NPR/PBS's Ray Suarez (a faithful Episcopalian) preaches at General Convention - sermon via wordle

NPR/PBS's Ray Suarez (a faithful Episcopalian) preaches at General Convention - sermon via wordle

Here is an "image" of his sermon created using "wordle" which you can find (and have fun with) over at www.wordle.net!


~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

created by Peter Carey using www.wordle.net

...and here is a bit of the text of Ray Suarez's sermon...(read it all HERE)

76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church
July 13, 2009
Ray Suarez

It is a joy to be asked to speak to this gathering of my brothers and sisters from all across the country and the world. I left a reporting trip in Tanzania to come here in full confidence that these invitations don’t come every day. It’s a privilege to speak to you on this day when we remember Benedict’s radical welcome to all who come from what the old prayer book called “the blessed company of all faithful people.” With outstretched arms we take a big, broad, view of what that beautiful phrase means… “the blessed company of all faithful people.” That includes our partners and friends from other branches of the family who are with us today. At this point in the life of the Episcopal Church, some of us, and some of the parishes we call home, may not be feeling they are in a blessed company right now, and forced to think about what welcome means, who is included in welcome. It is a tough time, even if your attendance is good, your pledges are strong… even if you have more baptisms than burials in an average year… we are forced to fight the battles, forced to live out the arguments that history conspired to make converge right now, in our day, in our time. Benedict had some plain-spoken advice for this gathering: “Let the house of God be wisely managed by the wise.” I’ll let you decide if you are in the wise. None of us in this room could have chosen, could have elected to be born, grow up, or be called to serve at another time. We have no choice but to play history’s hand… So we are struggling, perhaps in our buttoned-down, Anglican way, to figure out what to be in the 21st century, to keep the lights on, the altar set, and wait for people who left after the storms got bad, and trying to bring others in through the door for the first time and say welcome, you are home… while still very much having to be a place of coherence, love, service, for the people who’ve never left.

We don’t give you a spiritual means test when you come to the front door before we let you in. Instead, we say as Jesus did, “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

There are people lampoon us, wish us ill, use us as a punchline for lame jokes based on some very old stereotypes, and frankly, from material that wasn’t all that funny to begin with. But at least those old jokes, poking fun at imaginary church of WASP matrons, using ‘summer’ as a verb, country clubs, white shoe law firms, and pedigree - those old jokes had some measure of affection in them. These days the jokes contain more derision, condescension, and harsh judgment born of ignorance. Recently I was reading the religion blog in the Washington Post and one essayist, John Mark Reynolds, wrote: Do you know what you get when you cross an Episcopalian with a Southern Baptist? I didn’t know, so I kept on reading. You get someone who comes to your door and rings your bell, but once you open it has no idea what to say.

No idea what to say? Really?

I could swear I was in church at 7 am on Ash Wednesday morning, heard our challenging lectionary, was called out, forced to confront myself by a strong sermon, and then called to be holy by our penitential rite. I thought we had a lot to say, and when I picked my head up to look around there was a big crowd of witnesses sharing that sobering moment with me.

Nothing to say?

When my son and daughter and the youth of our parish head out year after year to the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast, and to the Lakota Sioux lands in North Dakota, and to our sister parish in Honduras… they worked hard, very hard… and began and ended every day with worship. Like so many of our youth, they have plenty to say, “Not only with their lips but with their lives.” Or, as Benedict himself might say, ora et labora, pray and work.

Read the rest HERE at Episcopal Cafe