Even though it is annual meeting season, and like many of us, I am busier than a moth in a mitten, I also realized at the end of December that I was absolutely being worn out by the stresses and strains of the COVID pandemic. I needed some little thing for me.
So I promised myself that I would read for pleasure every day for at least 20 minutes. There were plenty of books piled around the house, but many of them were more for my vocation than just for fun or for savoring. So I decided to start reading a book of essays by the poet Mary Oliver entitled Upstream, because I have started writing poetry again—haltingly. Her insights into the creative process are delightful. But within the first thirty pages, I was stopped in my tracks by this sentence:
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
I’ve been turning that small sentence over and over in my head the way your turn a smooth river rock over and over in your hand or in your pocket, tucked away. The more I thought about it, the more the words rang true.
When we were children, the thing we yearned for most was attention from those we admired: our parents, or older cousins or neighbors. When we became the big kids, we noticed little kids wanting the same from us. Hopefully we kindly obliged as much as we had been obliged when we ourselves were small.
Likewise, when we were small, many of us fastened upon often the most ordinary things that completely fascinated us. Chin propped on hands, watching the orderly dotted line of ants moving in and out of an anthill.
Searching through the day for a four-leaf clover, and along the way noticing the variations in the edges, tones, and patterns on all the rejected clover-leafs. Watching the industrious uncoiling of the tongues of sulphurs, Monarchs, or blues as they competed with the bees for the clover or drank from the fallen, exploded sandplums under the trees. Learning how to tamp down your natural reaction when a bee landed on you until you could allow one to crawl across your hand with no fear because you know how not to startle it.
I learned to start paying attention. And certainly that started me on the path of devotion to creation in to the majority of all its quadrillions of living creatures (not so fond of cockroaches or grubs or water snakes, all of which gave me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest). But I learned something else: the path to devotion ran straight through a way-station called amazement.
I was young, and therefore brave enough to be openly amazed and filled with wonder. I didn’t care if that amazement could be mocked by others as being naïve—I was lucky enough not to even know that some people sought to be above amazement, thinking it made them look knowledgeable and worldly.
And as I listened to Bible stories read to me by my mother, I began to notice when in the Bible it stated that a character was amazed, such as this Sunday, when we hear still in chapter 1 of Mark’s gospel how Jesus’s teaching and healing amazed those in the synagogue who witnessed them.
That attention is the beginning of all Epiphany stories, in fact, and it is steeped in the willingness to surrender to wonder and amazement, no matter how foolish it might seem to indulge in hope in a society that seeks to crush our imaginations and dull our senses. And I imagine that was why some were willing to abandon their shovels and their lathes and their nets, and follow Jesus out into a world that needed to be shaken to attention. To be brought back to amazement. And led to devotion.
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In 2020 we have endured terrible losses, beloved members who have passed away, the fear of pandemic hounding our every step if we are wise. We are fortunate indeed that we have an understanding of faith which is grounded on the words “Love thy neighbor” as much as “Do not put the Lord your God to the test,” so we have made willing sacrifices of our fellowship so that there WILL be a fellowship awaiting our return on the other side of this pandemic. Infection rates and the weather allowed us only a couple of outdoor Eucharists in the fall—but we know there will be more chances.
Every time I speak into a red dot in a tiny black box, I think about how much I miss you all. I miss the choir. I miss the altar guild. I miss Eucharist. But love calls us to place others’ welfare ahead of our own preferences.
While we long to return safely to worship in person, we have adapted as we can to continue offering worship, albeit online. I offer my extreme thanks to those who had the foresight to support this parish in planning for an eventual lockdown—we were not caught flat footed when it came. One of the unintended benefits of this technology has been to expand our evangelism to the outside world.
Just as with our Ashes to Go offering for the last two years, we have been able to worship with people who never might have through the doors into an actual church. We actually have new families joining the parish who have never worshiped inside our doors. We are now reaching out even all over the US who join us in worship, continuing the kind of reaching out to people where they are that Jesus demonstrated in the last few weeks’ gospels.
We offer some sort of programming every day of the week, circumstances permitting, except for Mondays and Thursdays, with Compline and Story Time being broadcast live twice during the week. I am indebted to Loretta Go and Gina Slobodzian for their willingness and their radiant presence as they serve as leaders of Compline.
We have managed to do this in an extremely frugal manner with the support of the diocese and the vestry—and Bill Scoopmire basically clipping coupons. If you pay attention, you can see new features every week, and those features are truly amazing. Where we have had to compromise, we thank you for understanding why that compromise was necessary. We can now broadcast live on Facebook, on St. Martin’s YouTube channel, and on our website, all at once.
I thank each one of you who have shared your appreciation with me or with the broadcast team for the time, study, and effort that goes into our broadcasts every week. Because our system is one that pulls from a lot of services and software packages, I am grateful for those who encourage us each week and whose comments lift us up—the Drakes who are still ushering, Kim Montgomery who is always seeking to help people when they have questions. I especially thank the broadcast team of Bill Scoopmire, Chris Marsh, Jim Fischer, and Scott Scoopmire, who handle so much with grace and a generous application of their time and talent. I am awed by the creativity and innovation of Denise Marsh, and all our parish musicians, who have found safe ways to continue to offer beautiful music for our worship.
In autumn, Bishop Johnson required each parish to form a Regathering Committee, and ours has met every other week and been a great support as we have continually adapted our plans to ever-changing circumstances—I think we might now be on version 9 of our COVID worship plan. My thanks to Tom Allen, Chelsea Brewer, Laura Limbaugh, and Chris Marsh for your dedication to this committee.
Thanks to the Committee and favorable conditions, we were able to have our first pilgrimage experience on Christmas Eve afternoon, in which small groups of parishioners could come, meditate while listening to fabulous Christmas music, and be anointed and receive communion from the reserved sacrament. We even had a gorgeous Christmas tree, thanks to Mary Pomeroy and Judi Batch. We hope to be able to continue with this offering as possible.
I thank Kirt Beckman for helping us obtain a disinfecting mister, and to Lincoln Drake and Tom Warrington especially for tending to the daily checking, disinfecting, and maintenance of the physical plant. Lincoln Drake’s devotion and leadership has saved this parish countless headaches and thousands of dollars—and we owe him all a huge debt of gratitude.
In October we lost a staff member with the resignation of Wendy Sain, and I thank Page, Denise, and Janet for working to help carry the load, especially in bulletins and communications. We are understaffed, but blessed with the talents and energy of these amazing women. When we finally managed to launch our new website, we received immediate benefits in its flexibility and ability to integrate with video—down to making this meeting much more possible than we ever could have experienced before. My thanks go out to Hope Jernigan for her design and redesign of the website once COVID struck, and to my son, our webmaster, Scott Scoopmire, who set up the members-only section and the ability to stream our services on the website.
We began the year with plans to ordain a new bishop with a wonderful diocese-wide celebration: COVID had other plans. Nonetheless, Bishop Smith was able to retire a few weeks after his planned date, and Bishop Johnson was finally formally ordained a bishop in the summer. More cause for amazement, and we had our first episcopal visit in October.
October was also supposed to be celebration of new ministry after I was formally called as St. Martin’s fourth rector, but a need for Bill and I to quarantine postponed that. I am your rector, and I have asked the bishop’s office if we can wait to formally celebrate that until we are able to meet again in person, perhaps this coming fall.
I am also grateful for the creativity and initiative you all have shown in maintaining our presence in the community in a time of lockdown. I am grateful to the Hankemeyers, the Drakes, and other members of the Lunch Bunch for delivering meals to hospital staff all around our parish when COVID first bit, and I am grateful for the outreach committee still attempting to maintain our holiday drives for Circle of Concern and Episcopal City Mission. I am grateful to John Lange and the Garden Committee for their steadfast planning and devotion in still eliciting a bountiful harvest from our garden for the assistance of those in need.
The guiding light who continues to make sure our children are engaged in formation is Sherrie Algren, who has made packets each month for the littlest members of our parish, for which our kids are truly grateful. I am also thankful for those who have met for our Lectionary Bible Study on Tuesdays. And I would like to see much more adult formation become a priority in this parish.
One financial picture starts with an amazing thing indeed: under some incredibly devoted leadership of Steve Brunkhorst, Page Andersen, Bob Ecker, Robin Ragsdale, John Lange, the late Wayne Peters, Bob Pomeroy, Barb Hankemeyer, Lincoln Drake, we completed our first capital campaign in 22 years as part of placing ourselves on a more secure financial footing. And we did this is a time of pandemic. Many thanks go out to each of you who have committed to this campaign—and to those who have already sent in contribution. I remind you that this is a three year campaign. So if you have yet to make or add to a pledge, it is NEVER too late.
Our stewardship campaign was completely conducted via email and mail due to the pandemic, under the oversight of myself with vestry support. The challenges of nor meting every week have meant that the stewardship campaign is still awaiting pledges from a sizeable number of households. Bob Ecker has done an outstanding job as our treasurer these last two years, and Page Andersen has turned over every federal rock she could find to secure PPP loans to help cushion the sustained economic shock of the COVID crisis that we endured. We have ended with a deficit smaller than we anticipated purely through their creativity and through the engagement already of capital campaign funds for capital improvements.
But the only good deficit is NO deficit. There is no deficit of fellowship here. There is no deficit of spirituality and faith here. There must be no deficit in our willingness to not just balance our budget but enable it to grow in discipleship areas that have been previously pruned back too far.
This has reminded us that stewardship is not an unpleasant task to be confined to a brief season, but is instead a year-round attitude of thankfulness, generosity, and courage that calls us to a frank assessment of how much St. Martin’s means in our lives throughout the year. Financially, we still labor under a deficit. And this simply must end. It is in our power to increase our revenue—there is no more cutting to be made. We are understaffed, overworked, and the deficit prevents us from being as nimble as we need to be, as this time of crisis has driven home.
In the last six years, this parish has gone from having four part- and full-time clergy to one. Janet Theiss is both a parish administrator, book-keeper, and woman of all trades, and we would be truly lost without her. Denise Marsh is so talented I believe she could make stones sing and woodpeckers play percussion. They both deserve our thanks—and our financial support to be able to do their jobs right.
There are so many things we should be able to do—send mailed Beacons once a month to parishioners who are technologically challenged, for instance-- but we simply lack the hands and hours to do these things. We can do this. And we must.
Too many people have been forecasting the death of the big-C Church for years in this country and throughout the West. As we hear in our gospel today, Jesus brings a new message of love and healing—and the people who witness it are astonished. Here was some good news they had never heard before.
The world right now is as hungry for this gospel as those townspeople in Capernaum were on that day 2000 years ago. And Jesus has placed this beautiful life-giving work into our hands. How can we NOT take it up with joy and gladness? We start by paying attention to the signs of beauty, wonder, healing, and rebirth all around us. We continue by being brave enough to be amazed, and overflow with that amazement so that we share this treasure with all those around us. It is then that devotion begins.
In her poem, “Mysteries, Yes,” Mary Oliver writes,
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
We are called to love. To love boldly, profoundly, holding nothing back. This is the action Jesus sets apart as the sign of discipleship in his teachings. When we love each other, we truly live as God commands us to live, fully and radically alive. And they—the world— will know we are Christians by our love. And that love is our strength, the glue that holds our union together, despite this time of isolation, political unrest, and uncertainty. It is that love that makes us a people equipped for a time such as this. Attentive, amazed, and devoted to God’s ministry with all that we have.
Amen.
Preached at the 9:00 am online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church before the 2021 Annual Meeting.
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