I was on the phone last week with an old
friend talking about the possibility of being called as the next Rector of St.
John’s, Petaluma, and he said I am in the very privileged position of being a
second “Founding Father” of the parish.
“Founding Father”—I liked the sound of that, but I also immediately
thought about all of you. The project of
renewing this congregation is only in its eighth year, and still has a long way
to go, so all of us here today, even those who are newly arrived, can consider
ourselves part of the founding generation.
I also thought about how many of our Founding Fathers are Mothers. I read an interview recently with Philip
Jenkins, the leading academic on global Christianity.
Asked about the role of women in the church in Africa, where, barring an
unimaginable catastrophe, there will be a billion Christians by 2050, he said
“Even if they are not ordained, women are key among the lay leaders. Women bring their menfolk in as
converts. If a church doesn’t have a
very strong female base and constituency, it is going nowhere.”
The same is true here, of course, and I saw a
beautiful illustration of this a week ago yesterday. I officiated at the marriage of one of our
members at her home outside of Santa Rosa, and many of the wedding guests were from
St. John’s. Theresa Peter was the DJ for
the event, and after dinner she cranked up the dance tunes. Jason Klein and I were sitting at a table on
the patio outside and we looked up and saw that eight or ten of the Founding
Mothers of our church had formed a circle and were dancing together on the
other side of the pool. Now I’m not
going to name names, but I can tell you that the church ladies were getting down, and taking turns strutting
their stuff into the center of the ring.
And to me that was a vision of what I love about the spirit of the
Episcopal Church, and why we have gone to such an effort to keep it alive here
in Petaluma.
Because while we prize our formal liturgical
worship, and we commit ourselves in baptism to live disciplined lives of prayer
and service, and although we value hard work, and intellectual rigor, and the
patient endurance of suffering as much as anyone, and while we do not
underestimate the gravity of sin and the destructiveness of its consequences,
or our great need for forgiveness and the unmerited gift of Christ’s righteousness,
we also affirm the basic goodness of life.
We find a lot to celebrate in the common things of the created world,
and those ordinary human experiences of love and pleasure, of beauty and belonging,
that speak to us of God. Another one of
our members summed it up for me very simply at that same wedding reception last
weekend when he said to me, “we really are meant to be happy, aren’t we?”
I think this experience of simply being
happy, of being among friends and enjoying life, was central to the mission of
Jesus. When he heard about the murder of
John the Baptist he decided to get out of town and lay low for a while, but
there were a lot of people, a huge crowd, in fact, who went after him. They were desperate for some relief of the suffering
and hopelessness of their lives and they saw him take off in his boat and
followed, walking along the edge of the lake until he came ashore. When he landed they were waiting for him, and
he felt compassion for their misery; so he healed the ones who were sick, and next
thing you know it was suppertime.
His disciples wanted to send the crowd away,
but Jesus decided instead to have a picnic.
Everyone sat down together on the grass, and ate their fill of bread and
fish, looking out over the lake as the sun was going down. The young men and women flirted with each
other. The air was full of the laughter
of children at play. No one had to pay,
or to cook or clean up. And Jesus didn’t
make a speech to that crowd. He didn’t
announce a new liberation movement to solve all their problems. He didn’t hold a religious revival meeting
for the salvation of their souls. But
for a couple of hours that evening, Jesus helped everyone remember what it was
like to be happy.
You wouldn’t think this was such a controversial
thing to have done. But the fact is that
one of things that Jesus’ enemies found so threatening about him was that he
made people happy. They were happy
around in a way they hadn’t been in a long, long time, and he seemed to enjoy
them, too. “This fellow is a glutton and
a drunkard,” grumbled the other religious leaders, “who welcomes tax collectors
and sinners and eats with them.” And
these critics were actually pretty astute, because they recognized that nothing
is as revolutionary as happiness. When
people experience it, they quite naturally understand that this is their
birthright. They remember how simple it
really is, and that it shouldn’t be too much to ask.
This leads them to some really uncomfortable
questions about themselves, but also about the rules and rationales that
dominate their lives. They wonder why
they spend so much time and energy struggling to stave off disaster, or avoid
punishment, or compensate for their obligatory shame and unworthiness, and so
little doing things that make them truly happy.
They question the dogma that happiness is only for the fortunate few,
and ask whether anyone really can be happy when the person across the street,
across town, or across the border is in misery.
And just as Jesus was not shy about sharing his happiness, he was also
willing to raise the questions it provoked, and to press them as far as they
took him, which, as we know, ended up being the cross.
As founding Mothers and Fathers of the new
and continuing St. John’s Episcopal Church, we’ve been trying to articulate
something about why we’re here. More and
more people are making do without any religion at all, and for those who do
need it, there is no shortage of trendy and user-friendly options. So why go to all the trouble of renewing and
rebuilding this parish, when the tides of cultural change seem to be flowing in
the other direction? To answer that
question we’ve had Vestry Retreats, and come up with a mission statement, and
held Vision Conversations, and Discernment Conversations, and done a lot of speaking
and listening by way of trying to say something clear, and compelling, and true.
And we have been very careful to frame these
conversations so it is clear that we are not being selfish, but that we are all
about what God is calling us to do, and how we can serve Christ, and love our
neighbor. And maybe we really mean that
in all sincerity, yet I also suspect that there is at least a little part of us
that believes that this is what we’re supposed to say. But true spiritual discernment is about
letting go of what we think is supposed to be and becoming open to what is, as
we see in the living light of the Spirit.
So today I’m saying there may be no shame in admitting that we come to
church because it makes us happy, or because we still hope to be, or want to
remember what it was like, and because we know that happiness multiplies and
deepens when it is shared.
In a world grown deeply cynical about human
beings, that reduces happiness to power and possessions, to entertainment and aggression
and sex, we hold on to the happiness of Jesus.
It was the cause he suffered and died for, and that should be enough to
tell us that it is not something sentimental or superficial. It is what he was raised again for, so that
his revolutionary happiness would not die, but would be universal and
eternal. We come to church because we
insist on believing his promise of being happy, and to listen to his teaching
about how to hope and to work, to give and to love, to suffer and to pray, for
a truly happy world.
