Service of Burial for Michael W. McCann, Jr

Please join together as we support Mick and Barb McCann as we hold a Service of Burial for their son, Michael W. McCann Jr., who passed away on October 5, 2024, at the age of 54 after a chronic illness. Interment will be at St. Martin’s columbarium at the end of the service.

Michael’s online obituary can be found here.

Burial Service for Michael W. McCann, Jr.

St. Martin's Episcopal Church

15764 Clayton Road

Saturday, October 26, at 11:00 a.m.

Please join the family for remembrances and light appetizers in Park Hall after the service.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Michael’s memory to St. Martin’s Episcopal Church.

In Christ’s love,

Mother Leslie+

Deliver your servant Michael, O Sovereign Lord Christ, from all evil, and set him free from every bond; that he may rest with all your saints in the eternal habitations; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God forever and ever. Amen.

Known By Our Love: Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 20, 2024

Readings:

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)

Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b

Hebrews 5:1-10

Mark 10:35-45

-- The Rev. Leslie Barnes Scoopmire

What does it mean to have power? And what is the purpose of having power?

Is it so that you can have everything your own way? Is it to be able to lord it over others, and have people bow and scrape before you? Or is it so that you can do the most good for the greatest number of people you can? What if doing that good costs you something?

This is the dilemma Jesus and his apostles spread before us today.

It’s not like Jesus hasn’t tried to tell his closest followers that being Messiah means exactly the opposite of being the emperor of Rome. He’s described that he will be handed over, and suffer, and die. He will do this for the sake of the world—to destroy the forces of death and violence that we humans have set loose upon this world.

The words are literally sting hanging in the air, and James and John apparently have been nodding absently while cooking up a plot to grab the seats of honor “in glory.” Yet for weeks now, we have been hearing Jesus not just predict his passion and death, but also telling his disciples that those who are on the top will be on the bottom, and that those on the bottom will be on the top. One also wonders if they were thinking that the coming of Jesus’s kingdom is going to be as the result of an actual political coup. For the third time, Jesus tells what awaits them in Jerusalem, and for a third time the disciples miss the entire point.

For those of us who know what’s coming, there’s some irony here: we know who is going to end up on Jesus’s right and left at the end of this road: it leads to Calvary, to Golgotha, and it’s NOT two followers of Jesus, but rather, a thief and a murderer hanging on a cross on Jesus’s right and left. Mark picks up on that irony.

Jesus then asks if they really think they can “drink the cup that I drink”—a reference to a cup of suffering that Jeremiah foretold, the cup that Jesus will pray to be taken from him in Mark 14:36 when he is praying on the night before his betrayal. The “baptism” that Jesus will undergo is likewise one of fire and death and betrayal through which he will pass to resurrection. James and John affirm that they can—perhaps a bit too quickly. Again, it seems that they are not really listening, that they do not really understand Jesus.

And then, as soon as the other disciples hear of what James and John are attempting, they get upset—but not because they have gotten Jesus’s message about service, but because probably they too were dreaming of asking for those positions of power and glory.

Now, don’t think I am using the lucky gift of hindsight to make fun of the disciples or mock them. Instead, I think about how lucky we are to see that the disciples were, really JUST LIKE US.

Jesus has laid out for them three times exactly what risks they are taking following him, and exactly what risks he is taking for himself. Someone who goes around criticizing the power structures of the world ends up very often at the very least unpopular and at the very worst dead—because even people who get abused by those same power structures nonetheless often support them, because they can’t imagine there being any other way being any better, or they think, “Well I may be struggling, but this system at least ensures that I’m not on the absolute bottom, because I HATE those people on the bottom”—fill in the blank with any likely group—the poor, the refugee, people from a different country or race, whatever.

Maybe the disciples DO have a sense of impending danger, even while they seem to not fully understand what Jesus is saying. And it’s a common thing that when we feel endangered, we try to take care of ourselves, first. Let’s be honest, don’t we feel grateful when we’re on a plane and the flight attendant tells us that, in case of emergency, we should put our own masks on first? Yay, that’s what we wanted to hear anyway!

Yet that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus has been urging for these many weeks. When we think there’s not enough to go around, our first reaction unfortunately is not to share what we’ve got but to hoard up resources for ourselves—which further multiplies the suffering if there truly is a shortage of resources. That’s kind of the challenge Jesus put in front of that wealthy man last week. If you’ve got a lot, and those around you have nothing, and you let that stand in the way of truly following me, you need to rethink how exactly it is you follow all of those commandments we just talked about. There’s a reason why, my friends, in our confession we are called to truly consider and turn back from both the things we have done, and the things we have left undone.

So what does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean committing ourselves to a life of giving up things, of denial, of sacrifice?

Well yes—in a way. Jesus calls us to give up the idea of our own powerlessness to work for change. Jesus calls us to denial of the forces that are built on hatred, of causing others to suffer for our benefit. Jesus calls us to sacrifice, but so that we can be investors in the growth of God’s kingdom and God’s message.

Jesus doesn’t ask for empty words of belief. Jesus asks for us to roll up our sleeves, and commit ourselves to following Jesus as the biggest love of our lives. That doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly in our live of faith—far from it, as Jesus insists again and again. But Jesus called us into community so we would have each other in those hard times. So that we would commit to each other as well as to Jesus in love. And when you love something, you dedicate everything you have to making it thrive.

Jesus specifically doesn't call us to intimidate, or to use his name as a code word for domination. I thought of that when my spouse came home yesterday from getting groceries, and he told me there was a group of people from a local church in the parking lot there handing out Bibles-- and then he noticed that one of them was wearing a gun on their hip, right out there in the open. Would you take a Bible from that guy, from someone trying to intimidate others? What might someone who has little knowledge of Jesus assume about our Savior when seeing this?

Jesus is trying to explain to us this fact: that as his followers, who share in his baptism and his cup, we both live in the heart of God and in the broken places in the world. We are the church of St. Martin all together here, worshiping and giving thanks, but that we also have to be the church of St. Martin out there, where people need us to show us who God is in the face of poverty, exploitation, fear, and division. We discover who we are called to be in being brave enough to turn the values of the world on its head to reflect the love of God in a world that thirsts for it.

Maybe this leads to disillusionment for many—for that rich man last week, for the apostles this week, for us any time we feel uncomfortable with the living out of that commandment to love God and each other with all we’ve got when at the same time we are afraid what we’ve got isn’t enough for ourselves, which is what the forces of division and acquisitiveness want us to believe. Or we are being told that those around us simply want to take everything from us. We live bombarded by lies like that every day. But as Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor said, “Disillusionment is the loss of illusion—about ourselves, about the world, about God—and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for truth.”

We will close our worship today with one of my favorite hymns I remember from my childhood. Its simplicity is only outshone by the truth that simplicity bears.

We are ONE in the Spirit, we are ONE in the Lord,

And we pray that ALL UNITY will one day be restored.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

And then, especially in this vitally important election season, and in this vitally important stewardship season, I know I am grateful for this verse:

We will work with each other, we will work side by side

And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Love that expresses itself in caring for others, and working to bring that to fruition. In working to create a society that seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people, that is grounded in unity rather than division and in love rather than hate.

To walk in love together, so that we change the world by that collective effort, and by that love.

To serve the world, rather than to seek power for our own ends. To challenge exploitation or neglect of the weak or the sick or the ignorant or the oppressed.

To challenge the idea that a few people are meant to lord it over the vast majority of others.

To refuse to get comfortable with the idea that some people deserve to suffer based on who they are or what they’ve done or where they’ve come from, and get numb to that very real suffering with the idea that we can’t do anything about it rather than admit we “won’t” do anything about it, no matter how small.

Our challenge is to BE the church in the world, each and every one of us as individuals, in what we say and what we do, and how we live, in serving the many people who need help or protection or community, so that we can make the case that the church IS visible and relevant in the issues facing the world today. That our paradoxical values are exactly what is needed in offering hope where there is despair, a willingness to engage in the questions alongside people rather than pretend we have all the answers, in being willing to love those who are ignored or overlooked or isolated, in willing to serve rather than to be served.

Being Christian is not about power—except for the power of love. It’s not about forcing others to live as we —it’s about living the best life we can live because that in and of itself is a blessing. May we declare ourselves able to share that baptism and that cup.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Love in action, love in the cause we stand for—the redemption of the world through the power of love.

Amen.

Image: The Red Vineyard, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Music Notes from Denise, October 19, 2024

This Sunday our Gospel reading in Mark 10 will be about Jesus teaching his disciples after they began arguing about who is the greatest, saying: …whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. Our music will reflect the Love that we share with God, the call of Jesus to follow in his ways, and about our understanding of what it means to serve others.

Our Processional hymn will be God is Love, let heaven adore him, written by Timothy Rees (1874-1939) who was appointed Bishop of Llandaff in 1931 in South Wales. He became bishop at the most acute stage of the industrial depression, facing widespread unemployment in the mining communities. He wrote several hymns including Holy Spirit, ever living and this week’s hymn about the love of God. (Wikipedia.org)

Our Sequence hymn will be Jesus calls us; o’er the tumult written by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1852. As a small girl, Cecil Frances Humphries wrote poetry in her school's journal. In 1850 she married Rev. William Alexander, who later became the Anglican primate (chief bishop) of Ireland. She showed her concern for disadvantaged people by traveling many miles each day to visit the sick and the poor, providing food, warm clothes, and medical supplies. (Bert Polman, hymnary.org)

St. Martin’s Choir will sing a new anthem for the Offertory, Sing to the Lord a new song, words and music by Diane Hannibal. It has a lilting and lively rhythm with an almost neoclassical style reminiscent of Handel, and is based on Psalm 96. The composer, Hannibal, also wrote our anthem for Sept. 29th, To You, I lift my soul, and the choir has enjoyed learning it. The text reads:

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things.

Come make a joyful noise to the Lord; break forth into songs of praise.

Trumpet and horn, cymbal and drum, come make a joyful noise.

Lute and the harp, psalter and lyre, come make a joyful noise!

Let the sea roar and all that is in it. Let rivers clap their hands to the Lord!

Let the hills and valleys proclaim their praise in one accord! Praise the Lord!

Our Communion hymn is a favorite one of the congregation, The Servant Song, written by Richard Gillard. Born in 1953, Gillard emigrated to New Zealand with his family when he was three years old. He writes, "I've had almost no formal musical training. I'm a self-taught guitarist and play mostly in a folk style." Regarding "The Servant Song," he says it "was first published in 1978 on a record album by Scripture in Song called "Father Make Us One" and has appeared subsequently in other Scripture in Song publications including a song book entitled "Songs of Praise" which is widely used by New Zealand congregations. (hymnary.org) Dr. C. Michael Hawn describes the meaning of Gillard’s text: “stanza three speaks of holding the Christ-light…in the night-time of your fear. We are called to reflect Christ’s light in the world. Stanza four is one of empathy—weeping, laughing and sharing together. Stanza five provides an eschatological perspective, as we sing to God in heaven. The joy of making harmony together offsets the agony of all that suffering on earth.” (History of hymns, umcdiscipleship.org)

Our final hymn is a discipleship hymn to celebrate our Stewardship Ingathering: They’ll Know We are Christians by our Love, by Peter Scholtes. Scholtes was a Catholic priest when he wrote this folk song in 1966 and it soon become popular among Protestant congregations also. In her book, Holding Faith: A Practical Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), Cynthia Rigby says: “What sense can we make of this moment, as a moment of discipleship? What are we being called upon to do and to be right now, today? For it is right now - today - that the Messiah asks us to join him in doing power differently, in hoping against hope, and in holding nothing back for the sake of those whom God so loves…Will we join in what God is up to, or will we just get in the way? (umcdiscipleship.org) May we find our own call to reach out to each other and especially to support the mission of St. Martin’s by turning in a Pledge of Giving for the coming year. Our Music Ministry relies upon your willingness to give of both your time and money to support the music that has become an integral mission of our church.