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Pentecost 9, Proper 13 Lesson: 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
August 2, 2009 Psalm 51:1-13
The Rev. Wallace Marsh Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-16
St. James’ Church, Marietta Holy Gospel: John 6:24-35
I speak these words in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I must admit, I am a little nervous today because I know the trains are coming , but I just don’t know when. The protocol (I asked the 7:45 crowd) is that if the train comes I just stay quiet. What nobody said is what happens if the train comes again while I am preaching. I think I am removed from the pulpit if it happens twice.
About two weeks ago, I was packing in Albany and I stumbled upon my ordination program from when I was ordained a priest. It had been a while since I had seen it, and it certainly beat packing, so I decided to procrastinate a few minutes and read over this ordination bulletin. As I was reading it, I was astonished to see that the epistle we have today from Ephesians was the same reading that was read at my ordination (and perhaps the same reading read at many other ordinations).
What a beautiful passage it is; it is one that exhorts all Christians to lead a life following Christian virtues. It is also a passage that reminds both the priest and the church of our primary mission--we are a church that baptizes...As you hear the words from our reading...There is One body and One Spirit, One hope, One Lord, One faith, One baptism, One God and Father of all. These are the same words we say every time we baptize someone.
The reading also reminds us that we (all of the baptized) have different gifts and talents. We are all very different people, we are all people from different walks of life, but as the Church we, in all our differences and similarities, come together to build up the body of Christ.
When I stumbled upon this reading two weeks ago from my ordination service, I took it as a sign that I should preach upon this passage today. However, as time went on, this proved to be a difficult task for two very good reasons:
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I do not yet know the people of St. James’. I have heard wonderful things about you...yes, I have tried to dig up some dirt on you. Everywhere I have looked and everywhere I asked I only heard good things. And I am really excited about getting to know you in the weeks and months ahead, but good preaching is personal. The preacher needs to know his / her congregation’s spiritual needs...and the fact of the matter is, I do not even know your names (so if you would wear your nametags, it would help).
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I was moving. Last Sunday I preached in Albany and this Sunday I am here, and had to move in that whole time. I probably own 20 Bibles...and dozens of commentaries. In Albany, I knew exactly what was in every box. By the time the movers got me up here, they just slopped everything around and I had no idea where any of my Biblical commentaries, any of my sermon references were. It made preaching quite difficult.
Thankfully, the idea for today’s sermon came when the movers arrived on Monday and I was running through the house. The movers had packed everything up, the truck left for Marietta, and I was running through the house picking up the final items the final items you had left but did not see. One of the last items to be packed was a trail map that hung high in my office. This map struck a chord with me personally and brought today’s epistle reading to life.
Just a few weeks before my ordination to the priesthood, (the same ordination that had this passage), I took a hiking trip, a pilgrimage...to Spain, to hike the final 150 miles of the Camino de Santiago...(the Way of Saint James) that is the 700 mile trail that starts in France and ends at Santiago. Tradition has it that before you are ordained a priest / deacon you usually go off to do a retreat...at that time, my bishop, the Bishop of Georgia, strongly encouraged us to take these retreats.
Before I was ordained a deacon I was still up in seminary, I went to a convent and spent three or four days praying with the Sisters of the convent, writing journals, reading Scriptures. In those months between my ordination as a deacon and my ordination as a priest, my good childhood friend (Ben) and his wife (Anne Hunter...a Spanish teacher) invited me to join them for a hike in Spain. He said, “Wallace why don’t you join us? You will be theology, my wife will be Spanish, and we will have a great trip. We can hike the Camino de Santiago.”
I said this certainly beats spending three or four days locked up in a convent, so I told the Bishop that I had another idea for a retreat, and he bought it. In reality, I really just wanted to go to Spain and hike with my friends.
I do not think I really realized what I was getting into. The first thing I realized is that if you have two friends who are marathon runners and they invite you to join them on a 7 day / 150 mile hike...20 miles a day with a 30 lb pack...you really might want to think about what you are getting yourself into.
The other thing I didn’t realize is how spiritually powerful this trip was going to be.
The minute you start your pilgrimage, traditionally the pilgrims wear the shell; it is a sign that you are a pilgrim, as we all know, it is the sign of St. James, which is on your program today, and it is a sign of our baptism. We traditionally baptize people using a shell.
As you hike day in and day out you wear this shell; you see other people who have shells on their backpacks, you start hiking with them, you start walking and talking with different folks. Sometimes you might walk two days with the same person or the same group. You might have the same lunch stops, you might spend the night in the same village. Sometimes you might walk with one person for one day, and he or she might break off and spend the night in the same village, and you decided to continue to the next village, but two or three days later you are having a cup of coffee or you are having lunch, and up walks that person. You say hello again, you reminisce about what happened in the past two or three days; if the weather was bad, you talk about the rain. It is an amazing experience.
One memory that I will never forget was the night we stopped at a pilgrim hostel on the top of a mountain. It was a hostel that also served dinner family style. That evening there were 20 people gathered around the table, and as fate would have it, no one knew the other person’s language. Believe it or not we ended up spending hours around that dinner table, somehow communicating.
The one thing we had in common at that dinner table was not our languages or nationality, the one thing we had in common were our shells and our desire to see each other gathered around the table in Santiago at the Cathedral of St. James.
And that is where we all came together again. At the very end of the pilgrimage you arrive at the Cathedral, at the body of St. James. When you eventually get to the cathedral, they have a pilgrims mass. Above the ceiling in the Cathedral is a chandelier-like structure, but it is much, much larger. There is also a big incense burner because if you have had pilgrims hiking 700 miles, they stink. So they swing this incense burner to cover the smell of people.
There we were, hundreds of people all there gathered around the Lord’s table – people you had walked with for days, people you had dinner with, people who snored so loud in the hostel you wanted to smother them with a pillow – they were all gathered around that table. It was perhaps one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life. It was one bread...one body.
My point in telling you this is not to share from my travel journal, but to bring today’s readings to life. I have read your materials, I have talked to folks in this parish, there are many similarities between that pilgrimage and this place. There is the obvious, we are St. James’ Church, a church who displays the shell, a sign to others that we are a parish who takes our baptism very seriously. We are a diverse community of baptized Christians, made up of different folks, from different walks of life, with many different gifts.
And like that pilgrimage, each week our journey takes us to the final destination, that is, the table. It is there that we all gather around. It is there that this entire baptized community, in all our differences and all of our similarities, it is there that we are reminded that we are one body in Jesus Christ. It is there we gather to eat the bread of life that nourishes us week in and week out. My friends, that is a powerful message and one that we Episcopalians need to tell, over and over again.
I would like to end where I began, with the passage from Ephesians. We are charged with building up the body of Christ, the final lines of today’s Epistle says that we are to build it up in love.
One of the tough and the beautiful things about hiking the pilgrimage, the Way of St. James’ was that you would have to part ways with someone you had been hiking with for a day or two; and then the next day someone else would join you. The person you hike with one day and the person you might hike with the next day might be very different, but inevitably, by the end of the day, it became obvious that God brought you together for a reason. In some weird shape or way, God was building you up, in some way that you did not know.
Last week you at St. James’ said good bye to a wonderful priest and I said good bye to a wonderful parish. It was a tough day for both of us. But today is a new day, today we begin our journey together. I am a little different than the last guy, you are a little different than the last church. But my friends, God has brought us together for a reason, and our mission will always remain the same -- building up the body of Christ by building it up in love. AMEN.
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