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The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10), July 10, 2005
Isaiah 55:1-5, 10-13, Romans 8:9-17, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT

The vision of the prophet found in this latter part of Isaiah seem particularly beautiful and ironic having just come from my sons wedding reception: “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Ah, were that it were so.

In the Gospel reading, however, we have one of the most familiar of parables recorded by Matthew, that of the sower. Jesus I feel shows great insight and wisdom in explaining why not everyone who hears the good news of his message is able to take it in and make it their own. He shows considerable knowledge of the way humans think and respond. He more than any one else understands that not everyone will be able to live into the promise of new life that he offers them. There is a certain poignancy in his honest reflection on human nature.

I think many of us have seen folks come into the church and then leave for whatever reason. Perhaps you have been one of them, that at one point in your life you were extremely involved in a faith community and then drifted away, only to return at another time, perhaps in another place. I have always found conversion stories fascinating and love to hear what brought people to the Episcopal Church and what kept them here, or caused them to wonder off.

Some time ago I read a story of one such person and what helped to bring him into the Episcopal Church. As I understand it, he has since found another spiritual home, as spiritual seekers tend to do, not staying forever in one place. But I found his insights to be moving.

So I turn to the trusted friend of many of us, Garrison Keillor as he shares about one of his first experiences in the Episcopal Church, after giving some background to his early upbringing in the Plymouth Brethren which broke with Anglicanism in 1831.

“A boy who grew up in the Brethren is an easy mark for the Episcopalians: they march into the dim cathedral chanting ancient things in their beady gowns and blowing smoke at him and the next thing you know he is reading prayers out of a book.

“I don't have the manual dexterity to be a true Episcopalian, who must juggle the prayer book, hymnal, and the order of service, and sometimes a special [copied] Kyrie or Sanctus; the music sounds thin and sharp to someone brought up on the Wesleys; the bowing and kneeling are odd in the Brethren we just clomped in and sat down, and there was no incense in the air, just cologne; and no statuary (although some of our members were less lively then others); and then if, on top of that, the sermon is about revolutionizing our awareness of homeless gay handicapped Nicaraguans, then Episcopal church is more exotic to me than anything in Scandinavia.

“Back in Minnesota, where words like ‘tuna hotdish,’ or ‘chicken,’ or ‘Lutheran’ always got a laugh and a great joke might be one about Lutherans eating a tuna hotdish and feeding the rest to their chickens, ‘Episcopalian’ was also mighty funny, especially if a Lutheran became one. To me and to my little radio congregation, a Lake Wobegonian moving to Minneapolis and turning Episcopalian was a case of social climbing straight up the hill, no doubt about it. Our clear picture of Episcopalians was of wealthy people, Yale graduates, worshipping God in extremely good taste. Episcopalian was the church in wingtips, the church of the Scotch and soda. So, when I moved to New York and walked into Holy Apostles, I was surprised to see no suits. Nobody was well dressed. A congregation of a hundred souls on lower Ninth Avenue, a church with no parking lot, which was in need of paint and the sanctuary ceiling showed water damage, but which managed (I learned the next week) to support and operate a soup kitchen that fed a thousand New Yorkers every day, more than a million to date. Black faces in the sanctuary, old people, exiles from the Midwest, the lame and the halt, divorced ladies, gay couples: a real good anthology of the faith. I felt glad to be there. When we stood for prayers, bringing slowly to mind the goodness and the poverty of our lives, the lives of others, the life to come, it brought tears to your eyes, the simple way the Episcopalians pray.” (We Are Still Married)

Week by week we bring to mind the “goodness and the poverty of our lives, the lives of others and the life to come.” We do it as a community, we do it as individuals. I give thanks for the goodness of my life in this community, for the goodness of your influence in my life, and for the goodness I see in you. Thanks be to God we come together week by week for the breaking of the bread and the prayers.