Articles from July 2016

In late July, The Rev. Twila Smith is serv­ing as a dai­ly “pil­grim­age blog­ger” for the Dio­cese of Beth­le­hem and you can fol­low these posts through the dioce­san web­site or Face­book.

“… for the gifts and the call­ing of God are ir­rev­o­ca­ble.” – Ro­mans 11:29

All around we see the needs, we hear the cries, to work to­geth­er for bet­ter out­comes, to do things dif­fer­ent­ly. Yet even in the church I think of the hard slog to get there, push­ing time-worn prac­tices, the sins of the gen­er­a­tions, and my own habits up the steep in­cline of change. My shoul­ders ache just think­ing about it.

In my mind, the bar­ri­ers to change be­come hard, rigid, and I feel the risk of be­com­ing an equal­ly un­change­able force press­ing against them. It hap­pens. Yet as I steel my­self to push hard­er, my soul re­mem­bers the most trans­for­ma­tive change-agent I have ever ex­pe­ri­enced – not a force in op­po­si­tion, but a call­ing, an in­vi­ta­tion, through the clear wa­ters of baptism.

How can this be?

An ir­rev­o­ca­ble covenant with God, an un­stop­pable flow of gifts from the Holy Spir­it, the changeover from death to ever­last­ing life through Christ – not break­ing us down with bur­den or force, but call­ing us into pow­er­ful wa­ters and wash­ing us anew … call­ing us to a life­time of change, of grow­ing and per­se­ver­ing, seek­ing and serv­ing … call­ing us into re­la­tion­ship, into com­mu­ni­ty, re­mind­ing us that we do not shoul­der this alone.

God’s faith­ful, ir­rev­o­ca­ble call: stead­fast and yet chang­ing us over and over again, pulling us out of the mire of the past, rais­ing us up to the new life of grace.

Keep call­ing me, O Lord, to the wa­ters of change. And help me stop push­ing long enough to in­vite oth­ers to join me here.

On the Oc­ca­sion of the 150th An­niver­sary of Grace Epis­co­pal Church, Allentown

Strength­ened by thy Holy Word and with the in­dwelling of the Holy Spir­it, give us grace, O Lord, to con­tin­ue stead­fast in the con­fes­sion of this faith. Amen.

DEAR PEOPLE OF GOD: This is a hap­py oc­ca­sion. We come here this day to cel­e­brate, to re­mem­ber the past, and to com­mit our­selves to the fu­ture. It is a time to give thanks, yes, though not sim­ply to give thanks for this House of God, this build­ing, but to com­mit our­selves to the con­tin­ued build­ing of God’s holy church and the glo­ri­ous King­dom God in­tends for us and for all the peo­ples of the world.

We gath­er here in this ves­sel for God’s use, and we must re­mem­ber to give thanks for the many peo­ple, the many gifts, that made this possible:

• For Bish­op Alon­zo Pot­ter, our dear broth­er, whose vi­sion and mis­sion­ary zeal is still bear­ing fruit, even as we re­mem­ber his un­time­ly death one year ago to­mor­row; may his soul be at peace with Our Lord;
• For those who have com­mit­ted them­selves to the growth of this parish, from small gath­er­ings in the cour­t­house and in homes, to bring peo­ple to the faith and to sup­port one an­oth­er in holy and god­ly living;
• For those who have gen­er­ous­ly giv­en of their re­sources, and for those who have la­bored to the sweat of brow and ache of bod­ies, to build up this out­ward sign of glo­ry for Almighty God and to serve as an en­dur­ing wit­ness to faith, for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Such gifts are sure­ly gifts from God.

We must also re­mem­ber that this oc­ca­sion of cel­e­bra­tion comes on the heels of con­flict, of strug­gle and hard­ship – of the pain of sep­a­ra­tion and loss in our not-so-dis­tant past. Our dear na­tion has been rent asun­der, and even so the Blessed Church. Re­la­tion­ships have been torn apart through egre­gious breach­es of ci­vil­i­ty, and ut­ter dis­re­gard for the sanc­ti­ty of life and the uni­ty which we know God in­tends for us. Far too long, we have not shown the dig­ni­ty and re­spect that Christ Je­sus taught us to give to all peo­ples. All peo­ples. Far too long we have turned in­ward, sep­a­rat­ing our­selves into like-mind­ed co­horts, and ig­nor­ing the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to which God calls us. Our wel­fare, as a na­tion, as Peo­ple of God, de­pends on the cause of uni­ty. And we must not stop with the ap­pear­ance that strife has end­ed. Our wel­fare de­pends upon the con­di­tion, the free­dom, of every in­di­vid­ual, and the good and god­ly de­sire to be in right re­la­tion­ship with one an­oth­er – not through co­er­cion, not through procla­ma­tion and laws, but through the con­di­tions of our hearts.

While we cel­e­brate the glo­ri­ous tes­ta­ment to God through this church, we must re­mem­ber the foun­da­tion on which we are built. We are in dan­ger, at this junc­ture, in think­ing that restora­tion is com­plete, that the build­ing is fin­ished. We are at great risk of think­ing we have done this through our own mer­its, by our own hu­man hands. Let us re­mem­ber that our earth­ly build­ings have crum­bled and burned. We must re­mem­ber that no mat­ter what may lie ahead, we, the Church, are built on the firm foun­da­tion of Our Lord, and our dear Lord will ever and again see us through hard­ships and show us the way to true, Di­vine Restoration.

We are in dan­ger on this oc­ca­sion of cling­ing to our past, to the things we have known that have brought us com­fort and as­sur­ance. Our An­glo-Catholic tra­di­tions, the beau­ty of wor­ship and of this ex­quis­ite por­tal, the rites and sacra­ments of Moth­er Church which we cel­e­brate – these are in­tend­ed to give glo­ry to Almighty God, and to be out­ward and vis­i­ble signs of the in­ward, mys­te­ri­ous work of thy same Spir­it. These gifts of our com­mon life may as­sist us in feel­ing clos­er to God, and to bet­ter hear and un­der­stand God’s holy Word. We should not con­fuse them, how­ev­er, as the to­tal­i­ty of Chris­t­ian liv­ing. The con­fes­sion of our faith con­fronts us with bear­ing wit­ness in dai­ly liv­ing to the pow­er of God to trans­form us, the strength of God to con­tin­ue to bring heal­ing to this bro­ken world. We are called to­geth­er and sent forth as wit­ness­es – not of death and de­struc­tion, but of the Grace of God, to rise up from the atroc­i­ties of our hu­man con­di­tion, to rise to the King­dom of Heaven.

It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber the Cross, to re­mem­ber that by our hu­man hands, through ha­tred and mal­ice to­ward our fel­lows, we can de­stroy what we have been giv­en. It is im­por­tant, time and again, to come to the cross and ask for­give­ness for such con­di­tions in our hearts, to ask for God’s con­tin­u­al love and af­fec­tions in us. I do not be­lieve, how­ev­er, that God in­tends for us to stay at the cross with the cru­ci­fied Jesus.

Even as this church was un­der con­struc­tion, the in­tent of many was to re­main at the cross. The im­age we were to face, and our name­sake, would be the Cru­ci­fix­ion. As proof that the Holy Ghost con­tin­ues to work amongst us, a swift and sure change was made, turn­ing our at­ten­tion to life through the cross, life be­yond the cross – turn­ing our at­ten­tion to Grace.

Saint Matthew re­minds us, in the gospel les­son for this day, that Je­sus called us to a house of prayer, to build up a holy dwelling in which heal­ing takes place. This is the tem­ple of God. This is the heal­ing brought to us by Christ Je­sus: through the cross, to live de­spite wounds; be­yond the cross, to rise from that which once threat­ened to de­stroy us.

This is Grace.

We shall ben­e­fit in the re­mem­brance of what has tran­spired be­fore us. Let us also re­mem­ber our full in­her­i­tance and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties there­in. God does not in­tend that we re­main at the feet of de­struc­tion, nor that we stay in a pos­ture of pas­sive de­vo­tion. As Saint Pe­ter pro­voked the ear­ly church, we are to be “Live­ly Stones,” and with such stones the church is built in every age. With said live­li­ness, the mis­sion of God is per­pet­u­at­ed. With the mis­sion­ary zeal that led us to this day, on the sure foun­da­tion of Christ, let us con­tin­ue to build a church for God and all man­ner of Peo­ples: A House of Prayer, a holy dwelling in which heal­ing oc­curs. And let us con­tin­ue to go out into the world with the Good News of Christ Je­sus, to bring peo­ple to such a won­drous dwelling, to bring peo­ple to the sup­port of the church for our shared hu­man strug­gles, to bring those who do not yet know Christ to the gift we have been so freely and gen­er­ous­ly giv­en: God’s heal­ing work in our earth­ly lives, and com­plete restora­tion and ever­last­ing life in the world to come, made pos­si­ble through the One who loves us be­yond all measure.

This is Grace.

May it be so, for the greater Glo­ry of God, to the ages of ages. Amen.

Twila+

The Rev. Twila Smith
Priest, Grace Epis­co­pal Church
Al­len­town, Pennsylvania
Dio­cese of Bethlehem
July 3, 2016

On this his­toric oc­ca­sion, the Peo­ple of Grace gave thanks to God us­ing the “litur­gy of the day” from the church’s con­se­cra­tion in 1866 – the or­der for Holy Com­mu­nion from the 1789 Book of Com­mon Prayer, us­ing the col­lect and lessons for the Feast of the Ded­i­ca­tion of a Church.