Trinity Sunday 2009

As I am speaking to you this morning my longtime friend is being entrusted with the authority as the ninth bishop of Texas. This morning The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle is symbolically entering Christ Church Cathedral where the eighth bishop The Rt. Rev. Don A. Wimberly will hand Bishop Doyle the symbol of the office of Bishop, the Crosier, an ornate shepherd’s crook that has been handed down to each of our bishops since the first Bishop of Texas, bishop Alexander Gregg.

The crosier of our diocese has been held by the leadership of our church from the civil war through the world wars. Bishop Quinn brought it when we started Camp Allen and held it over this parish of St. Mark’s. Bishop Hines held it when we started the Seminary of the Southwest and St. Luke’s Hospital. Bishop Richardson held it as he ordained my mentors and confirmed me. Bishop Benitez held it as he started Episcopal High School. Bishop Payne held it as he called us to reclaim our mission as Christian people. Bishop Wimberly has held it through the storms of our church at our conteious church times and through our hurricanes. Now,it is Andy’s turn to guide this diocese by holding this symbol of our church.

I have a privileged place in that I have a relationship with our new Bishop that stretches back into our youth when we both were training to be counselors at Camp Allen. My first memory of him is sitting across from him in the dining hall of camp site II. We were laughing at the way we could take a dinner roll and turn it into a space ship that would then bomb the Jell-o on the other person’s tray. With each bombing run the dinner roll became more emboldened, striking targets into the mashed potatoes and green beans. The game left a mess of camp food on the table and forged a friendship that lasts to today.

That summer we worked at the same camp sessions minding our cabins and goofing off. We would sneak through all the cabins kidnapping each of the stuffed animals and then set them on display along the rafters of the dining hall for the kids to see at breakfast the next morning. We would spend hours creating a radio show that would be played over the camp sound system as a way to wake people up. In future summers we would serve on the senior staff together. Into our twenties and thirties, through weddings, ordinations, children and jobs we have stayed connected. Now he is my bishop, our bishop, and I am curios what the future holds. Bishop Doyle is hard for me to say, he is Andy, the guy with the spaceship dinner roll and the quick wit. Bishop Doyle is being sat today in his Cathedral. But that is Andy, father of Caisa and Zoe, husband to JoAnne, the guy who likes to paint. Bishop Doyle will lead the one of the largest dioceses in the country, but that is Andy, Chip, not C. Andrew.

Who thinks this stuff up? Who takes a child from spaceship dinner rolls blowing up Jell-o and then gives them the crosier of the Diocese of Texas? Who takes a skinny actor frat boy and makes him the rector of a parish called St. Mark’s? Who takes the kid from the youth group that no one thought would do much and makes them the Dean of the Cathedral? Who allows grace to be given and leadership found in the most unlikely of places? The common life that we share moves into uncommon places of grace where we see regular people called upon to serve. This common life is animated by a God who seeks not the perfect but the faithful to lead his people. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, and Ruth and Hannah, Mary and Joseph and Peter, Paul and Phobe, Patrick, Andy and Joe, all of us are unlikely leaders. And you are too. Your baptism makes you an unlikely prophet. Our faith life takes on new meanings as we look at God and ask, “Who are we to stand before the Lord?” And God says, “I know who you are, whom shall I send, who will go for us?” And we each say with our own lives, “here I am send me.” With that declaration we suddenly are re-born, not of the flesh, but of the spirit. The child becomes the Bishop, born again through faithful living. That same rhythm of life is for you and for me, the child in each of us is called to grow into the adult and take on a ministry of baptizing and renewal. All of us are in a dance of salvation, finding it in the strangest of places and through people we do not expect, be that an immigrant from Ur, a woman from Moab, a ruddy shepherd, a carpenter’s son, all the way to you and me.

The same year I met Andy, I was entering my high school phase. My father had struggled with alcoholism, he was a good man who was also a sick man, and the disease took him away from love. Aware of that, the peer pressure of alcohol came late for me. One day Mark Smith and I conspired to steal scotch from my house and meet at Mountain View Park and drink it with coke-a-cola (Yes that is correct). The plan we made was for me to steal the scotch and Mark to bring the cokes. Something happened and Mark did not show up. I was left sitting at a park bench with a bottle of scotch in my bike bag. I had spent a camp session at Camp Allen, and was in that conflicted moment of morality that comes for most of us in our adolescent years, the cares and concerns of the world versus the matters of faith in God.

I sat at the park, under a big oak tree, at that cement picnic table thinking. I thought about Camp Allen. I thought about entering high school, I thought about my dad. I thought about what it means to be faithful to God. And in my own innocent and youthful way I thought about what it means to be Christian, and the sacrifices it takes to follow the way of Jesus. I do not know why I did what I did next, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. I took a piece of rock, I drew a cross on the table, I took the scotch out of my bike bag, I said a prayer and I poured it out on the cross. I sacrificed before the Lord, in a temple of oak trees, in the church of Mountain View Park. I asked God to be with me. I then got on my bike and road away into the rest of my life, re-born by spirit as a young man who now is a husband and father, a priest and a rector. I stand up here in front of you today to prophesy to you and ask you to do the same for me, being a prophet for me, preaching to me and to everyone else using your life as a pulpit and showing the world what it means to be a people of faith, to be born again in the power of the spirit.
What does it mean when God takes us, and makes us into a people of faith? What are you doing? What are we doing? What are we as a parish of St. Mark’s? What are we doing now that we are reborn in the power of the spirit?

Our parish is no longer poised to do great things, the time has come to live into the great things we will do. And we should be getting ready. The road construction is almost done. The balance sheet is strong. The staff is unified for service. The school’s health is sound. At the end of the summer we will enter the fall with more people looking to us, to you, to lead them through a journey of faith. There is no question that we are both Isaiah and Nicodemus. But we are not the reluctant prophet and the curious faithful Pharisee. We are now the faithful proclaimers of the power of God. We are the apostles sent out to tell the story of the good news of God. The coals have been set on our lips and our baptisms have made us clean. We are reborn in the spirit, and the road construction is complete. God is ready to do amazing things with us, each of us, be it a new Bishop, a young rector, or that faithful acolyte who is looking at her own new faith, praying to God and making sacrifice so that she might be made whole and setting off on a journey in the power of God.

We are not looking to be reborn, we are reborn. Our new birth calls us into a new life, a new energy, a new way of living. You are a part of that, I am a part of that, we are a part of the new things happening here at St. Mark’s, in the diocese, in the world. God is using us, even when we never thought God new our name. God is calling you, calling me, calling us out. We face our past demons, we face the frailties of our fathers, we look into the eyes of the six winged Seraphs and we hear, “who will go for us?” And we say, “here we are, send us.” Amen