Sermon for All Saints-by-the-Sea, Lent 2, February 28, 2010
by the Reverend Rob Fisher

Texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Anyone who was living in the Northeast in September, 2001, will remember that Tuesday morning of the 11th was an inspiringly beautiful, blue-skied day.  The air was crisp and still, and the grass and trees were lush and green.  It was as perfect as weather gets, in that transitional time between summer and autumn in that part of the country.

I was then a newly arrived seminarian, beginning only the second week of classes.

Our seminary was on the southern coast of Connecticut, and just barely within view of the smoke coming up from Manhattan on that unforgettable day.

At my seminary, every Wednesday evening the Episcopalians gathered for community Eucharist.

We held the service in a cozy little chapel within a stately old house that had been turned into the Episcopal Center.  The chapel was in a room that had once been a dining room, and instead of pews we sat in wooden chairs, facing each other across an aisle, with an altar at the top of the aisle.  When we worshiped, we saw each other’s faces.

The altar table itself had been Bishop Samuel Seabury’s desk, a relic from the turbulent post-colonial days when the Episcopal Church in America was still taking its shape after the Revolutionary War.

Our associate dean, a priest named Sandy Stayner, had been in New York on that Tuesday with her husband, participating in an event with the Archbishop of Canterbury.  They were at Trinity, Wall Street, merely a couple of blocks away from the World Trade Center when it came down.

It was a terrifying experience.

For most of that day, Sandy and her husband had no way of contacting their little son, who I believe was just five or six.

By Wednesday evening, they had made their way home and were with us for our evening service.  Sandy presided at the Eucharist, and together we all sang a setting of Psalm 27, the very psalm that we read here this morning.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom then shall I be afraid?

***

The recent tragedies of the earthquakes in Haiti and in Chile challenge our sense of security.

For many these events challenge to our ability to trust in God.

But sometimes these shocks to our sense of comfort have the power also to open our eyes to see Christ more fully.

They tear down the walls that we build up around ourselves for our own protection, when we think that this world is all there is, forgetting that, as Paul says, our true citizenship is in heaven.

When the walls come down—and when we finally accept that our truest strength is in love and not power—whom can we possibly fear?

William Sloane Coffin once said:

Before we gush about the King of Kings born among beasts in a stall, let us recognize that we too would have preferred God to remain God, rather than become the frailest among us.  We want God to be strong so that we can be weak. 

But God wants to be weak so that we can be strong.

***

Sarah and I in the process of saying goodbye to you all, and it is a time that—at least for us—is turning our world around.  And it is a time of transition in the life of this community.

There is no doubt in my heart about the clarity of God’s call for us to bring our ministry to the people of St. Dunstan’s in Carmel Valley, but that does not take away the sadness we feel in leaving a place and a worshipping community that is truly dear to us.

I’ll admit it.  I hate saying goodbye’s.

I will miss all of you who have shared your walk of faith with me, and who have inspired me with your gifts for ministry.

I will miss Jeff, who has been a friend and a mentor, and I will miss all my colleagues on our wonderful staff, who are not only colleagues but brothers and sisters in Christ.

Except I will not miss Carlos, our sexton, and Robbie, our Parish Administrator, because I am bringing both of them with me.  (This will be news to Jeff.  We can talk after the service.)

***

I remember when I first was discerning the call to come to All Saints.

At that time I happened to spend a weekend at a retreat held at the old Mt. Calvary monastery up in the hills above Santa Barbara.  I spoke with an older priest friend about my opportunity to come here, and he said: “God must really love you!”

The truth is—after being here for two and a half years, I can say truly about this place that God must really love All Saints.

There is a beautiful, pulsing heart to this community.

Here is a church with grace-filled and dedicated parishioners, where the steadiness of the past meets the freshness of new things, like the wonderful new Eventide service, or the inspiring recent partnerships with our neighboring churches.

And that is not to mention the incredibly blessed setting of Santa Barbara itself.

I had a seminary professor who was also from the Diocese of L.A. who used to lament how she was having a hard time working her way back to the West Coast. 

We stood together in a sacristy once with snow and ice outside, and she said, “Oh, Los Angeles: it’s like Eden.  And Santa Barbara, it’s like Eden before the Fall!”

All Saints is blessed.

But of course blessings cannot be hoarded, or they will cease to be blessings at all.  God has loved this place, and we are called to continue passing forward the blessings that we have received here.  That is the only true way to be blessed.

***

The psalm goes on to say:

One thing have I asked of the Lord
One thing I seek
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life

To behold the fair beauty of the Lord
And to seek his temple

One word that people say about All Saints frequently is that it is a beautiful church.

As a child, growing up in this congregation, I remember being enthralled especially by the dark spaces, where we allow room for God to be worshiped in mystery.

In this building you can see where human hands have lovingly crafted the wood and the glass.  A sanctuary like this could not be stamped out by a machine, but can only be carefully and painstakingly crafted.  It is an expression of our reverence to God.

As beautiful as our sanctuary is, All Saints cannot contain God.  Rather, All Saints sets a table and prepares a place for the Lord to dwell, for us to meet God in our worship, and in the love that we share with our brothers and sisters in Christian community.

The beauty of the Lord is not really found in the wood and the glass.  It is found in the faces of God’s children, those faces that I have been blessed to see every week, in these pews, and gathered at this altar.

***

The psalmist says

You speak in my heart and say, ‘Seek my face.’
Your face, Lord, will I seek.”

What is it to be a Christian?

It is to seek the Lord’s face.

Interestingly, when Sandy Stayner and her husband were trapped in Trinity, Wall Street on September 11th, they had to escape through underground passageways in Lower Manhattan. 

Trinity has a nursery school, and all of the adults were paired with little children to walk with them or carry them through the maze of tunnels. 

Before they set out, Archbishop Rowan Williams gathered them in prayer.

One would expect him to pray for their protection, but instead he prayed that they would see Christ in, and be Christ to, all the people they would encounter in the next hours.

The tragedy of that day gave them great clarity.

We are called to seek the Lord’s face.  We are called to be God’s face.

In the words of Bill Coffin, we are called not so much to the obedience to God’s power as to return God’s love with our own.

The Lord is our light and our salvation.

Whom then shall we fear?

– Amen.