Annual Meeting Sunday

By Ulysses Dietz, Senior Warden

Today's scripture was all about water, and about being called into a covenant with God symbolized by water. In Genesis God called Noah to build the ark and save his family from the Flood. God's rainbow was his guarantee that he would never again abandon humankind. The Epistle of Peter reiterates that covenant, comparing the Flood to baptism (which is a creative way to think about it) just as baptism is God's call to us to be cleansed of our sins and get ready to do God's work. The Gospel focused on Jesus' own baptism in the Jordan, and his call to go into the wilderness in preparation for his final call: to give himself in sacrifice to save all of us. What strikes me particularly about these parallel stories is that neither Noah nor Jesus remotely wanted to do what they were called to do. We don't always answer God's call willingly.

We are baptized, most of us, without our consent. We are called to be part of God's covenant with mankind for our own good by our families. It is later, first at confirmation, and then when we join a church as adults, that we are called to fulfill the promise of that baptism; to live into the covenant with God that baptism represents.

Each of us is called to do the work God has given us to do. We are not, however, called to do all that work flawlessly. And there is often a substantial difference between what we are called to do and what we want to do. In some ways that lifelong tension between what we are called to do and what we want to do defines us as humans.

This past Thursday evening, as I was setting up for a funeral, I was standing up at the high altar, smoothing the fair linen down after having changed the frontal from purple to white. My cell phone rang. It was the marketing director at The Newark Museum, urgently trying to find me to ask me to write up something that night for a promotional collaboration with the NJ Performing Arts Center for next year. Something about trying to connect a show about the Rat Pack (you know, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin?) with an exhibition I'm planning on contemporary studio glass in 2007. Somehow I had trouble seeing the connection.

This week at work I was also called to draft a letter for my boss to take to Governor Corzine to sign, to try to convince the CEO of a huge corporation not to sell of part of the Lenox China archives at auction, because we think it should stay in New Jersey. And I had to draft a fact sheet so that my boss could explain to the governor why we are asking him to sign the letter. In the meantime, I was trying to work on the text and labels for an exhibition of jewelry (called Objects of Desire) that I'm opening in early May, and I also had to finalize the checklist and text panels and label copy for a huge exhibition of 20th-century ceramics from the Museum's collection that opens next week in a corporate art gallery in New York -- which I spent all day Friday installing, and which I will spend all day Monday installing. And I had to assemble the slides and write the script for a lecture I'm giving on the evolution of the American home at a Drew University fundraiser next Sunday afternoon. And on Wednesday I had to visit an elderly couple in Teaneck, whose middle-aged daughter is dying and who therefore want to leave the museum the collection of art pottery they had intended to leave to her.

And I was called this week to leave work early to take my son to get his next round of braces and learn how to crank up his palette expander each night for the next six weeks; and to go into work late so Gary and I could meet with our daughter's teachers and discuss how we're going to arrange her special education resources at school next year; and help her through the fourth-grade-build-a-model-of-the-solar-system project; and celebrate our son's 10th anniversary of his arrival from Guatemala; and try to teach Gracie what a perimeter is, even though she totally didn't get it; and sit and do long division problems with Alex, even though he totally does get it and just likes me to do the work with him. And I was called to sit and watch the Daily Show with Gary at 11:00 each evening, which is virtually the only time we have alone together on any given day.

St. George's called me to do the flowers for church last Sunday, and clean up after the eight-o'clock service; and count the money with Kirk Petersen after the service (did we ever get the bank key back?); and during the week I needed to set up three Ash Wednesday Eucharist services for Bernie, as well as the funeral I mentioned before; and then I had to gather the biographies I'd forgotten to gather last week for the candidates for vestry for whom you'll be voting this morning; and poll the vestry about who would bring what for the lunch you'll be eating after this service; And also wash and iron a load of altar linens from last week, which I brought in this morning. Oh, and write this sermon.

And that was just last week. It reminds me of a T-shirt I saw once. On the front it said:

GOD PUT ME ON THIS EARTH
TO ACCOMPLISH A
CERTAIN NUMBER OF THINGS.

And on the back it read:

I AM SO FAR BEHIND
I WILL NEVER DIE.

We all feel this way sometimes. Perhaps too much of the time.

Beginning with our baptismal covenant, we make covenants in many aspects of our lives. We make a covenant with our employer (ok, a contract), by which we are bound to serve and for which we receive money. Unfortunately, employers sometimes don't see their covenant with us in quite the same terms that God does.

We make a covenant with our friends; and with our spouses; and when we are called to parenthood, we make a very special covenant with those children. (When you adopt, that covenant is made quite literal by the adoption process, but it only underscores the truth for anyone who is charged with the welfare of a child). These covenants with people are, to me, the most important covenants we make in our lives, for in them we most closely emulate God's covenant with us.

When we, as Christians and Episcopalians, become members of a parish; we are called to enter into a covenant with a community. We are called to live out our baptismal covenant with God by being part of that community. Notice that on the weekly bulletins that all the people of St. George's are called its ministers. We say that for a reason. Without all of you -- you sitting here in this building now and those St. Georgians who are somewhere else right now -- there would be no St. George's. A church is defined by its people; the priest may set the tone, but without the people he or she is just a lonely soul in an empty building. How each of us answers our call to do this part of God's work defines what St. George's is today, and what it will be in the future.

Some of us are called simply to go to church on Sunday. That is a precious calling in this secular world, where it sometimes seems that only fundamentalists and the extremely orthodox go to church regularly. This is to me a terribly important way to live out our baptismal covenant. However, as well all know, perfect attendance in church won't get the work done and it won't pay the bills. That is why we are called to be ministers and not only worshipers.

Some of us are called to get involved in Parish ministries, committees and task forces; ranging from staging Broadway shows to Bible study, to hosting coffee hour to knitting afghans to washing and ironing the altar linens. Some of us are called by a specific talent to, say, sing in the choir or sit on the Capital Projects Committee. Some of us, because of our particular skills, are called to avoid anything that remotely resembles what we do in "real life." Some of us are called to try out different things at St. George's over time; others to do various different things all at the same time. And, luckily for us all, some of us are called to be leaders, and to chair ministries and committees and task forces -- and to run for Vestry.

The Year 2005 at St. George's was an amazing year. We as a parish were called to do a tremendous amount of God's work. A wide variety of Centennial events filled the calendar, and if that wasn't enough, we embarked upon the first year of a three-year capital campaign, to raise money so that we can begin to transform this group of old buildings into a place where we can all live out our baptismal covenant more effectively and in community with each other.

We have, so far, managed to gather pledges to the tune of $660,000 for the capital campaign. While this won't let us accomplish everything we have dreamed of doing with our church and our parish hall and our resource center, it will certainly get us well along the road to fulfill our dreams for the future.

Perhaps most amazing to me is the fact that our centennial year was also the most brutal year in my memory in terms of global natural disasters; and from the pews in this parish we also raised some $20,000 in special charitable contributions to assist those in this world who have suffered.

And on top of all of this, the people of St. George's have been called to pledge some $270,000 in stewardship, to keep the lights on and the phones answered and the floors mopped for 2006. Part of that stewardship pledge will help St. George's keep its covenant with the Diocese of Newark; and in turn that will help the Diocese keep its covenant with the National Episcopal Church. We here at St. George's are part of a global covenant.

We are called to do many things to live out our baptismal covenant with God. But only God can give us the will to do that work in all its different aspects, with our time, with our talents, and with our money. Not everything that we want to do will get done in 2006. There are things that each of us might like to see happen this year that simply won't happen. This is true in our work lives; this is true in our home lives; and this is true in our lives as ministers of St. George's. This is not failure. This is reality. We can only do what we have the will to do.

Each week in the post communion prayer we ask God to "send us out into the world to do the work you have given us to do." This is not a guarantee that we will accomplish everything we want to do, or even everything we need to do. But it is a guarantee that God will be with us each step of the way. The moment that sacred water was poured on our heads in baptism, we received that guarantee.

For me, it is this guarantee of God's unwavering love that lets me face each day sure that, whether I succeed or fail, I will not be doing it alone.

Amen.

© 2006 Ulysses Dietz