Easter 3 - Address to Congregation

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Easter 3 - Address to Congregation
(The Annual Congregational Meeting follows the Service)
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: April 18,1999

TEXT: Luke 24:13-35 - On the Road to Emmaus
"Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread."

ISSUE: Bewildered disciples leaving Jerusalem meet Jesus along the road, but they do not recognize him: "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." Jesus begins a period of instruction, and stays with them for supper. Suddenly they recognize him. Luke's passage stresses the importance of the Word and the Sacrament. For the church today to continue to be effective in its work in the world and among its own it must stay focused on the Word, the teaching ministry, and the Sacramental ministry expressed in worship. Our faithfulness is rooted in embracing Jesus Christ as Lord. Without keeping focused we become ineffective as the church, distracted and secularized. We must continue to study, pray, learn, and worship regularly to deal with the issues of the future.
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AN ADDRESS TO THE CONGREGATION 1999
Today we are meeting for our Annual Congregational Meeting. It is our time for electing new members to the Parish Vestry. It is also that occasion for all of the members and interested persons to look together at the state of the parish, in terms of how we are doing as good stewards, and how we are doing as the disciples and missionaries of our Lord. I would also like to take this opportunity to talk with you about some of the issues facing the church as we greet the future.
This year will be one in which we will have to look at Stewardship in a way that we have not had to do before. We will be receiving two large bequests. We are still not completely aware of what the actual amounts of these gifts will be although we expect the Paul David White gift to be somewhere around $500,000. We will also receive the Florence Bergquist bequest which is estimated to be around $70,000. These gifts added to our present Endowment Fund would total nearly one million dollars value.
Needless to say, your Vestry and its officers will have some important decisions to make as to how these funds will best serve and promote our Lord's work in the years ahead. In all honesty, I feel a sense of apprehension about being in a position of having such responsibily as to be a partner in the stewardship of these funds. I am reminded of the Parable in Luke's Gospel (Luke 12:41f) of The Faithful & Unfaithful Servant. The faithful servant who is put in charge of the household is expected to do his duty and do it well. The servant who is negligent gets a good whipping according to the story. (Jesus' parables were really tough sometimes, and got people's attention.) The parable concludes (vs. 48): "Much is required from the person to whom much is given; much more is required from the person to whom much more is given." We do have a wonderful but awesome responsibility before us. We will be able to attend to some of our own needs, as well as be benevolent. We will need to take time for prayerful discernment before making quick decisions that we could later regret. These generous gifts should first serve to remind us all to put the church in our own Wills. They should remind us all to be continuning good stewards of the abundance that God has given to each of us. For us to become negligent in our regular giving as a result of these bequests would not be in the best interest of our church, nor in the best interest of our own spiritual growth. It would not be good for us to become a parish reliant soley upon the dead. In Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, he told his disciples, "Your heart will be where your riches are." All of us as members of this parish, as disciples of our Lord, as good stewards, need to do our part as God has given us the bounty we enjoy. If we choose to allow the church to become totally dependent upon endowment gifts from the past, we will cease to be a living church and an expression of the living body of Christ. We shall instead become curators of a dusty old museum dedicated to the past. God has indeed given us wonderful gifts and we must continue to build on them. May each of us continue to be good stewards so that we have our hearts, souls, and minds invested in what God is calling us to do, and continue to invest in the richness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Another issue before us this year is that of making St. John's Church welcoming and readily accessible to all people. Last year in my address to you I had mentioned that since we could put people into space and on the moon, it didn't seem that it should be impossible to put handicapped persons into St. John's Church. A committee formed shortly thereafter to begin looking at ways in which we could make St. John's readily accessible to people in wheel chairs and for people with difficulty negotiating stairs. Considerable time and energy, a lot of brainstorming, and consulting has gone into this project under the leadership of Debbie Starr. The Accessibility Committee will be presenting at the meeting today an architect's sketch and model of a feasible and possible way to construct an aesthetic ramp and porch that will make St. John's readily accessible to all people. It will be revealed today for the parish's perusal. I am most grateful for the really good and careful work that this committee has done. And I am hopeful that the project will continue to fruition though the support of the entire congregation morally and financially in the near future. A readily accessible church is a major step taken in being a truly welcoming church.
At the heart of being a living and vital church, true to good stewardship and being welcoming, is just how invested we all are in Jesus Christ as our Lord. In today's gospel reading, Luke tells of two disciples who are leaving Jerusalem after the crucifixion event. (Some think they are husband and wife.) They are going down the road to Emmaus. They are discussing the events of the past week, notably the crucifixion of Jesus. While they are going down the road, Jesus suddenly accompanies the two disciples. Their eyes are kept from recognizing him. He asks them what they are discussing, and they reply that he must be the last one to have heard how Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and work before God and all the people, was condemned to death and crucified. What's more there were reports by some women that he was alive. Some others went to check out the tomb and found it empty, but did not see him.
Jesus enters into the discussion with these two disciples and begins to talk about the scriptures and to make some revelations. Perhaps he told them of Moses in Deuteronomy (18:14f) declaring: "In the land you are about to occupy, people follow the advice of those who practice divination and look for omens, but the Lord your God does not allow you so do this. Instead, he will send you a prophet like me from among your own people, and you are to obey him." Jesus like Moses did indeed hate the suffering of God's people at the hand of great injustice. Perhaps Jesus reminded these two disciples of Isaiah's (53) Suffering Servant Passages: "We despised him and rejected him; he endured suffering and pain. . . . . But he endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne. . . . .But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received. . . . After a life of suffering, he will again have joy; he will know that he did not suffer in vain." Jesus entered into the discussion. He was revealing the scriptures to them, and how God would not abandon his people. He reveals and gives hope to these hopeless and fleeing disciples.
As the sun sets, the two intrigued disciples invite this person who still remains a stranger to remain with them for supper. When he was at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and borke it, and gave it to them. Luke says, "Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight." But they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" Like all other resurrection or appearance stories these disciples quickly returned to tell others that the Lord is risen, and that they had experienced him.
What is at the heart of this scripture reading is the importance of two things in the life of the church: The Word and The Sacraments. To be alive with Christ is to be knowledgeable of the stories contained in the scriptures. To be alive with Christ we must participate in the Sacraments, feeding upon him in this spiritual way. Notice that our Liturgies, our Sunday Services, are basically in two parts. The first part is spent dealing with the Word, in scripture reading, sermon, and in prayer. The second part of the Liturgy is the participation in the receiving of the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. The more we know the story and embrace the Scripture, the more we receive the Sacrament and take Christ into us the more alive and real Jesus Christ becomes. The meaning of his ministry - his longing for justice, his affection for the lost, the least, and the last, his profound sacrificial love become a significant part of our lives and our ministries joined with his. Through this formula of studying and knowing scripture, of prayer, and receiving the Sacrament, we are more able to share and communicate the living presence and its importance to us in our lives, and in the lives of others. The more we are invested in, and focused upon Jesus Christ, the more able we shall become in discerning how to use the gifts we are given. The more focused and invested we are in Jesus Christ as our Lord, the more compassionate, hospitable, welcoming, and genuinely sensitive and evangelisitic we shall become.
Our life together as a worshipping community consists of people knowledgeable of the scriptures, people who are full of prayer, people who participate regularly in the living presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrament seeking to discern what Jesus Christ is calling us to be and to do. All of this is what is ultimately crucial and vital to the future of our parish and how we as a community carry on the message of God's love for his creation, and allow God to work through us and in us.
Two disciples left Jerusalem and were on their way to Emmaus. Jesus came and walked with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. They were something like last week's Thomas who could not believe or have faith. Yet, those who were blind, those who walked in darkness, the light of Christ prevailed and enlightened them all. Pray that thas same grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus will keep us enlightened and walking in the light that leads us along the way to his Kingdom.