Bishop Diane Bruce<\/p>\n\n\n\n
St. Nicholas Day 2022
St. Alban\u2019s, Bolivar<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I bring you greetings from your diocesan staff \u2013 we are here to help you in any way we can. I am especially happy to be with you all this morning as I just love your priest \u2014 she is wise, kind, gifted and pastoral. She is also a brilliant writer and an advocate for those who have little or no voice. In other words, she tries her best to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ \u2013 and for that I am grateful for her ministry and for her presence as a leader in this Diocese.
As I get to the text of this sermon I will warn you that it is fairly short \u2013 when I do confirmations and receptions it\u2019s kinda like half time at the super bowl \u2013 you\u2019ll see what I mean when we get there, so the sermon is kept shorter. I hope that is okay with you all\u2026.
Now \u2013 today as we celebrate the first of St. Nicholas, I\u2019m convinced that St. Alban\u2019s mirrors the love of children and the care of those in need that St. Nicholas is reported to have done. I watched the video feeds of your services! More than giving gifts, although those are always fun, St. Nicholas saw needs in the community and addressed them, especially as it related to children. I see so much of St. Nicholas\u2019 legacy in the people and ministries here at St. Alban\u2019s! I have to confess I love seeing children being nurtured and encouraged \u2014 even at a tender age \u2014 to make the church their own. To listen to the sacred stories of our faith and to interpret them in their own minds and to participate actively \u2014 It reminds me of the gospel reading today \u2014 \u201cLet the little children come to me \u2014 do not stop them\u201d \u2014 do not stop them indeed. What a gift.
Speaking of gifts, if it is okay with you all I want to tell you a story about a little girl and her understanding of God.
My daughter Jardine was about 4. Now, whenever she was playing in her room with the door closed and she was quiet, it usually meant she was doing something she shouldn\u2019t be doing. One day I walked in her room and I saw all her Barbie dolls lined up on two sides of the room (she had a lot of Barbie dolls \u2013 everyone kept on giving her barbie dolls) \u2014 on one side were all the Barbie dolls with tattered clothes, or whose hair she tried to cut or faces she tried to paint or who went into the pool one time too many. On the other side of the room were the pristine Barbie dolls \u2013 beautiful clothes, etc. and the lone Ken doll.
I asked her what she was doing. \u201cI\u2019m playing good heaven\/bad heaven.\u201d
I thought, \u201cI\u2019ll bite\u201d \u2014 I asked her, \u201cWhat do you mean good heaven\/bad heaven?\u201d
\u201cMommy I heard you tell Daddy that the Bible doesn\u2019t say much about hell but it says a lot about heaven \u2014 so I thought there has to be a good part of heaven and a bad part of heaven.\u201d
\u201cHow do you get to good heaven?\u201d I asked her. \u2014 \u201cMommy that\u2019s easy. You are alive. You know God, God knows you. You die and you go up and meet God. You know God, God knows you and God points you to good heaven.\u201d
\u201cOkay \u2014 how do you get to bad heaven?\u201d \u201cOh Mommy! You are alive. You don\u2019t know God, but God knows you. You die and you go up and meet God. God knows you but you don\u2019t know God so God points you to bad heaven.\u201d
\u201cJardine, can you go from good heaven to bad heaven?\u201d \u2013 \u201cMommy, who wants to go from good heaven to bad heaven?\u201d \u201cOkay, then, can you get from bad heaven to good heaven?\u201d \u201cOh yes, Mommy \u2014 when you wake up.\u201d
When you wake up. The sacred stories interpreted by a 4 year old. When you wake up. I can never forget that story, and how just overhearing a conversation and always being in church and hearing the sacred stories shaped her. I thought so often she wasn\u2019t paying attention to the sacred stories \u2013 but she absolutely was.
We are about to welcome anew young ones and ones who are young at heart as they renew their commitment to Christ or are received into this arm of Christ\u2019s body. Their \u201cyes\u201d is not only a reflection of their commitment to Christ, but the dedication of this community of faith in their nurture in the way of love that is Jesus Christ but also of this Episcopal Church. Thank you for your faithfulness!
My charge to you, my brothers and sisters, my siblings in Christ here at St. Alban\u2019s \u2014 is to continue to be the loving, caring, Christ-centered community of faith that you are. Love your children, teach them the sacred stories \u2014 for they surely will teach you something as they learn. That way, there will be new shoots coming out of the stump of Jesse \u2014 new life will spring forth \u2014 life that knows and loves God, and that makes God\u2019s love known to this world. Right here in Bolivar.
Be like St. Nicholas. Be like Jesus. Love, love deeply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bishop Diane Bruce St. Nicholas Day 2022St. Alban\u2019s, Bolivar I bring you greetings from your diocesan staff \u2013 we are here to help you in any way we can. I am especially happy to be with you all this morning as I just love your priest \u2014 she is wise, kind, gifted and pastoral. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3791,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions\/3791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}