The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee is excited to announce the presence of a new Franciscan Friar, Brother Dustin Odom, in the diocese. The celebration took place at St. John’s Church in Johnson City, TN with the Rev. Dr. Laura Bryant (Rector at St. John’s) and Brother Andrew Morehead (Ecumenical Order of Charity and Diocesan Missioner for Communications and Evangelism) leading the celebration. Br. John Huebner (Order of St. Francis) and Br. Jesse Stinnett (Ecumenical Order of Charity) also participated. Br. Dustin plans to be active in ministry to the home bound. Brother Dustin is a member of the Order of St. Francis (www.orderofsaintfrancis.org), a dispersed religious order in the Anglican Communion with Friars active in ministry in the United States (Episcopal Church) and Canada (Anglican Church of Canada). Br. Andrew and Br. Jesse are members of the Ecumenical Order of Charity(www.ecuorderofcharity.org) with members leading a life of simplicity, purity of heart, obedience, non-violence, and universal citizenship.
For an audio and text file of the sermon by the Rev. Dr. Laura Bryant, please scroll below the photo album.
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Sermon by The Rev. Dr. Laura Bryant
In the name of God, our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen. Please be seated.
Well, good morning again, and a special good morning to our Franciscan brothers from the Order of St. Francis who are visiting with us today to help with this special part of our liturgy and to Br. Andrew, who is representing our bishop and the diocese this morning as well. So welcome to all of you. And before I get started, I want to also extend a special invitation to any children who are here in the congregation this morning. I need your help with a special task a little bit later on. Okay? Okay, good.
Well, a man by the name of Martin Greenfield died this past spring in March. He was 95 years old. He was a tailor and he had spent his whole life stitching and sewing men’s suits. He died near his home in Long Island and he has survived by his wife, Arlene, and two sons, Todd and Jay, and four grandchildren.
His obituary was published among other places in the New York Times, and the only reason his death made any kind of splash at all is because he was not just any tailor, but he was a tailor for many celebrities and stars. And in fact, the headline on his obituary read Martin Greenfield 95, who dressed six Presidents dies. He stitched suits for Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman and Leonardo DiCaprio and Shaquille O’Neill.
But he first learned to sow when he was a prisoner in Auschwitz as a young person, a teenager, just 15 years old. His first job in the prison camp was in the laundry washing the uniforms and shirts of Nazi soldiers and prison guards. He had never done laundry in his life before.
He scrubbed the clothes and the collars with a brush. And one day he scrubs too hard and he tears one of the shirts of the Nazi guards. He tears the collar, and when the guard notices this, the guard begins beating him with his baton and then leaves him lying there on the floor and balls up that torn shirt and hurls it in Martin’s face.
Now, there is an older man at the laundry who witnessed all these things and he knows how to sew. And so he kindly leans over Martin and gives him a needle and a thread and shows him how to stitch and sew. And so Martin mends the collar on that Nazi shirt, and he decides to keep it. And one day in a kind of a strange and wild instinct, in a bold moment, he puts that shirt on under his striped prison garment. The collar of that Nazi shirt just peeking over the edge over the neckline of his other garment. And he immediately discovers that when he is wearing that shirt with the collar peeking up above, he is treated differently.
Wherever he goes in the prison camp, he can wander the grounds in a way he couldn’t before because the soldiers assume that he has the privilege to do so. And for a while, he worked in the hospital kitchen, and when he takes extra food to keep from starving, the soldiers seeing that collar peeking up above assume that he has the authority to do so.
And so Martin on purpose rips another shirt and gets away with it. And he thinks of those two shirts as his wardrobe that helped him survive Auschwitz and the Holocaust. He said, the first day I wore that first shirt was the day I first realized that clothes have meaning and power. These shirts saved my life. And I never forgot the rest of his family did not survive. Grandparents, mother, two sisters, baby, brother, father. And when Martin immigrated to America some years later, he was penniless and alone.
And his first job was at a garment factory as a floor boy sweeping up scraps from the factory floor and the company he created and was known for. And that thrived was known for using traditional manual methods and for hand sewing and stitching the button holes and the other details on these very fine and famous suits.
And I think of that older man in the prison laundry bending over to teach Martin how to stitch and sew as a kind of ministering angel of God who gave a gift that transformed and saved Martin’s life because you know, God was a tailor too. He is the first tailor. And you may remember reading in the book of Genesis how he stitched clothes for Adam and Eve before they went out of the garden, naked and ashamed. He sewed garments of skin for them to replace those fig leaves they had cobbled together. And he dressed them in these clothes, a last gift of mercy and protection for the life in a hard, hard world to which they were going clothes mean mercy and grace, and have the power to give protection in a hard, hard world.
And we are now starting to collect winter clothes, hats, and jackets and gloves for those who will be living and surviving out in the cold in the winter months ahead in a hard world. And these clothes have meaning and power, gifts of warmth and of mercy and give comfort and protection. And it is even possible that one of these coats that you and I will give might save someone’s life and help them survive.
And Paul also had something to say about clothing that we read in Galatians, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ, have clothed yourself with Christ, which is a garment of mercy and love with the power to shape our lives. And in the early church for the celebration of every baptism in the baptismal liturgy, there was a time when the newly baptized stripped off their old clothes and put on a new bright white garment, a white robe.
And I think of that spiritual, I’ve got a robe. You’ve got a robe. All God’s children got a robe. All God’s children got a robe. This spiritual composed and sung by nameless slaves in protest against their old slave clothes and proclaiming that underneath they had been clothed with Christ. I’ve got a robe, you’ve got a robe. All God’s children got a robe.
And the reason I’m telling you all of this is because we are going to be dressing someone in new clothes later in the service, clothes that have meaning and power to shape lives. Dustin Odom, many of you know, is one of our Sunday school teachers and has taken vows as a novice in the Order of St. Francis. And he will reaffirm his promises in just a little while and we will help him get dressed in his Franciscan habit.
The Franciscan habit is a piece of clothing that is not fashionable. It’s not at all pretty. It is the color of mud, which is the color of dirt and poverty, the dress of peasants and beggars and poor people, and it is stitched in the shape of a certain cross. And wearing these clothes will help Dustin remember his promises as a Franciscan brother and as a disciple of Jesus, that he is a servant of all and especially of the least and the last as Jesus teaches in the gospel this morning in the gospel, the disciples and Jesus are again on the move, traveling through Galilee, the villages and countryside.
And Jesus is again trying to teach the disciples the way of the Gospel. And he tells them, I will be betrayed and be killed. And after being killed will rise again and again. The disciples don’t have a clue what he is talking about or how to comprehend, what it will mean to follow someone whose way leads to the cross and to a humiliating death. Jesus asked them when they arrive at the house, he has overheard them there behind him. “What were you arguing about on the way?” And they are afraid to tell him because they were arguing, arguing about who is the greatest, the best, the strongest, the disciple most likely to succeed. They were arguing about who is the greatest.
And again, Jesus corrects them by turning all of that upside down. “Whoever wants to be great,” he says, “must be last.” Whoever wants to be first must be last of all. And by way of example, he brings a child into their midst. And do you know that in that day, children were not coddled and treasured or lavished with toys and cute special clothes? They were property. They had no rights. And Cicero, for example, was ridiculed and ashamed because he shed tears over the death of his daughter.
But Jesus is not just talking about children, he’s talking about the least the last, the refuse at the bottom of the heap and daring to welcome these people. These are brothers. And as a gift of grace and life, however, welcomes the least, the last, the littlest welcomes me said Jesus. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes the God who sent me. And that is what our robe is all about. I’ve got a robe. You’ve got a robe. All God’s children got a robe.
There is a woman named Rebecca, whom I first met when she was sleeping on our front porch for several weeks a year or so ago. And in the evenings before I went home, I sometimes went out there on the front porch to check on folks and to talk a little bit with them. And one evening Rebecca told me her story and the little cluster of misfortunes that had led to her living on the street. But she told me that even so living on the street, she tries to dress nice every day and she puts on lipstick. And indeed, Rebecca is quite lovely.
This past week I saw her again for the first time in a while, and she was waiting by the streetside food pantry for Alan Pickle, I think, to fill it up. And she told me that there had been a glitch in her food stamps and it was being worked out, but it would be a few weeks before she got more food stamps.
And so she needed some of the food and the food pantry to sustain her. And then she said, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, and I’m not living on the streets anymore! I have a house in which I live. I have a home.” And I said, “Oh, that’s fantastic.” And I was so happy for her. And only later did I realize my mistake and feel regret for my failure because she had been so gracious to tell me exactly where her home was, a couple blocks up the street and then to your left. And it was the first house on the right. And she had been gracious enough to invite me into her joy and into her celebration, but I had not quite extended the same welcome to her. I had not invited her into our celebration or into our home or to feast with us around our table.
And I wish that I had been paying a little bit better attention so I could walk up the street and find that house and visit her. And that is what our robes are all about. To be clothed and shaped by the same mercy and love to extend the same mercy and welcome with which we ourselves have been clothed and covered. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have been clothed with Christ, who is a garment of mercy and welcome and love. I’ve got a robe. You’ve got a robe. All God’s children got a robe.
We’re all children of God. And I believe that each of us in our own way and in our own lives, no matter how beautiful and pulled together we look like on the outside, have passed through seasons where we saw clearly our littleness, our least, our defenseless nakedness, and have survived only because of the tender care and love with which we ourselves have been covered and clothed. And we are called commanded. Blessed to clothe and welcome each other, especially those who have been abandoned and left out in the cold in any way in a hard world. You’ve got a robe. I’ve got a robe. All God’s children got robes. And that is what our robes are all about. Amen.