The Rt. Rev. Prince Singh, Ph.D., provisional bishop of Eastern and Western Michigan, preached at the Renewal of Ministry at Church of the Ascension as they celebrated the installation of the Rev. Billy Daniel, Ph.D. as the rector of Church of the Ascension.
Sermon Text
I am grateful to your good bishop, Bishop Brian Cole, for his invitation to me. I thank Sylvia and Jan Peters for their genuine hospitality and radiant witness to beauty and love! “Joy is jumping off the walls in Ascension,” Sylvia kept saying! What a great way to describe a house of prayer! I thank Billy and Amanda for inviting me to encourage them as they take their habitation among you, the saints of Ascension! I was their Bishop in Rochester and got to know, live with and learn from them and Wyles and Ayda! I now serve as Bishop Provisional of East and West Michigan. I bring you greetings from your siblings there!
Hope in interdependence is our only hope. I begin with words of aspirational interdependence from Tagore.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
By Rabindranath Tagore in the Gitanjali, 1912.
Let me remind you about a few things you know already about our interdependence.
Our cosmic identity in God! At baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own forever! The apostle Paul reminds us in Galatians: “…because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child, then also an heir, through God.” Remembering who we essentially are is the most significant part of being faithful. In the words of Sweet Honey in the Rock, We are Mothers of courage, fathers of time, Daughters of dust, sons of great visions. We are sisters of mercy, brothers of love, lovers of life, and builders of nations. We’re seekers of truth and keepers of faith, makers of peace, wisdom of ages. We are our grandmothers’ prayers, we are our grandfathers’ dreamings, we are the breath of the ancestors, and we are the spirit of God; For each child that’s born, a morning star rises and sings to the universe who we are.
Let us not forget who we are as siblings in God, our mother, and our father!
My second reminder of our interdependence with you is in God’s cosmic fruitfulness strategy!
Listen to Isaiah’s wisdom. “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it, the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” I have wrestled with trying to differentiate between being fruitful and being productive. Productivity has been a part of our history when the Jim Crow economy, for instance, was quite effective as far as the economic bottom line was concerned but was wanting regarding the moral bottom line. Fruitfulness, on the other hand, is about allowing the life force of God to shine through every moment of every day among all of creation. Bearing good fruit is our stewardship of this life!
God invites each of us individually to do our part in lifting our weight. Taking up your cross daily is a Jesus’ command, not a suggestion. He clarifies this as the new commandment that we live with one another. When we do our part of spiritual soul-searching, we can identify everyday false prophets from thriving and spinning falsehoods into truths.
Finally, clear evidence of our interdependence is in God’s cosmic voluntary recycling strategy. Mary’s magnificate is a prayer for this new creation! “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” What a great way to encourage us to magnify that which is of God! Now is the season of grace when all of us with means of various kinds can give it away voluntarily, even as Christ has modeled this way of love and does it willingly. Philippians chapter 6: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of an enslaved person,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
So here’s my warning to you saints of Ascension. Watch out for a spirit of suspicion. Some time ago, we added an essential tool to our analysis tool kit. It is called the hermeneutic of suspicion. We taught in our seminaries and other places of formation about the chronic disease of exploitation. We studied our history and saw the truth behind this realization. We need this tool to identify and correct appropriately. However, we did not realize that this tool has limited use and that all of life is not about exploitation. We are in a place where we suspect everybody. We need the wisdom to use our tools. To a person with a hammer, everything is a nail. Philippians 6 again: Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your interests but the interests of others.
I hear of much energy and possibility at Ascension!
I hear of a Center for spirituality and learning: Spiritus Knox
Breathing under the oak tree: mindful meditation, breathing, book studies, alternative services for the community.
A Seminary for the city! What an empowering concept!
Leadership development programs
Newcomer and Confirmation formation as foundational leadership development. Acts 2: 42 Agape fellowships: I asked Billy, “What’s been the source of your joy?” “A team of colleagues to work with has been a joy! I love going to serve. Flushing things out, developing and sustaining leaders,
Your possibilities are immense 65 years after your prayerful founding. Billy is bright, kind, fun, and joyful! He will be your catalyst if you prayerfully live into being the servant-leaders who take your identity in God seriously. I pray that together you will practice your stewardship of fruitfulness for righteousness and praise by recycling all that is good among you to make your beloved community genuine here and now in Knoxville! Each of you is a bridge of interdependence. When I was young, I used to have romanticized notions about bridge building. Now I know when people see a bridge, they tend to walk all over you. It takes sacrificial love to be a bridge.
My final word for your namesake is this! Ascension was the feast of the ultimate cosmic game of tag when Jesus said; I am out of here. You’re it! May God smile on you and through you!