Jesus makes some wonderful and positive statements about us, doesn’t he? You are the salt of the earth. You sustain and preserve what is needed for life. You add savor, flavor, and wholesomeness to the world around you. You are needed. And you are the light of the world. Light to see by. Light to energize. Light for life to grow and thrive. As light, you reveal what is hidden, to clear the dim paths when it it’s drear outside or inside. Your presence brightens sin-wearied souls. You are needed.
And the light we are to inhabit and radiate is not merely for us but for the world. Don’t disguise it or try to stash it somewhere out of sight; do not hide your lightness. You are needed, not merely for the benefit of your local congregation, or of your neighborhood, but for the salvation of the world. Our saltiness, our light bearing, is not merely for our little corner of the planet, but for the whole cosmos, which is the word the Gospel uses to describe the world. Cosmos. The whole cosmos. Salt of the earth. Light of the world. That is who you are. Remember that. Cherish that. Deliver that.
God knows that there is a lot at stake at how we internalize, how we are soaked through with God’s irrepressible life and expansive love and then reflect and radiate that good news to the cosmos. That’s what Jesus urged his disciples: Be salt. Be tenacious in your holding fast to God. Be radiant. Be aglow with the light of Christ. The world depends on us, each of us, in our kindness, in our pursuit of justice, and in our humble pilgrimage with God. Let your light shine, or the whole world will be continually benighted.
This is why we began this worship by sprinkling the water (traditionally mixed with salt) of our baptism and we will soon renew our baptismal vows; to renew our identity, to remind us of each that we, each of us and all of us, are continually dying on the cross of Jesus and are continually bursting forth from the tomb. Remember, this is what we do in this diocese: We splash water. We eat together. We tell stories. God surprises. The salt by ancient traditional added as a healing compound in holy water, with which you were just splashed, and the light of Easter morning, emanating from this Paschal Candle. That’s us, the church of the 21st century, same as it ever was.
We hear a lot about spirituality these days. We hear of all the people disconnected from church, who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” who’ve found that organized religion doesn’t nourish their spirituality. We dismiss that criticism at our peril. If our proclamation of the gospel does not return us to the salt and light that Jesus sees in his followers, then we might as well close. So, I want to talk about our spirituality here in the Church of New Hampshire. What does it look like? What does it taste like, sound like, feel like
Sometimes I worry: Has our saltiness has been diluted? Do we sometimes dim the piercing brightness of the Gospel entrusted to us? If our light does not shine, the whole world will be consigned to continual bleakness.
This is not a message of hopelessness. Not in the least. This is, in fact, an amazing time. Indeed, it may be the most important time, in my six decades of being a Christian and of being a member of this straining, flawed and yet utterly sacred and beautiful church. I say that because this is a time where the stakes have never been more real. And to make God real to ourselves and others, is the task of all persons baptized, all persons, not merely bishops, priests and deacons, but principally all who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Salt, Light, Yeast, Living Water, a Living Vine...these are guiding images of how we season, enlighten, raise up, and draw others into a life in God. These are images that guide our prayers and actions to make God real to this real world
This is the spiritual reality that is deeper than all our divisions, our conflicts, our inequities and injustices. This is the spirituality I long for all our churches to preach, to teach, to practice, embody and radiate. This the sermon each of us has sworn in our baptismal promises to proclaim not just the deacons, the priests, the bishops, but every one of us. “How beautiful will be the day,” said Archbishop Oscar Romero to a land torn apart by hatred and massive political violence in El Salvador in 1977:
“How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand that their work, their job,
is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metalworker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office! How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cabs? You are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if you work with honesty, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab.”
(Oscar Romero, “The Violence of Love,” Nov. 20, 1977)
How beautiful will be the day when we the baptized in New Hampshire—as our first thought upon waking in the morning and as the last thing that crosses our minds upon our slumber—know ourselves as priests of God’s grace, guiding of all our speech and actions during the day. Whatever our occupation may be, we are Christ’s Body.
We are living in perilous times, war, violence of both physical and spiritual injury or even death. As your bishop, I have had the astounding privilege of seeing, though we may be uneven and sometimes inattentive to the depth of our spiritual formation or religious education, there is an undeniable longing and desire to feel God’s hope for us, to see God more clearly, follow God more nearly, and serve God and God’s creation more fervently, and to love God and our neighbor more dearly.
Our churches, our parishes, missions, Gospel-oriented communities are where we bring our longing for God’s promise, where we bring our joys and our struggles, our celebrations and our sorrows, our hopes and our fears. For over the past decade we have been committed to doing all we can, to leveraging all our prayer, our love, the right use of the resources of time, treasure, talent of the amazing staff at Diocesan House, the uniquely gifted and committed clergy we continue to assemble here in New Hampshire, so that the world, from Colebrook to Nashua, from Claremont to Durham and has the light and the salt that will save the world from the division, hatred and fear that threatens it.
When any of our church’s light is dimmed or is at risk of losing its particular character of love and devotion to our Savior Jesus, or when its peculiar character, its saltiness, is lessened by internal strife, by a lack of Christian discipleship, kindness, or charity, or even if its vitality has gone and it becomes simply a museum of the past, then the effect expands to us all, the whole community. Our churches were established, my friends, in each of the cities, towns, and hamlets of New Hampshire, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. As the world almost a century ago began to totter to fascism, sometimes with the church’s misguided blessing the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, William Temple, said that “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” And the internal spiritual health of a church, how we embrace one another, how we love one another, how we disagree and work out our differences, is how the church can extend that blessing to the world so hungry, benighted, and in need of the healing it can bring as bearers of resurrection hope. That’s a spirituality we too often dilute to blandness, dim to darkness.
So, there are two things that I wish to lift up for this Convention. The first is the work of the Reparations Task Force and the powerful resolution that is before us this morning, and how, no matter what, we may respond to the scourge of racism and injustice. Over the course of the past year, the Task Force led by James McKim and Betty Lane and assisted by church leaders, lay and ordained, representing each of our convocations, have worked tirelessly to prepare a resolution that accomplishes the task set by last year’s resolution for our diocese to listen, learn, and seek the Holy Spirit to guide us. The Task Force has clarified what reparation means: the ongoing work to establish, repair, and mend our common humanity among siblings in God. And they have made it clear what Reparations does not mean—nothing but check-writing and box-checking or virtue signaling to those with whom we are not in relationship.
Today, we will vote on a resolution that sets a course for us to continue to learn, listen, pray and respond to the many ways the original sin of Adam and Eve infects human society and the creation. To my mind the original sin set forth in scripture was extraction: extracting a perceived good from that which we are to hold sacred, and that God told us to honor, not exploit or manipulate for our own purposes. The sin of extraction, fueled by a doctrine that says some people and some parts of creation are ours simply for the taking. That sin tells us we can ignore how that taking damages our relationship to God and each other. That sin continues to plague us, disordering our society, and spoiling our planet. That is the nature of sin. And the purpose of the Church is repentance from sin, and seeking God’s grace to turn our hearts for a new beginning, even, as Scripture tells us, a New Creation.
The conversations initiated by the Reparation Task Force have opened my eyes to see how interwoven all human and ecological suffering is. We can talk about Creation Care, and yet: generally it is white middle and upper middle-class people who can afford to shift from our dependence on fossil fuels and buy electric or hybrid vehicles, while communities in the inner city or rural areas, with higher concentration of minorities or poverty cannot afford the solar panels or the transitions to heat pumps or to abate lead, arsenic, or other toxins in their homes. Or their schools perform less well than those the towns with higher property values, even though, like in Newport or Claremont, their tax burden is disproportionally punishing. These are examples of the intertwining of these issues: racism affects environmental stewardship, which affects health care disparities, which affect mental health, which affects education, which affects our political discourse, which as we see daily, affects everything. We remember Dr. King’s words written from the Birmingham jail:
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [of us] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.” (Letter From a Birmingham Jail, MLK, Jr.)
Yes, these are words of a prophet of civil rights. And they are clearly the words of a Christian theologian and pastor shepherding people to Resurrection hope, the hope in a power and presence that is stronger than death. In the Body of Christ, we are entwined with each other and the burdens of the world.
Earlier this month Diocesan Council created a new commission that will replace the more siloed and narrowly focused commissions and committees that have worked on racial reconciliations, creation care, educational equity, global mission, prison concerns, gun violence, poverty and hunger, natural disaster, and war. On our own we cannot fix any of these issues without the power of God working among us and other partners to work together. So, in the spirit of the prophet Micah, we are establishing one commission, the Micah 6 Commission, made up of 12 faithful New Hampshire Episcopalians—lay people, deacons, and priests—to work together and see how all of these intractable dilemmas and challenges are interwoven, intertwined and require first prayer. God is with us in these things. We will continue work with partners, like the New Hampshire Black Heritage Trail, Granite State Organizing Project, Episcopal Relief and Development, Braver Angels, our schools, our food pantries and thrift shops, others who are already and may even be better equipped to do God’s mission. The Micah 6 Commission will be informed and guided by the plan proposed by the Reparations Task Force. They will see how God surprises more often when we are in the same room, rather than set apart. Ours is a God who is Trinity, a God of relationship. In the God made flesh we are forever entwined with God and each other. That is the deep vision of all true Christian spirituality.
Finally, these words will not be complete until we acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit that led to an amazing thing. If we had any doubt that of our salt and light, preserving our character as a feisty, resilient light filled dedicated church that is both salty, radiant, rises like leaven and is interwoven like a vine, our doubt could be set aside by the powerful news shared last week of the success of our From Deep Roots New Life Campaign. Before COVID we began to talk about what it would be like to raise funds, not for bricks and mortar, but for the ministry of our people, and those who are not yet among us. Lesley Pemberton began the work in helping us with a case statement, a plan and a feasibility study. Later, we asked Jamie Hamilton and Rob Stevens to co-chair our Campaign Committee, and we invited, teams of dedicated souls to help us set a goal of $2 million the income to provide venture capital for mission, to start new missions, support new adventures, take some risks for the sake of bringing the good news into a world in need of it. Last week, our Campaign Manager, my real boss in this work, Shelli Gay tallied that we not only reached our goal but surpassed it by a half million dollars. We have raised 2.5 million dollars to support our commitment to serve Jesus Christ by seeking his face in our neighbor and to know God’s presence in the Creation.
So, we are salt. We are light. And we seek to become even more so by dwelling in the one Body Jesus in this beautiful, broken, straining, overflowing, shining, ragged, imperfect, and utterly holy church. It remains the privilege of my life, the challenge of my life, and the joy of my life to serve alongside you, learning as we go. How are we salt? How are we light? By doing justice, by loving mercy, and by walking humbly with our God in the path of Jesus Christ.
And speaking of learning, how about we memorize a Bible verse—like we’ve been to Vacation Bible School. Some of you, indeed many of us, already know this verse by heart. It could easily be a motto to start your day, posted on your bathroom mirror or your car dashboard, or to hold you in times of trial and celebration. I know at least one deacon who has a version of this verse tattooed on his forearm: Here it is:
And what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice,
to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Repeat.