PROPERS: PROPER 13, YEAR C
TEXT: COLOSSIANS 3:1-11
PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2022. (My last Sunday at St. Paul’s)
ONE SENTENCE: The bottom is not the end; it is the beginning of God’s redeeming work.
In the years which preceded her stunning success with a series of novels about a young wizard, J. K. Rowling’s life was anything but easy.
She was a recently divorced single mother living on public assistance in Scotland. As if to add insult to injury, her beloved mother died, leaving Rowling feeling alone with her young daughter. She pondered her dismal outlook as she awaited a bus to carry her across town.
Life had been difficult – maybe even cruel. She lived the life of the faceless masses. She was at rock bottom.
But Rowling had a sense of perspective on her desperate circumstances. She didn’t sugar-coat it. “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
She had been to the bottom, and the foundation was solid. It is wisdom that many, many people – some in our midst today – know from 12-step programs.
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I have spent considerable time and energy pondering what I would say to you on my last Sunday as your priest. How would I encapsulate the essence of my faith, forged out of 35 years in active ministry?
I went back to the beginning – to the summary of my belief from the beginning. I call it existential redemption.God works through all circumstances to bring about new life. Mini Easters, I call them.
Paul would loved to have written about my early life. He came close in the lesson from Colossians today. My life served as an example of what Bishop Gray, Jr. said many years ago: “No one’s life is a complete loss. They can always be a negative example in a sermon.”
Without going into detail, I was lost, wandering, and seeking to hide the holes in my psyche. Yet, against all odds, I believed.
My life began to change 50 years ago this past Thursday, when I met a slender, beautiful, strawberry blonde at a political gathering at the Buena Vista Hotel in Biloxi (Our daughter, in the sixth grade, had to write her autobiography. She had to tell how her parents met. She wrote simply, “My parents met in an old hotel in Biloxi.” We told her she had to change it.)
My renewal had begun but was nowhere near finished. For years I wrestled with demons – mostly internal – and a sense of direction. The gift of children was a great joy.
I perceived the whiff of a faint call to enter seminary, which I did at age 32. But the bottom had not been reached. After my first year, I remember sitting on the wind-swept brow of Sewanee Mountain wondering how I could be worth anything as a priest.
All that I heard in response to my plaintive tears was the rush of the wind. The bottom had been reached.
Over the next two years, aided by Nora and good friends, God forged me into a person he could use to share his good news. During my senior year, my mother died, and a dear friend perished in a helicopter crash. Despite the losses, I began to see glimmers of new life coming into my own life. Forged – with its focus on heat and force – described the process well.
A frightened, doubt-filled young man was ordained at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 30, 1987. And it is a testimony to the grace of God that I have been used over the past 35 years to share the good news of God’s redeeming power.
It is more of a testimony that I have been blessed by agents of grace and mercy in many of the saints I have encountered over the years. Many have gone to their eternal reward, but their impact on my life lives on.
A blessing. More specifically, to share the good news that God seeks to bring new life in all circumstances, to all people.
To be clear: I have fallen short. I have made mistakes. My words have not always been the right ones. There has been a tragic remainder sometimes. But God’s grace has always been the goal.
The tomb is empty. Maybe not the way we wished, but empty just the same. The only thing that keeps some form of new life from emerging from the figurative or literal grave is standing in the way of his movement. We can continue on the pathway of loss, bitterness, anger, brokenness, and alienation if we wish. But God invites us to discover new life.
As St. Paul wrote so clearly in his Letter to the Colossians: “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”
No matter what life deals us, we are new creations… new beings… the old self is dead. Life will never be the same.
It has been an unspeakable joy to share this journey with you. God bless you all.
