This sermon was preached for Annual Meeting Sunday, January 26, 2025 and references the January 21, 2025 sermon by the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of the Diocese of Washington. The texts for this sermon were: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21, and Psalm 19.
Did you know that churches can be reviewed online, out of five stars and everything? Look up any church on Google maps and you can see how people - visitors and life-long members - rate the church from one to five stars and why. Facebook also has the ability for folks to review church pages. I find these reviews hilarious, but also somewhat unsettling. Church, after all, is not a product to be consumed or even a performance to be observed. Worship and liturgy is co-created, by everyone who shows up. You change a worship service the moment you step into it. You change a church with your presence. This is perhaps most obvious in small churches. Especially on Sundays like last Sunday when a parish’s organist is out sick and everyone really has to sing!
Now, complaining from the pulpit is not a good look - probably something someone might critique in an online review - the preacher was too whiny. But I’m going to take a risk here and admit something that really grinds my gears - so just hear me out. The sentences that really exasperate me most in church contexts begin with the words, “Someone should…” “Someone should really…”
Now, we’ve all said those sentences. Including myself. (If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m always preaching to myself). But here’s what’s most insidious about the words “someone should.” By saying them, the speaker assumes the role of external observer, not unlike an online reviewer. “Well, I would give it five stars, but someone should really…” As if identifying the problem is contribution enough, but it’s up to everyone else, up to a “someone” to fix it.
The funniest thing about online reviews of churches, though, is that once you get to know a church and you know people’s names, you realize it’s often the lifelong parishioners doing the reviewing, which like fair. But it’s sort of giving yourself five stars, isn’t it? We are all the church.
Of all Sundays, today, Annual Meeting Sunday, is an especially good day to reflect on the notion that we create church together. As St. Paul writes in his letter, we are all diverse members of one body. After this service, we’ll be gathering for our annual meeting, a time when we reflect on the past year, elect our leadership, and discuss how to steward our resources in the next year. We are also blessing new members who are officially joining our parish. Their presence, their gifts, have already been changing us. Thank you for offering yourselves and giving us a chance to celebrate your choice to belong. Today you step up and step in to become part of our body, even as you’re still working out your place with us.
One of the first things I noticed about leadership here at St. Andrew’s is how quickly people moved from naming a problem to either stating how they were going to be part of the solution or beginning to brainstorm who was the right person for the job. Your current wardens, Trisha and Jenny, are really, really good at that, by the way. But there’s so many other small examples to name here, too. When Nancy Muller noticed that my alb was wrinkly and it was bothering her, she volunteered to iron it, even though that’s really not her thing. When Nicole Thoen noticed that there was no childcare set up for annual meeting last year, she stepped up to arrange it for today. Boy, every single time I come up with a wacko idea for an unusual bit of liturgy, like what if I douse everyone with baptismal font water, Charlotte Whatley, our altar guild head, is on it with all sorts of possible solutions and bringing in branches from her garden. I could go on. Five stars, y’all, five stars.
Now St. Paul is doing his own form of complaining a bit here in the letter of Corinthians, too. He spends a good deal of the Corinthians passage lambasting folks who turn to their fellow church members and say, “I have no need of you.” He’s talking about when people consider this or that person in their community to be below notice or appreciation, that they aren’t worthy of belonging. Certainly that attitude of contempt is destructive - no body can function that way. We cannot, neither as a parish, nor as a country, begin lopping off whole swathes of people, our neighbors, by declaring them unworthy of dignity and respect - and expect ourselves to thrive at all.
Listen to what else St. Paul says. He complains of the folks who say "Because I am not an ear, an eye, etc., I do not belong." Because it’s just as vital to point out the destructiveness of saying to oneself, “this body has no need of me,” no need of my presence, my gifts, all that I have to offer. Of believing, in your thoughts or actions, that you are somehow outside or separate. Convincing yourself that you are not part of both our weaknesses and our strongest strengths, that you do not belong to both the problems and their solutions. But that is not true at all. In this moment, you, too, are that someone, in the particular way only you can be.
Many hundreds of years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah foretold that God would send someone to release the captives, heal the sick, bring freedom to the powerless, and dignity to the oppressed. This Sunday, we remember how Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue, I am that someone. As the body of Christ, the church is to say today and every day, collectively, we are that someone.
The Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde made headlines this past week for the last few sentences of her sermon during the Interfaith Prayer Service for National Unity at the National Cathedral on Tuesday. Her full sermon was thoughtful and deeply theological. Like St. Paul, Bishop Budde reflected on what we mean when we talk about unity, and what it takes; dignity, honesty, and humility. She talked about how unity falls apart when we give in to contempt rather than respect for others. Her direct plea to the new president for compassion and mercy for the vulnerable that caused such a stir was courageous, yet gentle and gracious. She did not criticize or attack - simply lifted up the voices of the powerless and afraid, naming two particularly frightened groups, LBGTQ+ folks and undocumented immigrants - and their children. A Christian humbly asking a fellow Christian to extend that same mercy Jesus Christ would.
Later, in an interview with the New York Times, Bishop Budde shared about how she decided to add that plea that captivated so many people. Watching the inauguration on Monday, Bishop Budde thought of all the people who were frightened of what all the promised changes would mean for their lives. She said, “I had a feeling that there were people watching what was happening and wondering, “Was anyone going to say anything?” She couldn't help but think: Someone should say something on behalf of all the people, especially the children, who are afraid.
Someone should say something. Someone should do something. So she stepped into her pulpit and became that someone in the way only she could - as a preacher, as a Bishop, as a pastor, and as an Episcopalian. As our own Bishop, the Right Rev. Julia Whitworth, noted in her statement on the incident, Bishop Budde carried out the sacred vow she made at her consecration “to defend those who have no helper” and “to stir up the conscience of the people.” Asking all of us: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being?”
Each year at Annual Meeting, we especially take time to thank, celebrate, and elect folks who believe they are part of the solutions and mission of the church by being part of leadership - in our parish and our Diocese. Not all of us are called to be officers with official titles like clerk or warden or delegate, but here's the thing - anytime you move yourself from thinking “Someone should” to “I am that someone” you become a leader. By virtue of our baptism, we are all called to be part of the body of Christ. His hands, his feet, his ears and his voice.
Whether you choose to be a member here officially or not - even if you don't stick around for Annual Meeting - your presence here changes us, just by being yourself in worship today. I realized this in a new way at my last parish when someone mentioned to me how healing it was for them to watch my husband parent our kids at church. Now, Aaron wasn’t doing anything special, just being the kind, attentive father he always is, but you know what? His tenderness had more of a spiritual impact on that person than my sermon or prayers that day.
You never know how someone might spot you in a pew and think with relief and gratitude, “there’s someone here who looks like me.” “There’s someone here who also doesn’t know when to sit or stand.” “There’s someone here whose kids are just as noisy as mine.” You'll probably never know how the prayer petition you speak aloud during our prayers of the people has helped someone else feel less alone in their fears, or the friendly small talk at coffee hour has made another feel warm, included, and seen.
Sitting where I sit as your pastor, it is much easier for me to see the impact of your presence - and certainly the impact of your absence - than it is for you. To use St. Paul’s words: weak or strong, honorable or dishonorable, you are more indispensible than you realize. You contribute more than you know just by being yourself.
Neediness and desperation are also not a good look, I’ve been told. Not a good strategy for drawing people in. But I will take that risk now to say: this body has need of you, just as you are.
Amen.
Sources:
1.21.25 Sermon by The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Washington National Cathedral, https://youtu.be/xwwaEuDeqM8?si=Fgh5VZBBTXrZUfa8
The Bishop Who Pleaded With Trump: ‘Was Anyone Going to Say Anything?’, Elizabeth Dias, New York Times, January 22, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/trump-bishop-plea.html
MA Episcopal bishops issue joint statement supporting Bishop Budde's call for mercy, January 24, 2025
https://www.diomass.org/news/diocesan-news/ma-episcopal-bishops-issue-joint-statement-supporting-bishop-buddes-call-mercy
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