Sunday, January 29 - Student Human Being

This sermon was preached for Sunday, January 29 for Annual Meeting Sunday at St. Mark's Episcopal in East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12.

Picture this: you’re driving along and the car in front of you does something rather ill-advised. For instance, they slow down suddenly for no reason or change lanes abruptly. But just when you start to feel irritation and annoyance bubble up inside you, maybe even some choice words spring to your mind, you notice there’s a sticker on the bumper that says… “Student driver.” How do you feel now?

I often notice that when I spot one of those stickers, my attitude shifts. I’m brought back to when I was a student driver at 17, unsure and anxious, when all the parts of driving that come so automatically now - checking mirrors, turn signals, changing lanes - were conscious, stressful maneuvers. I suddenly have a whole lot more compassion for the driver of the car in front of me. I slow down and give them space. I try to be a bit more helpful as a fellow driver on the road. I drive a bit more kindly, a bit more humbly.

We call the folks who followed Jesus around back in the day disciples. Disciple, of course, literally means learner. We are disciples, too. And we don’t ever stop being learners. 

I wish we could all walk around with “Student Christian” buttons on. Myself included. Or maybe even “Student Human Being.” Maybe we’d walk a little more humbly. Maybe we’d give each other a bit more space and grace.

What does the Lord require of you? Not perfection. Not expertise. The Lord requires that you walk humbly with God. 

What makes us a church is not that we have it all figured out. What makes us a church is that we are a people committed to walking humbly, loving kindness, and doing justice as best we can figure out - together. 

My husband and I had an expression we'd say to each other all the time in the first months of my son's life: New day, new baby. Just when we thought we knew how to take care of him and had this little person figured out, he'd enter a new stage of development and baffle us once again. As he was growing as a child, we were growing as parents. So much change happens in the first months of life - over and over we had to let go of what we thought we knew and embrace curiosity for what he was becoming. Over the years my oldest parishioners have taught me, too, that even nearing the end of life, there's still new things to learn: how to adjust to a weakening body and mind, how to walk with a cane, how to say goodbye to dear friends. We never stop learning.

If church is a school, then there are an infinite number of grade levels. There is no terminal degree in Christianity. There are no expert Christians, no matter what some clergy may try to claim. In fact, in the priestly vow itself, we pledge to be life-long students of the scriptures and tradition. Life-long learners. 

As any teacher will tell you, learning takes humility. It takes embracing change. It takes being curious rather than anxious about who we are becoming. It requires stepping out of a comfort zone, bit by bit, so that we can grow. It takes adopting a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset so that when we find ourselves thinking, well, that's not me or I can't do that, we think instead: that's not me right now, I can't do that yet. But with God's help, by walking humbly with God, I can learn.

St. Mark’s has endured a phenomenal amount of change these past few years. Change none of us could see coming, change some of us longed for, and change that was already in the works but became super accelerated by loss, pandemic, priestly transition - by so many things, some of them extraordinarily painful. St. Mark's rose to the challenge. St. Mark's adapted and reinvented church in a radically new context. This community revealed not only its incredible resilience, but its ability, your ability, to grow and learn.

It’s possible there’s a piece of you that longs for church to be the place where everything stays the same, where you know all the words by heart and every face in every pew.  That’s not how God works on us. God gets to be both the eternal changelessness that is our steadfast foundation - and the agent of the kind of change that pushes us to learn, to grow. 

Here is what I see in St Mark's now, in the year ahead: This time in St. Mark’s life as a community is all about each of us learning and re-learning how to be church together in a changed world full of changed people.  

We never stop being learners because neither we nor the world ever stop changing. 

We are all learners and we all have something to teach. Every one of us. Even my four month old has things to teach me. She could offer a whole master class in how to delight in one’s toes, for example. More seriously though, my daughter has taught me the importance of being curious, that curiosity is the driver of healthy development. I'm proposing that we approach this year at St. Mark's humbly and with a willingness to learn and teach. Put those two together and I think you've got curiosity. Curiosity stands in contrast to fear, distrust, and rigidity. Curiosity is openness, playfulness, and confident interest in what God has in store for us. 

The moments that have given me the most hope in the future of St. Mark’s, that make my heart swoon for God’s people, are the moments when I have seen people teach and learn together with curiosity, humility, and grace. Like when I see our older elementary school kids be so, so patient with our toddlers. When I glimpse a toddler sticking a curious hand into our font. Or when I hear an experienced lay leader walk a newer leader through a complicated computer system or an altar guild member teach a newer member; step by step, with plenty of reassurance, kindness, and grace. Or when I overhear grandparents offer words of solidarity to new parents, or long-married couples joke encouragingly with the relatively newly-wed. When I got to hear our deacon instruct our lay Eucharistic ministers about offering pastoral care. Or when I was blessed with Bishop Beckwith and Father Jim’s words of wisdom and guidance to me at the end of their time with us. In those moments, I catch a glimpse of all that is possible ahead of us. I can see that the wisdom, the skills, and gifts we need are all already in the room with us, already growing inside of us. Let's be curious about what comes next. 

Today we read Matthew's version of the beatitudes. I want us to notice that in this series of blessings, Jesus sees and loves the people as they are, right where they are. Then he invites them to be hopeful about what is coming next.

Blessed are you, he says. 

Blessed are you as you reach for joy, even in your grief. Blessed are you as you reach for spiritual richness, even in your spiritual poverty. Blessed are you as you hunger and thirst for a better world. Blessed are you, right now. 

It’s not Blessed are you who have it all figured out. It’s not You will be blessed eventually. It’s Blessed are you now. 

Blessed are the works in progress. Blessed are the learners. Blessed are we, right now. 

In a few moments, we'll have our annual meeting. We'll share about all we've done and all that lies ahead, the ways we've changed and are changing. I'll be asking each of us as well to think and share about what we are ready to learn this year and what we are ready to teach. So if you aren't planning to stick around, that's my challenge to you. Think of one thing that you will come here to St Mark's to learn this year and one thing you will come to teach others.

When we get stuck in only asking ourselves: What can I do here? What can I give? when it comes to church, we can fall into the trap of assuming we need to already know things in order to be useful, that we already need to have things in order to be helpful. That we are to arrive already figured out. Seeing ourselves as curious, humble learners reminds us that we are here to grow and develop and become together. Works in progress.

What does the Lord require of us? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God.

Walking humbly with God means walking humbly with one another. It means being curious. Giving one another and ourselves the space and grace to be learner Christians, student human beings.