Final Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Paul Kolbet, August 25th, 2024

You may have noticed that we have had an incredibly successful last couple of years here at St. Paul’s. I arrived with a mandate to do three things: 1) oversee the process leading to St. Paul’s next rector; 2) help rebuild all in-person parish systems after the pandemic; and 3) reorganize staff and volunteers in light of St. Paul’s then new commitment to revitalizing its ministry to children and young adults. We created a timeline and accomplished all three goals–on time and on budget. We also happened to have accomplished a whole lot more along the way, but to hear about some of that, please come to coffee hour after church where we’ll celebrate those things and I’ll say my thank yous.

Why has there been so much success here when we all hear reports of other churches facing similar challenges and not experiencing what we have? The point of this last sermon of mine with you is to ensure that you know why St. Paul’s is so alive right now so that you can remind others and protect it going forward. The place to start is that everything we did, we did together. That’s not something people experience much nowadays, but here, all of you, all of us, pulled together to accomplish everything we accomplished. Yes, there are lots of differences here among us, but those differences never divided us. In fact, they made us better and stronger. 

I believe that was possible because you had been working on it for several years before I arrived. My predecessor, Jeff, in his last sermon, said that he had only preached one sermon here, the same sermon in multiple ways, with the point that you should love one another. What was great about that, and why that continues to be such an important legacy, is that that love is the beginning point for everything good that happens in church. As our St. Paul says, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Our time together has only made St. Paul’s even more St. Paul’s, growing what was already alive here. The style of church St. Paul’s is is described in the Episcopal tradition as “Broad Church.” It is a way of doing church that became quite popular in Massachusetts in the early 20th century. It happened when church leaders decided to bring together two Christian traditions that often exist separately in other places: the classic Protestant tradition focusing on conversion, amendment of life, and forgiveness on the one hand, and on the other hand, the Catholic emphasis on the real presence of Christ in the material sacraments and in life. Mixing these two together means that there is a diversity within worship that does not always hold together tightly and if you look for it you can hear the back and forth between different Christian theologies.

It’s most obvious in the music of our music director, Andy Clarkson, where within the same service you’ll not only hear various musical styles, but also find yourself singing songs from different sides of the Christian tradition such as today’s Protestant, “Amazing Grace, I once was lost but now I am found,” preceded by a song at the Eucharist with the Catholic exhortation about the consecrated bread, “Taste and See the grace eternal.” Critics could fault us for not deciding between the two, but it our experience that it is this practice that creates space in our hearts and room in our church for people coming from a wide variety of traditions or none at all, its breadth. We’ve worked together on adding to that breadth and protecting it, placing side-by-side, the oldest traditional language and the newest, the Catholic and the Protestant. And, even with all that, this is church can still play.

You might ask, why does this breadth need protecting, that is, who are we protecting it from? St. Paul addresses this in today’s reading. He writes, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Paul insists that we do have enemies and that life is indeed a struggle, an ongoing fight. But the real enemies are not other people. He rejects the common assumption that if only we could eliminate all the bad guys, then all of our problems would be fixed as if our enemies were flesh and blood. The real enemies don’t share our own flesh and blood. Paul called many of the first Christians to unite and band together as people “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” His early Christians were to discover that what they opposed in the people they considered enemies was also something that was in them and that thing and not the person was the real problem. In this way, work on oneself, and the work of love in the church, was of a piece with everything that matters in the world.

So how do you attack a broad church? How would “the cosmic powers of this present darkness” sink St. Paul’s? I don’t mind saying it out loud because I know they already know how. I learned it from them and you see it happening to all sorts of churches in decline. What you do, is you make the broad church narrow. It’s easy to do once you see it. The enemy convinces us of our own righteousness and calls us to reform, clean up, or purify the church, to eliminate the confusion of the old and the new, the Protestant and the Catholic. At it most devastating effective the broad church renounces the Protestant grace of a converted life and Catholic sacramental presence and is left with nothing but its own prophetic righteousness, a righteousness that is so narrow that it empties the church.  

So St. Paul’s “the cosmic powers of this present darkness” will seek to seduce you with tough choices, either/ors, and make you believe that what courage looks like is choosing one and not the other. Stay broad St. Paul’s. You know from your own experience that love is not either/or. It is both/and. You were told that you either make progress and grow with a settled rector or you have an interim where you tread water and devote all your resources to finding a rector. But we did both at the same time. It was a false choice. We are told that you either focus inwardly on your own parish or on mission outside the parish, but we continue to do both at the same time. We are told that you can’t make capital improvements to buildings and fully fund the operating budget. We’ve done both at the same time. We are told that you can’t have children everywhere and still have your worship be solemn and worthy, but we do both all the time here. 

Stay broad St. Paul’s, protect the both/and, keep rejecting the hard either/or choices, that masquerade as courage or righteousness, but in fact are nothing more than the first sign of a lack of faith. Be the church that says, “Whatever you are looking for in a church, you can find it here.” Is it sacred music? We have that. Is it robust children’s programs? We have those. Is it outreach to the world? We have that. Is it the Protestant call to hearing the Word that changes everything? We have that. Is it the Catholic sacramental presence so thick that you can taste it? We have that too. They all go together here and that is why there is room here for all of us both now and in the future.

St. Paul writes what he writes about “the cosmic powers that oppose us” because he thinks it is the teaching of Jesus. Jesus wasn’t against this person or that person. He was no enemy of the Romans (even though people wanted him to be). What he was against were those larger impersonal forces that damage and harm people and cause them to damage and harm other people. In this way, Jesus found common ground and purpose between people in opposing together what was bad for all of them. It was for this reason that when it comes to people he taught his followers, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). To find the common ground meant finding solid ground for yourself, through spiritual practices attending to one’s own life and its inevitable challenges and struggles.

St. Paul, therefore, proposes weapons for the mind and spirit to be our companions in this life. They would be more effective in accomplishing things than ones directed at flesh and blood since flesh and blood isn’t the real source of our deepest problems. St Paul exhorts us saying, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.”

There is very frequently more than one possible good outcome, but all good outcomes depend upon us first of all being people who strap on the belt of truth, put on the breastplate of God’s righteousness (not our own), wear shoes to proclaim peace wherever we need to go, with faith as our shield, salvation as our helmet, and the Spirit itself as our sword. If that is in place, any outcome is going to be worthy, humanizing, and full of light. And no outcome will be yet one more victory for the “cosmic powers of this present darkness.” As St. Paul explains elsewhere, “for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly or carnal, but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. (2 Corinthians 10:4).

This work of the spirit, the very work you will continue to do here, week in and week out is in the words of Jesus in today’s gospel, the work of “spirit and life.” If you ever feel powerless and are losing hope before the cosmic forces of darkness, flee from any narrow righteousness of your own, and instead put on  “the belt of truth, the breastplate of [God’s] righteousness, and the sword of the spirit,” remember that you win by addition, and keep choosing both/and and keep the broad church broad.

Almighty God, before whom even the “cosmic powers of this present darkness” will kneel and serve, protect the very love you have given St. Paul’s, continue to broaden it and use it to inspire in us more than what we believe is possible, and lead us into that future that is yours and yours alone, where, with the Holy Spirit, you lives and reign through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.