Bishop Stephen Lane visited the people of St. Paul’s, Brunswick, on Sunday, December 6. In his sermon he said, in part:
Let me suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, these are our wilderness days and that we are the nobodies God has chosen to do God’s will.
I don’t think that what’s happening to us is simply the result of secularization and consumerism, although there is no doubt a crisis in American values. And I don’t think that God has abandoned us. Rather, I think that, as always, God is doing a new thing. God is leading us from the comforts of Egypt into a wilderness where can get clear again about who God is and who we are and where we can be prepared to share the good news with our neighbors.
And why would God choose us? Who are we? If it were up to me, I’d pick Barack… But, you know, it’s not up to me. God has always chosen to work through ordinary folks. And the changes never take place in Jerusalem or Rome or Washington, but in Nazareth and Galilee (and Brunswick), places where ordinary people live.
