First Sunday in Lent, Year A

First Sunday in Lent, Year A

The Reverend Lois Keen

Key scripture Matthew 4:1-11

On the day after the Vestry Retreat, in which we cast a vision for Grace Church five years from now, this is what I preached, distilling down some of the high points of that vision:


G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Fairy tales don’t tell children dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children dragons can be killed.”

Satan, that great serpent, the dragon, tempted Jesus in the desert. It was a mighty temptation, hitting on all Jesus’s desires for the world – an end to poverty, the people following God with all their heart, someone to save them, a messiah. Was it him? To it all, Jesus said “no”. He killed the dragon of temptation, for that day. Even though it came back, being a reptile, having grown a new body part for the temptation in the garden of Gethsemane, the dragon was dead, for now.

We have a dragon to face. Over the past few weeks, since the annual meeting on January 13th, I have shared with you the challenges Grace church faces in becoming a viable congregation once again. On Ash Wednesday I told you that this is not a financial crisis but a spiritual one and that only a spiritual response will answer it.

I also told you that we put ashes on our foreheads to recall our mortality but also to recall the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus, who after his temptation, trials and crucifixion, was raised from the dead to give us a sure and certain hope for the future.

Yesterday your Vestry met in retreat with me. We have imagined our future. We have cast a vision for Grace Church five years from now. We would not do that if we did not think that we would be here in five years to see that vision come to life. Synthesizing all our separate visions, here is part of the vision we cast for Grace Church.

In five years Grace Church will be a center within Norwalk and the surrounding locale for spiritual exploration, spiritual growth, spiritual transformation and spiritual redemption. We will be continually seeking ways to have the Gospel refine our worship and ministries to be of service to all regardless of where they may find themselves in their spiritual journeys with Christ.

We will be reaching out beyond the confines of our sameness, our pains, our wants and needs to join in communion with those not like us who seek the kingdom of heaven.
To that end, we envision a separate entity, a Center for Religious Inquiry, for those not interested in church but desiring to explore their deep yearnings for and spiritual questions about God and the Absolute.

We will partner with the diocese to find ways to use the church building to realize revenue to offset the building operating and maintenance costs, without jeopardizing our not for profit status. We will have a staff person who recruits rentals, manages the traffic of rentals and other building uses in accord with our Gospel objectives, who is here for all major events and who knows the ins and outs of the heating, the crazy alarm boxes, the leaking downstairs and all our other building quirks, and who works in conjunction with a vibrant, energetic property committee committed to the Gospel imperatives in our vision.

We want our buildings and grounds to be in used every day. We dream of being a cultural center for the arts, a place where children are present all the time, and where storytellers, puppeteers, mimes, actors in search for a place to read plays in front of an audience, music students in search for a recital hall, short time music camps, Good Friday camps for children, and people looking just for a place to rest or pray for a few moments will find a home.

Our nave will be transformed to be able to be used for a multiplicity of purposes – from meals to blood drives. That means movable furniture.

We envision partnering with St. Paul’s on the Green for ministry with the Haitian Anglican/Episcopalian community, and with Iglesia Betania housed at Christ Church for ministry with the Latinos of Norwalk.

In five years there will be three services on Sundays, one of them at 7:00 p.m. in the evangelical style of worship. They will serve more than 300 persons among them.

Easter, Christmas and Mother’s Day are “must-attend” services, even for non-churched people in our culture. We envision having up to seven more of these kinds of community services, including a coming of age program and annual ceremony for youth in this community, especially boys, but some girls as well, who tend to look to gangs to fill this gap in our society. We envision strengthening and enhancing our relationship with the Haitian Baptist and Temple of Deliverance congregations, in conjunction with Families and Children’s Agency and Covenant to Care for Children to provide this service.

We will have an active Sunday School of 50 or more children, with 25 teachers serving on rotation, engaging in stimulating, creative education under the direction of a full time Coordinator of Christian Education. There will be a strong component of stewardship in the children’s formation, year round, focusing on time and talent as well as treasure, exploring outreach and the community.

We have lots more specific details to this vision, and that is a work in progress. Meanwhile, three things are going to happen now, or soon. When we leased parking spaces to Virgin Airlines, we felt we had to put up Grace Church Only signs to protect those parking spaces. Now that Virgin Airlines is gone, we will begin work this week to design and erect more welcoming signs for our parking lot. We are also working on plans to add a ramp into the altar area so that people who are differently abled can have access to altar ministries and the choir.

A third action began today. To help us come closer together, so that we might better know our need of one another and be encouraged in worship by one another, we have retired the last three pews on either side of the central aisle, until the day when we need them again.

Your vestry is committed to pouring our life and our resources into this community for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In five years we will be a congregation energized and motivated because we find that we are truly needed and useful at whatever age. And in five years, everyone in Norwalk will know that there is only one Grace Episcopal Church in Norwalk, and where it is, and to what denomination we belong.

God has given us all we need to do what God wants us to do in this place and time. Our building, our grounds, our off street parking, a strong, committed vestry, vibrant worship, location, dreams, and a congregation of people who make no hierarchical class or economic distinction between one another – these are some of our strengths.

Although we operate a deficit budget, we have substantial financial resources for the mission of the church in this community. We also have strong community ties through those who use our buildings already – two A.A. groups, a support group for manic depressive persons, Literacy Volunteers, Families and Children’s Agency, a Girl Scout troop, and two additional churches who are very different from us and from one another – and through our relationship with Covenant to Care for Children.

We are not starting out with nothing. We are starting with much. But that dragon, Satan, is ever crouching at the door to tempt us into anxiety, fear of change, fear of people not like us, fear of want and deprivation, fear of failure, and my all time favorite, our favorite pew being already occupied on Sunday morning.

We must become more prayerful, then, to stand up to him. Lent is the perfect time to develop habits of a spiritual rule of life, of prayer, study, healthy habits and an attention to the hurts and hopes of the world, especially of the people around us as well as one another.

Take this time to fast at least once a day, eating less at two meals a day, and not making up for it with the third, in order to leave a little space for God to make a home in you. Take on a discipline of study. Saul Haffner will join us a week from this Wednesday, at 6:00 in the evening, for studies in the Old Testament. You know Saul; you don’t want to miss him, and people you know may want to experience him. Light supper – soup and bread – at 6:00. Education for children in the Joseph and Exodus stories will also be provided.

And, even though it has been pointed out to me that the cartoons in the Lenten booklets we gave you before Ash Wednesday include some unfortunate stereotypes, I commend them to your use to help develop the habit of keeping the rest of the world before your eyes.

A strong spiritual life of prayer, fasting, and study will go a long way to see us through the times of temptation to give up. But the best years of Grace Church’s life are not behind you – they are yet to come.

And we all learned a valuable lesson from fairy tales when we were children: dragons can be killed, even that great snake, Satan.