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May, the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight . O Lord our rock and our redeemer, amen . Bringing you back to earlier in the summer.

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The opening ceremony of the Olympics this year was a decadent spectacle that took the viewer on a colorful tour of French sites and history. As Olympians drifted past on boats floating on the Seine Lady Gaga opened the

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ceremonies with a French classic and Celine Dion closed it singing her heart out from the Eiffel Tower. Between those two performances was a vibrant tapestry of odd and wonderful images, water shows fireworks, masked men carrying

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the Olympic torch dancers singulars, a headless Marie Antoinette . It was a feast for the eyes heightened by the fact that it was also pouring rain. Perhaps the most stirring and controversial image was a giant banquet

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set up on the De Billy footbridge, dozens of colorful people. Some of them drag queens surrounded the table that was shortly transformed into a catwalk for a wild fashion show. Some took offense to finding the

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tableau too similar to Da Vinci's last supper. Others argued it was a reference to Bacchus Mark Ramsey, one of our board members uses the image of the church of the 21st century being a feast on a

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bridge between the church's past and its future. I wanna borrow that image but say that seminary is like that feast on the De Billy Bridge between your own past as laypeople and your future as pastors or church

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professionals. Before you cross the seminary bridge, most of you are living in the land of layperson. You love God, you feel called to go deeper and you're learning to explore a call that's growing in

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your heart. And many of you are going to cross that bridge and end up in the land of professional church person. Your position in the church or religious community is going to change. That change isn't

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instantaneous, but it's already started to happen. People have started to see you differently even if you don't realize it yet. In the episcopal church, we talk about ordination as an ontological change. It's not

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just a new title, but it means who we are as a person has changed. But even those of you who aren't pursuing ordination will be changed by your experience here like the feast on the De Billy

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Bridge. You're surrounded by colorful colleagues from all over the world. The table has been laid for you by orientation and now the professors are starting to bring out the courses you've enjoyed the amuse bouche of carefully

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reading each of your syllabi. Now you're a little overwhelmed by the salad course of biblical languages. Your main courses of Bible, theology, ethics, worship and preaching are gonna make you feel stuffed. The

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dessert of C PE and PM will top off the meal perfectly. All of this rich food can start to feel like too much of a good thing. A six course meal when you've only ordered three and

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you need to eat all of it. And these courses are only part of the meal. God is serving you in this banquet, in this feast. What the guests offer each other is just as important

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as what the restaurant serves. This week's lectionary gives us the third chapter of James. Luckily for me , one of your, I don't know. Chefs . Margaret Amer has written a terrific commentary on James

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. So not only did she preach last week, but she also informs this sermon. So thank you , Margaret James is writing to the a diaspora migrant communities of Christians who exist in a broader sometimes hostile

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cultural context. He's trying to help these communities how to figure out how to order their moral and community life together. He's very interested in the action of faith. This is the be doers of the word

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and not hearers only text. While Paul's epistles name multiple church leaders, bishops, deacons, apostles, elders, widows, James only uses one title teacher and this third chapter addresses those who are or who

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are considering becoming teachers. He warns those who want to be teachers, that the standards are higher than the rest of the community. Those who take on the mantle of teacher take on a huge responsibility and

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will be judged more seriously. No pressure y'all, it's gonna be fine. So you're at this feast on this bridge is your identity shifts. You're learning all you can every day. But then James comes

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in to remind you that it's not just what you're learning, that's significant. It's also important that you're careful with your words. He writes the tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity.

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It stains the whole body sets on fire, the cycle of nature and itself set on fire by hell . James sees the tongue is almost beyond our control . Sometimes the words we speak are with intention and

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sometimes words just slip out and words have incredible power to hurt whether we intend them to or not. This is one of those passages of scripture that make me a little sweaty, my brain and my words

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are not always in alignment. I have preached in ways that upset parishioners. I have sarcastically replied to emails. I meant to forward. I have made any number of random asides that have nothing to do

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with the subject at hand. Some of you may have been at the Discovery Weekend when I just started wandering off about how whales are killed by balloons was not relevant. I have messed up pronouns I have

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hurt friends feelings. I've been praying and practicing my faith for 26 years and I still make mistakes all the time. I feel James sense of our inability to control our speech deeply. Yet as we transition

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across the bridge into more responsibility in the church, we must take our words seriously thankfully or painfully, we get to practice being careful with our words in seminary. There will always be words that in intentionally

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or unintentionally hurt in seminary and in every community and believe it or not. This is good news in his book Life together, Bon Hofer writes the serious Christian set down for the first time in Christian community

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is likely to bring with him a very different idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams just as surely as God desires to lead us to

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a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship so surely must be . We be overwhelmed by great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general. And if we're fortunate with ourselves by sheer grace, God will not permit us

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to live even for a brief moment in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of emotions but

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a God of truth only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment with all its unhappy and ugly aspects begins to be what it should be in God's sight begins to grasp and faith, the promise that is given to

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it, the sooner the shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and community, the better for both. He who loves the dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter,

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even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. He who loves the dream of community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions

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may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. Isn't that wonderful? I always tell incoming students, our beloved community covenant is aspirational, not descriptive. This is a real community with a lot of beloved

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broken people in it. Each of us will say something to hurt somebody's feelings. At some point, each of us will say something without awareness, without thinking or with defensiveness or with genuine malice. And

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that's the point at which the false stream of community can fade away and the real community can begin. I don't know what course of the seminary feast this would be. Is there a bitter herbs course,

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a stinky cheese course it feels awful when someone hurts us. It feels awful when we hurt someone else . But but this experience of being hurt and hurting someone else and learning to work through. It is

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a hugely important step on that bridge towards professional ministry . Our religious communities are also full of actual human beings or human beings who will hurt and be hurt . In the fifth chapter of James, the author

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gives the church guidance for how to move forward as a community. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another. So you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful

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and effective in seminary. We practice the skills and it is a skill of being honest. When we are hurt, asking for forgiveness and giving for forgiveness , we practice praying for our friends and for those

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who drive us crazy, sometimes it goes well and sometimes it does not because we are not the dream of a community. We are a real living community . But each time we practice claiming our hurts,

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taking responsibility, asking for forgiveness, giving forgiveness. We grow more like the people. Jesus wants us to be and hope form a community that's more like the Kingdom of God. After working here for 7.5

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years, I'm not most impressed when someone gets straight A's or delivers a knockout sermon. I'm most impressed when people are brave and let someone know they've hurt them. I'm most impressed when someone can own that

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they've hurt someone else and ask for forgiveness. And I'm blown away when after wrestling and praying and time passing someone can forgive another person. Life in seminary is a big, beautiful messy feast on a bridge

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between two worlds with fellow diners. You did not choose. God has given you these companions, these friends, these opponents, these challenges, these gifts because God loves you and God wants you to grow

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. So when you cross to the other side of the bridge, you're ready to serve God's people with humility and love. Thanks be to God. Amen