Loading...The apostle Paul, the poet George Herbert, a friend whose 60th birthday party began with Eucharist in the nave of her parish church, a small western Kentucky parish that left the harvests of the church garden outside at sunset to be claimed by those in need in the anonymity of darkness and a former Kentucky bishop's risky, selfless service to the Diocese of Haiti in the 1960s -- all illustrated what Bishop Ted Gulick described in his 2010 convention homily as "the complete self-wasting," gracious lavishness of God's love for the world.
Gulick delivered the sermon Friday evening (Feb. 26) during the Eucharist opening the 182nd Convention of the Diocese of Kentucky, meeting at Grace Episcopal Church in Paducah. "Paul, my friend and George Herbert illustrate what it means when it is not ourselves we preach. It is the Christ-infused, Christ-possessed, Christ-transformed self that does the proclaiming. And the key to keeping it Christ rather than self is as Paul brilliantly points out is service. What Paul proclaims about the individual evangelist is true of evangelistic communities--churches must not proclaim themselves but Jesus through service."
A podcast of Gulick's sermon maybe downloaded here.
