It is really good to be here today.
Thanks to Trinity for hosting this
great event.
And thank to Dave for inviting me to
preach today.
For those that don't know Dave and I
have known each other since 1996, but we became really good friends in the
summer of 1998 at Camp Calumet.
That fall Dave invited me to live
with him and his sister in a house they planned to rent in York, Maine.
It was during that year that Dave and
I decided to go to seminary.
I will tell you that it was because
of Dave that I finally made the leap.
We were living together in this
house.
I was working at a home for abused
and neglected kids in Portsmouth.
Dave was teaching math at a religious
school.
I had come home from work, and Dave
was sitting on the couch.
He said to me, "I am thinking of
going to seminary."
And I said, "Oh yeah...I will go
too that will be fun."
(If you ask Dave he will tell you a
completely different story.
It has to do with brunch at the cliff house,
but I don't remember it that way."
You see I had been thinking of going
to seminary for some time, but every time I went to visit and met other people
at the seminary I just didn't see myself hanging out with the type of person
that goes to seminary.
So when Dave told me that he was
going I knew that I would have at least one person that I could hang out with.
I am suspicious of the idea that God
has a plan for every little thing that happens in our lives.
If you take that position it leads
down some fairly dark roads.
At its worst, It makes God into a
puppet master, manipulating us to prove a point, or teach us a lesson.
The God that I know in Jesus Christ
loves us too much to make life so difficult.
But what I do believe is that the
people that come into your life are heaven sent.
And I am so thankful for Dave's friendship
these many years.
I do believe that God put us together
so that we could both hear the call to ministry.
Because I don't know if I would be a
pastor today without Dave as my friend.
And I believe that Trinity Episcopal
Church and Dave have been brought together by God at this time.
That here in this place you will do
ministry together.
I ask you to believe in that today.
Because what we don't know is how it
will all work out.
We don't know what that ministry will
exactly look like.
We don't know all the twist and turns
it will take.
We don't know all the ways that
working together you will impact this community, and individuals within it.
We don't know all the ways that Dave
will minister to you while he is your priest.
We don't know all the people that
will come walking through that door who will need to hear the good news of
Jesus Christ.
All we know today is that right now
God has brought you together.
We accept on faith that this
arrangement is heavenly sent.
And in ministry these days we need
that faith.
We are living increasingly in a post
Christian world.
Less and less are people going to
Church.
Recently, a chart came out that shows
in 30 years the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA for short) will be
gone.
I was talking about this chart with
some of my Episcopal colleagues in Concord, New Hampshire, and they told me
that they have seen the same chart for the Episcopal church in America.
Because of this, It is hard to be a
person who likes to go to church.
It is hard to be a person who has
given lots of their time, talent, and treasure over many years to keeping a
church alive and moving.
I am assuming that there are people
like this here at Trinity.
There are many of them at the church
I serve as pastor.
And I want to say, "thank you
and we need you."
I know that it is not what you
remember it being, or that it is harder than it used to be.
We often feel like the disciples in
our Gospel this afternoon asking Jesus to, "increase our faith".
I want you to know that pastors feel
that too.
We are aware of the difficult nature
of this work.
This is another reason I am so
thankful for Dave, because we talk a lot about these challenges.
We have long conversations about all
of the struggles that come with being a faith leader in this time and place.
But I want you to know that we still
have faith.
I know that Dave and I have faith
that even though the Church is struggling God is not going away.
We believe that God's grace and love
are ever present for us, and for the people we serve.
I am asking you at Trinity Episcopal
church to keep that faith with your new priest.
Believe what Jesus tells us in the
Gospel today.
"If you have the faith of a mustard
seed, you can say to this mulberry bush
be uprooted and it will be so."
I know we will hear this passage as
Jesus saying something like, "With faith we can do anything!"
How we might hear this is, "If
we just have faith God will give us more people in Church."
But I think Jesus point is much more
subtle.
There are many obstacles in our way.
There are many hills to climb.
And it feels like we aren't doing
anything.
Our congregation is shrinking.
We are losing money.
And all we have left is faith.
And my friends at Trinity Episcopal
faith is all there is.
That is the point.
The reason for the church's existence
is faith.
If everything went great all the
time, if the building was full and the money plentiful would we need faith?
I hear this all the time in subtle
ways from different church people.
They think, "if only we had a
better pastor then we could really do something."
I also hear it from pastors, "If
I only had better parishioners I could really do something."
Sometimes you hear it from both the
lay people and clergy in the same church.
And this is exactly the problem.
We have taken God out of the
equation.
Because our faith is never in us, it
is always in God.
It is our faith that leads us to
believe that we have been put in this place together.
You have called Dave Dalzell to do
ministry with you in this place and time, because you believe that God has sent
him to you.
He feels called by God to be here
with you at this time and place, because he believes God sent you to him.
That is the gift.
Have faith in that.
Believe that God has placed you
together now so that you can do ministry together.
With that faith here is what I
believe you will do together.
Forgive each other often.
No pastor is perfect, no church is
perfect, we only survive by forgiveness.
Love each other.
I can tell you that Dave will love
you, and as his friend I ask you to love him back.
Act on behalf of the poor and left
out.
Together figure out who in this
community is hurting and what they need and act together to make a better
world.
Worship together.
Celebrate the grace and mercy of God
every week through the Lord's supper, and hearing the word of God.
I can tell you that it might not seem
like enough.
You might not feel that the mulberry
tree is being uprooted!
You might not grow.
Faith is not a magic formal for God
to do what we want, but it is about being faithful to our calling as God's
people.
We will leave the rest up to God.
Trinity Episcopal Church and Dave
Dalzell.
God has put you together have faith
that it is all you need.
Amen