We learn in seminary not to make our preaching all about ourselves. Episcopalians and Anglicans love our three-legged stool, which scripture, tradition, and reason hold up. Preaching is also in three parts, blending the Bible with the preacher’s experience and events in the community and world.
You don’t want one factor to dominate. If my pet has died this week – my pet has not died; I don’t have a pet – but if my hypothetical pet has died, I won’t be able to proclaim the good news until I endure the worst of my grief. Either I don’t preach that day, or I talk about something else.
So in view of its emotional resonance, I’m going to say this next bit quickly, just to get it out of the way. This is my last visitation to a mission or parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles before we consecrate Antonio Jose Gallardo Lucena as our eighth bishop on July 11. This is probably my last Sunday sermon as bishop diocesan. And here we are, drenched, if not in tears, then in red, which represents the blood of the saints. So let us ponder our sainthood.
This parish of St. Peter’s is attentive to its saints. When I visited four years ago, we dedicated the display case in the narthex in memory of Art, Fran, and Erica. Today we’ll dedicate Dave Dawson’s Depot in the parking lot. Dave died three years ago after spending countless hours taking care of sets at Paramount and sprucing up this church he loved. We also mark your patronal feast, which is tomorrow, of St. Peter and St. Paul.
I know we all remember hymn 293: “I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true.” Like sermons, hymns are teaching tools. As well as any resource we have, hymn 293 expresses the Anglican conception of sainthood. We all qualify, by virtue of our baptism and devotion to glorifying God and caring for God’s people. Dave’s Depot, where people can wait for their rides home after church, also conveys considerable symbolic power. I don’t want anybody to be frightened to sit there. But our faith is that earthly life is a way station along our pilgrim way back home. Dave is now one of our pioneers.
Not to brag, nor make it too much about myself, but Kathy and I have four grandchildren. Our retirement plan was to move as close as we can to one of our families. At the end of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the newlyweds move next door to the bride’s parents. We want to be all up in our kids’ business, and we want them to be all up in ours. So we flipped a coin and decided to move to La Mesa, in San Diego County, five minutes from nine-year-old Frannie and her parents. Harriet and Silas live in Yorba Linda, near their aunt Lindsay in Fullerton. Emmett is in Long Island, New York. We want to be all up in their business as well. As with Dave’s Depot, it all comes down to transportation logistics.
Frannie is our eldest. Her other grandfather died a couple of years ago. Since then, she has been especially attentive to my sainthood status. She knows exactly how old Kathy and I are. She is aware of our infirmities. She has a lot invested in us and doesn’t want to hear anything about us waiting at the depot for our one-way ride.
I don’t mean to make light of this. We are all precious to those who love us. It’s just that we sometimes aren’t as conscious as they of our mortality. When I tell Kathy to be careful when she’s getting in the car to run an errand, I’m thinking about all the disasters that can happen on the way to Home Depot. When I get in my car to run an errand, I don’t worry about myself at all.
I don’t want anybody to worry any more than they do already in this anxious age. But St. Peter’s is attentive to it saints. And the main reason the church studies our most famous saints is to help the rest of us appreciate the preciousness of our remaining days and how we might continue to devote ourselves to the glory of God and the care of God’s people.
Peter and Paul have been commemorated on the same date since the third century. Both of our leading apostles are said to have been martyred in Rome during Nero’s dark time. Most important, they joined forces to make our faith a universal phenomenon. In Ezekiel we learn of God’s plan to gather God’s scattered sheep, from all the peoples and all the nations, and bring them into their own land. This is prophecy about extending the gospel to the ends of the earth. Remember how Peter was called to share meals with Gentiles, which is to say everyone who wasn’t a Jew. Paul also received a revelation to go global, beyond the church in Jerusalem, which was naturally focused on the historic Jewish community.
We lift them up today not just for their martyrdom but also for their witness for a universal way of life rooted in self-giving love. We heard Paul say that gospel love must be persistently proclaimed, whether the time is favorable or not. Whether people are open to the truth of the love our God in Christ, or being lured away by myths that suit their own desires.
We heard Jesus tell Peter to feed his sheep with the living Word. To express the whole gospel, Jesus needed just 21 living words in Matthew 7:12. We call it the golden rule. Confucius said it, too. We read it in Torah. It’s articulated in Sikhism and Sufism. Most Americans grew up steeped in it: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” While Jesus wasn’t the first to say it, he died and rose from the dead to prove it.
Without the golden rule, thinking about the interests of other drivers, we couldn’t have gotten here safely this morning. Without the golden rule, we can’t keep a happy home for two weeks or decide on a restaurant or movie with a friend or spouse without getting into an argument. The golden rule is the common denominator of all faith and decent philosophy. It’s the only thing that works. It applies to you and me. It’s time to insist that it also applies to Trump, Putin, and Xi and all who wield the power of the state.
At long last, the political authority of the faithful must be made more manifest if we are to be a land dedicated to liberty and justice for all. The golden rule is neither Republican nor Democratic, liberal nor Republican. But it rules out cruelty for cruelty’s sake and violence for violence’s sake. It insists that if we want to secure our borders, we do so without acts of pornographic cruelty. If we want to defend the United States of America, we do so without acts of unnecessary, stupid violence.
And on this Pride Sunday, at the end of Pride Month, we stress that golden rule government should say that, while we have a lot to learn about the lives that our trans and nonbinary siblings are leading, there’s no excuse for torturing and scapegoating middle- and high school athletes or for making children feel ashamed about going to the bathroom. Golden rule government says that we can follow whatever creed and ideology we want. We’re just not going stand by while the powerful, acting in our name, hurt our neighbors to get more power for themselves.
I give thanks that St. Peter’s is so attentive to its saints. It’s an example for our whole church of saints in waiting, all of us who are jostling one another for a seat on the bench at Dave’s Depot. It’s good to remember how Peter and Paul were made to suffer because they stood up for love when love was not the way of those in power. May all we saints remember their courage when we hear the Holy Spirit calling us to risk just a little more prerogative, privilege, and resource for the glory of God and the sake of God’s people.
Peter and Paul show us the way. Dave, Art, Fran, and Erica show us this way. Great priests and teachers like Jeanette, Jude, and Ruth show us the way. Jesus Christ’s glorious Resurrection and mighty Ascension cleared the way, making all of our risk-taking perfectly safe. The way of love, justice, righteousness, and peace. The way of the golden rule. The way back to the heart of God. The way home.
[A portion of my June 28 sermon at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in San Pedro, hosted by rector, the Very Rev. Jeanette Repp. The photo shows members of Dave Dawson’s family in the commuter’s shelter he constructed before his death three years ago.]