Sermon time shared with Bishop Jos of the Idaho Episcopal Diocese. St. James Episcopal Church and Grace Lutheran Church are now sharing an Episcopal priest, Father Larry. This joint worship at St. James, followed by lunch at Grace, celebrated this new partnership.
Ezekiel 2:1-5
2He said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you. 2And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me. 3He said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. 4The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, “Thus says the Lord God.” 5Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.
To be clear, 75% of the time, I preach on the gospel, but there were themes in today’s scripture passage from Ezekiel that I think speak to this morning and the new partnership between St. James Episcopal and Grace Lutheran. Please do not think for a moment that I believe Father Larry specifically has something to learn from the story of Ezekiel. Instead, I believe it is all of you, as well as the Fr. Larry and Bishop Jos and I, who can glean something from Ezekiel’s story.
The prophet Ezekiel was raised in a priestly family in Jerusalem and educated to become a priest himself. However, before he was able to perform his priestly duties at the Temple, he was taken with other high-ranking people during the first siege of Jerusalem (597 B.C.E.) by Nebuchadnezzar II (ruler of Babylon, 605-562 B.C.E.). Ezekiel went into the servile oppression of exile, working in a small village by the river Chebar. There, in his 30th year, he received a powerful vision and a call to be a prophet.
And what of the other exiles? They were forced to leave everything that was familiar and precious to them—family members, homes, possessions. They lost even the temple, the center of their life of faith. The temple was the place where they offered prayers and brought sacrifices, but more than that, it was considered the very dwelling place of God.
Now the exiles are in a foreign land, far from their homeland and far from the temple. How could God permit such a thing? Has God abandoned them? And now, distant from the dwelling place of God, how will God ever find them or answer their prayers?
Though sharing an ordained minister may not be up there with the plight of the exiles Ezekiel prophesied to, you all may feel like you are a bit in exile. After so many years of having your own ministers, it’s certainly a new venture to be sharing a shepherd and it’s perfectly normal to feel a little off kilter. How did the larger church and your congregations get to this state where you can no longer afford separate ministers? You might even ask if God has forgotten you, or does not care about you and your ministry. This scripture passage reminds us that even in moments of exile, God remembers us and comes to us.
God has provided Father Larry, and all of this is possible because you all have been building relationships with one another for the last chapter of your life. You saw beyond denominational lines and, for the sake of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, decided to spend time with Christians who do things slightly differently than your home denomination. And what fruit that has born!
We are celebrating this shared ministry because you have followed the Spirit’s lead. What the future will bring is, likewise, up to both you all and that same Spirit. The text from Ezekiel is again a mirror. Ezekiel had a difficult message to proclaim, and what was his measure for his own effectiveness? Statistics, the listeners’ behaviors, the temple being rebuilt? Not at all. For Ezekiel, the measure of success, if he would even use that word, is not the outcome, but his own faithfulness. Ezekiel’s commission suggests that he may plant seeds, but he harvest is up to God.
What is God calling you to next? I’m not sure. I found more hope turning to the national full communion agreement between The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I will end my sermon with the final paragraph from that nearly 25-year-old document.
29. We do not know to what new, recovered, or continuing tasks of mission this Concordat will lead our churches, but we give thanks to God for leading us to this point. We entrust ourselves to that leading in the future, confident that our full communion will be a witness to the gift and goal already present in Christ, “so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Entering full communion and thus removing limitations through mutual recognition of faith, sacraments, and ministries will bring new opportunities and levels of shared evangelism, witness, and service. It is the gift of Christ that we are sent as he has been sent (John 17:17-26), that our unity will be received and perceived as we participate together in the mission of the Son in obedience to the Father through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
A Place at the Table 
I was privileged to preside at worship once-a-month at St. James for en extended time. I was warmly accepted there and will always remember the honor to worship with them, both in their regular sanctuary and also at Easter in their original building.
So it is with thanksgiving in my heart to have learned of those members working together with Grace in Mountain Home.
Lothar Pietz