A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on the occasion of the First Anniversary of the founding of the church, and based on Luke 17:5-10
This past week, as I read the words of Jesus, “If you had faith like a mustard seed…” it immediately occurred to me that for the past year we have actually been living out the words of Scripture!
Last year at this time we were coming together for the first time as a worshipping body. We were coming out of prolonged pain with the Episcopal Church and we had finally decided we had had enough. We were taking the plunge – stepping out in faith, Stepping up to the challenge and Stepping into the promises of God. We had nothing, or next to nothing. Mark and I hadn’t even had a chance to buy white albs for ourselves, so we used our black Benedictine robes.
It was a case of ready, fire, aim! And true to that slogan, we have been systematically developing into a fully-functioning body that has its own flavor and reason for being – one that goes beyond just being an angry split from TEC into one that expresses God’s will and plan for us and the communities in which we reside.
Think back and ask yourself: If All Saints Anglican Church had not come into being, would we have had a baptism in this room eight or nine months ago? Would there have been four teens baptized on Dutch Ridge last week? Would Fr. Mark be standing before you today as a priest? Would there be a Hope House today? Only God knows the answer to these questions, but the likely answer is NO!
As we have stepped out in faith, God has richly blessed us – exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. The disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. I’d like to now reflect on how the Lord actually does this in our lives.
Sparking a Vision
It seems to me that God typically sparks us with a vision, inspiring us to act. This vision can be positive or negative. To show the contrast, we at All Saints have come out of churches that we thought were following a wrong path. We carried a vision for a body of believers that would not have to be shackled to heretical teaching and so we were willing to launch out and start a new church.
Mike Harris has lived up on Dutch Ridge for about 7-8 years. As he interacted with his neighbors, he began to catch a vision for starting a church to minister to those who were not in church or had been wounded in church situations previously. This I would say was an essentially positive vision of something that wasn’t there, but could be there God willing.
Obstacles
Then, once we have the vision, we have to wait and deal with obstacles. And the purpose of these obstacles seems to be to drive us to prayer. We wait and we suffer, and in the process we learn to be patient, to persevere and to pray.
Resistance
God will often resist us in our efforts so that we will remember who is God and who is not. Often times, we are too eager to trust our own strength and intelligence. The Scripture says God resists the proud but lifts up the humble” If we get ‘too big for our britches’, he will allow us to fail in order to drive us back to prayer and to remember that it is not by strength nor by might, but by my power says the Lord. When God is resisting us, no amount of prayer will remove the obstacle – we’re praying against the wrong person! Instead we need to back off and remember to trust him, to stop our own thrashing and to simply sit still until he is ready to Act.
Dramatic Action
After all that waiting and suffering, when He has us where he wants us, then God will frequently act in a sudden, dramatic fashion. A church suddenly comes into being one Sunday in October after planning on waiting until January. One Baptism turns into Four. A $38,000 house sells for $10,000. These are all examples of how God has made us wait and pray, and then suddenly advocated remarkably on our behalf. It is typical of Kingdom living and working. Just like Moses leading the people of Israel through the Red Sea – there is no doubt Who did that work. And that is important, because there is always the tendency to forget and to slip into the illusion that our works alone made things happen.
Sleep Metaphor
Perhaps this all can be represented by using the metaphor of sleep. After the hectic activity of our day, we retire and fall into the vulnerable mini-death of sleep. In it our strength is renewed, just as Isaiah says, “In returning[1] and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” IS. 30:15. We are meant to rest in God as our source and provision, trusting Him for the increase.
The Challenge: Exercise Faith
So our challenge is to Rest in God, but exercise our Faith at the same time. We can say that Faith is a faculty, the development of which enables Human Beings to participate in the Divine Nature (II Pet. 1:4).
As Fallen people, we must Work by the sweat of our brow to sustain ourselves. But we must realize that we cannot overcome the thorns of the fallen earth by ourselves. In order to prosper, we must submit ourselves to God, after the fashion of Proverbs 3:5,6:
5Trust in the Lord with all your heart,and do not lean on your own understanding.6 In all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make straight your paths.
Anglican Temperament
It is especially important for us as Anglicans to do this. Our temperament as a people is to do things deliberately and orderly, according to good reason and best practices. But in the midst of all that managerial competence, we must make room for the leading of the Holy Spirit. As an example from History: If the Anglican Church had found a way to make room for the ministry of John and Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield, all Methodists would be Anglicans today! Failure to make room for what God is doing results in being left behind in the dust.
Warning;
As we go into our First Annual Business Meeting, we must remember that the Church is not a Business; it is a family. Nevertheless, every family must do business in order to survive and thrive.
The Business affairs of the Church support and enable the mission of the church, not vice versa.
The church should not measure its success by how much money it has at its disposal (TEC has lots). Nevertheless, He who is faithful in little is faithful also in Much (Mt. 25:21).
The Church should not measure its value of success by its size, nevertheless, a healthy church grows.
We need to discern what God is doing and then Join Him in that.
How to Increase your Faith
*Take God at His Word. He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Eph. 3:20.
*Speak to the Mulberry Bush: (Tell Story of Bruce Taylor and healings) Speak to the condition about the Kingdom of God. Declare God’s purposes to the fallen, and bring the Will of God to bear on earth as it is in Heaven.
*Attempt Something Great for God, something you cannot do alone, and something that takes more than one lifetime to accomplish.
Friends, I think we, as All Saints Anglican Church are living this out. Cindy and I are delighted to be a part of this faithful, orthodox body of Anglican Believers. There were days when we never thought we would have this kind of church to worship in. But here we are! Although we are small, I believe that God will grow us over time, honoring our faithfulness.
Let us celebrate what God has done over this past year and expect that he will do things beyond our ability to imagine in the next year. AMEN.
