St. Margaret's Belfast
Celebration of New Ministry
with the Reverend Martha Kirkpatrick
November 8, 2009
(Romans 12:1-18, Psalm 146, John 15:9-16)
Reverend Susan Murphy
What a blessing for me to come home to St. Margaret's and be with you as you welcome into your ever widening and embracing circle your new Rector Martha. What a wonderful and blessed day this is when we gather to celebrate a new chapter in the life of St. Margaret's, a Christian Community having a long and distinguished history of faithfulness to God and its mission to "restore all people in unity with God and each other in Christ."
Just a little over 15 years ago this past October I walked into St. Margaret's having been invited by Nancy Schroeder. To be honest, Nancy had been inviting me for over three years but I was a very slow learner at the time.
What did I find and experience here? A community with open arms, one committed to mission, accepting of new ideas and willing to listen to my heart and help me discern God's dream for me. Then you supported me with prayers, treasure and most importantly your love that formed and continues to form and inform my priesthood. Martha you have been called as Rector and it will be here that your priesthood will also be formed and informed by the "priesthood of all the believers" who worship and do ministry in this place.
St. Margaret's grew from gathering in homes to worship, to a summer chapel, then a recognized parish in the diocese and has become a beacon of hope for not only those in the Belfast area but in Haiti and other parts of the world as well. It has always, and sometimes with growing pains, adapted to the changes that were necessary in order to be committed and faithful to the Good News of Jesus Christ. Your parish takes education for all ages seriously and is open to divergent thought and is held together within your common life by a deep understanding of who you are and whose you are. So we gather with all of you this day to say thank you for what has been and pray for an openness to the Holy Spirit to lead you on to the next phase of your journey.
It is good for us to look to the scriptures chosen for today to assist and guide the process of meeting the mission challenges you have set of increased outreach near and far, additional support for children and families and offering radical hospitality.
What did Paul's letter to the Romans have to say about your mission focus? Paul illustrates a practical way of addressing community and mission using the metaphor of the body. The community is called to hear, respond and live out of the gospel message. Through our human bodies with its many parts and all of our emotions, our senses and our connection to others we are prompted into action. The offering of ourselves is not as a sacrifice upon the altar but as a gifting of ourselves, body, heart and soul. Created in love by God for good we worship our Creator and being Thanksgiving people we reach out to others offering hope.
Eugene Peterson who uses contemporary language in his book called The Message ( pages 331-332) translates Paul's letter in this way and I quote., "Place your life before God. God brings the best out of you. ... Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing the goodness to God. No God brings it all to you. ....
We are like the various parts of the human body. Each part gets its meanings from the body as a whole, not the other way around. ... Since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't." Peterson goes on,
" If you preach, just preach God's message, nothing else;
if you help, just help, don't take over;
if you teach, stick to your teaching;
if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy;
if you're put in charge, don't manipulate;
if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond;
if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face." end quote
Good counsel indeed and in John's gospel Jesus exhorts his followers to love one another. A key ingredient for doing ministry together. These words followed Jesus' story of the vine and the branches and illustrate how this grace filled connection to him enables us to be the fruit of faithful ministry. As we renew our Baptismal Covenant on this special day we are reminded, that all us, lay and ordained are to work together in Christ's name for the common good.
Martha you have been grafted into this community now. You bring multiple gifts: an appreciation and love for the law and how it can be a vehicle for justice and peace, your passion for the environment with an ability to connect the web of life to our being responsible for that web and the planet we call home. You also bring the heart of a teacher who has the gift of connecting the whole earth with the Holy enabling us to become teachers and earth keepers ourselves. You know how to listen with your eyes, your ears and your heart giving voice to others who have no voice. Your call to priesthood was initiated by others who saw in you gifts foundational for ordained ministry and thankfully over time you listened and now here you are today. You join a community made up of people also blessed with many gifts and together, as the Body of Christ, God's name is being made known and God's people are being ministered to.
Joy abounds this day in this Holy Place. On a day such as this I wanted to come up with a theme for a gift for Martha recognizing her ministry among you. Researching St. Margaret of Antioch, patron of this parish, I found a connection between her and St. George namesake of the parish I serve in Sanford. Both of them by common lore had encounters with dragons. The dragons lost and evil was overcome but finding an actual theme for Margaret of Antioch patron saint of mothers in labor was a challenge. Truman Fudge, your beloved former Rector, reminded me that St. Margaret of Scotland was also considered part of St. Margaret's story so I've gone with a Scottish theme for this gift.
But first, when Bishop Chilton was a new Bishop, a Bishop with more experience told her: be sure to say your prayers, love your people and have fun. So Martha I am giving you this teddy bear dressed appropriately in Scottish garb, to sit with you in times of personal prayer, as a reminder to love your people as I know you always will and to dance and have fun in your ministry together.
To all of you gathered this day I will continue to pray for you and your ministry together and in the words of today's psalmist
May you praise the Lord as long as you live;
May you sing praises to our God all your life long. Amen
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