s church, one thing—and perhaps one thing only—will never change, and can be held with absolute certainty. The end of one journey is always the beginning of another—and that new journey can always be begun in thanksgiving, and in hope.

This certainty is not because of us. It is not because all of our journeys, or all of our endings, or even all of our beginnings, are easy, or pleasant, or desired. This certainty is because of God, and because of who God is; and, (because of who God is), we can be absolutely confident that all of our journeys will begin, continue, and end with God.

Remember the Trinity of love that God has revealed himself to be. God the Father creates, he makes things happen, he is the beginning of all of our journeys—as he was for Isaiah, in the year that king Uzziah died. Then, as we accept the challenge, the call of "whom shall I send", as we take the road laid before us, with its end always obscured, we do not walk alone.

We have, in Jesus, a companion on the way, one who is always with us, and whose presence is as certain as the journey is mysterious—we have Jesus who has brought us this far and promises us more. He promises that his Spirit, his presence, will continue with us; and that it will open for us new truths, new possibilities, and new directions—directions we, again like Isaiah, cannot possibly see or imagine at the beginning. And it will all be all right.

In the weeks ahead, as we go about the business of ending what has been for me a wonderful time when our journeys have been together; and as we remember that and reflect on that and (I hope) celebrate that; and as we prepare to begin new journeys, journeys with new insights and new truths shown to us as we are able to bear them—as we do this, it is important always to remember, first, that what really matters is God, and the community of love that is modeled on God, and built around God, and, second, that we are called to hold fast to our mission, to God’s passionate desire that, through his grace and with our cooperation and service, all of creation will come together, in all of its variety and diversity, with God, who is love, at the center.

Yet, above all else, this little account is about compassion. It’s an acted out definition of what compassion is and how it operates. Let’s look closely at the story itself. Luke pictures Jesus preaching a circuit, traveling through Galilee; and Jesus seems to happen upon the town of Nain just in time to watch a funeral procession go by. The scene is especially tragic because there are really two deaths being marked by that procession—both the dead man and his mother.

In a patriarchal, family-oriented culture like Israel’s. a widow with no son to protect her was doomed. She was understood as cursed by God and had virtually no hope of expecting anything more from life than ostracism total poverty. She was a good as dead. So this funeral marked the end of her life, too. It was her pain, her tears, and her loss that moved Jesus–in fact, the Greek word we translate "compassion" literally says something like "moved in his guts." The feeling was very powerful; and Jesus stepped forward.

Notice that this compassion was Jesus’ only motivation. No one asked him to help, no one showed the faith or trust in him that was usually a part of his healing miracles. In fact, as far as we can tell from the text, no one in the funeral procession even had the slightest idea who Jesus was. All of the initiative was from him. He had compassion and he acted.

Jesus came forward and touched the bier. Then, suddenly, everything stopped. The bearers stood still, and so, no doubt, did the crowd. They knew something special was happening and they wanted to watch. But they didn’t expect to witness a miracle, they expected to witness a scandal. Remember, a dead body was ritually unclean, and anyone who touched one was unclean.

That’s because touching a dead body was to take upon one’s own self the defilement of death; it was to share the corpse’s fate of being cut off from the community. Nice people, no matter how bad they might feel over someone’s death, simply did not touch dead bodies. So, everything stopped as Jesus became unclean—as he joined the dead man in his defilement, the widow in her isolation. There is nothing sweet or cute about this scene.

It is only when Jesus behaves in a thoroughly disgraceful and shocking way, only when he breaks the law and defiles himself—it is only then that something wonderful and unexpected and life-giving happens. And it is only with this action that joined his life to the lives of the widow and her son that compassion was fully present—that the power of God was present, and manifest, and active.

Compassion at its most real always looks a little bit like this story of Jesus’ scandalous activity at Nain. There is always the touch of the radical about it. The English word ‘compassion’ has its roots in two words that mean ‘to suffer with’. To have compassion is to join, to connect with another—it is to allow our own lives to expand enough to include someone else. This makes compassion very different from sentimentality or pity—which are the tendency to feel all gooey inside because someone else is hurting. Pity, as a purely internal state, names the other person’s suffering as distinct from our lives, allows us to wallow a bit in how bad off the other is (like the cries of a professional mourner), and then go our way unchanged.

This sentimentality further isolates and separates us. It is a parody of compassion—it is compassion truncated, turned inward, and gone rancid. For real compassion, like real love, is whole only when it acts—only when it moves from self to others, only when it joins lives.

The incarnation is probably the best image of God’s compassion. In his love for us, God did not pity us, he did not feel sad about our sin, our pain, and our need—and then, having felt sad, go on about his business. Instead, God acted—he joined his life to ours, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And that radical action, whatever else it meant, meant that God was going to hurt, and God was going to celebrate, and God was going to participate in everything it means to be human. It meant that God was going to know what’s it’s like to be one of us. And, it is only in that living and hurting, and loving—only in God’s full participation in our humanity—that healing and salvation can be found.

This picture of compassion as active participation in life continues throughout the ministry of Jesus. Never is his compassion just some private, isolated, interior feelings. It is always public—it always leads to action, action without invitation, action that makes a difference, action that involves Jesus in the life of the people who move him in his guts— who evoke his compassion.

And so with us. Our call to see in Christ’s life the shape of our own lives is a call to compassion—and not to sentimentality or pity. It is a call to reach out and so become involved and vulnerable; it is a call, in one way or another, to join our lives with the lives of those whom God has given us to love and to serve. To touch the unclean, to share the helplessness of the weak, the despair of the suffering, the joy of those who celebrate, and the relief of those who are delivered—this is at the heart of all Christian ministry. This is how the incarnation continues—this is how Jesus is present through us.

There is great power in such an active, reaching out. The old German proverb that "a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved, a joy shared a joy doubled" gives just a hint of this power. We know it even better from our own experiences of being touched by love—and finding our lives transformed.

Compassion, reaching out to share the lives of those God places on our path, is not one more rule to follow among a bunch of other rules—it is more of an icon for our lives, an image of a way of living that can draw us away from ourselves and into a new wholeness. We need that image.

It seems that the natural tendency of the world is to isolate us—to emphasize how we are separate and distinct from each other. One example of this is how our culture has elevated competition into a sort of Holy Crusade and so we reward and honor the folks who stand on the necks of those they have defeated. Consider the contrast between the Lord of life defiling himself to bring hope to an insignificant widow and our cultural pantheon that seems fixated on celebrities or conquering heroes.

Today’s gospel does not offer us a comforting story or a moral lesson. It offers us Christ’s vision of a way of life, a way of life that is challenging, difficult, and radically different from what the world offers. It is a life of compassion, a life open to the lives of those around us, vulnerable and willing to risk, trusting that in such risk the presence and power of God will be discovered.

It is the way of our Lord, the way of the cross and the way through the cross—it is the way of new life.

Immediately after peter’s confession of Jesus qualifies his definition of discipleship in three respects: 1. Jesus orders the disciples not to tell anyone. 2. Jesus tells the disciples that he must be killed. 3. Jesus teaches the disciples what following him will require. Jesus’ own answer emphasizes neither fulfillment of the words of a prophet nor his role as a Davidic king; but the necessity of his death and resurrection. People expected the messiah that was long awaited to be more than a prophet and he was not fulfilling their idea of what the Son of God would do; kind of like we have expectations of one kind about a person’s actions and usually they are not the ones that the person has or has come to fulfill (like a new priest).

The demands of discipleship are given to his disciples; not to the crowds in general. There are five of them and they bear repeating: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." To follow Jesus means to be ready to lay down one’s life just like he did; Luke emphasizes not readiness to die with Jesus but rather that discipleship requires a continuing daily yielding of one’s life to the call to follow Jesus. All the disciple rules were given to cover all the occupations of the day such a being a soldier; Christians facing persecution and so on—he made the point of stressing that the life spent in indulging only one’s own ambitions and interests will not lend itself to a true life following his teaching. Discipleship is a continuing process. That means first that however lofty our understanding or obedient our discipleship most of us are probably not far from the first disciples; confessing but failing to grasp the implications of our confession; understanding but only in part; following Jesus, but maintaining our own aspirations and ambitions also.

Who do they say that I am? I read something that Jay Leno wrote the other day and in it he says: "fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats that the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S., yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are: The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don’t have, and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good lord we live here"

Another saying I would like to offer you: I am my neighbor’s Bible; he reads me when we meet; he may not even know my name yet he is reading me—you shall be witnesses unto me–Acts 1:8.

Who am I ? Today’s gospel asks an interesting question and it comes at a very relevant time in our Church life—we are going to be looking at who we are –where we are going and who do we want to reflect during the coming months. The lesson from Galatians reminds us that through Baptism we are all children of god through faith and one in Christ Jesus. What a legacy to be granted and what a responsibility to fulfill.

Who does the community see when they look at St. Mary’s communicants? Does this image change and is it the same in all people’s eyes and at all times? Of course not. Jesus was not seen the same by all his followers—he was who he was sent to be on all occasions but everyone did not accept him in this way. This did not change his purpose nor should it change any of his faithful. It is not an easy job to know who you are and have a goal to which you never lose sight of—no matter the cost.

Who do you say I am? This removes the image from who I think I look like to who do we look like to others. Jesus asked his disciples first and then who the crowds say I am. He emphasized that the Son of Man must fulfill his destiny and this did not depend on what others said he was—he had a goal–he had faith

Discipleship is the truth of the way that we live in the present and it determines our relationship to the lord in the future. We are becoming who we shall be. Who we say Jesus is now determines what he will say of us in the future. How we answer the question "who do you say that I am" through our day-to-day discipleship is the only answer that matters—but everything depends on that answer.

Their mission—to proclaim by word and deed the good news of the kingdom—is our mission, the mission of the Church, and therefore the mission of each one of us. That’s easy enough to see and easy enough to say. But this little story raises some fascinating and difficult issues. I don’t have much in the way of answers for you this morning, but I do have some great questions.

When Jesus sent out the seventy—when he first sent the church on mission to the world—he sent them out with some very specific instruction about how they were to live. They were to go without personal resources of any kind—relying totally on the goodness of God and the generosity and kindness of strangers. They were not to greet anyone on the road. (By the way, Jesus said this because greeting people on road did not just mean saying ‘hello’. It involved a set of complex and extensive social rituals that could consume most of their time and distract them from their real work.)

They were to hold to their message whether or not anyone paid any attention to them or believed them. They were to be like lambs in the midst of wolves. They were to let everyone—friend and foe alike—know that the kingdom of God is very near.

That’s how they were supposed to live; and it’s important to notice that this is a way of living that is absolutely consistent with the message they are to share. So the way they live is itself a witness to the truth of what they say. That’s what it means to live with integrity.

And the story of the sending out of the seventy is about us. But how? What does it mean for this story to be about us?

First of all, it’s real clear that our situation is not that of the seventy. We are almost certainly not called to leave everything behind, and, proclaiming the kingdom of God, move from town to town in Palestine—or anywhere else, for that matter. And this is a good thing. Because even if that were our call, we wouldn’t do it, would we? We don’t do things like that. Other people do things like that. We don’t. Besides, it would look funny—barefoot and everything.

That’s probably all right. It’s probably all right that what it means for us to live as Christians today does not look exactly like it looked for the seventy in Luke’s story. We probably don’t need to feel guilty because we are not in Palestine, out on the road somewhere, shaking dust off our feet, doing stuff like that. But this story still raises an interesting question. The question is simply this: If what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus does not look the way it looked for those early Christians, then what does it look like, for us, today?

Remember, the key reason for all those instruction was to insure that the disciples lived with integrity, in ways that were absolutely consistent with what they believed—with the message they were to share.

So, what does it look like for us, for real people living in the real world, to live in a way that is absolutely consistent with what we believe, and with the ministry we are given as baptized people?

Not all that long ago the answer seemed simple. The answer was some form or another of "be a good person, keep the rules and go to Church as regularly as you can." When I was growing up (which was not all that long ago!) that was pretty much the answer; and we pretty much knew what it meant. Remember? The problem with that answer now is that these days we really don’t know what it means, and most of the old rules are gone or different.

Now, I’m not talking about the easy stuff; the stuff that’s covered by the 10 Commandments and the traditional morality of the Church. We know about that. That stands. But that still leaves us a lot choices, and many unanswered questions; and we certainly can’t look "out there", to the world and the culture around us, to find out what it looks like to live as we are called to live.

So there is a lot of confusion, and a lot of noise, and a bunch of conflicting voices telling us what it looks like to live in a way that is absolutely consistent with what we believe, and with the ministry we are given as baptized people. And as nice as it would be, there is no simple ‘one size fits all’ solution. (Like I said earlier; I don’t have many answers; but I aren’t these great questions?)

Still, a good place to start is with the seventy. The words of Jesus are always the best beginning. And somehow or another we have to deal with the same things that first bunch had to deal with.

First of all, we have to deal with what it means to travel light. Even if we carry a purse and a bag and more than one pair of sandals, we need to deal with this. Because the issue of possessions remains a central issue—and there is no better way to find that out than to do what I’ve been doing, to plan a move, or to empty a house after a death. What we possess, and what we do with what we possess, and how the things we possess shape and direct our lives—all of these continue to be among the most important spiritual issues we face.

This was the first thing Jesus talked about when he sent out the 70. It’s also of first importance to us. That’s one thing.

Another is that we have to deal with the business of being sheep among wolves. What makes this important is that it says that we cannot try to be the best wolf in the pack. We have to deal with what it means to live both with and for a set of values and attitudes and priorities that are different, because they come from Jesus and not from anyone else. The values and attitudes and priorities of the world around us are what Jesus meant by wolves. And it is as true now as it was then that wolves eat sheep.

A third thing we have to look at is the business of greeting folks on the road. That is, our lives are to be lives of purpose and service. There is to be more to them than just an endless series of social or recreational pleasantries that use up our time and energy, but accomplish nothing.

We have to deal with all of these, and doubtless more. We will not all deal with them exactly the same way, and for some of us one of them will be most important, and for others, another will be.

But in one way or another each one of us, and all us together as the Church, will have to deal with all of these: With traveling light, with being sheep in a culture of wolves, and with living lives of purpose and of service.

All of that is difficult and complicated and pretty vague and a little scary. And that’s how it works. Rumors to the contrary, it is neither simple nor easy to live faithfully. It never has been.

On the other hand, the seventy returned with joy. They could only do that, they could only discover that special joy and fullness of life that the Lord and his service offer, they could only return with joy, if they set out in faith. You can’t return with joy if you don’t set out. There is commitment, ambiguity and some real risk involved in all of this.

But the seventy set out in faith, and they returned with joy, and that is our promise, too.
 

As I said, preaching on marriage is hard, and that is in no small part because marriage is hard; marriage is very hard—and this is something that each of us, in one way or another, knows very well. We know that there is a major and pervasive cultural crisis going on around marriage; and that about half the marriages out there end in divorce. Also, and more alarmingly, there is, statistically, absolutely no difference in the divorce rate between Christians (no matter how many times they have been born) and non-Christians. That’s a real bother; or it should be.

Preaching on marriage is also hard because it’s always personal, and it’s always taken personally. We are all effected in one way or another. As I’ve mentioned before, of the six kids in my family, we’ve had at least 12 weddings among us. The latest update is that number thirteen is planned for this winter; and, doubtless we’re still counting. So I guess that, sadly, we’re a bit above average; and there is a lot of pain that goes with those numbers.

At the same time, I have also learned over the years that some of the divorces that happen make sense. People really do make awful mistakes, some folks truly are victims, and some marriages are simply made a very, very long way from heaven. The realities and consequences of sin are surely as real and as evident in the most intimate of human relationships as they are anywhere else.

But so are the realities of grace, forgiveness, and holy transformation. So, as usual, the human situation is ambiguous, messy, and complex. And as tempting and as common as it, it’s impossible responsibly to make grand, sweeping, and absolute judgments.

So, instead of that, I want to try to get at this theologically, to talk about a couple of the many things we mean when we insist that Christian marriage, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, is a unique and special thing—something very different from what is so often going on in the world out there when folks get married. After all, a Christian marriage is not just a marriage that is done in a Church with a minister, although that’s a good start. Still, you can’t just bless a duck and turn it into a swan; it’s still a duck. And a Christian marriage is not just a marriage that includes churchgoing and family prayers (although these are good and valuable things). Again, you can take a duck to church over and over, and pray the heck out of it, and it’s still a duck. And it’s those ducks out there that are dying all over the place.

Three good places to start looking at what makes a marriage a Christian marriage (and not a duck) are with what Jesus has to say, with who we are, and with real love. On those few occasions when Jesus talked about marriage, he always talked about creation, about the nature of human beings, and he always said that marriage was about this—and not about happiness or convenience or not being lonely or meeting our perceived needs or anything like that (those are all duck things). Instead, Jesus says that marriage is about being created by God.

Now, one of the things it means to be created by God is to be incomplete all by ourselves, in isolation. (Remember, the only "not good" in the whole creation story—"it is not good for the man to be alone.")

Our humanity in its fullness, the way God wants us to be, this humanity is not automatic. It is drawn out of us by others, by relationships and by community. It’s a little like the way a child learns to walk. The idea of walking is sort of built into a child, but it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t become real, all by itself. Instead, you stand the kid up, and you step back, and hold out your arms and the child, well, falls down a few times, but sooner or later, the child walks towards you.

Walking is something you draw out of child, by loving it and inviting it to do something it hasn’t done before, and might not think it can do, but that is in there all along.

The connection is that Christian marriage is intended to be one of what the desert mystics called a school of love, a relationship where each one helps to draw out the fullness of the other’s humanity, the fullness of the other’s life. Marriage is intended to be a place where each one exists for the sake of the fullness of the life of the other, in order to help the other to become more; to become who the other was created to be.

Now, to be sure, marriage is not the only school of love—after all, marriage is a vocation, and not everyone is called to that vocation. Families, parishes, religious communities, things like that—these are also supposed to be schools of love, relationships that exist for the sake of the other, relationships that are also, at their best, holy and sacred things. (And there is a whole other sermon about how your marriage is also about us, about the Christian community, and our common ministry, but I’ll save that one for another time.)

None the less, to begin to see that what you are about as a husband or a wife has to do, not with you, but with the other, and with what is truly best for the other, and to be willing to allow that other to be so for you—this is the theological foundation, the real beginning, of Christian marriage.

And this is so wildly different from what our culture says about marriage—from all those ducks out there—that it can be a powerful alternative vision—a new way to see and understand yourself and your marriage, that can be both transforming and energizing.

It can also be scary. If marriage isn’t about you, but is instead about the other (which is what all of those richer and poorer, sickness and health promises are about—your commitment is to a person, not to any circumstances or feelings) then it means that you are newly vulnerable, and newly responsible. It’s a big deal; and it’s possible only with the security that comes from a life-long commitment, with constant reliance on the grace and presence of God, and with the help and support of everyone here, and everyone who shares our faith and our vision.

Which is where love comes in. We Christians need to be careful when we talk about love. That’s because, unlike everybody else, we know what love really looks like. It looks like a cross. So to promise to love the other is not to promise to feel any particular way, it is to promise to act a particular way. It is a promise to act always for the sake of what is best for the other; to act always for the true good of the other. That’s what we mean by love—and, sure, like marriage itself, love is something we always end up doing humanly, never perfectly; but that’s all right, and the ideal is still there.

This love is why marriage is a sign of Christ’s love for his Church, and why it is a very special thing. Now, as for those duck things—being happy and having a good time, and getting your perceived needs met, and things like that—there is no need to worry about these—your heavenly father knows those desires better than you do.

Seek first the heart of the matter, and these, too, will be given you as well, and in abundance. God bless you both.

First of all, and as I will say again in the little service concluding our pastoral relationship, it has been an honor, a blessing, and a true gift to have been given the opportunity to be a part of St. Mary’s, and of Big Spring, for these last thirteen and a half years. I have received far, far more than I could possibly have given. This place has been very good to Kathleen, Will and me; and I have been able to work and live among some of the very finest people I have ever known. St. Mary’s staff—our splendid Deacons, Linda, Jann, Barbara—are simply the best there are—and you had better take good care of them. As with all of God’s gifts, they are better than we deserve.

And you—each and every one of you has, in one way or another, allowed me to share in your lives, and in your journey with and to God. For that I am forever grateful. The numbers give just a hint. In my time here we have had 36 baptism, 86 people have been presented (to two different bishops) for Confirmation and Receptions, there have been 7 weddings (not our strong suit) and, painfully, 76 funerals. Just about all of these have touched just about all of us in one way or another. All of this has created among us a web of relationships that ties us together in more ways than we can ever realize at one sitting. These years have been, for me, an holy, and a moving time. I have learned most of what I know about being a Christian adult from you, and I simply cannot thank you enough for all of this.

And there is much more. You all have helped Kathleen and me raise our son, and no small part of the fine man he is becoming is due to your care and participation in his life. That is an eternal debt. In the same way, your support for our active engagement in the life of Big Spring—especially for my involvement with Howard College and Rotary, has been a great source of personal growth and delight.

Of course, these years have had their share of struggles, conflicts, and hurt; I know there have been times when, for a number of reasons, but never from malice, I have made mistakes. For these, I ask your forgiveness, and your prayers. Life its own self is always messy, and parishes are as far from an exception to that as you can get.

And, to answer a question I’ve been asked a couple of times, I think my most abiding regrets were anticipated—I didn’t spend enough time with you, individually, and I didn’t spend enough time just sitting in the courtyard, and in the Bennett Garden. I do want to learn from those.

Gratitude and love, these, and sadness, are churning most in my depths today; but there is always more. Of course I am excited about the new challenges that are set before me; but at the same time I am hopeful and optimistic about you, about St. Mary’s.

You need always to remember that St. Mary’s has been at this a long time; you have had 27 Rectors in the last 125 years—each one of us, whether we knew it or not, was working for the sake of our successor. Rectors always do. I know that my successor will be blessed, and will inherit a vibrant and committed congregation.

The parish’s leadership is strong, committed and able. This congregation is rightly known throughout our city, our Diocese, and beyond, as having the ability to do amazing things; and that won’t change. Finally, I am utterly convinced that God is calling St. Mary’s to meet a real, indeed a desperate, need in this community for that special, Anglican, vision of the Christian faith that we have received and that we are engaged in living out. There is work to do here, and St. Mary’s is called to do that work.

Now, hope and challenge are always intimately intertwined. Real hope for any congregation, and certainly for St. Mary’s, lies not in the "things the Gentiles seek", in questions of survival, or of getting by, or of having enough stuff. In fact, it is only when these questions become dominate that their outcome is in doubt. There is no real hope when these come first. Real hope emerges from embracing the mission that we are called to do—from moving forward to reach out in Christ’s love to our community and all God’s creation through faith, worship, and service.

Never forget that in the little stories that we just heard from Luke, the bread, the fish, and the egg that Jesus likened to the Father’s gifts were never for the person who was asked, they were always for someone else. So, when it comes to ministry and mission, to the call to service that is, it seems, built into the DNA of this place—when it comes to the business of going forward and reaching out—and to the things necessary for that to happen—trust in who Jesus is, and in what Jesus has to say: "Ask and it will be given you; search and will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks, receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."

Once more, thank you from the depths of my heart; it has been a joy and a privilege—I will miss you all deeply, and may God bless you always.