Creativity is the Cornerstone - The Rev. Spencer Reece

Pray with me.

Pray and concentrate on your breath for just a moment on this absolutely gorgeous, beautiful Wyoming morning.

The sun shining, the ability to breathe. Everybody in this room having the ability to breathe, being able to breathe, breathing in and breathing out is the very first prayer that we get, which I know all too well from just having done a baptism in Rhode Island. That beautiful baby in my arms.

The very first prayer that we get and the very last prayer that we get as we leave this earth. As my mother left this earth, as my father left this earth.

The last prayer that we get.

Breathe with me for one moment.

Wasn't that great that Brian got the gospel mixed up? Didn't you just. Everybody feel like a little looser? Wasn't that good? Yeah.

Okay.

Dear God in heaven, be with us this morning at St. John's this love hut of Christianity.

Be with us this morning in this birdhouse of Christ.

Be with us this morning as we hear these words of the gospel in this crazy parable, perhaps the craziest parable of all. May it guide us, may it instruct us in our 12 step groups, in our marriages, in our single life, with our children, in our businesses and in our churches.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Amen. All right.

Thank you for coming today.

Thank you, Molly, for being an usher today. Thank you, Matt Lee, for picking me up at the airport just 48 hours ago. I think I've arrived to you from Rhode Island.

In Rhode island, they call me Father Spencer. It's a little more New England there, but I answer to anything.

Also, it's a 300 year old church, St. Paul's Church. So. So I'm a canon there. So I'm called Canon Vicar Spencer, or CVS for short.

Molly and Fife.

It's nice, right?

You know, one of the challenges of preaching in Wyoming is that Wyoming is the sermon. I mean, this place is the sermon. And so my words feel. I'm humbled by being with all of you. But thank you all for coming and being here today to focus. I want to focus on the gospel.

And a little bit as a sidebar, Psalm 19, that was just read so beautifully. A bridegroom out of his chamber. You'll hear echoes of that in my words today. A bridegroom out of his chamber.

And also from this curious parable, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Now, what the hell does that mean? Do you ever ask yourself that question or I'm the only one, right? No. Yeah.

No.

Yes. Yeah.

So this is What I have for you today, fresh from Rhode island, from the, the bosom of New England.

You've got a photograph on your bulletin as well of the Vogelkop Bauer bird found in New Guinea. They are very busy right now, these Vogelkop Bauer birds in New Guinea.

Very, very, very busy.

The males, who are about 10 inches tall, so they're not very tall, just little, little guys, little dudes are running around the forest right now and they're creating these cone shaped huts that are about 3ft tall. So it's a big bower that the bird is making. This 10 inch bird is making this 3 foot tall love hut.

Bower, hut creation. It looks like a twig church.

You can see part of it in the picture today. And it has like a steeple and it has a corridor.

And in front of these bird churches, these bower love huts, the male bower bird fife goes into the forest and starts to collect things.

Its favorite color is blue.

Loves bottle caps.

There's a lot of bees in this sermon, isn't it? They love bottle caps, they love beetle wings, they love pebbles, any kind of trash. And then they bring it back to the love hut and they arrange it, they're arranging it right now in shapes and patterns according to colors as this big presentation before its love hut, this three foot tall love hut, the gifts of God for the people of God, or as it said in the psalm, the bridegroom coming out of his chamber.

Bowerbirds are wild interior decorators, channeling creation and abetting it.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Their cornerstones are wildly creative. Eucharists like Brian will soon arrange all of his bottle caps and his pebbles and beetle wings up there for all of us to draw us all in Eucharists that Annie Dillard would love. Dear Annie Dillard.

Now this is truly the interesting part. I think one of the interesting parts.

The female who's in the forest, in the New guinea forest comes along to check out the love hut and the arrangement of the objects in the forest.

And if she wanders by and she approves of the arrangement and the steeple and the corridor, She'll get excited and the male will begin an ebullient dance and the two will mate and the community will grow, the community will get bigger, the church will get bigger.

But, but if the female walks by and she doesn't like what she sees, she doesn't like the bottle caps and she doesn't like the beetle wings, then no dice, no eggs, no community, no church.

No nothing.

No cornerstone.

And then the male bowerbird has to go back to work.

What do you think of all this, Suzanne?

The creativity of the bowerbird is the cornerstone on which this species survives.

So without creativity, the whole thing falls apart. Molly, it won't work. If there's no creativity, there's no community. There's no church. There's no cash. There's no nothing.

No eggs.

Which leads us to this parable. Are you with me so far?

So far, yeah.

Which leads us to this parable. This. This very unusual parable full of these nasty renters. Have you ever heard of such nasty renters? They kill everybody that arrives. They build a watchtower. They make a really ugly fence. They don't let anybody come in.

And they completely reject.

What? What do they completely reject?

What have I been talking about?

And what is the cornerstone?

What is it?

What?

Community? And how did we get the community? Because the bowerbird did what?

Very good creativity.

These nightmare tenants. Do not laugh.

There's no shiny bottle caps here. There's no beetle wings. There's no channeling of creation and abetting it. As Annie Dillard once wrote, these cranky tenants are not bowerbirds.

They're all about what. What ruins everything In a relationship, in a church, in a marriage. What's the one thing that can just be a complete buzzkill? Money.

What's at the bottom of that? What's at the bottom of the money?

Control.

Oh, yeah. Did you hear that?

Control.

Control will kill a church faster than you can blink your eyes.

Kill a marriage, too.

Control.

And why?

Why does that kill everything?

It kills creativity, individuality.

And God can't come in.

There's no way for God to get in. If you're controlling everything, how's God going to get in?

This parable for me is a metaphor on how to kill a church, which I have seen with my own two eyes as a priest.

There's no love. Hut then which is the cautionary tale of this parable.

I have come to you after my long flight through ordinary time. Look at all these beautiful green tunics. This long time of ordinary time. 17 sermons, all focusing on Matthew, who was a tax collector, who certainly knew a lot about what was money.

Number crunching.

And in his gospel, as he learned what he learned from money, from control, from lack of creativity. The word, the verb that keeps reappearing in Matthew.

If you get the privilege. If you're invited to preach 17 sermons on Matthew in Rhode island, you will notice the verb that. Does anybody know what the verb is that he loves to use, which all of you inspire me.

It's a verb that is defined by St. John's Church. You embody this verb, love and what's another L word?

It's a verb that he uses.

Loosen.

Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven to loosen. As the stone the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone. It points to a loosening. You know, when you get creative, it gets loose.

Stuff gets loose, right?

Seeds scatter, the bowerbirds come in.

Jesus is a bowerbird.

And for Jesus to come in when a church starts to die, it doesn't get loose, it gets rigid.

Oh, we don't do that here.

You can't do that. Whatever you do, don't move that chair.

Just got to stay right there.

Then the kids start to disappear, get smaller, more and more rigid.

The nest gets really brittle.

Jesus arranges parables like bottle caps to attract us. And this is a beautiful bottle cap of a parable. Today, Jesus stands at the Eucharist in the love hut of Emmaus, a bowerbird arranging the bread and the wine and passing on his radical love, as happens here, each one of you being bowerbirds. Molly the usher, Brian the priest, Haley. Haley, who makes these bulletins. She's a bowerbird drawing you in.

As I told you, I just.

It's a poignant moment in my own personal life. I just arrived here. I'm glad all my sentences are coming out right at the 8 o' clock service. I was bumbling a little bit. You know, it's a time change and I've come off a very busy period.

October 2nd, I was ordained a priest. 15 years, My dad's birthday.

My dad would have loved this place where you all get to live.

He never got to come to Wyoming, but I've been lucky enough to come here for 10 years. And you just live in such a beautiful place. You're beautiful people. It's a beautiful church, and I hope I just never take it for granted. And I've been thinking all those things since I got here.

My father wanted to be a writer. He really, really wanted to be a writer and an artist.

But he was in many ways, is in many ways my bower bird.

Creativity, though, in the household that I grew up in, in some ways got lost as the cornerstone and he'd lost sight of in his struggle to fulfill the American dream, where workaholism replaced creativity. Does that sound familiar to anybody?

All these beautiful dads in the room? My dad was a beautiful dad. He worked his ass off Can I say ass in here? He worked so hard, so hard.

He loved America. He loved the West.

Yet it was his sacrifice as a Bauer bird that paid for me to go to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, a la de da school if ever there was one, where I was able to be taught by Annie Dillard, who also died recently.

Another amazing bower bird for me. I've had one hell of a lucky life.

So, you know, my dad scattered those seeds, and I was loosened by a person like Annie Dillard, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Dillard was a bowerbird who said to me in that classroom, at the time, colleges in New England didn't know what to do with creativity, yet there was no creative writing major. In 1984, we met in the chemistry labs. She sat on a chemistry table with Bunsen Berners and talked to us about poetry. And I thought, this is the coolest thing ever.

And she said, spencer, if you want to write, and I hope you do, I hope you do, then study something else.

That was a Zen Cohen, like this parable, right? I'm like, what?

Which of course leads me to here, leads me to now. I began studying theology to my parents. Surprised, who were not religious. I became a priest.

So how do churches become bowerbird love huts? How does that happen?

How do we loosen up in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving where we offer you these gifts? How do we do that? How does that manifest? How does that happen? So we don't build a watchtower, Suzanne. So we don't build an ugly fence. So we don't become caught up with just profit and loss.

How do we practice creativity and not get cranky? And what's the name of the biggest love hut west of the Mississippi?

Oh, who said that?

He's not a plant. Can you say it again?

Now, how about we all say that? What's the biggest love hut west of the Mississippi?

St. John's Mississippi, that's so reserved for people from the West.

What's the biggest love hut west of the Mississippi?

St. John's Episcopal Church. And now one more time for Jimmy, who's still at convention, God bless him. What's the biggest love hut west of the Mississippi?

St. John's Episcopal Church.

It is. God bless you.

Yeah, it really is. This place inspires me and has Inspired me for 12 years. Your rector, Jimmy Bartz. Big bower bird best. How many bees can I get in there? Friend of mine who has inspired me, who has encouraged me. Brian, to my right, another big bowerbird. Have you ever noticed how handsome that guy is? I just got into town, I was like, geez, you're good looking.

Oh, gosh, I love all of you so much.

Your campfire, your liturgy, your staff meetings, your labyrinth, your carved eagle, your sermons, your choir, and your Capitol campaign, all inspiring to me. As cornerstones, I come to you in closing. I've come here, part of our vestry will be arriving on Thursday, to learn from all of you in. In this birdhouse of Christ, to inspire us and help inspire us. I was called by the bishop, I served in Honduras, In Spain, for 10 years, in New York City, called by the bishop of Rhode Island. He said, there's this church. I don't know if you can help me.

It's just really struggling, you know, not every place is always as vibrant as this place. And perhaps there's nothing sadder for a priest to say see than a church that's on the brink of dying when you walk into it, and it's tight and it's rigid and there's a watchtower and there's an ugly fence, and they don't do. We're going to only do it this way. We're not going to do it any different. And we've got no kids. And how can you help us?

So it's five years later from that and Jimmy has come to visit us. He's helped me. He's inspired.

And with the gift of my dad and Annie Dillard and Jimmy. One of the first things we did when I got there, I said, yes, I'll come and help you. I will rush in where angels fear to tread. And they said, well, we want to do a Christmas. We want to do it. We don't have any money. We want to do a Christmas. Money again. We want to do. And you need. This is my message. You need creativity. Creativity brings the community and then comes the cash.

This parable is about the cash comes first and it kills the whole thing.

The other two have got to come first.

So. Well, we want kids and it's Christmas. Can we do a pageant here? And I'm looking around, I'm like, how are we going to do a Christmas pageant and there's no kids?

So I wrote this original Christmas play with the adults all playing the kids parts.

And immediately this thing became so hilarious. We have over 500 in attendance every Christmas. Yankees. Yankees laugh so hard they wet their pants.

So thank you. You are an inspiration to me as a priest.

We are here to witness the creation and abet it. Annie Dillard wrote, thank you for your welcome today and thank you for your rector. My friend and bowerbird. No, Just lucky to have friends in the world. Right?

When you really get a friend.

Doesn't happen all the time.

Who inspires me.

And thank you St. John's what a fabulous community you are. Every time I'm here I just get inspired.

A little 10 inch bird. I'm ready to make a 3 foot tall bowerbird love hut by the time I leave.

Thank you very much. Amen. Amen.