Tracy J. Sukraw
Bishop Alan M. Gates preaches during the service of Holy Eucharist at the annual diocesan Clergy Day, his final one before retirement.
Following is the text of the sermon preached by Bishop Alan M. Gates at the annual diocesan Clergy Day on Sept. 25, 2024, at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston.
The cartoon shows an elderly gentleman standing with his walker in front of his garage. The door is up and the garage is packed from floor to ceiling with stuff. Surveying his treasures, the gentleman says to a younger man standing next to him, “One day, son, all this will be yours.”
The image strikes a chord. It is real partly because I am right now, at home and office, divesting in advance of a move. This comes not too long after my mother’s death, when sorting through family mementos and treasures was a primary task. But here’s the thing: as the cartoon suggests, our kids do not want our stuff. I observe a real shift in the past generation. My parents loved the furnishings and mementos that were passed on to them by their parents. I, in turn, have always cherished certain treasures in my home – the oak bureau my mom and I refinished together when I was a teen; two mantle clocks from my grandparents; the brass coffee table my parents received as a wedding gift in Lebanon.
Our children’s generation is – mostly – not interested. They don’t want our antique furniture. They don’t want Tricia’s matrilineal bone china or her Hummels. Ethan might take my collection of 25,000 postcards – but only because he’s an archivist. The fact is, heirlooms and mementos do not have the appeal to our children that they had to us. This could be reassuring: nobody is quietly wishing to hurry me across the Jordan so they can have my grandmother’s secretary desk with the claw feet!
But in great measure this shift is a source of sadness. There’s grief in knowing that things which we have cherished are no longer wanted. No matter what our rational understanding says about changing tastes, if we’re honest there’s a certain disappointment and nagging sense of rejection. We like to hand down our treasures. “One day all this will be yours!”
In my better moments, however, I look at my grown children and those of my friends and I see there a source of deep gratitude. For if they do not want my stuff, they nonetheless manifest the inheritance of real treasure – which is the core values and life priorities that we have striven to pass on. My children and others in their generation are good people: kind, compassionate, responsible and loving people; people with a spiritual curiosity, a desire to make meaning and an informed commitment to justice, to things larger than themselves. What greater treasures could we possibly hope to pass along?
Some days I picture the Church looking a little like that cartoon. There we are, you and I, in our finest vestments, standing before a garage full of liturgical accoutrements; architectural appointments; hymn books, prayer books, parochial reports; and outdoor signs announcing yard sales, pet blessings and ashes-to-go. And to the spiritually curious younger folk looking on we say, “One day all this will be yours!”
I do not need to tell you that – when it comes to church – the world around us does not appear to want our stuff. Judging by the place of church in the wider culture and by metrics of many sorts – accelerated by the COVID pandemic – there is a lot in our ecclesiastical garage which is of no interest to many of our children and most of our neighbors. As I travel around to so many struggling parishes of the diocese, I hear an increasingly urgent grief that I can produce no secret formula for quick growth and “attracting the young people.” I know you hear the same. This grief – often expressed as anger – is much akin to that sorrow I have acknowledged feeling when our children do not want the family treasures. It’s hard to contemplate losing things so precious to us.
But if we are “losing” many of the particular structures, shapes and cultural attributes of the Church – which we are – still we know that this has happened over and over again for the past 2,000 years. Our parish churches really are not structured or organized like a house church of the second century; or a basilica of the fourth century; or the rigidly hierarchical institution of the Middle Ages; or the patron-driven creativity of the Renaissance; or the Great Awakening revivals of the 19th century; or any other static, magical moment of church history. Will we be different? Undoubtedly. Will we be smaller? So it seems. Will the new thing emerge in our lifetime? I don’t know. But as worshipers of a God who created the turtle and the lichen, as followers of a Savior who enjoined us to be salt and yeast and leaven, I expect that speed and size are not actually Gospel metrics.
It is hard, and the grief is real. There are moments when I feel that the thing to which I have given my life will be gone in a very short time. But then I think of my children who do not want my antique furniture but yet are wise and sacrificially compassionate people – and then I believe: the truest treasures entrusted to the Church will endure, if those are the treasures we try hardest to pass on.
The Church will be fine, if we remember what we are really truly about. The Church will be fine, if we recall what Bishop Barbara [Harris] always said – that it’s not about being successful, it’s about being faithful. The Church will be fine because God our Creator is immortal; and Christ’s resurrection is enacted again and again; and the transformational capacity of the Holy Spirit has never ceased, does not cease, will never cease. You know it, I know it; it’s what we sing, it’s what we proclaim, it’s why we’re here.
From today’s Gospel lesson [Matthew 13:47-52]:
“[Jesus said,] Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
And from our former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold:
[The Church] is never static because it is the risen and living body of Christ. … The fundamental dynamic of dying and rising, losing and finding is integral to its life. … We as living stones are being built up into a spiritual house not of our own design but according to God’s boundless imagination. So let us … live the life that is ours in Christ with courage, hope and joy. Let us live in expectation that God will accomplish great things through us, not least of which is the healing of our world. [i]
This past week Tricia and I spent a few days on the coast of Maine with some of our oldest friends. At one point I was attempting to look at a distant shore through their binoculars, which were notably different than my own set. No matter how I adjusted the span and focus, I was unable to make out much of anything. Finally I realized – to my embarrassment – that I was looking through the lenses backwards!
As you and I struggle to envision and proclaim a transformed church and a resurrected world, we must be sure we are looking through the right lens. If, with so many around us – including often our most dedicated and skilled lay partners in leadership whose greatest desire is to bring their professional experience to share with the Church, earnestly – but if they and we are looking at the Church only through the oculus and filters of the world, rather than looking at the world through the lens of God’s capacity for transformation – well then, we’ve got the wrong lens. And we are likely to evaluate the Church with despair, and to share the world’s fear and desperation, rather than offering resurrection hope. Get the binoculars right way round, my friends. It makes a world of difference!
Beloved colleagues: I hope you know how honored I have been to serve alongside you as bishop these past 10 years. I hope you know how much I have cherished our common life and work together. I hope you know how grateful I am for the sacrifices you made during COVID; for all that I learned from the creativity and devotion you show. I hope you know how grateful I will always be for the esteem and affection you have shown me, even in those times when we have all been flying blindly together. I hope you know how grateful I am for the patience and forgiveness you have shown for my own failures, known and unknown, things done and left undone.
I hope you know that when I look at you I see God, present and moving. As when I contemplate my children who might not want all my treasures, but nonetheless give me hope – I see among you kind, compassionate, responsible and loving people; people with a spiritual curiosity, a desire to make meaning, faithful disciples of Christ with a commitment to Gospel justice. I hope you know you give me hope. I hope you know I love you.
Last month I told the planning team to use the Propers for today’s commemoration of St. Sergius of Radonezh. Now, in my nostalgic look-back, I have proceeded to ignore Sergius altogether. Well, so, here finally is just one bit of his hagiography. While Sergius was yet in his mother’s womb, he was heard to cry out three times in church during the Mass. As an infant, Sergius refused to nurse at his mother’s breast on days when she had eaten meat. Only when she kept the fast did he return to suckle. Now, if the expectations of your vocation or your parishioners sometimes make it seem that this level of piety and devotion is expected of you, let me tell you how in the end Sergius is remembered. Says Lesser Feasts and Fasts, “Sergius was gentle in nature, mystical in temperament, and eager to ensure that his monks should serve the needs of their neighbors.”
Dear friends: Be gentle in nature, mystical in temperament and eager to equip your people to serve the needs of their neighbors.
Hand down the treasures of your faith, like the master of the household who distinguishes, among what is old and what is new, that which is the true gold.
Hold your binoculars right way round, striving not so much to see the Church through the lens of the world, as to see the world through the resurrection lens of Christ.
In Jesus’ Name, amen.
[i] The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold III, "And what is 'church'? Looking beyond institutional forms," June 19, 2002, The Episcopal Church website, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/pbfrankgriswold/and-what-is-church-looking-beyond-institutional-forms/