(Sermon delivered by Christine Richardson at her husband Doug’s memorial service in May 2012)
One day, Doug and I were preparing to anoint and pray for a man who was in desperate need of God’s love and light.
He was crying. He asked, "Why? Why do you bother?
Why waste your time on a piece of garbage like me?"
While I was still trying to figure out a fancy theological answer to that question,
Doug answered.
"We care for people. That’s what we do."
During his life, my husband was most fully alive
when he was reaching out to people in trouble.
At those times, he forgot about himself,
his problems, and his insecurities.
He freely offered the unconditional, unlimited love of God
and his own love along with it.
Before Doug became a priest,
he would drag all kinds of people home,
expecting me to feed and comfort them.
As the children were growing up,
they got the idea that it was normal
to get involved with people in trouble.
That was often inconvenient,
but those were the times when I felt really proud of my family.
We cared for people. That’s what we did.
Ordained ministry slowed Doug down a bit.
In small communities, people were not that eager
to have the neighbours notice their vehicle in our driveway.
Respectability crept in, bit by bit.
But from time to time, something drastic would happen,
jolting Doug back into an understanding of who he was
and why he was here.
The core of his identity was that of
an outcast reaching out to other outcasts.
We are all outcasts at some level.
We don’t fit in because we are not rich enough,
not clever enough, not popular enough;
because our skin is the wrong colour
or we grew up on the wrong side of the track.
Even those who are fortunate enough to be classified
as beautiful people and pillars of society
experience private agonies that often explode
into destructive behaviour.
Even Jesus, the sinless lamb of God,
was an outcast.
He was conceived out of wedlock.
He was a refugee in Egypt.
Instead of leading a normal, predictable life,
he became a wandering maverick preacher
who turned people’s ideas of success upside down,
criticized the religious establishment,
and spent quality time with people who needed his help
rather than people who could further his career.
Scripture tells us that he was despised and rejected of men,
a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
(Isaiah 53:3)His friends ran away when he needed them most,
and he was executed for blasphemy.
Perhaps the pain he felt
when he was misunderstood and rejected
made him especially tender around those who were sick and needed a doctor,
those who were lost and needed a shepherd,
those who were spiritually dead and needed a Saviour.
When we surrender our lives to Jesus
and call ourselves Christians,
we don’t have to look far to see
who we are and why we are here.
Holy Scripture makes it plain that we are children of God
and we are here to do God’s work on earth,
just like Jesus did.
The Holy Spirit works in us and through us.
Like Jesus, we care for people. That’s what we do.
Our baptismal covenant comes in a variety of forms,
depending on our age and religious tradition.
In one way or another,
we confess our need of a Saviour,
renounce the lure of the world, the flesh, and the devil,
affirm our belief in the Christian faith,
and promise to participate in the business of God’s church.
In the Anglican tradition,
these promises are made on our behalf by sponsors
when we are adopted into the Body of Christ as infants.
We reaffirm them for ourselves
when we are old enough to understand what they mean.
One of the baptismal questions
in the Book of Alternate Services is:
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons,
loving your neighbour as yourself?That question cuts right to the heart of the matter.
All our preaching, teaching, healing, helping, and reaching out
has a single focus: finding Jesus in everyone we interact with.
Jesus said that whatever we do to the least of people,
we do to him.
When we seek and serve Jesus in another person,
we are doing the work
that Jesus has called us to do on his behalf.
Our power to do good is the greatest power
we have on the human level.
When we carry the power of the Holy Spirit,
we share in the ultimate power in the universe,
God’s very nature.
Saint John wrote boldly,
No man has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God lives in us,
and his love is perfected in us . . . 1 John 4:12
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God,
and God in them. 1 John 4:16b The power of divine love is transformative.
The Spirit we share has the power
to change a person from the inside out.
When we remain in Christ and work in His strength,
anything can happen.
As Christians, we have been given the mandate to
preach, teach, baptize, and heal.
The visible church on earth is a sacramental sign
of the Body of Christ alive and at work.
We have built gathering places,
formulated liturgies and prayers,
composed music, drama and dance.
We have ordained and commissioned specialized workers,
argued over theology and forms of worship.
We have even gone to war to prove who was the most righteous and pleasing to God.
Sometimes Christians get so involved in servicing the system
that they forget
why the system was developed in the first place.
Keeping the doors of a building open
can become more important
than keeping people’s hearts open.
When a church community
measures its success by numbers --
how many dollars, how many people, how much staff –
it is terminally ill.
It is a body without a soul, a zombie.
For the last ten years or so,
Doug foresaw that the institutional church would collapse under its own weight
and be reborn.
His work as a priest was not to tell people what God was saying to them,
but to help them find out for themselves.
He worked to encourage God’s people to reclaim their heritage as children of God,
living stones in God’s temple,
kings and priests actively engaged
in furthering God’s kingdom.
This diocese, like many other parts of the church,
is facing loss.
What worked yesterday isn’t working any more.
What we thought we had is falling apart.
At a time like this, we must ask ourselves
how God is calling us to respond.
Is this our time of renewal?
Are we dead, or are we just asleep?
Have we forgotten who we are?
Where is the path?
What do we need to walk it?
What are the minimum requirements to be a church?
Jesus Christ, plus at least two people
who are willing to let him into their circle.
The church is not an organization.
It is an organism – something alive.
As long as there is life in it, it will grow.
How do we begin?
We put God first in our lives,
and follow where Jesus leads us.
We seek and serve Jesus in others,
and reveal Jesus to those whom we serve.
We care for people. That’s what we do.
