Annual Address to the Parish

Annual Reports from 2007 are available here.

January 27, 2008

St. Luke’s Church

The Rev. Eric M. Williams

Today is our annual meeting

and instead of a traditional sermon

I give my annual state of the parish report.

By a happy coincidence,

we are also today baptizing Isabella Lisciandro,

daughter of Sam and Jen,

granddaughter of John and Carol,

great-granddaughter of Beatrice,

and therefore a fourth-generation member of St. Luke’s.

Isabella’s baptism is a wonderful reminder to us of why we are here

and what we are doing.

With her we remember and reaffirm our own baptismal covenant;

with her we renew our commitment to Jesus Christ

and our identity as members of Christ’s Body, the Church.

The other day when Sam and Jen came in with Mary and Chris the godparents

I told them that this is the most important day of Isabella’s life:

the day when she claims her birthright

and is formally accepted as God’s daughter

and our sister in Christ.

God promises today to recognize her forever as his own special possession,

to grant her everlasting life through the death and resurrection of Jesus

and to pour upon her the gifts of His Holy Spirit.

In return she promises (through her godparents) several things.

We all will shortly promise those things right along with her.

They are familiar promises.

We have said them over and over again—

at every baptism service.

But they are meaningless without one key ingredient,

they remain just words, hollow words, unless they are activated by one thing.

I don’t know if you remember the movie “City Slickers,” with Billy Crystal.

In the movie he and some friends go to a dude ranch

and end up getting far more than they bargained for.

They meet the old trail hand, Curly, played by Jack Palance.

They are impressed by him and ask him:

“Curly, what is the meaning of life?”

Curly holds up one finger.

You’ve got to know what your one thing is—

the one thing that gives your life meaning.

We get a clue about that one thing in our psalm today.

“One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek;

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life….

You speak in my heart and say, ‘Seek my face.’

Your face, Lord, will I seek.”

That, in a nutshell, is passionate spirituality,

a burning desire to see the face of God,

to know God,

to put God at the center of our lives.

That is the passionate spirituality that led Peter and Andrew, James and John

to leave their father and their fishing boats

and just drop everything and follow Jesus.

That is the passionate spirituality that takes those baptismal words

we have said so often

and turns them into a baptized life,

a life we claim today for Isabella Lisciandro

and for ourselves as well.

As you must know by now

(unless you have been avoiding church and not reading the VOICE)

Passionate Spirituality is the theme of our year

and I want to talk about it today in this annual address.

First, I would like to recognize the members of the Natural Church Development team.

This is the group that is providing overall direction for our parish plan this year.

Please stand up: Cathy Basile, Barbara Bumsted, Karen Collins,

Donna Phillippi and Catherine Way.

There are also two groups charged with the specifics of planning our program for Passionate Spirituality:

Understanding Spirituality and Openness to God

I would like the members of those two groups to stand at this time.

I won’t name them because I might well forget someone,

but you know who you are.

These faithful parishioners have been working hard

these past few months on your behalf.

And I’d like to give you a quick overview.

The purpose of our efforts is to help each one of you

find the best way to connect in a deeper, more personal

and more meaningful way with the living God.

Our goal is that by the end of Lent every parishioner

will have found and committed to one spiritual practice

that makes a real difference in your walk with God.

The result of this work will be a whole church full of committed disciples

alive with faith and actively living out that faith with joy and energy

in their families, the community and the church.

This is uncharted territory for most of us,

so we have created a simple easy to use road map

to guide us along the way.

Last Fall we asked several parishioners to become “experts”

in various forms of prayer and meditation.

Their work resulted in a forum series called “Lord, teach us to pray.”

That series has been edited into a booklet and is available for you today.

Along with the booklet you can also take audio CD’s of the presentations.

Listen to the CD’s in the car, at home, during your lunch break.

Both the booklet and the audio presentations are available online:

Booklet

Podcast

Here’s what I want you to do.

I want you to take these next several weeks

and try out different forms of prayer.

Use the five forms offered in our prayer booklet,

or find something else that works for you.

But do something.

Becoming a passionate Christian does not happen overnight.

For most of us it is a process of slow gradual conversion.

It happens when we make a choice every day to put God first.

It happens day by day by day

as we build into our lives the practice and habit and discipline of prayer.

But first and foremost we have to want it,

we have to want to see the face of God.

I know that this is not easy—

believe me, I have struggled my whole adult life

to find and maintain a discipline of prayer.

And I know the struggles that many of you face:

Divorce and other family conflicts;

Too little work or too much work;

Financial stresses and crises;

Struggles with alcohol and chemical dependency;

The challenges of caring for children, parents or both;

Physical and emotional illness.

What I want to say to you today is that while all of these problems are real,

while all of these are significant obstacles to putting God first,

not one of them is a good enough excuse.

You see, this is not a zero sum game.

It is not, “either God or the rest of my life.”

Instead it is the acknowledgment that without God

we cannot get through any of these things.

I had a priest friend who told me once:

“Every morning I pray for an hour.

When I get too busy, I pray for two hours.”

I thought he was joking, but he was deadly serious.

I could not find time then to pray even five minutes on a regular basis,

and my frantic life led me closer and closer to burning out.

In order to help with some of these obstacles

we are also making a special focus in Lent

on healing and reconciliation.

We believe that these sacraments are the means by which

God gives us grace to get beyond these obstacles

and truly receive his grace and power.

Every Sunday we will offer the sacrament of healing

not hidden away in the chapel

but right here in the church over on the right side.

There will be a special retreat on reconciliation (confession)

and the clergy will be available all during Lent

to hear private confessions.

Finally there will be a special retreat right here at church on March 1

with Sr. Caroline from the Benedictine Sisters of Erie.

She is an accomplished retreat leader and I urge all of you

to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

I had a sudden realization at our retreat last week at Camp Onyahsa.

I had been grumbling a bit about going

because I was tired and the idea of a retreat sounded too much like work.

But shortly after I arrived on Friday night

we had some quiet time and as I relaxed it hit me:

“This isn’t work; it’s a gift.”

So may this year of Passionate Spirituality

be for all of you not one more thing, not more work,

but instead God’s gift to you—

a gift of Himself—

to renew you and fill you with his Spirit of power and grace.