Author: All Saints Episcopal Church SF
A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 29, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, on the Fifth Sunday of Lent, March 29, 2020
Hello everyone. I’m recording my sermon and posting to YouTube from my home in Alameda. We are doing well. My 90 year old Dad remains in the nursing home at St. Paul’s Towers in Oakland after breaking his hip, and we can’t visit.
But yesterday we had a Zoom call with him. It was really good to see him on the screen and talk face to face.
Seeing people’s faces on Zoom is a powerful thing. On Wednesday night we had our first All Saints’ zoom meeting. About 12 people came, and it warmed my heart to see everyone’s faces. It made me realize how much I miss you all and celebrating the Eucharist with you on Sunday morning. Later this morning we’ll try our first Sunday morning zoom service.
The Coronavirus is changing life as we know it, and as a priest it’s challenging me to learn technology that I’ve never used before, like YouTube, and Zoom.
Before now, the Episcopal Church has not really embraced the broadcasting of services. The National Cathedral and other cathedrals have done it, but not many churches. Why is that?
I think that overall, we are traditionalists at heart.
We also have an incarnational theology of worship that invites us to actively participate in the liturgy. We stand for the Gospel, and for the prayers; we greet each other with the Peace. And then, of course, we participate in the Great Thanksgiving, and we come forth to receive the blessed bread and wine.
All Saints’ Anglo-Catholicism heightens this incarnational approach. We cross ourselves, we bow, we kneel. We sprinkle the people with holy water, we take in the sweet scent of incense. We chant, and our voices respond with hymns. We create the liturgy together as the gathered people.
We do it all to create the beauty of holiness, and if you go to YouTube and watch the Mass we recorded on March 15, you can see most of the familiar aspects of our worship.
I know that you all miss our Anglo-Catholic liturgy, and our beautiful church. I do, too.
I realized this week that what I’m feeling is grief. I am grieving for the loss of our face-to-face community, and I am grieving for the familiar way we have always done things at church, and I’m grieving for many other things, too.
Accepting the uncomfortable feelings of grief (because there are many aspects to grief) has helped me find new footing this week. It’s important to be realistic about where we are in the midst of this strange situation.
At the same time, I am thankful for technology. It brings us closer in such a stressful time when we cannot be together. With zoom, especially, we can be face-to-face in real time. And for that I’m thankful.
I’m also thankful for the many conversations I’ve had on the phone with parishioners. I spoke with Rod Dugliss early in the week and he said, “we have a larger story that encompasses hope.” And that has stuck with me through all the bad news this week.
We have a larger story that encompasses hope. Certainly, our readings today speak to that larger story, that larger hope.
Our reading from Ezekiel is known as The Valley of the Dry Bones, and is one of the traditional readings for the Great Vigil of Easter. God shows the prophet Ezekiel a valley strewn with dry bones, which represent the people of Israel. When Ezekiel prophesies to the bones, God causes them to rattle up from the ground, coming together into skeletons, and flesh and skin covers them. God breathes upon the bones and they live, a great multitude are brought back to life.
In the midst of this Lent, when we have given up so much; in the midst of this serious pandemic, I find hope in this story of the dry bones. It reminds us we have a larger story.
The Dry Bones story also speaks to the resurrection of the body. The ancient gnostic Christians valued spirit above the body, and argued that the separation of the spirit from the body after death was a triumph. Early Orthodox Christians disagreed. They affirmed that the spirit and the body were one, and they argued that the body good and holy, and that a body was needed for resurrection to happen. The argument between the two camps came to a head during the Christian persecutions when the Romans deliberately destroyed the bodies of Christian martyrs to prove the Christians wrong about resurrection.
Ultimately, the orthodox Church Fathers went back to the story of the dry bones, and the creation story when God breathes life into Adam to affirm that God doesn’t need a complete body to bring us to resurrection. Our resurrection is totally up to God. This also gives me hope. We have a larger story, a story that encompasses hope.
In our reading from the Gospel of John we see Jesus raise Lazarus’ body from the dead. The text makes it clear that Lazarus is truly dead. When Jesus says, “Take away the stone,” Mary says, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
So we have a pretty stark scene of death, in our Gospel passage and in our world today. Yesterday I saw that in Madrid they’re using an ice rink as a makeshift morgue for victims of COVID-19.
I’m lingering here in front of the tomb for a moment because I feel like that’s where we are right now in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The scene in Bethany when Jesus arrives and everyone is in mourning feels strangely familiar right now. If we look at Italy, and Spain, and now New York City, and other parts of the U.S., we see people in shock at what’s happening, we see people mourning the dead, and other things, too.
I’ve been mourning the poor response by our government, and the way our health care system is set up. Why aren’t we better prepared?
I think we are mourning the disruption of our regular lives. Our freedom. We take so much for granted. The pandemic has thrown all of us into a place of uncertainty about the future.
In terms of us at All Saints’, I am mourning the loss of momentum in our interim time.
I acknowledge that at this moment in Lent we are Lazarus in the tomb, we are Mary and Martha in mourning, and we are Jesus, who weeps for his friend, and who is deeply disturbed by death. We are human, we are mortal. We may be contemplating our own mortality in a new way.
And yet we have Jesus out in front of us. He says “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, wil live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Like Martha and Mary, we can affirm our faith in Jesus, the Christ. That gives me hope. We have a larger story, a story that encompasses hope.
Jesus says “take away the stone,” and cries out, “Lazarus, come out!” When Lazarus emerges from the tomb, Jesus told the people, “Unbind him, and let him go.” What do we need unbound in us? How can we help unbind each other?
In the last couple of days I’m starting to see this shelter-in-place as an interim time within an interim time, like a play within the play in Shakespeare.
Where is God in this time of quarantine? What is God calling to us to learn at All Saints’ that we’ve not learned so far in the interim time?
As we mark the last Sunday in Lent, let’s remember that God is with us through this difficult time, and Jesus is calling us out of the tomb into newness of life. As Rod Dugliss said, “we have a larger story, a story that encompasses hope.” Amen.
A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 8, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, on the Second Sunday of Lent, March 8, 2020
Last week the Gospel of Matthew led us out into the wilderness with Jesus for Lent, and this week it feels like we really are in the wilderness. What a Lent it’s turning out to be! With the concern over the coronavirus, the tumbling stock market, the stress of the 2020 election cycle—all these things come together to mark this Lent as a strange time. Maybe, given the level of uncertainty we’re living with, it’s fortuitous that the rest of our Gospel readings for Lent all come from the Gospel of John, which is known for its mysticism and its beauty. We could use both right now.
Today we hear the story of Nicodemus, next week we meet the woman at the well, the fourth Sunday is the healing of the Blind Man, and the last Sunday of Lent we hear the raising of Lazarus. All of these stories are unique to the Gospel of John, and each one shows us an intimate encounter healing encounter with Jesus.
Compared to the other people Jesus encounters Nicodemus seems to have has his life together. He’s a Pharisee after all, and Pharisees were upstanding religious leaders.
But in today’s reading John presents us with another side of Nicodemus. What can we learn from this story today in the midst of our strange and anxious Lenten season?
Nicodemus seems to have a yearning for a deeper spirituality than what his tradition has taught him, and he seeks out Jesus. The fact that John says he came “by night,” symbolizes the mystical quality of Nicodemus’ spiritual yearning.
Jesus immediately sizes up Nicodemus and initiates a conversation about being “born.”
He says, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above…no one can enter the kingdom of god without being born of water and the Spirit. The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it come from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Poor Nicodemus is flummoxed by this talk about being “born” of the spirit. He takes Jesus literally and asks, “How can these things be?”
We don’t know what happened to Nicodemus after his dialogue by night with Jesus. Maybe he supported his movement financially. Maybe he followed Jesus’ ministry from the safety of his position as a Pharisee. And maybe something new was being born in him.
Because the story of Nicodemus continues. He reappears another two times in John’s Gospel. In both instances, John identifies Nicodemus as “Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night,” which reminds us of who Nicodemus is, and he came to Jesus.
About midway through John’s Gospel, Nicodemus, uses his influence as a member of the Sanhedrin to defend Jesus when the temple police want to arrest Jesus for teaching in the Temple. And after the crucifixion, Nicodemus comes out of the shadows to bring 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, which makes it a burial on the scale of a king. Nicodemus along with Joseph of Arimethia break all sorts of religious and social traditions by personally attending to Jesus’ body. It was something never done by men, and it made them ritually unclean.
If we look at the whole arc of the story of Nicodemus, we see someone whose faith grows over time, and whose faith required a degree of sacrifice. We see someone who is being born of the Spirit.
It’s ironic that the story of Nicodemus, which shows us the process of spiritual growth over time, has become associated with the term “born again”. In evangelical American Christianity, “born again,” means that you’ve had a definitive one-time conversion experience. Nicodemus did not have a one time experience of being “born again”, his faith grew as a process.
What do I hear in this story as we travel through Lent in 2020? In this time of uncertainty, I recognize in myself a desire for more clarity and control, a very human sign of stress. But as I sat with this passage, I found new meaning in Jesus words about the wind. “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” I wonder what is being born in me by the Spirit this Lent? What is being born here at All Saints? What is being born in all of you?
Personally, I feel a new appreciation for the movement of the spirit. Sometimes we don’t understand where it’s blowing, and we need to trust, have faith, and listen for it. I hear Jesus saying God is still active in the world. The winds of the Spirit are still blowing. We need to raise our sails to catch the wind of the Spirit as we mature in faith, as we move forward in our time of transition, as we move forward as a society.
Last Wednesday we had our first Wednesday evening Lenten program, “Signs of Life,” and we talked about the meaning of “Light” to our faith. One of the monks in our video talked about the comfort he felt seeing the light of the sanctuary lamp in the chapel. We also have a sanctuary lamp that is lit 24 hours a day, and it is comforting to see it when I come into the dark church.
The video talked about the play of light and dark in John’s Gospel, and how light was there before God created the earth, and how Jesus calls himself the light of the world. In the story of Nicodemus we see the interplay of the darkness of night and the light of the world, and Jesus draws him towards the light of new life.
In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. used the Nicodemus story as a metaphor for the United States’ need to be “born again” to address social and economic inequality. Half a century later, we need that kind of rebirth more than ever. In his language about being “born” again, Jesus challenges us to let the new be born within us, as a society, as a church, and as individual followers of Jesus. Birth is hard work, and it leads to new beginnings, a new life.
In these challenging times, I also find comfort in the familiar verse from John that I’d like to reclaim as a touchstone for us this morning, “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten son that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” May new faith be born again in you this Lenten Season. Amen
A Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Reverend Christopher L. Webber on the First Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2020. Well over three thousand years ago the Hebrews were a nomadic tribe wandering in the deserts of the middle east. All around them were people who were learning to be farmers: Egyptians, Babylonians, Canaanites who raised wheat and barley and melons and other good things to eat. And because they depended on the sun and the rain and the rivers, the soil and the seasons, and because these were not always favorable, these agricultural people prayed to the powers that they thought determined success or failure, abundance or hunger, and they made statues and images as a focus for their prayers.
The Hebrews, however, were nomads. They had no crops to raise, so they had no need for gods of that sort. For them there was one God, invisible, all-powerful, known in the uncontrollable volcano at Sinai and the desert storms. So when the Hebrews came into the promised land and tried to learn farming themselves they looked to the Canaanites for advice and they were told, “Well, here’s what you do: you set up a pillar or carve some statues of wood or stone and you make offerings, and you cry out to Baal or Astarte or whichever god you need at the moment for rain or sun or whatever crop it is.”
Some of the Hebrews tried it out and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, but they thought it was better to do it than not do it. Hey, you never know. But others resisted and said, “No, the God of our ancestors commanded us to make no statues because our God is beyond all possibility of representation. And our God also cannot be influenced by the size of our offerings or anything like that. We can try to line up with God but no way we can get God to line up with us.”
That was a conflict that went on for centuries. The Hebrews were divided by it with prophets and their visions on one side and the practical people on the other. The prophets said, “It doesn’t matter where you are or what the agenda is; there is one God, no other. You can serve God, but God can’t be bribed to serve you.” But the practical people said, “Look, the Canaanites have the experience and the smart thing is to hedge your bets, not put all your eggs in one basket, always backup your computer, don’t take chances.”
But the prophets didn’t give up; always there were prophets who insisted God is beyond all this and if this becomes an idol God can and will destroy it and God can even destroy you, the chosen people, if you turn to your own ways, because God is always beyond, always greater than we can imagine and God asks us to respond in a freedom that lacks the apparent security of walls and borders and images and festivals and buildings and laws. God is not limited by our constructions. God is free. And God calls us to respond in freedom giving ourselves without limit to the God who loves us without limit.
Well, that’s what Lent is about: it’s a reminder that we are by origin a wandering, wilderness people with an unconfined God, a God who is free and calls us to freedom. Lent summons us to remember who we are and respond to that challenge. For forty days every year we are challenged to follow Jesus back out into the wilderness of our nomadic ancestors where there is none of the security of plowed land and settlements and walls and well-traveled roads. The Prayer Book speaks of Lent as a time of “special acts of discipline and self-denial.” It asks us to find out whether we can get along without the images and the idols – the things, the possessions, that give us a feeling of security. Can we put them aside and learn to live with God alone?
All the old traditional disciplines of Lent, giving up candy and movies and television – the images of Canaan and Babylon – are basically about that: how addicted are you to the local idols? how dependent on material things? what is it that takes the time you might have used for prayer or the energy that might have been used to help someone in need or to work to change a society that seems indifferent to the needs of others? It’s probably not something as simple as candy or computer games. It’s things that have become part of the very fabric of our lives and it will hurt to tear them out. The idols are where they are because we’ve learned to love them and depend on them and believe we need them. Lent asks us to focus on the question: who is your God?
One of the old mystics used to say, “This, too, is not God.” It’s a good line to remember. “This too is not God.” I think some of the most divisive arguments in our public life, church and state, are about idols – not God. We still want our images, things to hold onto; we are still afraid of the desert.
The church today is being torn apart by those who insist on this reading of the Bible rather than that one, my way of reading the law and the security it gives me rather than your way which makes me nervous. And not enough of us are prepared to stop and say “Let’s really listen to each other; let’s admit that my way and your way both are inadequate images, neither one is an absolute and final and complete picture of God and never can be. So let me hear how what you have to say honors God and let me try to explain why I believe my views honor God and one way or another let’s recognize that we both are seeking to honor God and God is not honored by our anger or by a narrow clinging to images. Let’s confess our limitations and try still to love each other even if we no more understand each other than we truly and fully understand God.”
The church I served for twenty-two years, like this church and many others, follows the old English custom in Lent which wasn’t purple but monks cloth. You come into church on Ash Wednesday and the crosses and pictures are draped in simple sack cloth and it always feels to me like spring cleaning – the visual distractions are covered and there’s a sense of simplicity and cleanness.
The Russian Orthodox have a custom called pustina, which has to do with going into a bare cell, a room with four walls and no more, to spend a day or two days or more – with nothing to see, nothing to hold on to – “sensory deprivation,” I think might be the modern phrase, removal of distractions. And who needs some such practice more than 21st century Americans whose lives are so full and whose souls are so empty? Lent is a time to clean house, to be rid of idols and images and preconceived notions and start afresh.
Now, let me ask you to look at it another way: we speak loosely of the desert or wilderness, but years ago, when I was in Israel, we had a guide who took us down from Jerusalem to Jericho – down through the barren land where Jesus spent those forty days – and along the way he showed us a bright splash of green down the side of a steep cliff and he said it came from a break in a conduit taking water to an ancient monastery and he said it shows you that this is not truly desert but wilderness. There is a difference. Desert, true desert, he said, is where nothing can grow. Wilderness is where growth can take place if only it has water. When the spring rains come it bursts into bloom. When the aqueduct springs a leak, the barren land turns green.
Think about that this Lent. Yes, go back out into the desert, get rid of the idols, but then ask yourself this: where I am, can anything grow? Am I in the desert or the wilderness? Go out onto the paved street outside the church and pour some water on it and watch for awhile. Probably that’s desert, not wilderness. Probably nothing can grow there. Try it in your office or place of work. Pour some water in a corner near your desk or work place and watch for a week or so and see what happens. Try it at home. Pour some water on the television set, maybe a quart or so every day for a week. Does anything grow? Does any life emerge? Did it ever? But it might do good things for you anyway if you water it well. I will guarantee that if you do that you will have a better social life, your thinking will clarify, and you will lose weight. But seriously, Lent is a time to ask whether I’m in a place where life can come or not: desert or wilderness: which is it?
For all the visual richness of our society a lot of it is desert: dead as it can be and deadening to those who come there. But we are not like the wilderness plants; we can move; we can pick ourselves up and put ourselves in a place where life can emerge and develop – real life, the life of the spirit, life that can transcend even death itself. And we can carry that life with us and make things bloom where we are. I trust this church is such a place. I trust your home and place of work can be such a place. But it depends on what you bring to it from here, from the sacraments ministered here, from the Word of God read and proclaimed and taught here. I suspect that this community, the places you work in, the places you live in are wilderness, needing what you can absorb here and take there and capable of real life.
But it’s not automatic and it won’t happen unless you want it to happen. God twists very few arms. God wants us to respond in freedom. But God does want us to grow. God does want us to focus on life. God does want us to turn away from all that which is not God to come to the One who is.
A Sermon for Ash Wednesday, February 26, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, for Ash Wednesday, February 26, 2020.
On Ash Wednesday we step over a threshold into Lent, the season of self-examination, reflection, and preparation for Easter, the great Christian Mystery. Every year we encounter God’s generous love story with humanity in which Jesus lives, dies and is raised for us. If we take the opportunity to enter into this reflective season, our hearts can be opened more fully to God’s love.
As we make our way through the Ash Wednesday liturgy we will encounter language that focuses on our sinfulness. Since I firmly believe many of us are already overly critical of ourselves I always say that Ash Wednesday is not a day to pile on the guilt. However, sin is not something to be swept under the rug. On Ash Wednesday we acknowledge our individual human sinfulness and our corporate participation in the systemic sins of our society. And the later seems very real to me this particular Ash Wednesday.
Lent is a time when we can de-clutter our spiritual house, shift our daily habits, maybe let go of something that doesn’t work for us anymore. Lent is a time to exfoliate our souls, to let fall some of the armor that we’ve constructed around ourselves. Lent is also a time we can grow closer with others in our faith community. In this Interim period, it’s a time we can consider who we are now as a community of faith. Lent is a time when we can intentionally spend more time with God.
Years ago I was introduced to the idea of “horizontal” vs. “vertical” time. Horizontal time is what we are all compulsively aware of, what clocks and calendars are for. In horizontal time our lives unfold day by day on a continuum. The past is behind us, and we’re looking ahead to the future. And our perspective of horizontal time changes as we move through life. The point is, we’re riding along on the river of time.
In Vertical Time we momentarily step out of the river of time. We can experience Vertical time through prayer and meditation in all its forms. In Vertical Time we live INTO this moment and accept the NOW as a gift from God. There’s another term for vertical time called “Kairos”, which means God’s time.
Pausing to step into Vertical Time or Kairos opens space within our selves. It displaces our constant time-keeping, so that we can simply BE with God.
I think that Jesus invites us into Kairos time in the Gospel we heard today when he denounces the practices of the conspicuously religious elite, and dismisses a spirituality ruled by the ego.
Instead, Jesus models through his teaching and his life an intimate way of BEING with God that becomes second nature, an on-going dialogue, something that becomes an integral part of who you are; it beats in your heart. Jesus says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
As we sit together in this beautiful space, let us take a moment of Vertical time and consider, “where is our treasure? Where is our heart?”
What can we leave behind this Lent that is cluttering up our inner space? What needs to go so there’s more room for God? Resentments, wounds, expectations, grudges, habits of being, what gets in our way of being our true selves? What troublesome aspect of our lives can we ask Jesus to surround with love and dissolve, to heal?
The intersection of the horizontal and the vertical creates the shape of the Cross. In Franciscan theology, the Cross is seen as the intersection of the human and the divine, the instrument through which we are reconciled to God. This is part of the mystery that we contemplate in the Season of Lent.
In a few minutes we will come forward and receive the imposition of ashes as the sign of the cross on our foreheads with the words, “You are dust, and to dust you will return.” At our baptism we are sealed as Christ’s own forever and anointed on our forehead with the sign of the cross. Today these ashes will trace that same cross.
Ashes are a powerful reminder of both the horizontal and vertical relationship we have with time. They remind us of our death, and they remind us of our eternal life.
These ashes are made of the very dust of creation, the soil of the sacred earth. God brought us to life out of the dust. As part of our Lenten discipline, please imagine what God can do with the dust of our lives this Lent? Imagine.
May each one of you be blessed by a holy Lenten journey. Amen.
A Sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany, the Annual Meeting, February 23, 2020
A sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, February 23, 2020, the Annual Meeting.
This Last Sunday of Epiphany, Jesus leads his disciples up a high mountain. Peter, James, and John have no idea what’s about to happen, or what they’re going to see up there. It turns out to be a turning point for them, and a true “mountaintop” experience, where they see Jesus transfigured before them, dazzling white. They see Jesus talking to Moses, just as we read about Moses on the mountaintop in our reading from Exodus today, with Elijah. Then are overshadowed by a cloud and they hear God’s voice say, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well-pleased; listen to him!” Of course they are afraid, and, of course Jesus tells them, “Get up and do not be afraid.”
As I looked back on 2019, I realized that we’ve been on a journey together for a little over a year. Some of it’s been uphill like Jesus’ field trip up the mountain, and there have been numerous high points. And some times when we probably have felt some fear, both you and I. Where are we going? Are we going to make it as a parish? You may have wondered, who is this new person? But overall, I think it’s been a rich mutual learning experience for both of us.
Last year at this time I was on a liturgical learning curve, learning how to preside as an Anglo-Catholic priest. I am grateful to everyone in the parish who supported me along that journey which was rather steep in the beginning, especially during Holy Week, which began two weeks after my Mom passed away.
Perhaps the parish also experienced a liturgical learning curve this year. Presiding is incarnational, and simply having a female priest at the altar most weeks has been a different experience for you.
And having an Interim Rector with a different leadership style is a core experience of the Interim time, especially following a Rector who was in place for thirty years. That’s an element of the learning curve for both of us, too, and I am grateful to the Wardens, the Vestry, staff, and all of you for the support you’ve shown me, and your openness to collaboration and change.
I often marvel at the sheer beauty of leading worship at All Saints’. The incense, holy water, chanting, vestments, music, and liturgical action are all Anglo-Catholic expressions that for many of us, create a portal to the Holy. This transcendent experience is a signature strength of All Saints’.
I’d like to revisit some of the high points of last year and some of the new things we’ve tried.
A weekly parish email newsletter. Every Friday there’s a message from the Interim Rector, photos, links, Vestry news, and a list of upcoming events. Healthy internal communication within the parish is a key sign of a healthy parish. The email newsletter helps keep everyone on the same page, and it is also a way to introduce ourselves to newcomers.
A refreshed All Saints’ website. Where do we go to find out about a church in 2020? Websites. It’s vital that All Saints’ website be accurate and attractive, with the service times on the home page.
Our social media presence. Our Facebook page has 140 followers, and I’ve been running a Facebook ad promoting our website targeted at people living in a one mile radius around the church. If you’re a Facebook user, please like All Saints’ page and comment on the posts. Every week I post the weekly email and usually the text of Sunday’s sermon, and photos from parish life.
Wednesday night Lenten Series. We brought people together around a shared meal of soup, fellowship, and spiritual formation.
Holy Week and Easter. On Palm Sunday we processed out the to the sidewalk and then up the stairs to the front door. I hope we can process a little farther along Waller Street this year.
In June, the Vestry had a daylong retreat at St. Gregory of Nyssa church. We met beneath the rotunda painted with dancing saints. The extended time allowed us to get to know each other and explore several topics with more depth.
During the summer we used a Eucharistic Prayer from “Enriching Our Worship” that was new to All Saints’, and once we figured out when the Sanctus Bells were rung, all went smoothly. We also experienced the crowds of Bay to Breakers, and the San Francisco Marathon, a first for me.
In September we had two all parish meetings after the 10:00 Mass to look at our history and talk about our own history with All Saints’. Using a timeline, we invited people to place a sticky note on the year that they came to All Saints’ and we had discussion about what brought them to All Saints’, and what brought them joy.
We had a third session that offered a time and place to talk about loss and grief. The conversations around the tables and our larger group conversation made a space for consolation and healing.
On St. Michael and All Angels we held a Healing Service that offered up our sense of grief and loss to Christ’s healing grace.
The Vestry created a HACS Subcommittee with Brenda Nelson as Chair, and the Vestry appointed Myron Chapman Acting Director of the HACS Saturday morning food program. The HACS Subcommittee is meeting on a regular basis to plan how the food program can be sustainable into the future, and draw volunteers from the community.
Bishop Marc visited us on All Saints’ Day on his first day back after his stroke in October. It was a joyous morning, and we celebrated the baptism of Calvin Quick.
The 1300 Block Neighborhood Watch group started meeting at All Saints’ once a month in the parish hall. Many of our immediate neighbors had never been through the All Saints’ gates. This is a way we can serve our immediate neighborhood. We’ve discussed being a resource for the neighborhood after a disaster.
On December 15 we celebrated the 100th Birthday of our beloved Willard Harris. Willard invited many of her sorority sisters to All Saints’ that morning, we blessed a paten engraved with her name, and her family sponsored a festive reception.
Christmas Intergenerational Pageant. We had an interactive Pageant where people of all ages built the Creche as we heard the Christmas story and sang carols. Afterwards, we gathered in the parish hall and sang more carols. It was an opportunity to experience a different kind of liturgy and include children in it.
The Rectory Renovation was a priority throughout the year. The Vestry decided that with the cost of living in San Francisco, we needed to have a place for the new priest to live before we could begin the search.
Larry Rosenfeld, our Jr. Warden, has done a stellar job taking the lead on the project: analyzing the scope of the work, researching the costs, finding contractors, kitchen designers, and putting out bids. Margaret Taylor was also instrumental in this process. At our last Vestry meeting we awarded the construction contract to Guilfoyle Construction.
Larry has also been instrumental in analyzing how we can pay for the renovation, and coordinated meetings with the Finance Committee and the Trustees of the Endowment to create a plan. When construction began in January, we had a blessing of the renovation project.
Now that the rectory renovation project is underway, we can continue on our discernment process and begin the steps towards our search.
In the coming months we will examine these questions together: “Who are we,” “Who are our neighbors?” and “What is God calling us to do?”
This isan exciting period of the Interim time, and I look forward to discerning who we are in 2020, and where God is calling us to go in the future, and who will be our next priest.
As we move into 2020, we say Thank-you to some very important parish leaders. Vestry members Jeff Russell, Lindsey Crittenden, and Margaret Taylor, who finished Stewart Krengel’s term. They have served three demanding years on the Vestry, and we are deeply grateful for their service.
Jean McMaster is finishing her service as Senior Warden after staying on an extra year into the Interim period. Jean has served All Saints’ as Senior Warden with strength and grace, sensitivity and integrity. The Vestry is fortunate that she has another year left on her Vestry term.
Later, the annual meeting we will vote on a slate of three new vestry people: Susan St. Martin, Colby Roberts, and Margaret Taylor, who is running for a full three year term, and for our deanery and convention delegates.
The season of Epiphany began with the shining star in the East guiding the Wise Ones to Bethlehem. Like them, we’ve been on a journey together this past year, learning as we go, and walking in faith.
As we enter Lent, Jesus continues to lead us on our up hill Interim journey. I think it’s important to pause and see that we have come a long ways, and today I feel deeply grateful for all that we have done together.
I want to acknowledge again that it is easy to become afraid on our Interim journey. It may feel overwhelming at times. But I noticed in our passage today that Jesus touches his disciples, and then tells his disciples, “Get up and do not be afraid.” In the Eucharist Jesus also touches us and gently tells us “Get up and do not be afraid.”
I believe that if we listen to Jesus, as the mysterious voice in the cloud commanded us to do, Christ’s radiance will illuminate our path, and guide us into the future.
It’s been an honor and a joy for me to be your Interim Rector this past year and I look forward to continuing our collaboration together. May the light of Christ continue to shine through us and transfigure us into the parish Christ calls us to become. Amen.
A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 16, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Christopher L. Webber on the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 16, 2020.
Why do we do what we do?
The New York Times bestseller list has two kinds of nonfiction: a general category, mostly history and biography, and a second category called “Advice, How to, and Miscellaneous.” “How to” books make up most of the list. Usually they offer a couple on love, there’s probably one on diet, and maybe one on dealing with alcoholism. This week there are three on leadership and that might be appropriate reading for a parish seeking a new Rector, but one title I noticed LEADERSHIP STRATEGY AND TACTICS BY A FORMER NAVY SEAL might not be a good fit.
The “how-to” book is is an old, familiar, American phenomenon. We are a nation of doers. If things aren’t right, we want to change them. And we have this pervasive idea that if we just knew how to do it, we could solve any problem. Through the years, religious books have often been at the top of the “how to” list. I remember one called “the power of positive thinking,” and more recently one called “the Be Happy attitudes.” Currently there’s one co-authored by the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu called “The Book of Joy.” Joy, happiness, God on your side. It’s an age-old search. And all too many of us, even if we’ve outgrown it ourselves, try to push it on our children. I’ve heard it 100 times: “I want little Suzy to be in the Sunday school because I think it’s good for children to learn about God and how to behave and get some ethics.”
Christianity is often cheapened into a self-help program, a self-improvement program. But Christianity is not primarily an ethical system and you can’t just simply teach behavior. Children are not dogs to be trained; they are people to be loved. And, anyway, behavior is not the point of Christian faith. It’s a byproduct at best. The church is here not so much to teach children as to love them.
Do you know that Sunday schools were only invented about 100 years ago, and only then to serve children whose families were unchurched? It’s only very recently, two generations, maybe three, that the idea took hold that churches should teach Christianity to children in separate classes. And it happened, I think, because so many families had a feeling that they were failing to do the job but it could somehow be taught.
But it’s interesting to notice that in the Episcopal Church, about 50 to 75 years ago, a counter movement began with the growth of the “family Eucharist” or “Parish Eucharist.” We still bought in to the general belief in Sunday school, though we tended to call it church school, but we began to combine church school with Eucharist. Somehow we knew that there was more to learning than teaching; that Christian faith could not be reduced to a classroom experience.
And especially Christian education can’t be reduced to a matter of good instruction
Why do we do what we do?
I remember a story told by the Bishop of Long Island back when I was in that diocese. It happened during the height of the Cold War. A Russian bishop somehow had gotten permission to travel and had made his way to Long Island and had met with the Episcopal bishop. And the conversation was very stiff at first, and Bishop DeWolfe gradually realized that the Russian bishop was concerned about being overheard. So Bishop DeWolfe got his guest into a car and went for a drive and finally the visitor felt free to talk about the problem of being a church that was forbidden to teach. So what can you do? asked Bishop DeWolfe, and his guest said, “We have the liturgy.”
In this morning’s Gospel, we have a part of the sermon on the Mount which we have been reading for several weeks now, in which Jesus seems to be teaching his disciples how to behave;
“You have heard that it was said to the men of old, you shall not kill; and however kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. . . “
“You have heard it said,” Jesus says again and again, and then he goes on, “but I say. . . .” and what he says is beyond any possibility of doing: “Do not be angry – – do not desire – – do not be limited by law not be unlimited in love.”
Down through the centuries scholars have argued, “Did he mean it? Did he have in mind an impossible utopia? Did he expect the kingdom to come in his lifetime and was he condemning us all to hopelessness? If it weren’t that Lent is coming, we would come back next week and hear the end of this section and Jesus saying “You must be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect.”
Is that the gospel? Is that the bottom line? “Be perfect.” Is that Good News? Are we really to teach our children a way of life we haven’t even tried and can’t follow ourselves? Or is Christian behavior like the 55 mile an hour speed limit: a swell idea as long as nobody really expects me to accept it?
But I think we miss the point when we look at Christianity as primarily a way to behave, a system of ethics. There was a fundamentalist college in Upstate New York, near where I grew up, where girls were required to wear long sleeved dresses. Smoking, drinking, card playing were all no-noes. That trivializes something intended to be far more revolutionary than just being nicer to others. These commands of Jesus are serious and, yes, they are meant for us. But if we are called to be like Christ, called to perfection, then we have only two alternatives: to fail in a futile effort to do it ourselves, or to give up, admit who we are, and die to self – and let Christ remake us in his image. I think that’s the goal: Christ in us. I think that is what baptism is all about. I think that’s what the Eucharist is all about. I think that’s what prayer is all about. It’s about dying to self and letting Christ live in us. It’s about being born again. And as that happens, behavior will take care of itself. We will become a new person and act like that new person.
I happened to have a talk show on the car radio one day years ago and the subject was alcoholism. A woman called in and told how she was living with a man she loved a lot, but he was alcoholic and would get depressed over something, and get drunk, and beat her and her child. “Get out!” said the talk show host. “Go to Alanon. Hear about it from people who have been there. But you can’t change him. He has to change himself.” There was dialogue back and forth and finally the woman said, “well, all right, but what about him? Should he go to a meeting?” And the talk show host, a psychiatrist, said, “of course he should go to a meeting. He should stop drinking. But should is a meaningless word. You do what you have to do.”
“Should is a meaningless word. You do what you have to do.”
Well, how often have you and I said, “I know what I should do, but – – –“ haven’t you said that? What controls your life: “should” or something stronger? “You do what you have to do.” Exactly right. And what we have to do is what we are, what’s in us, our inner nature. Which doesn’t mean we are simply helpless victims of our genetic inheritance and environment, that we “can’t help ourselves” – – a kind of “no-fault” ethics. No, it means that we need to concern ourselves not so much with the rules we learn as with the relationships we form, and with the environment we choose to live in, not so much with what guides us from the outside as with what shapes us from the inside, what in-forms us, not so much with what relationships we create as with what relationships re-create us.
Why do we do what we do? “A bad tree,” Jesus said, “cannot produce good fruit.” You can say “should” to it all you want; it won’t happen. What matters is the soil and the rain and inherited genetic traits that form that tree over the years from within. So too we may hear sermons that tell us “should” but they will have no affect on us unless we have found a source of life in the Eucharistic community that enables us to grow into the life to which we are called.
Jesus said, “do this,” and he took bread and said, “this is my body.” That’s what we need. His life transforming ours. Why do we do what we do? Because Christ in us so shapes our hearts and minds that we love what he is and do what he does and become who he is. When that happens “should” becomes a meaningless word.
A Sermon for The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 9, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, on The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 9, 2020
Today we heard the famous gospel passage, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can saltiness be restored?” from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.
I had some hands on experience with salt this week. I’ve been doing some Spring Cleaning at home, and I found a box dated 2008 that my parents left in our garage when they downsized to senior living. It was filled with bottles of spices wrapped carefully in newspaper.
My Mom collected a lot of spices over the years but she really didn’t use them much in her meat and potatoes style of cooking, so there was a lot left in each bottle. All the herbs had lost their flavor, so I emptied out them out.
There was also a carton of Morton’s salt in the box. Of all the seasonings wrapped up the garage for ten years, the salt was the only one that still had flavor.
It made me think as I studied today’s text, can salt lose its flavor? What does it mean to be the “salt of the earth?”
It helps to examine salt for a few moments.
“Salt, A World History” by Mark Kurlansky, is one of my favorite non-fiction books. It looks at the history of civilization through the lens of salt.
Among many things, salt is a natural preservative. Salting fish, meat, and preserving vegetables by pickling them with salt was one of the only ways to preserve food before refrigeration or the canning process. The Latin word for salt is sal, and so common English words like salad and salary have their origins in salt. The Romans salted their vegetables, which gave us the word Salad. Roman soldiers were paid partly in salt, which brought us the word salary.
Salt is elemental to life. A human body contains about 250 grams of salt, which would fill about three or four salt shakers, but we are constantly losing it through bodily functions, so everyday we need to replace this lost salt in the right balance.
Salt shows up time and again in the Bible. Remember how Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom; Sodom was near the Dead Sea, famous for its black salt.
Salt is a symbol of the eternal nature of God’s covenant with Israel. In the Book of Numbers, it’s written, “It is a covenant of salt forever, before the Lord.” As a preservative, salt symbolizes the eternal agreement between God and God’s people. On Shabbat, Jews dip the bread in salt, which symbolizes the keeping of the covenant. We can see how Jesus’ uses salt as a symbol of constancy and covenant to teach faithful discipleship in our passage today.
Salt is constant, and at the same time, it’s capable of change. It can move from crystal to brine and back to crystal; and when it’s used to preserve food, it transforms the food into a self-stable product. Perhaps Jesus also sees salt as a transformational agent as well as a symbol of constancy.
Jesus pairs the image of salt with the image of light to talk about discipleship and how to share the knowledge and love of God.
Like salt, light also changes. It shines, it dims, it reveals. Like salt, light has an eternal quality.
Kurlansky writes in “Salt, A World History, that “from the beginning of civilization until about one hundred years ago, salt was one of the most sought after commodities in human history.” I think this is important to remember as we consider what Jesus says to us today.
In a world where we salt is just another kitchen staple we occasionally buy at Safeway, we can easily miss Jesus’ point that salt is valuable. If we are salt, and salt is precious, we are precious, we are valuable. We do not need to become a better person to be salt, to prove ourselves in some way. We ARE the salt of the earth.
Think of the people Jesus spoke to originally. They were downtrodden, they were poor, they were people who needed hope. And Jesus says that they are the salt of the earth, that God loves them. He sends them out as bearers of the Gospel, and bearers of God’s light in the world. He.’s speaking to us, too.
As I mentioned earlier, the carton of salt in the box of faded spices earlier this week was still salty after ten years. I ended up putting it on my kitchen shelf with my collection of spices because salt is salt, and doesn’t go bad. And I expect we’ll sprinkle it on food as we cook, and it will enhance and bring out the good flavor of whatever we make.
The old-fashioned label on Morton’s salt has the motto, “When it rains it pours,” which reminded me that salt needs to be poured out, it needs to be used to do its flavorful work.
By calling us salt, Jesus tells us that our saltiness is meant to be poured out in the world. Here’s our passage in the modern translation called “The Message”:
“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavor of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness…You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept.
Today’s passage also made me think about who we are as a parish in transition, and it made me thankful that we at All Saints’ are a salty, well-seasoned! We’re really flavorful, even spicy. That’s going to bode well for us as we move into the next faze of our interim period. That is Good News!
This morning I want to acknowledge that this has been a difficult week for those of us invested in the health and wholeness of our country. It is tempting to retreat and hide from the news; it’s understandably tempting to be weary and jaded, and to check out. But I think our passage about salt is timely in several ways.
For me this week, remembering my own God-given saltiness gives me courage to stay engaged, to mourn, and also to hope. With God’s help I will continue to live into my saltiness, my values as a liberal Christian. Our saltiness, our Gospel values and standards of behavior and ethics are needed more than ever. Please do not despair.
It’s Good News that our ancient story that we tell over and over is one of brokenness and healing, death and resurrection. In our passage from the Isaiah this morning we heard God calling God’s people to listen to the Lord, and promise that when they do, “they will be like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. You shall be called the repairer of the breach.” And in the reading from First Corinthians, we hear Paul speak of God’s wisdom which we have and the rulers of this world do not have. Paul ends profoundly with, “We have the mind of Christ.”
We’re called to be the salt, the light, the mind of Christ. The world needs us. Amen.
A Sermon for The Presentation of our Lord & Candlemas
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector, on The Presentation of our Lord & Candlemas, February 2, 2020
My kids grew up in a tight group of neighborhood friends who were all about the same age. Now they’re all in their late 20’s, early 30’s. The girl who grew up across the street from us just had the first baby of the group. She lives in Denver, and when we were in Colorado a couple of weeks ago, we got together to meet their new son, Finn. Finn was a month old, very tiny, and in just a few minutes he wrapped us of us in the Foote family around his tiny little finger.
One thing I noticed that day was: when baby Finn came into the room, he rearranged the generations. Suddenly, our kids were no longer the kids. Finn was now the child, the 25-30 year olds were the adults, and Hale and I became…elders!
It made me remember how babies are change agents. They’re change agents in their families and their communities; the world is always being renewed because human life is continually being renewed with new little humans like Finn.
One of the mysteries of the Christian faith known as the Incarnation, is that God became one of us by being born as a baby into the human family.
In our gospel passage today we see the baby Jesus already making waves in the world. Mary and Joseph take him to be presented in the Temple. It was probably a perfunctory thing to do—buy your turtledoves and move on—but that day it turns out differently.
Simeon, an aged holy man, was guided by the Holy Spirit to come to the temple that day to meet the baby Jesus. He recognized the baby Jesus and took him into his arms. Simeon blessed the holy family and spoke to Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed –and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
Then Anna, a female prophet of great age, came up to them. “and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”
Today on the Presentation of our Lord, we witness an Epiphany. Simeon and Anna recognize the Christ child for who he is, the Christ child who is destined to reveal truth, and God’s love in the world.
Whenever people encountered Jesus, they recognized him, and truth was revealed. We see this over and over in the Gospels. Last week we saw Jesus meet four fishermen, ordinary people, whom, like Simeon, recognized Jesus’ truth and power and they immediately follow Jesus.
Jesus emerges in the midst of Judaism of his time, and he comes to change the wider world by revealing truth, and love. He is a great teacher, and he is something more. He embodies the holy, as an infant, a youth, a man who gave his life for the love of all. As Christians, we believe that Christ lives in each one of us, the mystical body of God.
Here at All Saints’, we’ve been blessed to have two baptisms recently. At the end of the baptismal liturgy we give each person a baptismal candle and say, “Receive the light of Christ.”
Today with our tradition of Candlemas, we celebrate the light of Christ coming into the world, by blessing candles and holding them aloft during our procession. These candles remind us of our baptism, and of the light of Christ that we hold within us. Please take them home with you as a reminder of the light that you carry into the world.
The tradition of Candlemas began in medieval times, when candles were the only source of light, especially in the dark days of winter. Medieval symbolism saw in the Candle wax, wick and flame an analogy to Christ’s body, soul, and divinity.
February 2 is 40 days after Christmas and the winter solstice. Candlemas was the final feast of the Christmas season. By February 2, nature was stirring. It was the day bears were supposed to come out of hibernation. And by February 2, we recognize, like our ancestors, that the sun is setting a little later each day. In folk tradition, Candlemas was the day when people made predictions on the weather similar to our Groundhog day. “If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, / winter will have another bite. / If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, / winter is gone and will not come again.
Candlemas celebrates the kindling of the light, and the renewal of life come into the world.
Each one of us was once a baby, like Jesus, like tiny baby Finn I held in Colorado. And like Jesus, each of us is a kind of change agent, because God created us unique individuals called into the world to embody truth and love. Through our birth we brought renewal to our families and to humanity; through our baptism we are lit with the light of Christ, and we are called to rekindle it throughout our lives.
As a parish, we are a constellation of people and light that comes together on Sunday morning, and today our light was made visible in the light of the candles held high. One of our tasks in the coming months is “how can we shine our constellation of light more effectively as a parish, in our neighborhood?”
We know that the truth needs to be revealed in our world right now. Our country is in the midst of a great struggle for truth. We are thirsty for truth and for those who will stand up for it. As followers of Jesus, we are invited to embody what Jesus stands for: truth, and the power of love.
How can we embody the light of Christ? How do we open ourselves to renewal and new life? How do we shine our light of Christ in the wider world?
A Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 26, 2020
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Beth Lind Foote, Interim Rector on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany. I finished my pilgrimage walking the Camino de Santiago on a rainy October day. When I reached the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, I paid my respect to the bones of St. James in a crypt beneath the altar. Like so many pilgrims before me, I was moved to be so close to the relics of St. James, who was so close to Jesus’ in his earthly life.
Who was St. James? Once he was simply James, the fisherman, one of the first people to follow Jesus.
In our Gospel today we hear the calling of James along with his brother John, and another set of brothers Peter and Andrew. What can we learn from this passage in the season of Epiphany, and in our season of Interim time?
In the Episcopal Church we call these weeks between Christmas and Lent the Season of Epiphany. Today, we heard a few lines of Isaiah read both in our Old Testament lesson and in the Gospel:
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”
These lines from Isaiah, also quoted in Matthew, give us our themes for Epiphany Season. A great light has come and illuminated our world. Christ has come in the person of Jesus and made everything new. We see Christ’s light manifest in the world around us, and we are called to share it.
The Roman Catholics call this season, “ordinary time,” rather than give it another name. And there’s something attractive about that, too. If Epiphany focuses on the light of Christ, ordinary time reminds us that we are ordinary people who Christ calls in love to share that light with the world around us in our time.
And ordinary people can do extraordinary things out of love.
These days, I admire Greta Thunberg, a teenager who speaks truth to power about climate change. She is not intimidated by the condemnation of certain world leaders. She’s an ordinary person doing extraordinary things out of love for the earth.
This past week we celebrated Martin Luther King Day. By mobilizing ordinary people to uphold the dignity of every human being, MLK did extraordinary things out of love for justice and human rights.
In our Gospel passage today we see Jesus call four ordinary people to be his first disciples: Peter and Andrew, James and John. We may be so used to the story that we don’t see how unusual it is. The Son of God does not call the powerful people of his day, rather, he calls ordinary people: fishermen.
Somehow in the middle of their workday by the Sea of Galilee those fishermen responded to Jesus’ powerful authentic love. They leave everything they know and follow him in faith. They end up traveling far outside their comfort zone; they go from Galilee to Golgotha with Jesus, and after Pentecost they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which transforms them into apostles and martyrs. You never know where love will take you. It always causes us to stretch and go deeper, to give of ourselves, to receive joy, and to share it.
As I experienced on my Camino, James traveled to Spain to preach the gospel, went back to Jerusalem where he was martyred, and his body was returned to Spain. Peter became the first bishop of Rome, was martyred there, and his bones reside beneath the Vatican. Andrew went to the eastern part of the empire, founded the church in Constantinople, and was martyred in Greece. Only John, the beloved disciple, and the youngest, lived into old age. Tradition says he wrote the Gospel of John.
Not bad for fishermen casting their nets in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. They said yes to Jesus’ invitation, and spread the Gospel of love throughout the Mediterranean world. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things out of love.
I wonder what this means for us here in our Interim time?
We, too, are ordinary people. And we are living in extraordinary times. Christ invites us to share the gospel of love where we are in 2020.
We live in extraordinary times of economic change here in San Francisco, and the larger Bay Area. The tech boom has rewritten the economic landscape, and that affects each one of us, our neighborhood and our parish. This is our context for ministry now.
As we know, All Saints’ has met extraordinary times before. Father Harris opened our parish to a diverse population living in the Haight in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and ministered to the hippies of the late 1960’s and 1970’s. We were a haven of God’s love during the AIDS Crisis in the late 80’s and 90’s. We continue to feed hungry people every Saturday morning. We have a legacy of love that can offer us direction into the future. In the coming months, we’ll meet to talk about who we are as a parish today, and where we see Jesus calling us.
The good news is we have a jewel of a rectory next door that is a great investment in the future of our parish. Our Jr. Warden, Larry Rosenfeld has carefully stewarded the front end of the project with a lot of love. Please offer Larry your thanks for all he has done so far, and for what he will continue to do as the project unfolds in the next few months.
With the housing crisis, the renovation of our rectory has become more than a nice thing to do; it is essential to the health of our parish going forward. It’s difficult for Episcopal priests to live in San Francisco or most of the Bay Area on their salary and given the probable age of our new priest to come, someone in their 30’s-40’s, they will probably have debt from college and seminary to pay off. With our rectory in good working order, we can attract a wider pool of applicants to be our next priest.
At the end of the service, we will process directly out the front door to the rectory steps. Please follow the altar party and gather there with us. We will bless the beginning of the renovation project and our contractors.
In our Gospel today, Jesus invites the fishermen by saying, “follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”
Notice he’s not inviting them to become better, more prosperous fishermen. The invitation to “fish for people” is ambiguous and intriguing. It’s outward-facing.
Jesus uses what they know—fishing—to characterize the work of ministry that he will teach them over time.
He’s inviting them onto a path of change and growth in love. He invites us onto a path of change and growth, too.
What does it mean to “fish for people” in 2020, in San Francisco? You never know where love will lead you, usually places you would never imagine. But we know that Jesus will be there with us in love. Amen.
All Saints' Episcopal Church in the Haight 
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