“Let us go on to
the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim my message there also, for that
is what I came out to do.”
Jesus
sets a tone in today’s gospel reading that distinguishes Christianity from
pretty much every other major religious tradition in the world. Eastern religions are available to provide
enlightenment for those who seek it.
Judaism is a religion for a particular group of people, the
Hebrews. Islam seeks converts, but the
converts are brought into the traditions and tenets of the faith. Only Jesus goes out into the world to engage
people where they live and work.
Let’s
think back over the gospel readings from the last few weeks. While we heard them as individual stories,
they are, in fact, events unfolding over just a matter of a few hours. Jesus invites four fishermen to leave their
jobs and follow him. They go into the nearby
town of Capernaum and worship in the synagogue.
There, Jesus teaches “with authority” and commands an unclean spirit to
leave a person. Today we read they leave
the synagogue and go to the home of one of the fishermen. His mother-in-law is sick with a fever, a
potentially life-threatening illness in an era before modern medicine. Jesus goes to her, takes her by the hand,
lifts her up, and the fever leaves her.
She is able to resume her customary household role of tending to the
needs of visitors and guests. By nightfall
everyone in town brings anyone who is ill to the
house and Jesus heals all. Before the
sun comes up the next morning Jesus slips away to pray.
Perhaps he is praying about what to do next. Capernaum has been pretty good to Jesus. People seem open to his message, it has a
nice place to worship, a beautiful view of the Sea of Galilee, and all fish a
person could want to eat. It is not
unlike the Eastern Shore – wonderfully out of the way with a relaxed vibe and
self-sufficient mindset. Jesus can stay
here and set up shop. He can preach and
teach and heal until his heart is content.
Anyone who wants to hear him can come to Capernaum and find him. I mean, if they went out to the Jordon
wilderness to be baptized by John, this little village on the lakeside will
seem like paradise.
Jesus emerges from prayer and announces a very different vision to
his followers. He is going to move on
and move about and he is going to proclaim his message through what he says and
through the healing deeds he does.
It makes sense for Jesus to do this. As Paul wrote, Jesus “did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the human
form.” In today’s reading the person who
set aside all divine prerogatives in order to become incarnate in our world
announces he will take another step and then another and then another to become
even closer to all people. Jesus engages
the world with God’s redeeming love and we are inheritors of this spiritual
tradition. Christianity, when it is lived
properly, is an outward focused endeavor aimed at bringing God’s love to a lost
and hurting world.
Perhaps you have heard this question
before. It has been around for a long
time. If St. Paul’s closed tomorrow,
other than our members, who would miss us?
There are some congregations whose honest answer might be absolutely no
one. In fact, some churches could be
closed for months or even years before anyone notices at all. This cannot be said of St. Paul’s. Our Food Pantry clients would miss us. The people who come here each week for A.A.
meetings, Al-Anon meetings, and N.A. meetings would miss us. Quilters and Dog Dancers would have to find
some other place to gather. Various
groups that use our facilities over the course of the year would miss us. People who enjoy coming to the holiday handbell
concert would miss us. People who like
pecans, work downtown and park in our lot, or who just enjoy the beauty of our
building and a green space on Main Street would miss us. Groups and organizations we support on a
regular basis, such as Boys Home, Jackson-Feild Home, Episcopal Relief &
Development, Chanco, CAPS, and the diocese, would miss us.
As we saw at the Annual Meeting, our
average attendance on a typical Sunday morning last year dipped slightly below
80 people after hovering near 100 just a few years ago. The Vestry and I are committed to on-going
reflection about this. Average Sunday
attendance is an important measure of a congregation, but it is just one
measure. By most other measures St. Paul’s
is a dynamic and vital church whose members are faithful and generous.
At our Vestry retreat last weekend we
looked at another way to measure a congregation. How many people do we engage over the course
of a typical week? How many people come
into the building or participate in a ministry or come here for an event or
activity or just simply drop by to say hello?
While not as easy to track, we have approximately 375 engagements each
week (and this number does not take into account the people we reach through
our on-line presence). Now, we engage
some people more than once over the course of the week. Kitty Quillin, for example, is here Monday
night for Food Pantry, Tuesday night for Bell Choir, Thursday night for Choir,
perhaps on Saturday for Altar Guild, and Sunday morning for worship. She alone accounts for 5 engagements each
week!
Your Vestry and I are pondering some of
the things we might do to increase the number of people who engage St. Paul’s
over the course of a typical week. We
are not planning on closing our doors anytime soon, but if we did we want even
more people to miss us. Because we have
a fixed physical building, which is a tremendous asset in our work and
ministry, we are not able to pick up and move from town to town, as Jesus
did. Our calling is not to be an
itinerant congregation. We are called to
engage the community from and with this space, making St. Paul’s a center of
God’s love and healing for all people.
Here is another question for you to
ponder. It gets to the heart of how you
live out your faith: If you were to move
away from our community tomorrow, other than those of us at St. Paul’s, who
would miss you? How would the community
be poorer without you? In what ways
would your witness to the Christian faith and life beyond these walls be missed? Just as the question about our church gets at
the heart of our call to reach out beyond ourselves, so too this one asks you
to ponder how you are living the faith “from town to town”.
The Catechism states in part “the
ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness
to him wherever they may be”. We
Episcopalians do not go about thumping on our bibles at public meetings nor do
we tend to stand on a soapbox in the town square preaching at every person who
passes by. Our faith motivates us to get
involved, to make a difference, and to contribute to the common good. We carry God’s presence and healing love with
us wherever we go. And we like what St.
Francis is reported to have said, “Preach the gospel always, and when necessary
use words.” If you were to move away,
other than us here at St. Paul’s, who would miss your “preaching”?
