Sunday, August 12, 2007

hope, fear, and holy vigilance

This morning I had a hard time thinking up a sermon. The text seemed relatively straightforward--hope, fear, and holy vigilance. But it was hard to think of what to say without slipping into dangerous territory. As an Associate Priest you always have to worry about saying anything that can be perceived as being critical of the Rector, even when it isn't. It's a fine line to be the designated agent of change in the parish--hired specifically to grow the place--and yet not upsetting the status quo too much. Therefore it's easy to avoid Scylla on the one hand and Charybdis on the other by climbing the mast toward heaven. It would be interesting to do a study of the correlation between clergy stress and the level of spiritual abstraction in their preaching. Anyway, this morning I'm taking the safe route and talking about the way in which we are called to cultivate faith as a preparation for the unseen yet coming kingdom. Perfectly true Gospel, but not quite as hard-smacking as I would wish for my third-to-last sermon. On the spectrum between Prophetic and Pastoral, one often defaults to "Pastoral," I'm afraid. Probably that means I'm stressed out too much at the moment. But on the other hand, people really liked my sermon and thought is spoke to them. So one never really knows about these things! "The ways of the force are mysterious, young Skywalker."

Anyway, services went well. 95% of my singing was just about perfect. It was one of those morning when everything seemed to go just about right. A nice feeling to have as I lead worship in the waning days of tenure here.

True Torontonians will recognize this as a P-Meal Bacon
Sandwich from the St. Laurence Street Market


-t

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