Yesterday afternoon, over 100 people gathered at St. Paul’s Church in Salinas to meet the five nominees for our third bishop and to hear the nominees respond to questions about their ministries, positions and experience. Yesterday’s was the fourth session of the presentation tour. The nominees have spent most of the week traveling through our diocese, beginning in San Luis Obispo and Arroyo Grande, and working their way north through Monterey, Salinas and South San Jose. This afternoon, the final meeting will be held at St. Andrew’s in Saratoga, beginning at 1pm, and you are all invited to attend.
Each of these presentation tour meetings has the same structure. We gather in a central area for an opening prayer and an overview of the process for the sessions. A presentation team member introduces the nominees one-by-one, who then introduce their family members and answer a question that is created especially for each gathering. Following the introductions and questions, everyone scatters to the various rooms where they meet the nominees for the round-robin question and answer sessions.
Between the overview and the introductions, an important thing happens. everyone in the audience is asked to turn to the person next to him or her and answer the question: “What do you love about this diocese?” Yesterday, the person next to me was the Reverenda Ruth Erazo, priest in the congregation of San Pablo in Salinas. Ruth said, “I don’t speak English.” I said to Ruth, “Y yo no hablo espanol, pero no importa. Digame, por favor.” I don’t speak Spanish either, but it’s not important. Please tell me. She nodded and spoke about loving the feeling of the Spirit that has come to fill our hearts. I responded in my miserable Spanish and with hand gestures that I love the courage that the Spirit has brought to us. We were here—and now we are here. Now we are strong. Now we have hope. Tenemos esperanza.
The air was electric with the conversations going on all around us. The energy grew as the sound level increased, and we all carried that feeling of excitement with us as we went to our rooms to begin the sessions. The people attending were attentive, engaged with each of the nominees as they rotated through the rooms and in high spirits as we moved through the afternoon. The sessions last almost four hours. Each nominee spends 35 minutes with each group of people, responding to the questions that have been gathered in the last few weeks and as people have arrived at the gathering. My job was to select the questions that each moderator would ask the nominee, with the aim of eliciting as much information as possible in the allotted time. I sat behind the moderator and nominee, so I was able to watch the rest of the people in the room. As I listened to the nominees’ answers and watched the faces of the people in the room, I found myself remembering one of our first diocesan gatherings after Bishop Shimpfky’s resignation. At the end of that day, I found myself wondering if we would ever have the strength, courage and passion to live into our call to be God’s people and to do God’s work in this diocese. As I sat in that room yesterday, I gave thanks for the people we are becoming and for the nominees who have been called to discern our future with us.
At the end of the day, after I got in the car to drive home, I reread the lections for today. When I’m going to be preaching, I tend to keep a copy of the week’s lections tucked in my pocket. When I read the psalm, one verse stopped me. As I read that verse, I could hear it being sung and realized that it was connected with music in my memory. You brought me up, O LORD, from the dead. I sang it to myself several times, trying to identify the context for that memory, and finally—finally—it came to me. This is one of the antiphons we sing during the Great Vigil of Easter as we tell the story of our history as God’s people and hear the record of God’s saving deeds. The psalm that goes with the antiphon is also the one appointed for today. During the Great Vigil, the psalm follows the prophet Ezekiel’s story of the dry bones being reconnected and covered with new flesh and given new breath by God’s Spirit as a sign of new life for the people of Israel.
God has indeed brought us up from the dead. Three and four years ago, if I spoke with clergy from another diocese and actually identified myself as being from El Camino Real, I could count on hearing an exclamation of sympathy. People uniformly responded: “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Now people all over the country are watching us with anticipation—watching to see what exciting things are going to happen next. When the Search Committee began accepting applications for bishop last fall, we were amazed at the response. Fifty-eight extraordinary people completed applications. These days, it’s rare for an episcopal search to gather more than 20 applicants, but the work we have all done together in these last three years is bearing fruit—the fruit of the Spirit. God’s Spirit has blessed us with new life, and that life is apparent in all that we are doing.
We are blessed with new life, but new life brings its own complications. You may have noticed how people responded to new life in today’s Gospel portion. Jesus says to the young man who has died, “I say to you, rise!” and the man does exactly that. He sits up on his bier and begins to speak. And what happens next? The people watching are seized with fear. They ultimately glorify God, but the fear comes first. When things start changing, the first thing that happens is fear. The young man’s family and friends understood the situation they had been in: someone dear to them had died and they were mourning. When the young man sat up and began to speak, the world changed, and the people didn’t know what to expect. So they were afraid.
When our world changes, we also fear. It doesn’t matter whether we see
the change as good or bad. Change brings unpredictability, and being unable
to predict makes us fearful. Our diocesan world changed three years ago when
our bishop left, and we experienced fear and uncertainty about our future.
It took time for us to move through our fear, time to learn to rely on each
other, time to trust each other, time to learn how to share with each other,
time to dream of new ways to live into our ministry with each other and with
the communities outside our doors, time to hear God’s voice calling to
us. Three years later, with God’s help, the love of Christ and the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, we’re in a pretty good place.
We’re in a pretty good place, but there’s a catch. Resurrection isn’t a one-shot deal. We’ve all seen that in our own lives. Every time we get to a place of comfort, God calls us into new life—into new challenges—into new growth. And when that call comes— in whatever way it comes—fear comes with it.
God is calling us—our diocese—to new life. In six days, this very next Saturday—blessed June 16!—the Holy Spirit will lead us to elect our next bishop, and we will enter another time of transition. We will be preparing for life with our new bishop, and, much as we long for that new life, the prospect of change will bring fear to us. We will be tempted to all manner of unproductive activities as we try to control the change that surrounds us. Remembering that fear is a byproduct of change will help us move more easily through the transition that’s coming. Remembering God’s presence through all our history together will give us strength, comfort and reassurance to keep moving forward to build our ministry with our new bishop.
God has not brought us this far to leave us. The God who brought us into being, who sustained us during the flood, who freed us from slavery in Egypt, who made dry bones walk again and turned our hearts of stone to hearts of flesh is still with us. The God who speaks love and justice through the prophets and gives us Jesus Christ has not forgotten us. The God who brings us up from the grave will not leave us standing by ourselves.
Thanks be to God.