Ninth Sunday after Pentecost July 17, 2016 Feast of St. Anne Good morning, welcome, and thanks for being here today with the St. Anne s family to join in our annual celebration of the Feast Day of our patron, St. Anne. In full disclosure, the actual observed feast day for Saints Anne and Joachim is July 26, but at least in recent St. Anne s history we have celebrated on the closest third Sunday of July, to coincide with our monthly fellowship meal or special event and today that is all about ice cream. As a refresher to some of you and maybe news to others, you won t find the official story of St. Anne in the Bible. You can however find stories about her in the unofficial gospel of James, also known as the Infancy Gospel or the Protoevangelium. It tells us that a faithful couple, Joachim and Anne, grieved for their 20 years of childlessness throughout their marriage. When Joachim was not allowed to offer sacrifices to God at the temple because he did not have offspring, he went to the wilderness to pray for 40 days, recalling the promises God made to his faithful and also childless ancestor, Abraham. During this same time Anne was also fasting and praying to God, holding on to the memory of the barren Sarah, when an angel of the Lord came to Anne to tell her she would conceive a child who would be known to all the world. Anne then pledged any child she might bear to the service of God. 1
When Anne s child Mary was born, her parents kept her with them for three years, and then presented her to the priests at the temple, reminiscent of the story of from First Samuel where the barren Hannah gave up her own miracle child Samuel to live in the temple under the care of Eli. Mary lived in God s grace in temple service until at the age of 12, she was betrothed to Joseph in an agreement between her parents and the temple priests. This unofficial gospel of James says that Mary was 16 when the Angel Gabriel visited, Mary found herself pregnant, and God s salvation plan for the world began to unfold. The pain and disgrace of Anne s barrenness was fully redeemed when her daughter Mary became the mother of the Son of God. St. Anne is also known as the patron saint of unmarried women, housewives, women in labor, grandmothers, horseback riders, cabinetmakers, miners and sailors. So for a saint who came to us from off the grid, she has managed to get around. In Tifton, Georgia, St. Anne became the patron saint of this congregation, which began with a handful of Tifts and their friends who gathered monthly at the Methodist Church on Love Ave. with the Rev. J.W. Turner as their first circuit riding priest about 118 years ago. The third Bishop of Georgia approved a building plan in February of 1898 and pledged about half of the $500 estimated total cost to build little St. Anne s in downtown Tifton. The Tift family, led by brothers Edmund and Henry, provided from their lumber and ship building enterprises the rare curly pine that was so delicate that it had to be carved under water to create the beautiful and one of a kind little church which was consecrated in downtown Tifton by Bishop Cleland Kinloch Nelson on June 1, 1902. 2
It took the next 40 years for St. Anne s to grow to 40 members, and they survived with the service of 14 different priests. In another 17 years St. Anne s first became a self-supporting parish, and struggled to maintain that status for the next 20 years. When the Rev. Arnold Bush served as Rector from 1974 to 1983, the congregation began to evangelize and to grow significantly, and in the Rev. Jacoba Hurst s first year at St. Anne s in 1982, the little church was moved to its current home where it served the congregation well through three services each Sunday. The old education building was built and dedicated the following year in 1983, making room for offices and classrooms for education. Two years later, in 1985, the present sanctuary was built and consecrated by the eighth Bishop of Georgia, Harry Shipps. The parish hall followed a year later in 1986. For the past 30 years St. Anne s has continued to grow in many ways, offering a safe and holy space for healing, education, thoughtful spirituality, rich and meaningful sacramental worship, and a community of love and support that sees its members through lifetimes of joyful celebration and devastating loss, a place where the red doors are open and all who enter can open their hearts to the kingdom of God without leaving their minds at home. St. Anne s has always and forever kept the light on, not only indicating the presence of God in the consecrated bread that rests in the tabernacle, but also indicating that this is a safe place to explore your faith, even when it means you have to bring your doubts. The most common phrase I hear from parishioners telling their story of coming to St. Anne s is, When I walked in the door, I knew I was home. This has much to do with the liturgy, and communion, and the prayers, but it also has to do with the warmth and 3
welcome that people receive when they come through those red doors. The relationships that await them here go way beyond just fellowship in the good times; they demonstrate what it means to truly love one another. In the past 7 years, with the leadership of the Rev. Lonnie Lacy, St. Anne s has lived up to her mission to become Salt and Light, working diligently to be a place of welcome and hospitality, to reach out to her most vulnerable neighbors through programs of feeding, baking, teaching, and praying. This congregation has tried on new ways of seeing the world, all the while grounding itself in scripture, and seeking pathways to a deepening spirituality in sacred art, literature, music and conversation. And St. Anne s has made and delivered on a commitment to children and youth, understanding that they are the future not only of this church, but of a world that cries out for people of faith and understanding to work for healing and peace. Towards this goal the new Ministry Center was imagined, designed, built and opened just over one year ago in order to support the call to Christian mission to equip the saints present and future for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. This rich history of faithfulness throughout cycles of barrenness and rebirth is important to remember. Those who have come and gone, whose labors and resources were offered to this congregation in their own time, have left a legacy that is being enjoyed today. We are bearing the fruit of many tillers and planters and harvesters who have been drawn by the Spirit to this place. Lest we think their earlier tasks were easier than those which lie ahead of us, remember that our spiritual ancestors lived and worshiped and cared for one other and prayed together through two World Wars, the 4
Great Depression, the racial violence of the Jim Crow South, the Cold War era with its threat of nuclear war, Viet Nam and social revolutions that radically changed the roles of women, men and families. The curly pine walls of Little St. Anne s are steeped in the prayers of generations that have called on our God to save, to protect, and to guide. Those ancestors kept this congregation breathing life through all of it and more, for themselves and for us who have followed. In more recent times we have come to church to pray for an even more rapidly changing world with increasing connectivity and decreasing understanding, increasing polarization and decreasing civility, increasing violence and decreasing security. And all the while people around us everywhere are leaving churches in unprecedented numbers, having lost their faith in God, in religion and in religious people. Now, more than ever, we need to draw on the strength of love expressed here at St. Anne s embodied in both Mary and Martha of Bethany. We need to be passionate as we sit at the feet of Jesus and passionate as we work in the kitchen to feed a hungry and broken world. Now more than ever, we need to be vigilant in prayer, in song, in fellowship, in ministry, in mission, and in sharing the Eucharistic bread of our broken and resurrected Lord. Now more than ever, we need to keep alive hope in the gospel, hope in our community, hope in the redemption of the world. We need to saturate these walls with prayers for the hurting, the grieving, for those who have been cast out to lives of isolation, and for those who have lost their way and just might see the light on coming from our open doors. We need to pray for the grace to be peacemakers in a world 5
that wants to draw us into its madness. We need to kneel and lay hands on one another for the healing we so desperately need sometimes just to face another day. We need to give thanks and praise to our God who loves us and watches over us with our patron St. Anne. And we need to play together, to laugh together, and sometimes to eat ice cream for breakfast because God is good, and there is nothing like ice cream to remind us. And we need to dedicate ourselves to preserving our own legacy of love for future generations who will be drawn into the St. Anne s community long after we are all gone to glory. May God bless you all, and may God bless St. Anne s Episcopal Church. AMEN 6