Proper 8a July 2, 2023

 It is tough being a Christian. Last week Steven Metcalfe shared with you the dire situation of mainline Christian denominations in this country—the institutional church is no longer relevant to a majority of the population in the United States. What we do here on a Sunday has become irrelevant to more people than not.
Sobering isn’t it?
Of course we’re doing all sorts of things to address the collapse of the institutional church—we’re reaching out more and more, letting the outcasts of the wider community know that God loves them, no exceptions, and that we will meet them where they are, and do all that we can to help them EXPERIENCE that unconditional love with every interaction. We’ve fully engaged in the Genesee Regional Initiative, offering a way to make the sacraments available in the smaller churches of our region, knowing that to close those churches won’t mean more people for us on a Sunday, it will mean losing more people from the Episcopal Church as a whole.
Now, all this decline is depressing for sure, but it is also an opportunity, an opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus in different ways. More like how the early church became “the church.”
We’re doing it right here—even though the weather outside is frightful we were ready to be outside this morning---bringing our celebration of Holy Eucharist—our weekly gathering to praise God and share God’s love with one another—- out into public view. The early church had to do this because people were very afraid of what was going on in these home churches, behind closed doors, so the early home churches flung open their doors and windows to let the whole world know that what they were doing was open and available to all. That’s what we are doing here—letting folks know we are not a secret club!
We have our blessing box and our Thrift Store where, like the early disciples Lydia, Phoebe and Dorcas, we make sure the hungry are fed and the naked are clothed. We don’t preach to those who use the Blessing Box, we welcome them. We don’t ridicule the Thrift Store customers for being poor, we welcome them, and when they don’t have enough money to purchase something, we give them a gift certificate or one of us throws in the extra money because it isn’t about making money, it’s about serving others.
We did it when a group of us attended the Gay Pride kick-off at Frist Presbyterian Church on June 1. Designed for the youth of Batavia, we engaged in conversation with young people who, by their own report, feel that the Church and God hate them. By eating ice cream with them we showed them we and God love them.
We are engaged with the Balanovych family, selling Halayna’s pierogis for her and raising money through bake sales to aid relief efforts for the Ukrainian people displaced and terrified by the invasion of Russia in their sovereign land.
On Juneteenth Several of you stood by the grave of Addy, who may have been the enslaved servant of a former rector of this very parish, making public amends for the horrors of slavery.
    All of this work is discipleship work, it’s being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. It is not easy work, it can uncomfortable, painful and scary work. We may be reviled for it, we may anger one another by doing it, we may anger others. But we keep doing the work. Why? Because sharing the good news of Christ behind the closed doors of our building has never been the point and in the current climate in this day and age, it’s not engaging more people into the Way of God as given to us by Jesus. But doing the work of the prophets, being a disciple of Christ? That does. And it will. It is the life-bread of our faith.     So, in a few minutes, when I am honored to feed you with the bread of life, may you be strengthened to feed others in all that you do, wherever you are, however you can do it for as long as you can do it.
Because if we don’t do the work of being Jesus in this world, who will? Amen.