October, 2002 In This Issue: Framing Worship at 9 a.m. What is the Altar Guild? A Just War? Wanna Re-connect? Make Friends? Reflections of a New Member Homecoming Sermon Making Room: the Ministry of Hospitality Welcoming the Stranger Collect For September 11th A Day in the Park

by The Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd

Homecoming in college was such a huge event. A football game. Beauty queens. Star athletes. The smell of greasepaint, the roar of the crowd. Bigger than life. At St. A's this morning there's no football game, unless graduates of USC and UCLA engage one another in an aggressive pattern during the coffee hour.

Homecoming for me here holds a lot of different meanings. Many old friends. I first encountered Hartshorn and Marla Murphy around 1970 when he was in seminary and they came one night to hear me read some prayers I'd written. My first visit to St. A's occurred in the 1950's when the then rector Robert Rusack invited me to be a guest preacher. It was then a wonderful wooden building that resembled a ship-it reminded me of the chapel at Vassar College in the East. Starting at the end of the 1970's I spent 15 years on the staff here. And I have another tie to St. A's because my mother Beatrice loved it here-and her ashes are scattered and buried out in the courtyard.

A great oral history of St. A's could be had by simply seating us outside on the lawn, telling story after story about our lives and experiences in this place. About all the great characters in this place (yes, including yours truly), the incredible human crises, understandings and misunderstandings, ups and downs, ebbs and flows. Shakespeare might envy some of the plots engendered here; Stravinsky could orchestrate them, and Spielberg to film them. Only Pavarotti and Renee Fleming could attempt to sing them.

When I came upon the scene, Fred Fenton-a lively, lovable man-was rector. He gave grade A sermons. He also saw St. A's as the All Saints Pasadena of the Westside, and worked tirelessly to achieve his dream. During his long tenure, Fred had four women priests as his associates. Since Fred somewhat physically resembled Tudor King Henry VIII, and King Henry had six wives, often I found myself playing mental games associating Fred's combinations of women priests with the sturdy sovereign's spouses. For example, the tall, angular, very aristocratic Rev. Carlyle Gill resembled Queen Catherine of Aragon; warm, friendly, extremely able Rev. Elizabeth Habecker seemed a bit like Queen Katherine Parr or Queen Katherine Howard, the spontaneous, bright, talented Rev. Barbara Stewart was a shoo-in for Queen Anne Boleyn, although Barbara kept her head; and the intellectual, highly trained, brilliant Rev. Marilyn Adams possessed the fire and acumen of Queen Anne of Cleves. Later, a certain poetic justice was realized when the Rev. Marni Schneider, who had been a seminarian under Fred's tutelage, succeeded him as interim rector of St. A's-much as Queen Elizabeth I had succeeded her father King Henry VIII on the throne of England. Yet enough of past ramblings lest we all turn into past movie stars out of "Sunset Boulevard." We must look forward, not backward. Indeed, we must live as fully present in the moment at hand as we can.

The moment at hand confronts us with challenges that are awesome. We are very close to September 11. A year ago an event on that date changed the course of American history and, too, the course of our own lives. In recognition of this fact, next Wednesday, Sept. 11, those of us at the Cathedral Center will gather at 5:30 a.m. in solidarity with Eastern time. At 5:46 bells will toll at the equivalent time of the first plane's impact on the World Trade Center. A liturgy will follow with Bishop Bruno as our preacher.

It is a conflicting, perplexing time. People are genuinely worried about the present, the future, decisions affecting their lives over which they seem to have no control; worried about security and trying to understand what seems to evade easy understanding.

It is a sober time. Words like endurance, patience and acceptance come to the forefront. A former, brasher time of fantasy about running the world with endless energy has faded out of a bright spotlight. Faith is not enough in itself; it requires an accompanying action, in the sense that God is not passive, but active. In today's gospel Jesus tells us: "One who believes in me will also do the work that I do."
Our times demand action. In the shadow of Sept. 11, the most immense problems confront us. We appear in a way to be on a Titanic with at least several icebergs out there. Global warming and the most pressing environmental crises. Human poverty at levels we cannot even begin to say we acknowledge or have a clue about-and a host of problems related to such poverty of the body, the mind, the spirit. Poverty that kills. Poverty that shuts windows on hope.

Cassandras are never popular. And who wants to be a Cassandra-because it is the messenger who is shot. Yet on Homecoming at St. A's I cannot act like a Jimmy Stewart in a late 1930's movie about small-town America. We must be aware of the real world that surrounds us and that we inhabit. For example-and I venture to say nine-tenths of Americans like ourselves do not know these statistics-40 million people in the world are living with HIV/AIDS; 37 million are adults, 18 and a half are women, 3 million are children. Fourteen million children have been or are phased by AIDS. Presently there are 14,000 new AIDS infections every day; presently there are 8,000 individual AIDS deaths every day.

If we are to wage a war against terror, it is ubiquitous-and within as well as without. We don't have to go to another continent or country to find it. The gap here between haves and have-nots is a Grand Canyon. Being able to have a decent education, being able to have minimal health care are becoming luxuries in a Tiffany's window. War, casual murder, and pillage are shopworn clichés that cannot attract as much attention as, say, an Idol TV show. Looking desperately for leaders whom we can trust, we grow tired of canned charisma and photo ops, and look for simplicity, an honest and quiet approach, women and men who tell the truth. Turning to organized religion, we run into fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam and find that fundamentalism of any stripe wounds the mind, wounds the soul, and sets up false gods of perfectionism and control.

Where, then, are we? What are we to make of this as we try to make a life, believe a belief, practice love, sustain hope? It might surprise you that I look out upon almost unparalleled challenge and, yes, opportunity. It requires us to respond positively to Jesus' words: "One who believes in me will also do the works that I do." Let me explain.

I have never forgoten these words in a play I saw in London years ago written by Christopher Fry. I remember vividly how they remarkably took full measure of the human condition we're looking at this morning ... but, more, how they went on to focus not on that-but on God.

Copyright © 2002 St. Augustine by-the-Sea