In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Juliet famously asks Romeo, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” She’s saying, “Romeo – it doesn’t matter what our family names are, what matters is our love, which would be just as true if our families weren’t at war with one another.” And her point is valid – a Capulet can love a Smith or a Jones just as validly as a Montague. Right?
While there is a sense of logic to the argument that a name is just a name and is interchangeable with any other word, psychologists and linguists suggest otherwise. Names have power. One study found that most people’s favorite letter is one that is in their name. As the study put it, there’s a reason why Sally sells seashells, and not ice-cold lemonade, by the seashore. A disproportionate number of dentists are named Dennis, says Robert the Rector. We know about the impact of bias in job applications – people with less common and more ethnic sounding names, despite superior qualifications, are often passed over for interviews.
These researchers really wanted to dig into Juliet’s argument and created a study where people had to smell various odors, ranging from pleasant, to neutral, to disgusting. They found that, regardless of the actual smell, odors were rated more pleasant when they were given positive sounding names – and it wasn’t just opinions, they found that the heart rate was elevated and people took longer sniffs when smelling something given a pleasant name.
So, perhaps, a rose would not smell just as sweet if we were to call it a “skunk flower.” I bring this up because the words that we use to describe things matters. Words give meaning to concepts, and they become handles that either help or hinder our understanding.
Over the past several months, a small team of members has been working with a consultant to create a new website for our church, and along with a much-improved website that will function as an attractive, welcoming, and helpful front porch for those checking us out online, there will also be a new look in terms of color palette, fonts, and logo.
Now, this isn’t like a corporate rebranding effort where we’re trying to leave something behind or go in a radically new direction. What motivates this work is going deeper into our name – giving us a fuller sense of who we are and what our work in the world is all about. I’m not going to say anything about the new style or logo, that will launch when the new website is ready, which should be soon, hopefully within the next month, but we’re not going to rush it if it’s not ready.
Instead, I want to use today’s Scripture readings to talk some about the organization of the new website. Bet you didn’t have that on your bingo card – a sermon about website design. But it’s very much at the root of our faith and mission. In the book of Proverbs, we read “Where there is no vision, the people flounder.” How true that is – when we don’t know who we are, what our purpose is, or where we are going, we languish. This is about so much more than a new website, it’s about giving us a sense of vision for who God is calling us to be at Grace & Saint Stephen’s, and sharing that vision with a world that is hungry for the relief of the Gospel.
When I started here this past September, I set aside some time to think and pray about God’s vision for this parish as we began this season of shared ministry together. I was led to chapters six and seven of Acts, which recount the story of Stephen’s calling, ministry, and martyrdom. I prayed through those chapters many times over a few weeks and my attention was repeatedly drawn to three words that will become the organizing structure of our website, but also our vision for who we are and what we are to be about as a parish: beauty, wisdom, and witness.
First, Acts reads “All who sat in the council looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” That angelic shimmer is beauty. Practically speaking, this is where information about the history and architecture of our beautiful church will be found on the website. It’s where people will learn about the beauty of our Prayer Book tradition and our robust music programs. But beauty is about more than the senses – beauty is about resonance with God. When things are aligned with the grace, goodness, glory, and grandeur of God, we call them “beautiful.”
This beauty is something St. Paul writes about in chapter 8 of Romans. He writes, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” The greatest tool we have for evangelism, spiritual depth, and church growth is this sort of beauty, of being in harmony with the life and peace that are given to us by Jesus.
Beauty is a truth that is nearly impossible to define, but one that we simply know when we encounter it. The beauty of the Rocky Mountains, of a stunning sunset, of the blending of many voices in a choral anthem, of the smile of a beloved – their beauty is beyond explanation and lead us towards the source of all beauty.
For us, an emphasis on beauty means a few things. For one, it means that we know that investing in beautiful things matters because it draws us deeper into the beauty of God. Secondly, beauty asks us to slow down and savor the goodness of the world around us. And thirdly, beauty gets us out of the trap of arguing about right and wrong, but rather invites us into a deeper dialogue about what sorts of things align us with that life and peace given to us by the Spirit.
The second pillar of our identity and vocation as a parish is wisdom. As Stephen was speaking, Luke, the author of Acts, notes that “No one could withstand Stephen’s wisdom.” To be clear, it wasn’t really Stephen’s wisdom, it was the enlightenment he had received from God. This morning’s Psalm declares “Your word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path.” That divine light is the wisdom that shone through Stephen’s words.
In terms of our congregation, this is where people will learn about our formation offerings, Children’s & Youth Ministry, McJimsey lectures, small groups, and EfM. As far as what wisdom means, this week’s Collect gives us a glimpse – it’s about both knowing and understanding what things we ought to do. Because it’s one thing to know something, it’s another to understand it. If beauty is recognizing the ways of God, wisdom is process of aligning ourselves with that way.
By now, you all have heard me talk enough about “relief” to know it’s an important concept for me. Words like salvation and Good News are great, but they don’t quite translate to wider society without doing a lot of background work. But relief – we all know what a sigh of relief is like, and that’s what Jesus is all about: giving us relief. Something I like about the word “relief” is that it also has a meaning in world of art. A relief is a specific type of sculpture, one in which the figures or scene emerge out of the background, as in phrase “standing in relief.” Relief is something that is different from its background.
This is why we do all of those things – Bible studies, lectures, small groups. This isn’t a school and there is no final exam. The goal of wisdom isn’t knowing facts and figures, it is about coming into harmony with God’s ways. And this will make us blessedly different. The prophet Isaiah relays the word of the LORD, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Wisdom is about taking our hearts and minds to that elevated pitch.
In Genesis, we heard a story about the opposite of wisdom when Esau sells his birthright as the firstborn for a bowl of soup. Now, I’m not judging him. As those Snickers commercials so correctly put it “You’re not you when you’re hungry.” Still, it was a very unwise decision based on impulses and cravings, instead of Godly wisdom. In the language of the parable in Matthew, it is succumbing to the lures of wealth that choke God’s wisdom, it is having no root or depth. And so, we pursue wisdom as a way of growing into the beauty of Grace.
Lastly, there’s witness. Stephen is sometimes called the “protomartyr,” the first martyr of the Church. Luke records, “Stephen said, ‘Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.” The word “martyr” is a Greek word that we’ve brought into English to mean “someone who is killed for championing a cause.” But that’s not what the word means at its root – the word “martyr” simply means “witness.” A martyr is someone who has seen something and testifies to it; someone who has seen the beauty of God, through wisdom has followed that path, and then declares that truth without regard to the cost.
On our new website, the witness page is where people will read about how the Gospel is manifest among us – in our fellowship, pastoral care, and in our work pertaining to justice, mercy, and outreach in the world. Witness is an essential aspect of our purpose as followers of Jesus, and the call to witness reminds us that while faith is personal, it is never private.
In the parable that Jesus tells, he describes an absolutely unimaginably abundant harvest: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. A return of sevenfold would have been a really good year. Tenfold would have been a bumper crop. Thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold is, to borrow a phrase from another one of St. Paul’s letters, “abundantly more than we can ask for or imagine.”
One theologian has noted “It’s not that the Church has a mission, it’s that God’s mission has a Church” – meaning that we don’t set goals and priorities of our own and pursue them, rather God has a mission and we are the tool that God is using to get what God wants out of this world. We are witnesses to this mission – striving always to seek first the Kingdom of God, pursuing peace, and testifying to the love that is making all things well.
And we accept this vocation knowing full well of the cost of discipleship – knowing that it may cost us our pride as we have to ask for and give forgiveness, that it may mean giving time and money that our fearful and selfish preferences would rather us not give, and that it may mean standing up, like Stephen, and speaking inconvenient truths to a world more interested in living by lies. Jesus tells his followers, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.” We are here to witness to the beauty of God’s love.
This is so much more than a new website for the sake of having something shiny and new – it is about being planted in that good soil where we can belong to and become God’s vision for Grace & Saint Stephen’s. May God grant us the grace and power to flourish in this grounding of beauty, wisdom, and witness. Amen.
