The Rev. Alicia Schuster Weltner

St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church

13 Pentecost/Proper 17C/August 29, 2004

 

Note: This is Mother Weltner’s last sermon as associate rector of St. Martin in the Fields. On September 15, 2004, she resumes her pastoral journey as Canon for Congregational Ministries at the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta.

 

God first loved us and loves us still, and aches for us to know that truth, in all its pain and glory.

 

Gospel for Sunday: Luke 14:1, 7-14

 

                Once upon a time, there was a Mom who wanted to be a queen. First, she turned into an oreo-cookie-making machine, then she turned into an oreo cookie and got eaten up, then finally, she turns into a queen; a queen with her very own king. The End.

I am not making this up! This story was written and told to me by my very own daughter, supporting actress of many a Sunday sermon, Sally Cobb. This is a story she wrote herself, or more accurately, illustrated herself, (though she did write “The End” all by herself) in vivid blue marker in a Target college ruled composition book. She was the narrator as well, of course. And while I don’t like to think that my own ambitions could have given her this idea for a Mom who wanted to be a queen (I think it is much more likely that it’s all the time she spends on disneyprincess.com), I do think she gets at a very compelling truth in her own five-year-old way, the point that Jesus is trying to make today in today’s 

gospel--whenever you think  you know where you’re heading, you better be careful how you go, or you might turn into an oreo cookie—or to translate to gospel terms—be asked to move down to the lower place at the table. You have to humble yourself before you can be exalted.

Jesus is at the table when we meet him today, at yet another dinner party, and he is giving his own lesson in table manners. As is his custom, he is turning everyone’s expectations upside down—about their own lives and how they should live them, about who is welcome at the table and when and where. And he gives advice too—advice that is not just about good manners but about how our world and how we relate to each other will be reordered in the Kingdom of God. His advice is not about how to save your next dinner party, or one you attend, from social disaster. It is about saving your life; it is not just about honor, but abut glory; it is not just about changing seats at the table, but about changing the world.

And that’s what the church is about—what we are really, truly, about, here at St. Martin’s, one of the Bishop’s favorite “missionary outposts,” and everywhere people worship in the name of Christ. We are about “knowing Christ and making him known,” cooperating in bringing the kingdom of God closer among us, and with it, the hope for new love and new life into the circle of love God has made here. And the work we do with God is about always widening the circle of his love. As Jesus says today, we are to welcome the new and the strange, to welcome the poor and poorly dressed, the confused and wanting, the troubled and hurting and needy, as such as us have already found welcome and love. We are here not just because we love each other, as wonderful as that is, but because God first loved us and loves us still, and aches for us to know that truth, in all its pain and glory.

As I prepare to end my time here with you at St. Martin’s, I have been reflecting how true that all is. For we have known happiness and sadness, even glory and pain, during our time together here.  I know I have learned and loved a lot here. I have grown to know many of you well, and been stunned and saddened after almost four years to realize how many I have missed the chance to know. There have been many, many happy times here, especially for my daughter in the joy of being in school here, first as a member of the last two-year-old class, and now as a very proud kindergartener.  And there have no doubt been humbling times too (like the time I knocked over the advent wreath on my way to making announcements). We have taught each other much, I know, about what it means to live and love as God would have us do, and we have known too, no doubt, the need and the power of forgiveness.

Through it all, we have lived in the hope of the new life promised to us in Christ, I hope, in the best ways we could. We have lived this is in all the children we have welcomed into this place and watched grow, in all the people, young and old, that we have said goodbye to, and in all those we have lost and commended to larger life with God.

A priest friend of mine once told me that what she hoped for in parish ministry was that you and your parishioners could be like two camels crossing the desert together. You need each other equally—because you both need the dust blown from your eyes every so often. I trust and hope we have done some of that for each other.

And I also trust and hope that in my new work for the Diocese of Atlanta I will take much of that learning and love with me, as I work and pray to find new ways to help the Church I know has saved and transformed my own life reach in new ways the many, many people who need a home with God and will find one in our Episcopal church. I ask your prayers.

The other night, after Sally’s creative adventures in short story writing, we settled down for our usual three books (well, three books and then Black Beauty—but that’s another sermon!) before bed. And after Picky Nicky and The Man Who Had Ten Children and The Ticky Tacky Doll, I closed the book with a resounding, “THE END” and my best “aren’t you sleepy yet,” smile.  Ever resistant to the inevitable time to sleep, Sally cried out, giving me her best puppy dog pout, “But I don’t like it when it’s ‘The End,’ Mama”!

None of us do, do we, least of all me. But one of the truths our faith teaches us is the bright and beautiful one that God is present in all of them, and that our ends are our beginnings. I am not making this up!

 Friends, as we all continue to find our places at God’s table, I know that God will continue to bless us, each and everyone, kings and queens and least and lost, that we may continue, together and apart, in the good work God has begun in us, and, “be embraced by the fathomless and ever-surprising Love”** that waits to say to us all, “Friends, come up higher.”

 

 


* To quote our Presiding Bishop, Frank T. Griswold, in his letter of June 2004, to the clergy of the Episcopal Church.