Good morning everyone!
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| Icon: feeding the 5,000 |
I begin this morning with a question. What
is an example of a symbiotic
relationship? [Plants, humans,
animals.] One can’t exist without the
other!
And what about symbols? We know
the meaning of a symbol is “something
which stands for something else”.
And just look all around right
there in our sanctuary! It is full of symbols! The stained glass windows, the colors of the
liturgical season (green for Pentecost), the Cross, the dove, what else?
How about the symbol for St. Peter, the
upside down cross? Why is it upside
down? It must mean something!
But a symbol can be more than
a visual image, it can also be a gesture, a sound, a word, even letters &
numbers are symbols! Symbols are
everywhere! Look at the symbolic
gestures we all just did together…the sign of the cross, bowing,
genuflecting...
And have you ever noticed
that in music, some songs just “sound
sad”, and others “sound happy”? I’m not talking about the lyrics, but the
sounds! What is the sound that makes a
song sound sad? Yes, the minor third,
the blue note! And happy? Usually it is the tempo and rhythm…
Yes, symbols are a complex form
of communication and have multiple levels of meaning. They can mean a certain
something, but to each of us, can have different meanings. The same goes for other cultures. What means something here, can mean a whole
other thing in another country or culture!
Last week I spoke about what
the kingdom of God is like, and ‘why do we worship’, and that at its root,
worship is about love.
But wait…there’s more! Worship, because of the richness and depth of
symbols & ritual actions, is very much interrelated with what we do here
inside church, but also outside of “church”.
The two are very much connected…a symbiotic relationship.
How? Let’s take a look…
Today’s Gospel passage in
Matthew tells the story of feeding the 5,000.
We all know the story well. Jesus goes to a deserted place to try and get some
rest & alone time, but crowds of people find him. Instead of sending the people away so he and
his disciples could be alone & eat a meal together, Jesus did not send the
crowds away. He could have said, hey
come back tomorrow, but he didn’t.
Jesus saw there was a need, and had compassion for the people. The people were sick, so he healed them. They were hungry, so he fed them.
“Jesus took the bread, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the bread,
and gave it to the disciples to give to the people.” Here, we see the beginnings of the future
Holy Communion / Holy Eucharist.
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| Breaking Bread |
The Eucharist was born in
service to others!
The actions of Jesus
blessing, thanking and sharing the bread is innately connected to serving the
people in the wider community.
The early Christians
continued this style of ministry, (today we call this “outreach”, or “mission”)
& Christianity spread like wildfire
thru the Mediterranean, the Middle East, into Africa and into Europe.
Why did it spread so fast? What drew people to this new religion?
Well, the early Christians
really practiced what they preached. They got out there and lived the Gospel!
The whole of the early church
spread because the early Christians helped fulfill the needs of the people.
They helped the homeless, they fed the hungry, they cared for the sick… No armchair analysts!
The early Christians were not inward looking…they were
outward looking. They lived out their faith!
And so I ask you, how do you “live your
faith”?
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| Fish symbol |
The very first Christians
would meet in houses to worship. They
didn’t have churches or church buildings, so they met in people’s houses. The symbol of early Christianity was the
fish. People would have a symbol of a
fish on their door or house…the Romans didn’t know what this meant. (Remember, the early Christians were
persecuted , so they used symbols and symbolic gestures with each other.)
For example, sometimes people would greet
each other and symbolically (secretly) ask the person if they were a Christian
by drawing an arc in the sand with their foot, a half of a fish. If the other person was a Christian, he or
she would draw the other half of the arc of the fish in the sand with their
foot! A sort of secret code!
And so they met in people’s
houses to worship. The early liturgy
(remember, liturgy means the work of the people), revolved around
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| Fresco of the Agape Meal |
gathering for
a meal, called the “agape meal”, the
love feast. They also prayed, sang
songs, listening to scripture and had a teaching or lesson. This later became
the homily or sermon. They visited,
encouraged one another, and had fellowship, and they ate food together. This later became the Holy Eucharist!
And if you have ever wondered
why or how worship services developed & became the way they are today, why
we have Eucharist, why we sit, stand and kneel, why we sing, etc. …it is and has always been a reflection and
expression of what we do in the wider world!
People living out their
faith. Without this, the symbols,
rituals and songs that we sing and all that we do here in worship can become meaningless empty rituals.
As we know, many hospitals,
care facilities, nursing homes, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, orphanages, schools,
colleges, & universities were originally started by various and courageous people,
living out their faith.
Take for example St. Joseph’s hospital, the first
hospital in Phoenix. It was started in
1895 by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy. Actually, the Sisters first came here to
establish a school. But upon arriving,
they saw there were many people sick with tuberculosis, and most of them were
very poor. Many people living in tents,
hovels and dying in the streets. And so,
the Sisters instead established a hospital to serve the sick and the poor.
The Episcopal Church was also
very involved in mission and serving
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| St. Lukes, 1911 Phoenix, AZ |
the needs of the people in early
Arizona. In 1907, The Rev. John Atwood established St. Luke’s Home / Hospital in Phoenix
in memory of his wife, and to care for tuberculosis patients.
In 1919, they expanded to care for war
veterans and treating those with other diseases. (The Rev. Atwood by the way, became the
Bishop of AZ in 1911 and served until 1925.)
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| Treating Veterans in 1919 |
Notice these ministries were based on need and changed as needs
changed.
However, probably one of the
biggest mistakes ever made by the Arizona Diocese was their decision in 1995 to
sell St Luke’s hospital.
Bishop Kirk Smith talked
about this at a meeting last year. St
Luke’s was sold so the Episcopal Church could concentrate on “church matters”
and not have the headaches of managing a hospital.
Unfortunately what helped
make much of the Episcopal Church so connected to the wider community & non
Episcopalians in Phoenix had been essentially cut off. The connection of direct service, ministry
and mission to the people and community, gone….and for so many recipients of
this medical ministry in the community…the Episcopal Church further removed.
Yes, big mistake.
Churches and people of faith used
to start & run hospitals, schools, help feed the poor, house the
homeless…now we have non profit organizations, and for profit organizations
that do this… so many of the things that the church used to be directly
involved in, has become the charge of other organizations.
And it is no secret that
church attendance has been in decline the past 40 or so years. And for many, practice no religion at
all. Many are raised with no religion at
all. So many students that I teach and
have taught over the years have been brought up with no religion at all. And in the military, the largest group at
every unit I have served, is “no religious preference”. Sadly,
for many people in the wider world, the church has become irrelevant.
So I ask some questions for
us all to contemplate…
What is St Peter’s known for in Casa
Grande and in the wider communities? The Gila Indian Reservation, Ak-Chin, the
Tohono O’Odham reservation…. the city of Maricopa?
How are we known? Are we
known?
Is St. Peter’s an inward
looking church, or an outward looking church?
One based on the needs of the people & wider community?
You may wonder what this has
to do with worship and liturgy…
Actually, it has everything
to do with worship and liturgy.
Let us think and pray on
these things...
Amen.
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