A Time of Discovery: Lent 1B, March 5, 2006

In today's Gospel Lesson, we heard again the familiar story of Jesus' baptism in the Jordan by his cousin John the Baptizer and his subsequent journey into the desert. It seems to me that that desert experience may not have been fully Jesus' idea. You'll recall the Gospel reading said that the heavens were "torn open" and that the Spirit in the form of a dove "drove" Jesus into the desert. That sort of description suggests that he may have been a bit reluctant to undertake that forty day retreat during which he prayed, discerned God's will in his life, came to understand who he was and what he was about, and planned his ministry.

I suppose that vestry's are probably a bit reluctant to go on retreat with their rectors and other clergy, but it is an annual necessity. Some time to pray, discern God's will in our lives as leaders and in the lives of our congregations, come to understand who we are and what we are about, and plan the direction our parishes’ ministries will take during the next year, two years, three years, five years....

This is what your vestry will do for two days at the end of this week. They and I will continue a process which, in one sense, began almost 200 years ago with the founding of this congregation, but which, in a more immediate sense, began about five months ago in October and November, 2005. Many of you took part in those in-home "cottage meetings" of up to a dozen St. Paulines at which we discussed our understanding of who we are as this congregation and what we believe God is calling us to be and do in this place. The process continued a couple of weeks ago when the Gratitude Group hosted a potluck supper at which about 60 people heard their report that the four areas of our congregational life which generated the most energy in those meetings were Fellowship and Evangelism, Communication, Christian Formation, and Stewardship and Finance.

Several years ago, this parish began living with, under and into a mission statement which says this:

As the Body of Christ at St. Paul's we invite others to join us in proclaiming the Gospel through worship, prayer, learning and reaching out in mission and ministry.

At the end of this week, your vestry and staff will gather at Camp Cedar Hills with our diocesan congregational development officer, the Rev. Dr. Patricia Hanen, and we will take the feedback from those “cottage meetings,” that mission statement, and data from and about our parish and community, and prayerfully seek to discern God’s vision for St. Paul’s Parish in the next year, two years, three years, five years.... Similarly, many of us will be gathering here on Wednesday evenings during Lent to share a supper of soup and salad, to study the Lenten Bible readings, and to better understand our commitments to God, to one another, and to the community around us.

Today’s lessons, and specifically the account of the end of the Flood which we heard read from Genesis, are instructive as we take these next steps in discernment. You remember the story, how Noah sent out the birds hoping for a sign that the Flood was ended and, eventually, the dove returned with a sprig of laurel, and Noah and his family found the dry land. As they did so, God spoke to Noah and promised him that never again would God flood the earth and destroy all creatures. In fact, God made the promise not only to Noah but to "all flesh that is on the earth." As a sign of this promise, which in Biblical language we call a "covenant," God put the rainbow in the sky and said, "Whenever you see the rainbow, you will remember my promise."

As I was pondering these lessons, I went onto the Internet and looked up rainbows. There I discovered a website which contains a great deal of scientific information about rainbows. It's the sort of stuff I should have learned in college physics, but I must not have been paying attention. I found out, for example, that it was Rene Descartes who figured out how the rainbow is produced by suspending glass balls and observing how they reflect and refract light. Descartes surmised, correctly, that rainbows are produced when light is reflected and refracted through tiny drops of water suspended in the atmosphere and which are essentially spherical in shape. He found, with his glass balls, that the point from which one observed the light passing through the ball determined the color of light one observed, so that the spectrum one sees in the rainbow is determined by where one is standing at the time.

That website I mentioned poses the question, "Does everyone see the same rainbow?" Its answer is, "No." Since the particular colors and the distribution of colors seen depend upon the position of the observer, this means that everyone sees a different, particularly unique rainbow. We may all see a rainbow, but we don't see the same rainbow.

This, it seems to me, points us toward a significant theological understanding of the story in Genesis. The Covenant made by God with Noah and with "all flesh that is on the earth" is not merely a blanket promise made to us all as a group; it is also an individual covenant, a special promise made to each of us individually. The Covenant is both personal and community-directed. As I thought about this it reminded me of the way God counts people. You may remember that I’ve mentioned this before: God counts people "One .... one .... one .... one .... one ...." Each person is special and unique and of the highest priority to God. So each person receives a special and unique promise, and sees a special and unique rainbow.

The mission of the church is like that, as well. One of the exercises a retreat leader led on a vestry retreat I attended several years ago was a prioritizing of church activities. It became clear as, during the first step of that process, we called out suggestions of things our church "ought to do" during the coming year that we all saw things a bit differently. For one the mission of the church is primarily focused on the teaching of the Bible and biblical truths; for another, the mission of the church is primarily embodied in up-lifting and informative worship; for another, the church's mission is primarily about doing community service; for another, it is about fellowship, recreational activities, and the building of relationships.

The mission of the church is, like the rainbow, a spectrum, and each of us sees it in our own unique and special way. But... we all have to see it and do it together and, whether we like it or not, we have to prioritize and choose among the many tasks the church could be doing, and we have to settle on a way to do the ones we choose. We can't do them all, nor can we do them in all the ways, at all the times, and in all the places convenient to every member! Like Jesus driven into the desert, parish leaders must make choices, and congregations must trust them to do so and accept the plans they make, the goals they envision, and the priorities they set.

Making those choices was the second part of the exercise our leader took us through in that long-ago vestry retreat. When we had listed eleven different ministries our parish could do in the next year, three years, five years .... we were each given five votes to cast. We could use them all to vote five times for one thing; or we could vote one time for each of five things; or we could group them any other way we saw fit, as long as we didn't cast more than five votes. When the voting was done, we had four top vote getters, two immediate tasks and two longer-term activities.

The Senior Warden and I met with Dr. Hanen a week or so ago and shared some ideas, so I know that part of what she will do with our vestry will be some similar goal-setting exercises. I hope that we will return from our retreat with some similar short-term and long-term goals for the parish.

Now I need to pause here and reiterate that the vestry will be setting short-term and long-term goals for the parish. Again, let me underscore those words for the parish. The point and purpose of a vestry retreat, although we will be taking a look at some matters specific to our lives as leaders, is not about setting goals for the vestry! It is about making plans for the parish. One of the truths about our life as a church is that the leaders, the vestry and the clergy, cannot be the only "doers" of ministry; that is a task shared with all members of the congregation. Your leadership will be just what that word says; leaders – overseers and coordinators of ministry. They will not be your surrogates in the doing of ministry: they will be asking you, recruiting you, encouraging you to work with them to accomplish the goals and plans that come out of this retreat.

Both short-term and long-term plans and goals will mean that your vestry will be counting on you to be the ministers your baptism made you. They also mean that your leadership will be thinking of budgeting over longer periods than one calendar year and will be talking about financial stewardship, growth, facilities, and such much more often and much more frequently. Again, such plans and goals will mean that you will be recruited, asked, encouraged, prodded, maybe even nagged about your baptismal ministry, and about increasing your commitment of time and talent to St. Paul’s Parish and its programs and ministries.

Lent is a time of discernment, of figuring out what God's will is in our individual and corporate lives. Lent is a time of understanding, of learning who we are and what we are about. Lent is a time of planning, of preparing and mapping out a course for the future. Your vestry is starting this Lent in an excellent way, and we invite you (and, we believe, God expects you) to join us on the exciting journey ahead. You can do so during the next five weeks by coming to the soup suppers and joining in the process of understanding our covenants and commitments, and when the vestry reports back from our retreat, by listening carefully to what we have learned and by joining in the accomplishment of the goals we will have set.

You can begin even earlier. You can begin now by praying for your parish leadership every day. Let us pray:

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with our parish staff and vestry as they go on retreat to consider and plan for the renewal and mission of St. Paul’s Parish; be present with those who will gather on Wednesday evenings to study your word and our covenants. Teach all of us in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide us all to perceive what is right, and grant us all the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it. May this Lent be a time of new discovery for our congregation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.