Nativity at 150
Sermon by Bishop Paul Marshall
Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012
It has been a week that demonstrates who the people of Nativity are. Patiently preparing for the worst, hoping for the best, and when trouble came, handling it with grace and charm. It is a good celebration of a great church.
During the week, we have been given envelopes from children in the Sunday School of your daughter church to help with relief on the south side, and I was deeply touched by their generosity, because the north side has turned out to have its own problems. I have a little gift of my own later, from a bank vault in Wilkes-Barre: it’s a piece of wood from the first structure in Bethlehem, probably the first place God was praised here.
If we think about the dozens and dozens of people who prepared this weekend, culminating a year’s celebration, it is important to hold in on mind the big question, why do it? There are old churches all over the land, many for sale.
The answer is, of course, we celebrate Nativity because it is still doing its ministry, doing it creatively, faithfully, and in service to Christ and his flock.
What kind of a message did it send to the community to build a house of God in 1862, a year of death, a year when The United States was losing a war on its own soil? A number of future rectors and lay people would have seen service in that terrible war. Can you imaging their relief to come inside the shelter of this church in 1865, giving thanks for their safety, thanks for their country, and shedding before God quiet tears for those who did not make it back with them. Again and again in Nativity’s history it has been a safe place for widows and veterans to pray and give thanks. And in no time of major conflict has Nativity failed to remember those who bear their country’s arms.
To build a church in 1862 was an act of faith and an act of service.
As we maintain and gratefully receive what our ancestors have placed here, we may well ask what is next. We have all been doing our part to preserve this wonderful place. Why?
Ordinarily I would say that the gospel passage is not so great for ALL Saints Sunday, but that’s another sermon, and here we have it and it meets our purposes very well.
Jesus’s friend is ill and he mysteriously takes his time in getting to the sickbed, announcing at one point, “our friend Lazarus is dead.” When he shows up, sure enough, his friend Lazarus is not sick, but like a certain Norwegian parrot, is completely dead. They’ve wrapped him in burial sheets, laid him in the tomb, and covered it with rocks so the odors stay in and the robbers stay out.
Jesus comes before the tomb of his friend and cries. Some are unimpressed because he had plenty of notice to heal him, his friend. He tells them to open the tomb. Despite their fear of odor, they obey Jesus. And with a loud shout, “Lazarus come out of that tomb.”
If you had a hard time imagining Blind Bartimaeus stumbling up blind to find Jesus, this week we are to imagine a man tied hand and foot with his face totally covered responding to that compelling voice.
WHAT HAS TO HAPPEN? For the healing to be of any use to him, the community has to unbind him. They must set him free so he can stumble out into the sunshine to live out the miracle.
Do you know that the Hill-to-Hill Bridge was lined up with the cross on Nativity? Everyday thousands of aching people aim their cars needing Jesus to heal them and needing us to do the perhaps longer job of unbinding them—and they don’t know or have forgotten how to ask. You do know that from either end of that bridge you can walk to hovels where people are entombed in violence, drugs, and even murder. The skilled care they get from our partners in ministry at New Bethany and Trinity may be their only chance to come out of those tombs. We can be there for them with our cash and with our volunteer time.
What about our own Lazarus moments? I remember when my younger brother died in 1995, just over a month before the dog and pony show—now they call it walk-about—in this diocese. In the weeks after Ron’s death, I was as good as dead. I showed up from the Yale chapel because it was my job, but I was paralyzed with grief. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t talk, I was mostly hurt and hugely angry. Then I realized two things. The real reason I came to church was to be hurt and hugely angry—there was no other place big enough to take it. Eventually I realized that my stony silence in worship was not merely being tolerated by those around me: they were loving me, believing for me, singing for me, and at those moment when I thought I would choke on the bread and wine, they were receiving Christ for me.
Slowly I was exhumed by followers of Jesus, who offered me not one word of advice, but who loved me and lent me their faith. Talk would come much later.
That is one way the church has saved me—through its ritual and those who share it. Others are saved by having a place to come to be counseled, absolved, or to knit, teach, guide youth, sing in the choir, and dozens of other ways to get, like Lazarus, less tightly wrapped and closer to the love of Jesus Christ.
Just think of how many new ways there will be to do that in the next 50 years in this house! I wasn’t kidding the children; their ministries may be much different, yet showing the love of the same Jesus Christ.
I want to give you something: lines from Psalm 84: “How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! Happy are they who dwell in your house! They will always be praising you. Happy are the people whose strength is in you: whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.” May those next 50 years be an astounding pilgrimage.
Sermon by Bishop Paul Marshall
Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012
It has been a week that demonstrates who the people of Nativity are. Patiently preparing for the worst, hoping for the best, and when trouble came, handling it with grace and charm. It is a good celebration of a great church.
During the week, we have been given envelopes from children in the Sunday School of your daughter church to help with relief on the south side, and I was deeply touched by their generosity, because the north side has turned out to have its own problems. I have a little gift of my own later, from a bank vault in Wilkes-Barre: it’s a piece of wood from the first structure in Bethlehem, probably the first place God was praised here.
If we think about the dozens and dozens of people who prepared this weekend, culminating a year’s celebration, it is important to hold in on mind the big question, why do it? There are old churches all over the land, many for sale.
The answer is, of course, we celebrate Nativity because it is still doing its ministry, doing it creatively, faithfully, and in service to Christ and his flock.
What kind of a message did it send to the community to build a house of God in 1862, a year of death, a year when The United States was losing a war on its own soil? A number of future rectors and lay people would have seen service in that terrible war. Can you imaging their relief to come inside the shelter of this church in 1865, giving thanks for their safety, thanks for their country, and shedding before God quiet tears for those who did not make it back with them. Again and again in Nativity’s history it has been a safe place for widows and veterans to pray and give thanks. And in no time of major conflict has Nativity failed to remember those who bear their country’s arms.
To build a church in 1862 was an act of faith and an act of service.
As we maintain and gratefully receive what our ancestors have placed here, we may well ask what is next. We have all been doing our part to preserve this wonderful place. Why?
Ordinarily I would say that the gospel passage is not so great for ALL Saints Sunday, but that’s another sermon, and here we have it and it meets our purposes very well.
Jesus’s friend is ill and he mysteriously takes his time in getting to the sickbed, announcing at one point, “our friend Lazarus is dead.” When he shows up, sure enough, his friend Lazarus is not sick, but like a certain Norwegian parrot, is completely dead. They’ve wrapped him in burial sheets, laid him in the tomb, and covered it with rocks so the odors stay in and the robbers stay out.
Jesus comes before the tomb of his friend and cries. Some are unimpressed because he had plenty of notice to heal him, his friend. He tells them to open the tomb. Despite their fear of odor, they obey Jesus. And with a loud shout, “Lazarus come out of that tomb.”
If you had a hard time imagining Blind Bartimaeus stumbling up blind to find Jesus, this week we are to imagine a man tied hand and foot with his face totally covered responding to that compelling voice.
WHAT HAS TO HAPPEN? For the healing to be of any use to him, the community has to unbind him. They must set him free so he can stumble out into the sunshine to live out the miracle.
Do you know that the Hill-to-Hill Bridge was lined up with the cross on Nativity? Everyday thousands of aching people aim their cars needing Jesus to heal them and needing us to do the perhaps longer job of unbinding them—and they don’t know or have forgotten how to ask. You do know that from either end of that bridge you can walk to hovels where people are entombed in violence, drugs, and even murder. The skilled care they get from our partners in ministry at New Bethany and Trinity may be their only chance to come out of those tombs. We can be there for them with our cash and with our volunteer time.
What about our own Lazarus moments? I remember when my younger brother died in 1995, just over a month before the dog and pony show—now they call it walk-about—in this diocese. In the weeks after Ron’s death, I was as good as dead. I showed up from the Yale chapel because it was my job, but I was paralyzed with grief. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t talk, I was mostly hurt and hugely angry. Then I realized two things. The real reason I came to church was to be hurt and hugely angry—there was no other place big enough to take it. Eventually I realized that my stony silence in worship was not merely being tolerated by those around me: they were loving me, believing for me, singing for me, and at those moment when I thought I would choke on the bread and wine, they were receiving Christ for me.
Slowly I was exhumed by followers of Jesus, who offered me not one word of advice, but who loved me and lent me their faith. Talk would come much later.
That is one way the church has saved me—through its ritual and those who share it. Others are saved by having a place to come to be counseled, absolved, or to knit, teach, guide youth, sing in the choir, and dozens of other ways to get, like Lazarus, less tightly wrapped and closer to the love of Jesus Christ.
Just think of how many new ways there will be to do that in the next 50 years in this house! I wasn’t kidding the children; their ministries may be much different, yet showing the love of the same Jesus Christ.
I want to give you something: lines from Psalm 84: “How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! Happy are they who dwell in your house! They will always be praising you. Happy are the people whose strength is in you: whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.” May those next 50 years be an astounding pilgrimage.
