INDUCTION OF THE REV. ANNE H. KELSEY

AS RECTOR OF TRINITY CHURCH, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

25 APRIL 2002

Sermon given by the Rev. Kenneth L. Schmidt

Rector, All Saints’ Parish, San Francisco, California

“GLORY IS MY WORK”: In a poem called “Work,” Mary Oliver makes two stunning revelations about herself in one simple line. She admits her age, for every reader to see: “I am a woman sixty years old.” And then she tells us what it has taken her sixty years to learn about her life-work: “and glory is my work.” To be honest, I bet Oliver knew glory is her work far earlier. Otherwise she could not have written the exquisite poetry that has created so many devoted readers over the years. But the important thing is not at what age she learned that glory is her work, but that she learned it.

What is true for her as a poet, holds true for you and me, whatever other kind of work we may do, at whatever age we do it: glory is our work. Every good Presbyterian here already knows that. You would have been schooled as I was on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, still used to this very day in spite of all its theological limitations because of the abiding relevance of the first question and answer: Q. What is our chief end? A. Our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy God for ever.

Every good Episcopalian should know that too, . . . even every bad Episcopalian. Especially if you are members of a Church named after the holy Trinity. Granted, the name of a church may not really say anything particular about that church’s worship and ministry. Still, I surely hope the people of any church named after the Trinity will see their very name as a proclamation of their identity. And if you, the people of Trinity Church, St. Louis, see your name as your identity, you will see glory as your work.

TRINITY: For the Trinity is about glory. Sorry to disappoint those who think the Trinity is some kind of intellectual puzzle put in our way by God to stump us lest we get too cocky in thinking we know more than we can about God and ourselves. If that were the case, we could do no worse than arrive at the humble, yet frustrating acknowledgement once made by the mystery writer Dorothy Sayers in a comment on the now little-known Athanasian Creed: “The Father incomprehensible; the Son incomprehensible; the Holy Spirit incomprehensible; the whole damn thing incomprehensible.”

The Trinity, however. is not a puzzle. The Trinity is glory: the glory that is God’s work. The Trinity shows us that God is not some solitary, self-contained, isolated, tight-lipped, recluse, like a cup filled to the brim, but not a drop more. No, the Trinity shows us that God is an exuberant, abundant, open-hearted, open-armed, diverse, embracing community, always like a cup overflowing. Overflowing so much, we should wonder why we stop counting at three. Why not count on . . . as suggested by the John Bowker, an Anglican historian of religion, in a sermon published for Trinity Sunday a number of years ago: “So obvious is our sense of God's plenitude or fullness” he writes, “ that the religions of India arrived at a threefold, Trinitarian, understanding of God long before Christians did. Of course, the Indian imagination went on to ask, Why not more than three? Why not three hundred? And they multiplied the imagination of God into not just three, but three thousand million manifestations of the divine nature. For the Hindu the idea of God is a kind of divine exuberance, a cosmic magician pulling innumerable strips of cloth from a hat for the sheer fun of it, truly divine play.”

Most Christians probably do not want to go that far. But surely our experience of the extravagant abundance of who God is should at least approach the exhilarating open spaciousness of the majestic Gateway Arch, which I was privileged to see yesterday for the first time.

ABUNDANCE: And if that is who God is, I assure you that is who you who belong to a congregation named after the Trinity, are called to be too: an exuberant, abundant, open-hearted, open-armed, diverse, embracing community, always like a cup overflowing. All the more so, if you accept as your resolve what you say about yourselves in your Mission Statement: “The Mission of Trinity is to be the Body of Christ to each other, for each other, and for all others. Our mission, grounded in love, and rooted in scholarship, scripture and Anglo-Catholic tradition, is nourished by diversity, inclusivity, and personal growth.”

And just a note about that identification as an Anglo-Catholic parish: I think Anglo-Catholics, most of all, are challenged to be an exuberant, abundant, open-hearted, open-armed, diverse, embracing community, like a cup overflowing. In our worship. In our ministry. Often we get a bad rap for our abundance in worship. Too seldom do we get a good rap for our abundance in ministry. Be that as it may, the tongue-in-cheek division of Episcopalians into “the low and the lazy, the broad and the hazy, and the high and the crazy” is quite a compliment to us “high and crazy” folk. For just as it will seem crazy to many for God to be so abundant, so it will seem equally crazy to many for us to strive to be just as abundant in God’s name.

CRAZY: So I pray this evening that the people of Trinity Church, St. Louis, will become crazier than ever as you continue the new work of glory you began with Anne, your new Rector, last year the First Sunday of Advent.

And that will happen, because of who Anne is. Quite frankly, the people of Trinity Church, St, Louis, Missouri, have the best of the best as your new rector. Granted I am very prejudiced in Anne’s favor. For reasons I will not go into, lest I unduly embarrass her. But I guarantee you, the prejudice is well founded, and is not based solely on the monthly lunch we shared together with a glass of wine . . or two . . . before going off to yet another interminable meeting of Diocesan Council at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Bottom line: I assure you will never have to worry about Anne like Harriet did about the archdeacon in her conversation with him in Barbara Pym’s novel, Some Tame Gazelle, as she prevents him from visiting her ill sister, Belinda:

‘Poor Belinda. I am really extremely sorry. Do tell her how sorry I am.

I only wish I could go and see her.’

‘Oh, she’s not at all seriously ill,’ said Harriet. ‘Just a little chill. I’m

sure it would alarm people if you were seen going to the house. People always think the worst when they see a clergyman.’

‘Dear me, I hardly know how to take that that,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘I should have liked to think that we brought comfort to the sick.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose you do, in a way,’ said Harriet, who was finding it difficult to convey that it all depended on the clergyman.’

Were Anne the archdeacon, Harriet would have let her in right away. Especially if she had witnessed the moving scene a couple of us did last evening in Anne’s home. As you may know, Anne’s husband Brooke suffered a separated shoulder and a fractured pelvis in a bicycle accident late yesterday afternoon. After accompanying him to the hospital, waiting in the emergency room, negotiating with paramedics, nurses and doctors, and helping him make the painful final trek from the apartment door to the bed—just the way you want to spend the evening before your installation--Anne calmly, with great peace of mind and love of heart, removed Brooke’s s sneakers and socks as he sat on the edge of the bed, and offered to wash his feet. Which she then did . . . though that part of her ministrations we didn’t see, since Brooke politely, but firmly, asked the rest of us, no told us, to leave the room, so he could finally be alone with her.

“THE TIME IS FULFILLED”: Ultimately, of course, celebrating your work of glory depends not on who Anne as your Rector is, but on who you and she become together. I don’t know whether you understand that yet. But she does.

And I know she does because of what she said to you last February in her Annual Report, posted on your web page. She told you there are “three areas which we as a community of faith must begin to address as we work to grow our community of faith. Hospitality, stewardship, and shared ministry.” She then explained these three areas “will be the building blocks of growth and renewal, the hallmarks of our work together in Christ’s name” so that “each one of these areas will inform and shape the whole.”

I couldn’t agree more. Mostly because of what I learned over a decade ago from a meditation a lay member of my parish presented at a retreat for Diocesan Council, well before Anne and I were members of it. The Gospel for the retreat was the Gospel for this evening, the Feast of St. Mark. Neil focused on the last line where we are told Jesus preached “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” Here is his brief, perceptive commentary on Jesus’ proclamation:

Call, is God’s speaking to and through a specific person or group of persons to

do a special thing in a particular time.

I believe there is struggle in the call. Part of the call is the struggle of its fulfillment. When the struggle stops, the fat may well set in. Do we ever win

the struggle? Perhaps not. Are we ever fulfilled? Perhaps not. However,

reflect on the last major struggle of your life. Would it not have been much harder without God?

The fullness of time is the correct time in which the richness of events unfolds. The unique nature of each person can produce good works by accepting God’s grace and living within its framework. The resulting works will be unique because each person is unique—each giving and receiving of God’s grace is unique. It is the blend of these ‘uniquenesses,’ if you will allow that usage,

that keeps good works going on in our midst—in the fullness of time.

CELEBRATION OF A NEW MINISTRY: In the fullness of time of your new ministry with Anne, please accept the challenge of Jesus’ call to make glory your work, in the name of the Trinity. Then the eloquent hymn with which Mary Oliver closes her poem “Work” will echo in your worship and ministry:

It may be the rock in the field is also a song.

And it may be the ears of corn swelling under their

green sleeves

are also songs.

And it may be the river glancing and leaning against

the dark stone is also a deliberate music.

So I will write my poem, but I will leave room for the world.

I will write my poem tenderly and simply, but

I will leave room for the wind combing the grass,

for the feather falling out of the grouse’s fan-tail,

and fluttering down, like a song.

And I will sing for the bones of my wrists,

supple and exemplary.

And the narrow paths of my brain, its lightnings and issues,

its flags, its ideas.

And the mystery of the number 3.

I will sing for the iron doors of the prison,

and for the broken homes of the poor,

and for the sorrow of the rich, who are mistaken and lonely . . .

and I will sing for the white dog forever tied up in the orchard,

and I will sing for the morning sun and its panels

of pink and green on the quiet water,

and for the loons passing over the house.

. . .

I will sing for the veil that never lifts.

I will sing for the veil that begins, once in a lifetime,

maybe, to lift.

I will sing for the rent in the veil.

I will sing for what is in front of the veil,

the floating light.

I will sing for what is behind the veil—light, light, and more light.

This is the world, and [glory] is the work of the world.

To Anne, and to all the members and friends of Trinity Church, St. Louis: may glory ever be your work too as you celebrate your new ministry together.

AMEN.