Renewal of Our Ministry and Welcoming of a New Vicar, January 18, 2014 (The Rev Dr. Richard Smith)

First, a few brief words in Spanish:

Bienvenidas y bienvenidos. Estamos muy contentos de que ustedes estén aquí, y esperamos que ustedes se sientan--como en casa--orando con nosotros. 

Aunque hablamos inglés--en vez del idioma de los ángeles--es solo por falta de bastante tiempo para hablar ambos idiomas. 

Específicamente a nuestros hermanos de la Iglesia del Buen Samaritano, bienvenidos. Tenemos ganas de estrechar nuestra amistad y reconciliación. Agradecemos a dios por su presencia en esta celebración y por los lazos entre nuestras dos comunidades. Bienvenidos.

Now, back into English...

This is a formidable group, and to be honest it’s a little daunting to speak to you, so many people that I have come to know and love and admire.

I look around and I see:

• Immigrants who continue to struggle against unbelievable odds just to keep their families together and who have taught me so much about faith and not giving up.
• I see transgender women who have taught me so much about integrity and courage.
• I see many strong and beautiful gay men and lesbian women. Sometimes we have not been understood, and sometimes we’ve been shamed and disgraced, but here we can proudly take our rightful place at this table.
• I see staff and leaders of Mission Graduates and the San Francisco Organizing Project, and the Julian Pantry who give their hearts and souls to the families and elders of this neighborhood.
• And clergy with so much wisdom and eloquence and love for their people, including three of our own beloved former rectors.
• And our bishop with his powerful vision for our diocese, and his prophetic words about marriage equality and immigration reform and about healing our fragile planet. I’m personally very grateful to Marc for the support he has given me this past year.
• I see members of this community of St. John’s that has been through earthquakes and fires and economic downturns. And God knows this past year has seen it’s own challenge. And with God’s help we’ve come through all these things together. I couldn’t be more proud to be part of this community that I love and feel so privileged to serve.
• And I think of all those others members of St. John’s who are now in heaven--from the many strong lay and clergy leaders over the years, to the legendary Miss Emily and Barbara Colt, to our many gay brothers who found a shelter here in the worst days of AIDS and are now  buried in our garden. All of us are here in the communion of saints, A formidable group.
• And then there’s Rob, the man of my heart and my best friend, and our incredibly awesome son David.

You are a formidable group. It’s daunting to speak to you.

It reminds me of when I was a Cub Scout and was slated to receive five silver arrowheads--five of them. To do this, I would have to get up on a stage in front of my whole school, all my classmates and all the big kids, with the priests and all the nuns standing in the back watching.

It was daunting. I was stressed. And when I told my grandmother how stressed I was, she simply said “Just be yourself, Richard. Just be yourself.”

So that’s what I’ll try to do today.

And I’m going to direct my words to the people of St. John’s, but of course the rest of you are welcome to listen in.

Let me tell you about one of the first break-ins at our church. It was in the late 1800s. It was the work of Mrs. Green. She ran the Sunday school.

Back then, the parish was broke and couldn’t pay the rent, so one Sunday everyone showed up for services only to find that the landlord had locked the doors. Some of the men on the vestry went to negotiate with the landlord. But while they were away, Mrs. Green showed up.

I picture her as a cross between the church lady and Rosie the Riveter. Like a cat burglar, Mrs. Green cases the place, finds a window slightly ajar, pries it open, hikes up her skirts, and climbs in. Then she opens all the doors to let everyone else in. Later, when the men return, they find the church services and the Sunday school in full swing.

That’s Mrs. Green, the cat burglar who breaks in and opens the doors.

And she’s like God, the cat burglar of the heart, who, like Mrs. Green, is very determined, who cases our locked and barricaded hearts 24x7 looking for a way to break in. Once he finds the slightest opening, a window ajar, he climbs in and slowly begins opening the doors to let in more life and more love, eventually letting the whole world in.

Our scriptures tell us to be on the lookout because this cat burglar of the heart, this God of ours, can arrive when you least expect.

It’s happened to many of us here at St. John’s.

• Maybe it’s in the swirl of our Anglican liturgy with its incense and colors and stories and songs. Suddenly a part of your heart opens up that had lain dormant for many years.
• Or maybe it’s when seven-year-old Ben bounds up the center aisle like he’s running for office, smiling his toothless grin, high-fiving all of us his adoring fans.
• Maybe it’s the awe you feel from watching how the light comes through these windows just before twilight
• Or the goosebumps you get from watching the people that gather around this table each week--
• activists and professors
• monks, and computer nerds
• black, white, and brown
• straight, gay, and transgender
• octogenarians, millennials, and babes in arms
• middle class and homeless
• most of us happily clean and sober, some of us three sheets to the wind

Each with our own stories of love and loss, each with our own ragged edges

How did we all manage to get here?

Be on the lookout, the scriptures say, because God, the cat burglar of the heart, will show up and break into your heart when you least expect.

And we can vouch for it. We’ve seen it right here at St. John’s.

Our patron, St. John, also knew all about having his own heart broken open.

One part of our tradition says he was the one our scriptures call “the beloved disciple” who, when all the other men had fled, stood with the women at the foot of Jesus’ cross. The one who, when the disciples reclined at table, would lean back and rest his head on Jesus’ chest.

And there, in that moment, in that privileged and intimate space, he would listen to Jesus’ heart, find out what made him tick, what made him happy, and what made him sad; what made him angry and what made him laugh.

The scriptures give glimpses of this Jesus, this crazy, elusive character John grew to love.

• This Jesus who would say, "Blessed, blessed, blessed are the poor, the gentle, those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for justice;
• Who throws aside all the laws of ritual purity and touches the untouchables: the leper, the lame, and the blind;
• Who sits at table with those deemed shameful ad repulsive, and by eating with them, renders them acceptable, outcasts no more

John leans against the heart of Jesus, and from that amazing place, he looks out at the world, seeing it all now with the eyes of Jesus.

In my more presumptuous moments, I like to think we in this community of St. John, like our patron, are also invited to listen to the heart of Jesus and from there, to look out at our own neighborhood and world, becoming the hands and feet of Jesus in this place.

It’s happened to many of us, taking us on paths we never would have imagined.

• Several of us have gone on nightwalks along some of the more violent streets of our neighborhood, pausing at times to talk and pray with the families and friends of those killed by gun violence and to call for peace.
• Some of us have come here on Saturday mornings to the Julian Pantry to distribute food to seniors and parents struggling to feed their kids.
• Some of us have gone to rural villages in Nicaragua with El Porvenir to help people get clean, safe water.
• Others have helped neighborhood kids through school through the amazing work of Mission Graduates
• Many of us have stood outside Senator Feinstein’s office with immigrant leaders from the San Francisco Organizing Project, demanding simply that our government stop tearing their families apart,
• Or stood at the Federal Building silently calling for an end to the longest war in our nation’s history.

Along the way we’ve discovered something, perhaps to our surprise: That we, with all our loose ends, can matter. That our own wild and precious lives can make a difference.

It happens here at St. John’s where we listen to the heart of Jesus and our own hearts slowly get broken open.

And in the days ahead, as we watch our kids grow, and bury our dead, and welcome new members, and marry off our friends; after all our coffee hour chats about cabbages and kings, after all our triumphs and setbacks, our laughter, our fights, and our celebrations; through all these things, one question will remain: Have our hearts, like that of our patron, become more in tune with the heart of Jesus: full of more joy, more compassion, more life, more love. Yes, more love. Amen.