The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Proper 25
21st Sunday After Pentecost
29 October 2017
Readings:
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46
We have an interesting ravel of scriptures to unravel this morning as we join together in the middle of our visioning process together.
For those either visiting or who weren’t able to make it to any of the conversations thus far, this week we’ve met in small groups in the hospitality of one another’s homes and here at Calvary to talk about our stories—about what brought us to Calvary, and what keeps us at Calvary—which laid the foundation for our conversations about strengths and growing edges of our community and parish, about who we have been and who we are today.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with every group except Al and Sonja’s Wednesday group, whom I’ll join this coming week since I was in retreat with the bishop last Wednesday. These conversations were an opportunity to hear the sacred stories of how God has been present in the interweaving relationships that have made Calvary the family that it is today. For some, there is a deep personal history in this community. For others, like me, their journey with this family has only just begun. But for all of us, there is a sense of belonging in this place and with this people that draws both the promises of faith and support and the succeeding of generations into a common journey that feeds us.
As much as the Israelites lamented the loss of Moses, it was their common journey as an ongoing family, united in their faith and hope and led by God, that carried them into the Promised Land. So too, as much as beloved and treasured individuals we’ve lost in our family have made a difference in this place, it is our ongoing and familial journey in faith, hope, love, and mutual care and support that makes this a place of solace—or, echoing both our Psalmist and several of those telling their stories this week—a place of sanctuary; a place we find God. Here, in all our amazing, quirky, and eclectic ways, we find acceptance, we find inclusion, we find home. Paul’s words from today’s epistle could almost be our mission statement: So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.
Whatever shortcomings we may also have, this is certainly a place of relationship and mutual care and faith.
I read an interesting take on this morning’s gospel this week that drew it into the heart of this process of community introspection and visioning for the future. A theologian named Earl Palmer suggested that in Jesus’ response to the lawyer’s question this morning, his answer shows us that he took the question seriously. Rather than just dismissing yet another attempt to out-wit him in yet another duel with the religious authorities, Jesus listens to his question and risks a response that draws from both his wisdom as a masterful teacher of the law as well as his prophetic role as messiah. Drawing on the history of relationship between his people and God, he draws from the “Hear, O Israel” text from Deuteronomy 6:5 that always begins worship in the synagogue (as well as our 8:00 service!), which he pairs with the Levitical expansion on the law to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, to which he also adds his own distinctive spin that summarizes the core of his own teaching in mission and ministry—on these two laws hang all the law and the prophets.
By taking the lawyer’s question seriously, Jesus takes the time to be in relationship with him. He takes the time to hear him with respect. He takes the time to honor his question with a response that not only demonstrates his mastery of the law, and proclaims him as messiah, but also sets him in the place of the one who now asks the questions—which he does.
By asking them about David’s relationship to his son who is also his Lord, the only answer available places the Jewish covenant of hope and national longings for kingdom under the only one who fulfills David’s psalm: the Messiah himself.
Whatever the outcome of our conversations next week, and the drawing together of our hopes that will come with the ingathering of ideas at our potluck dinner and celebration on November 12th, we are encouraged both to take Christ’s model to heart in listening to one another, to honoring one another’s questions, to being in dialogue with deep intentionality, and to take hope in Christ as the foundation of our faith, who inspires us to the work that we collectively dream of doing in the years ahead.
I shared some of my own story with each group this week of what brought me here and why I have every intention of staying as long as you’ll have me.
I didn’t grow up Episcopalian. I knew from the time I was four years old that I was going to be ordained when I grew up, but as I grew, it became clear to me that my calling conflicted with my father’s theology which taught me that because of who I was, God couldn’t love me. So I ran from my calling. I quit going to church when I was confirmed, and I searched for seven years in many self-destructive and dangerous ways for community, for acceptance, for affirmation—for God. When my best friend in high school finally tricked me into going to his Episcopal youth group, I finally found a place where I felt accepted and loved, not in spite of who I was, but because of who I was. I started piecing back together my understanding of God and God’s love in a community that taught me a new way of faith that enacted God’s love and invited me back into discernment of a calling I’d been running from, but which wouldn’t let me go.
After seminary, I served in my first parish with a priest who claimed both to want to be in collaborative ministry with me, as well as that balance between vocation and family was essential. I took him at his word but quickly found myself serving in a vacuum. In charge of the children’s and youth programs of the parish, I built them up to the point that they were thriving and new families and new life were coming into the parish. This apparently upset my boss, who jealously began taking opportunities to undermine my position at the parish. Then one Thursday, without warning, he called me into his office and berated me for 90 minutes, premised on a trip I had to cancel because there hadn’t been enough interest to pay for it and we weren’t given enough budget to cover it. He called my personal integrity and spirituality into question, told me that he never heard anything positive about my ministry there, and that it wasn’t working out and that I might consider seeking elsewhere. I cried. Monday he tried to take it all back, but by then I had learned that he’d done the same thing to his two prior assistant rectors, and I had, indeed, sought elsewhere.
I left with my dreams crushed. I was called from there to serve at Epiphany in San Carlos, which was a tremendously healing experience with Melanie Donahoe—a priest I still admire tremendously. But I still didn’t believe I’d ever have my own parish, so I entered the doctoral program at the GTU planning to be full time faculty and to serve as a non-stipendiary priest on weekends for parishes that couldn’t afford clergy. We moved to Fort Collins where I worked as adjunct faculty for four years, and I experienced the grace of filling in for another priest I admire greatly—Bonnie Sarah Spencer—as interim both during her sabbatical and again when she retired. I learned that I did have gifts in parish leadership, and I started to feel that familiar tug that I’d again been running away from.
I accepted a position as resident chaplain for a summer on Lake Tahoe at Camp Galilee, where I met and supervised a handful of different clergy over the summer, one of whom, Jeff Paul, had a very similar story to mine, but who had reluctantly taken a parish of his own and then blinked and twenty years had gone by—and he couldn’t have been happier.
That summer, Jane also came here to Santa Cruz for the gender spectrum conference, and came back to camp with information that three different parishes were searching for clergy in the Santa Cruz area—one of our favorite places in the world. After applying for about a hundred tenure track jobs without a single interview, I applied for all three clergy jobs—and was invited to three interviews. It was a bit of a two-by-four knocking me through the open window. In the Skype interviews with all three parishes, I was open about being non-binary and that we were a queer family. For one parish, we both agreed I wouldn’t be a good fit, but both Calvary and St. John’s invited me for a second interview. Each parish seemed lovely over Skype, but when I came to Calvary and met the search committee and vestry in person, I knew. As an introvert, I am typically exhausted by spending time with strangers, particularly when I’m the center of attention. What I found, however, wasn’t that I wanted to collapse in a heap and escape at the end of each of my three days here, but that I felt energized. I felt like I was amongst family. I felt like I was home. So I stepped out of the process with St. John’s to come home here to Calvary. That is what brought me here.
Why I stay here is that I’ve gotten to know each of you in this amazing, eclectic, quirky family. This is a place that doesn’t just pay lip service to wanting to be here for another 153 years. This isn’t a place that just pays lip service to a catch phrase of “all are welcome.” This is a place that is passionate about being a family that lives out God’s love, that is passionate about being involved and having a voice in the ministries it carries out, that is passionate about its history, as well as about its present and its future. This is a place that is passionate about relationship. And it is exciting to be here with you, to be a part of this family, and to serve as your priest as we dream together of what lies ahead.
May God continue to bless us in this time of questioning, of discernment, of assessment, and of dreaming for our future, and may Christ be our guide, companion, and inspiration as we venture into the next 153 years together as a family of faith, passionate about living out Christ’s love.
Amen