Music Notes from Denise, September 21, 2024

This Sunday, St. Martin’s will celebrate 59 years as an Episcopal parish in west St. Louis County. Our church has gone through many changes and developments over those 59 years, and this Sunday’s Gospel reading in Mark about the disciples’ discussion with Jesus may increase our understanding. When the disciples ask Jesus, who is the greatest? “He took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:37) Let’s see how we can respond to Jesus’ words as we consider our past, our present, and most importantly, our future!  

Our Processional hymn, God of Love, we sing your glory, was written by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette to honor her church, Limestone Presbyterian Church upon their 50th anniversary. She wrote: “Limestone Church is typical of many churches begun in the 1950s: It was started as a mission outreach in an area where farms were turning into suburbs. It is a church that cares deeply about mission work and wants to reach out to help others in the community and around the world.” (Songs of Grace: New Hymns for God and Neighbor. 2009 Discipleship Resources) This description could easily be applied to our own St. Martin’s. We began with several Spirit-driven, faithful families who were determined to have an Episcopal church out in the western regions of St. Louis County where new neighborhoods were being developed. Now, 59 years later, we have become what we are today, a church that cares deeply about each other, and holds Christ’s teachings in our hearts as we reach out to our surrounding community.  

Our Sequence hymn, Lord of all hopefulness, written by Jan Struther (1901-1953), focuses on working through the entire day with God’s grace and support. She wrote this hymn in 1931. It is a work with a warm human touch, a healthy spiritual tone, and well merits its popularity. The four stanzas begin by addressing God in terms of God’s attributes and then asks for specific blessings for morning, noon, evening, and night.

During World War II, Struther moved with her children from London to New York City and remained there until her death. In England she is best known for her novel Mrs. Miniver (1940) which was later made into a movie. (Hymnary.org)  

This week, St. Martin’s Choir will be joined with the children in our Chapel Choir and Chelsea Brewer for the anthem. Our Offertory will be You Are Welcome Here, written by Mark Burrows in 2017. Burrows is a composer and clinician whose works are published by many major publishers. Known to little listeners as “Mister Mark”, he tours the country performing concerts for children and families. He is currently the Director of Children’s Ministries at First United Methodist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. (choristersguild.org) Chelsea and the Chapel Choir will sing the opening verse: “Am I welcome here? Am I safe to sing or laugh or shed a tear? Will I be loved the way I am? Will friends be near? Am I welcome here?” Then the adult choir will respond: “You are welcome here. You are safe to sing or laugh or shed a tear. We love you just the way you are, so have no fear. You are welcome here. This is a place of peace and grace, where all God’s children have a home. God’s reign will come, God’s will be done when all are loved and no one stands alone.” Our hope is that these words will touch your hearts as you meet others both here and in your own community every day. May you strive to find Jesus in each person you encounter, and do what you can to welcome them into God’s family! (2017 Choristers Guild)  

Our Communion hymn comes directly from our Gospel reading, One small child, by Shirley Erena Murray. In this passage, Jesus illustrates child-like truthful simplicity as the means by which one embraces God. Murray’s text and Rusty Edward’s tune match the teaching of the scripture. Murray is an editor with the New Zealand Hymnbook Trust and has earned an international reputation as a hymn writer. Edwards is the pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Marietta, Georgia, and a composer and hymn writer with more than 60 works. He titled this tune Rachel’s Song. (Marilyn Haskel & Lisa Neufeld Thomas, Voices Found hymnal supplement leaders’s guide 2004 by Church Publishing Inc.)  

Our final hymn will be one that is new to us, All Are Welcome by Marty Haugen, the prolific liturgical hymnwriter who wrote this in 1994. It describes how the people of the church can “build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live, a place where saints and children tell how hearts learn to forgive. All are welcome in this place.” (Hymnary.org) May all people find a place of belonging here in 2024!

Generous Wisdom: Sermon for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 22, 2024

Readings for Proper 20B:

Proverbs 31:10-31

Psalm 1

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

 -- the Rev. Leslie Barnes Scoopmire

In the Babylonian Talmud, one of the collections of commentaries and applications of the Hebrew Torah, there is a great story:

It seems that the sage, Honi, was walking along a road, he saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked him, “How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?”

“Seventy years,” replied the man.Honi then asked, “Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?”

The man answered, “I found a fruitful world because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children.”

There is much wisdom in this story. What we do now resonates far into the future, and to future generations, like that little child Jesus places squarely in our midst in our gospel. That is one of the truths of our lives, and in particular to consider in this Season of Creation.

Our reading from James this week once again outlines what true wisdom is. James exhorts his readers to act with the wisdom of God, which is a generous, compassionate wisdom. Perhaps we can consider how this text corresponds to our own situation here in late September, 2024.

Do we seek peace and security? Do our actions provide for those things for not just ourselves, but for others? Because only looking out for yourself certainly brings neither peace nor security—not for anyone. You can’t have peace or security by attacking those around you, or by making others feel less-than, oppressed, or vulnerable.

Maybe we do need a call for conversion.

One of the questions we Episcopalians can get asked frequently by evangelicals is when we were “born again.” For some of us, those words might make no sense, for if you are a cradle Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, or from some other liturgical denomination, you have probably never experienced the phenomenon of the altar call. It’s a moment when you are called to give your life to Jesus, when it is done right. When it’s done wrong, it’s only about you and your own salvation. When it’s done right, it’s about how we can join together in repairing the world, or tikkun olam, as our Jewish kindred say.

Here in the Episcopal Church, we believe we are born again when we are baptized. We believe it is a literal rebirth. The way we embody and live into that continual rebirth is outlined in our baptismal covenant—the agreement that was usually affirmed for us at birth and that we then reaffirm at Easter, on Pentecost, on All Saints’ Day, and at the Feast on the Baptism of Jesus—the four greatest days for baptisms to be held. This is our statement of what it means to be converted, to give our lives over to Christ. But it is both inwardly and outwardly directed.

We reaffirm our answers to the eight questions in our Baptismal Covenant found starting on page 304 in the Book of Common Prayer. There we find a “small catechism,” as it were, outlining the basic expectations of someone who follows Jesus. The first three questions are shaped around the Apostles’ Creed: do you believe in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit?

Then follow five questions that get down to specifics for an ongoing life of faith for everyone, whether their age is 3 or 33 or 93. And they follow logically, one from another, in practical description of how we demonstrate and grow in wisdom and faith.

Will you commit and continually recommit to continuing in Christian education and apostolic community, in regularly partaking of communion (which is actually required to be a member in good standing), and in daily prayer of some kind, preferably morning or evening prayer, or compline.

Will you practice the self-awareness to recognize and resist the occasions for evils, from tiny to great, that present themselves through our daily lives—and when you fall into the trap of cruelty or contempt or taking advantage of others or petty dishonesty, will you recognize that stumble, will you turn your life back on the path of loving discipleship and rededicate yourself to follow the Way of Jesus?

Having made sure you are always studying and learning about Christ in both worship and educational opportunities, the next questions extends this line of inquiry: Will you ensure that your life, your words, your habits, and your actions and choices proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ? In other words, is your life itself a testimony to your faith and following of the example of Jesus?

How do you do that? The next question suggests a strategy: Will you, when looking upon the neighbor, even if a stranger, see Christ’s face gazing back (even if they are having a bad day), and treat them not only as you yourself would want to be treated, but as you would want to treat Jesus if he were standing before you?

So how exactly do you outline how to treat others as Christ? The final question provides specific goalposts: Will you dedicate yourself to acting with justice and demanding justice from the leaders you support?

Will you act from the understanding that true peace can only flourish when we realize that every right also entails a responsibility to never oppress or deprive others of the sense of security and well-being we all seek?

No matter who those we encounter look like or talk like or come from, and thinking of all those previous promises we just made, do we respect the dignity of all persons as much as we ourselves hope to be able to live in justice peace, and dignity? How we love or don’t love others reflects how we love or don’t love Jesus, as his followers, disciples, and kindred.

We live in the so-called “information age-- but it’s pretty clear that knowledge or information does not produce wisdom. And the definition of wisdom in our world can also be slippery. Literally. When we consider the way that human values too often look at a forest or a river, and only value them as products or means of transportation or disposal, rather than as part of our very existences. When we consider how repeatedly we hear ruthlessness, manipulation and cheating being extolled as being “smart” or “clever,” we have to begin to think that wisdom, especially the wisdom of God that we have been urged to seek in our readings for the past several weeks, has to mean something else entirely.

Living our lives in this way is living by the holy wisdom our readings have been urging us toward these last many weeks, and that our readings from James have been encouraging us to contemplate.

For scripture is not there for us to cherry pick verses to use to hammer our fellow human beings. Scripture is here, to explain to us ourselves to live our lives generously, open-heartedly, as Jesus embodied in his human life for us to imitate.

Scripture is here, as the opening verse of Psalm 1 reminds us, how to be truly happy and blessed, both as individuals and as a community. James lists the characteristics of the wisdom of God we are to seek and emulate: purity, peaceableness, gentleness, being willing to yield and not insist on your own way, merciful, productive, impartial, sincere.

How will the world ever emphasize these values if we ourselves don’t embody them, in our lives and our choices, as our testimony to the love of God in the world. This is how to joyfully submit ourselves to God, as James exhorts us.

In the reading from James we hear today, which probably was at one time an actual sermon, James contrasts holy wisdom with worldly wisdom. Unsurprisingly, he takes a dim view of worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom, James points out, is characterized by bitterness, envy, selfishness, dishonesty, disorder and wickedness. It is filled with resentment and feeds on grievance and treating people with contempt and dehumanization. Worldly wisdom is the wisdom that the world rewards while destroying the soul, because it values that which tears us apart rather than that which unites us, that denies God’s values because they are not measured in profit. It leads to the kind of competition and rivalry that Jesus condemns in our gospel.

Jesus says, Stop worrying about who is the greatest and getting all up in our heads. Stop seeing others as enemies and competitors for resources.

Instead, get all up in our hearts. Rejoice in the humanity of the people with whom we live in community. See those around us as those whom we love as a fulfillment of our baptismal covenants and as a fulfillment of our discipleship. Treat the people around us, no matter how different, as tenderly and generously as Jesus treats that small child in our gospel.

In our gospel, Jesus points out that the wisdom of God, and the way it orders our lives, turns worldly wisdom upside down. To illustrate this, he places a little child in the center of the disciples, and equates welcoming that little child with welcoming Jesus himself, the Son of God, who is also sometimes referred to as the Wisdom of God. That child, Jesus implies, embodies a generous wisdom, unspoiled by the hardness of the world.

And it is our job to welcome that child and care for that child, starting with the child within us and then to the children around us and to the inner children is all of those around us.

That’s the generous wisdom, rooted in love, at the heart of following Jesus.

Amen.

Image: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.” Painting by Hap Rogers, Church of the Servant, Wilmington, NC

Adult Education Begins at 9:00 am Tomorrow! Join Us!

If you have ever longed for a way to slow down the business of daily life, what are your choices? Many of us do not have time to go away for retreats, or have a hard time giving ourselves permission to lay aside our daily tasks for even a moment of peace.

What if we could find a way to draw closer to God through creation, and at the same time get some fresh air and grow plants to beautify and nourish both body and soul? Here at St. Martin’s some of our members already engage in this practice using our parish property. I’ve heard some of these gardeners describe the way working the soil has returned as much for their peace of mind and peace of spirit. Even if you do not have much land, or no land, you can find ways of connecting with growing plants.

Join us tomorrow at 9 am as we begin adult education with a celebration of the Season of Creation. We will return to a starting time of 9 am, with a book discussion of Contemplative Gardening by Pamela Dolan. Books will be distributed and we will set the stage for the following weeks’ discussions.