Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, May 25, 2025.
I have always been grateful for the opportunity to be here, in this place, with you. Especially on Sunday morning, which feels like the weekly cherry on top of this ministry we’ve shared together. I’ve been so fortunate to serve you good people here, in this place. I know it’s time for me to retire, but I am really going to miss you, and what we have been co-creating together these 17 years.
One thing I’ve always loved, and have been even more aware of lately, is the view from this place called the chancel. In the theater it’s called the stage, and that’s what it is—a raised up place where the actors are visible to the audience. Or in a church, the congregation.
My predecessor here preached without a text, and liked to move around while he spoke, so he did this from the floor level. A few days before my first Sunday here, I was standing over there, talking with the chair of the worship committee, and told him I was going to use this pulpit. And he said, “You’re not going to be down here with the peeps?” I worried that he was thinking that my taking to the chancel was a kind of power-over move. And there is, in this tradition, a history of some discomfort with authority. I worried about that. But here, in this pulpit, is where I have always felt called to preach from. And the view from here is great!
Of course the chancel isn’t just for clergy. This church belongs to its people. You are the church, and the chancel, and the ministry, are meant to be shared. Your worship team has already arranged a great lineup of preachers and worship leaders for this summer, and they are folks like you. I may not say it enough, but this is a good place to roll up your sleeves and get involved, to practice leadership and stretch your spiritual muscles and learn new skills. If you have an idea or a yearning to do something here, speak up—talk to anyone who seems like a leader here, and they should be able to help point you in the right direction.
So today I want to hold up a mirror and share with you some of what I have witnessed from this raised-up place. And invite you to reflect with me on the spiritual practice of noticing, of bearing witness, of paying attention to what is going on, as life goes rolling by.
Especially this year, I find myself thinking, “I just love getting to be here on Sunday.” There are so many subtle things that happen in this hour of worship. Someone wipes tears from their eyes. Or rests their head on their partner’s shoulder. Or whispers to the person next to them. “What are they saying?” one wonders. A parent soothes a crying baby. Someone stretches out their arms and yawns.
From here I’ve seen how the light from a single candle spreads across the sanctuary on Christmas Eve. And I’ve preached to empty pews and only a camera in those pandemic days when you were coming to church from home; those days which sometimes seemed were never going to end. I’ve gotten to see you lighting candles, quietly, after the prayer, which often feels to me like the most sacred time in our worship.
One of the things I want to say to you in this last month here is this: thank you for letting me be your pastor. Thank you for inviting me into your hearts and into your lives. I don’t take this lightly, or for granted. Your openhearted welcome and trust has invited and helped me to be a better minister, to be the pastor you needed and deserved. It’s like a dance we do; encouraging and helping each other, creating one another.
The Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor says a similar thing about the sermon; that it’s a shared project, a communal act. She writes,
“A congregation can make or break a sermon by the quality of their response to it. An inspired sermon can wind up skewered somewhere near the second pew by a congregation of people who sit with their arms crossed and their eyes narrowed, coughing and scrubbing their feet as the preacher struggles to be heard. Similarly, a weak sermon can grow strong in the presence of people who attend carefully to it, leaning forward in their pews and opening their faces to a preacher from whom they clearly expect to receive good news.”
I’ve experienced this with you—you’ve heard things in my sermons that I didn’t know were in there; you’ve given me credit for what I thought was an ordinary sermon, because of what you found in it.
Listen to a little more from Barbara Brown Taylor:
“If the preacher is also their minister and pastor, then the sermon is theirs in another way. The quality of their life together—the memories, conversations, experiences, and hopes they share—is the fabric from which the sermon is made. The preacher is their parson, their representative person, who never gets into the pulpit without them. Whatever else the sermon is about it is first about them, because they are the community in whose midst the preacher stands. In a very real way, the preacher would have no voice without them.”
In this month when were are reflecting on pluralism, celebrating the difference and diversity around us, I want to remind you that you are part of that breadth and depth. That your showing up makes a real difference: here and the other places you bless with your presence, your attention, your care. Pluralism is simply an act of acknowledging that everyone has gifts to share, an act of seeing and receiving and celebrating those gifts. As John O’Donohue put it: “May you have the eyes to see that no visitor arrives without a gift and no guest leaves without a blessing.”
Sometimes I think church exists primarily as a place to see and to be seen; to behold one another. And to sense, and be held by, that Spirit in which we live and move and have our being. Do you know how much your seeing another is a gift to to them? How just bearing witness, paying attention, can make a real difference.
We live in a time where kindness and mercy seem to be in short supply. But are they? Don’t we just need to take the time to look, with open eyes and an open heart? Your goodness and care are always needed. How are you going to spend your self? How will you share your gifts?
It’s easy to get discouraged, and it happens to all of us. Which is one reason we need a community, to share our burdens and to find encouragement; to get help, and, to help others. To be reminded that there are sources of love and strength and solace; that the Spirit is very near you.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. (Denise Levertov, “The Fountain)
I have seen you, lighting candles and praying your quiet prayers. I have seen you, leaving to teach the children, and collecting the offering, and stepping out a minute early to check on the coffee or uncover those cookies. I have seen you looking out for one another, and taking care of each other. I have seen you, breathing in and breathing out. opening your hearts to the mystery, the wonder; seeking the Spirit some of us call God.
And what a quiet honor and privilege, what a deep source of strength and encouragement it has been to see you here, drinking at the well that is this house of worship. I have seen you. I have gotten to behold you. And what a gift that has been. What a gift you are, to one another, and to the world outside these doors. Do you know that? Do you know how beautiful you are?
Dear spiritual companions,
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts
The fountain is there…
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.
Let us be ever open to these gifts, and let be ever grateful and glad, for the living of these days,
Amen.