Packing for Lent

 

Ash Wednesday / Year C

Our Lenten theme this year is ‘Personal Pilgrimages.’  My sermons will expound on this motif and a variety of parishioners are going to share a trip or experience they have had which meant much to them, touched them, and in meaningful ways is still present to them.  In all of this, I hope we can discover how the most ordinary journey can be transformed into a pilgrimage, a holy experience.

Pilgrimage is not a novel theme I came up with for Lent.  For centuries the faithful have viewed these 40 days as walking with Jesus as he journeys to Jerusalem and the Cross.  In it we see a template for our own pilgrimage.  And when I mark you with the ashes, saying the words “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,” I do not do so intending to be morbid.  Rather, I am encouraging you to view your life as being a pilgrimage that begins with God, goes forward with God, and ends in God.  This perspective has the power to be life-changing.

Along with colleagues and friends, I have made three pilgrimages now.  Prior to each, we have come together for a pilgrim’s mass and the Blessing of the Backpacks.  My friend Dale preached at the first service and he told a story which has stayed with me.  It seems he and his wife Doris (the planners of our trip) approach the task of packing for it like in very different ways. 

At least two months before the departure, Doris converts a spare bedroom into a staging area.  On the bed she begins to lay out the various things she thinks she will need.  A lot of discernment goes into her master plan: What might the weather be like?  Which outfits can be swapped in what ways in order to have something new to wear to dinner each night?  How much does it weigh (an especially important question for the things you will carry on your back)?  Is it really necessary?  What ultimately will make the trip changes many, many times as she deliberates what she really needs and what can be left behind.  Dale, on the other hand, pulls out a suitcase the day before the flight and, without much thought as to the specifics, throws into it a haphazard variety of shirts, pants, socks, and hiking paraphernalia.  His packing process takes about fifteen minutes.  Hers, even after weeks of deliberation, still takes the better part of two to three days.

There is something in this to guide us as we begin out Lenten pilgrimage.  If life is a journey, Lent affords us the opportunity to pause and reflect on what we are carrying that is no longer necessary.  I am not talking specifically about the stuff you may have stuffed away in your attic, garage, and storage facility, although it might be a good spiritual exercise to begin to rid your life of clutter.  I refer to the ‘baggage’ which weights you down and holds you back. 

In a few moments, after receiving the ashes, we will pray the Litany of Penitence.  As we go forward on our Lenten pilgrimage, think of it as a list of things you need to leave behind.  It is a long list – too long to attack all at once.  Spend some time with it and focus on one or two things you no longer want to carry; as things you know you should carry no longer.  If you commit to trying harder on your own, most likely you will fail.  In Sunday’s sermon I want to focus on the resources God provides for us as we walk the pilgrim’s way, considering the ready help provided to us which far surpasses what we can muster on our own.

And speaking of personal mustering, did you know the record for the longest time holding your breath underwater ‘voluntarily’ (and I don’t know if this surpasses or lags behind the record for doing it involuntarily) is held by Budimir Sobat.  On March 27, 2021, the Croatian native went without breathing for an astonishing 24 minutes and 37.36 seconds (and yes, those hundredths of seconds matter in matters like this because is a competitive sport and out there somewhere, someone is dreaming of breaking Bud’s mark).

Let me suggest this is not a good image for what a Lenten discipline should look like or feel.  The goal is not to give up something which is the spiritual equivalent holding your breath until Easter Sunday before pantingly returning to, say, gorging yourself on chocolates.

I think a better image to hold as you approach Lent is that of a pilgrimage.  And while a pilgrimage has a holy destination, the real power for transformation lies in the journey itself, not the journey’s end.  What happens along the way has a greater impact than what happens at the end. 

If I were to direct you to give up something really challenging for Lent or if I said, “If you give up something that doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t count”, I would be doing you a disservice.  Give up what distracts you from giving yourself fully to your Lenten pilgrimage.  When I undertook my pilgrimages I intentionally decided not to bring headphones because I wanted to be present to the sounds of the journey.  I reasoned on pilgrimage headphones are to hearing what a blindfold is to sight.  What are the headphones of your Lenten pilgrimage?

One of the things I am leaving behind this Lent is chocolate.  You all have been overly generous in giving me chocolate chip cookies, especially around Christmas, and I have supplemented your kindness in a variety of other delightful ways.  Now my body craves chocolate throughout the day.  On our physical pilgrimages we were encouraged to use the ache of sore feet as a call to focus on the real intention of the journey.  Many people elect to give up something like chocolate because the pangs and cravings can serve as a way to call them back to the reason they are undertaking the pilgrimage in the first place. 

On this day when we begin our Lenten journey, I ask you to consider what you need to leave behind as you set out.  And I pray these next forty days will be transformative in ways small and great.  And while we look forward to the day of Easter, dreaming of flowering the Cross and our church looking joyous decorated with an array of lilies, don’t forget to embrace each day of the journey, believing it will change and shape in ways which will stay with you throughout your life.

Empathy as Seeing

 

Luke 6:17-26

Epiphany 6 / Year C

Jesus said,

Blessed are the poor.

Blessed are the hungry.

Blessed are those who weep.

Blessed are those who are hated and persecuted on my account.

Woe to those who are rich.

Woe to those who are full now.

Woe to those who are laughing.

Woe to those of whom all speak well.

Unlike the 10 Commandments, as best as I can tell, no person, group, or organization is lobbying to have these words put on display in classrooms or courthouses… and for good reason.  If you take them at face value, they are enormously disconcerting because, if we are honest with ourselves, the lifestyle most of us enjoy in this world means we fall under the category of the woes.

Because Jesus’ teachings here makes us uncomfortable, we tend to do one of two things with them (or perhaps both).  Either we tell ourselves Jesus is not referring to us or we attempt to soften the bluntness of what he says.  To do the first, we might posit other people have more money than we do, eat better than we do, and are happier than we are, and we have our fair share of pain and sorrow in life.  To do the second we need look no farther than the Gospel of Matthew.  His account has Jesus saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” while all together omitting the corresponding woes.   

Yet Luke, which we read from this morning, weaves God’s purpose and Jesus’ teachings in a way with which we must wrestle.  When the angel Gabriel tells Mary she will give birth to God’s child, she responds by saying (in part) this:

God has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Luke records Jesus’ parable of The Rich man and Lazarus (16:19-31) where a rich man continually ignores the pleas of a poor, starving beggar, even as he himself lives in comfort and dines sumptuously every day.  Yet in the end, Jesus says, the two find their stations reversed in the next life.

This parable gives us an excellent entry point for the teaching we hear this morning.  The rich man deserves woe, not because he is rich, but because he does not ‘see’ Lazarus.  He has made the poor beggar invisible.  Those times he is aware of him, no doubt he dehumanizes him, perhaps even contending his misfortune is a punishment of his own making.  He considers not Lazarus’ pain, only how his mere existence is an inconvenience to him.  The rich man no longer sees Lazarus as a person.  If he sees him, he only sees him only as a thing. 

Those who are blessed, in Jesus’ estimation, are not so because there is something inherently virtuous in poverty, hunger, sadness, or being hated.  They are blessed because he sees them, values them, understands them, identifies with them, and ultimately loves them. 

Today we would say Jesus has empathy with them.  Unlike sympathy, which involves feeling sorry for the misfortunes another experiences, empathy involves the ability to do several things:

·    To feel what the other is feeling (like when we blush when we see another person being embarrassed).

·    To understand why another person thinks or feels the way they do (to be able to grasp the world from their perspective).

· To discern the emotions driving another person and to respond appropriately.

·    To desire to do what is within one’s power to improve the lot of another person.

·    To recognize how our own words and actions affect people different from us.

The rich man in the parable, lacking all of these qualities, is completely indifferent.  Jesus says woe will come to such a person. 

If you want to know what the opposite of empathy looks and sounds like, turn on any cable news show and you will find people screaming to be heard as they labor to discredit and demonize those who do not think as they do.  It is a 24/7/365 contest to prove they are right and the other is wrong, never once seeking to learn what makes the other person tick.  Woe to us when we saturate ourselves deeply into this worldview of Me & Mine vs. Them & Theirs.

The Westminster Confession is a doctrine of faith drawn up by an English assembly in 1646.  One section addresses God’s Impassibility, the belief God’s essential nature and being cannot be altered or influenced by, among other things, emotions.  In the language of the confession, God is “without parts or passions.”

This implies God is wholly unlike us; not given to fluctuation or feeling.  Given this, why do we even bother to come here to worship, to pray, to pour out our hearts?  Why?  Because Jesus demonstrates God sees us.  Jesus reminds us God is empathetic, able to be as we are, able to join our place and state, able to see things from our perspective, and able and willing to respond. 

We seek to be empathetic because God empathizes with us.  We seek to see others for who they are, as they are, because God sees us for who we are, as we are.  God looks upon us and blesses us, therefore we are called to look upon others and be a blessing unto them. 

The Urge to Say 'No'

 

Luke 5:1-11

Epiphany 5 / Year C

A newspaper man before he answered God’s call to the ordained ministry, it seemed fitting after Ed Campbell was diagnosed with cancer he would write a weekly article for a local paper chronicling his fight.  After his death in 1997, Forward Movement published Letting Go, a booklet containing many of his columns.  Ed was my clergy supervisor when I was in seminary.  I learned a great many things from him, including how to share God’s working in your life in order to help others better understand how God is at work in theirs.    

This story is from Letting Go:

Today’s gospel reminded me of an incident a week ago.  We were home, when Sheila [Ed’s wife] said to me, “Come, get in the car.  We’re going somewhere.”  I was enjoying reading a book at the moment, so I asked naturally, “Where are we going?”  And she said, “It doesn’t make any difference, just get in the car.”  “How long will we be gone?” I asked.  “Never mind,” she said, “here’s your hat and your cane, get in the car.”

Do you see the point?  I didn’t want to go – didn’t want to respond to the “call” until I knew where we were going and how long we would be gone.  I was being asked to leave my comfort zone and risk placing myself totally in her hands.  I was really quite uncomfortable.  I didn’t want to take a risk, until I knew what was involved… 

I believe we are always receiving calls from Jesus.  And I think our tendency is to turn a lot of them down because it appears they will take us out of our comfort zone.

As I wrote in the E-News, unless it is the Godfather who makes me an offer I can’t refuse, my default response to almost every invitation, opportunity, or adventure is to pass.  I don’t know how long I have been this way, but I first noticed it when my daughters were young and I realized every time they asked if we could do something I almost always said no… often not because we couldn’t, but more as an ingrained reflex not unlike when Ed resisted his wife’s request to get in the car.  I wonder now, how much of the lasting joy of parenthood did I miss out on simply because at the time I didn’t want to be bothered.

In today’s gospel reading, Peter does something noteworthy; incredible really.  He has been fishing all night – ALL NIGHT – and has caught nothing – NOTHING!  Once ashore and tending to his nets he has to sit through a lengthy sermon with a congregation so large Jesus commandeers his boat in order to have a pulpit. 

Peter is exhausted.  He is frustrated after a fruitless night of fishing.  He is worried about lost income.  He is embarrassed by coming up empty-handed.  If he didn’t pack a meal, no doubt he is hungry.  I suspect he is more than a little ticked off.  Most likely he is focused on going home, going to bed, and getting some sleep before getting up and giving it another go when nighttime comes again.  So when Jesus invites Peter to head back out on the water and let down his nets, we can imagine every fiber in his being is protesting.  He has every reason to say no, but opts to give it a try.  It is no overstatement to say Peter accepts the call.  

Ed Campbell noted we often think of God’s call as requiring sacrifice… you know, like sacrificing a quiet night at home or giving up watching the end of the ball game.  But Ed believed a call requires not sacrifice, but a spirit of recklessness.  This is how he put it:

[Responding to a call] requires the same kind of recklessness that characterized the shepherd who left the ninety-nine sheep to search for the one that was lost; or the recklessness displayed by the woman who takes a large alabaster jar of an expensive perfume and pours it over the head of Jesus, despite the cries of the more frugal and prudent.

And while Ed didn’t cite Peter who, after a night of futility, puts out the nets for one more try, he could have.  Now, for Peter, the reward for saying yes is great; life-changing in fact.  Not every yes ends up with a blessing of this magnitude, but most do result in a blessing by contributing to the abundant life Jesus promises in the gospels.

Here is the reward Ed found:

For what it’s worth, I’m getting better every day – maybe more reckless – when Sheila rousts me from my comfort area and says, “Get your cane and hat and get in the car.  We’re going somewhere.”  Who knows?  The risk of responding might end up with ice cream, or a movie, or stopping by the side of the road to watch a beautiful sunset.  I think this is yet another call from God to me.  There are many, you know.  But I figure that this call is pretty good practice for another call I’ll receive before too long – the call [to] “go home.”

The next time you are tempted to say ‘no’ to an opportunity, why not – for the heck of it – say ‘yes’ and see what blessing ensues.  As Ed wrote, saying ‘yes’ to the minor calls in life prepares us for those calls of greater significance.  So go ahead.  Be a little reckless.  Toss out the nets once again and see what you might catch.

The Presentation & Candlemas

 

Luke 4:22-40

The Presentation of our Lord

Our prayer book is chock full of information most of us don’t know is there.  If you turn to page 15 you can find detailed instructions for the Calendar of the Church Year.  The only people who ever need to know this stuff are Master Champions for Final Jeopardy and seminary students taking the General Ordination Exams.  The rest of us simply refer to a calendar hanging in the Sacristy.

Do you know there are seven Principal Feasts in the Church Year?  Christmas and Easter are obvious, The Ascension less so.  These feasts, to use the language of the prayer book, “take precedence” over any other day, i.e. they are the Mt. Rushmore and then some of Christian celebrations.

Turn to page 16 and you will find what are known as Other Feasts of our Lord.  We all would be commended if collectively we could come up with all seven of these:

· The Holy Name, which always falls on January 1^st, seven days after we celebrate our Lord’s birth.

· The Annunciation when an angel tells a young girl she will bear God’s child; a day always observed on March 25… exactly nine months before Christmas.

· We round off these days with the Visitation, when pregnant Mary visits her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, a day to commemorate John the Baptist, a day in August to reflect on the Transfiguration, and Holy Cross Day.

This morning we observe a Feast Day of our Lord known as The Presentation.  It always takes place on February 2, thus it seldom falls on a Sunday, but when it does, it becomes the focal point of our liturgy. 

February 2^nd is significant because it is forty days after Jesus’ birth and Hebraic law requires Joseph and Mary to do two things on this day.  First, Mary is required to present herself to a priest and make an offering in order to be declared ritually clean after giving birth to a son (by the way, birthing a daughter requires an eighty-day waiting period).  Some Christian traditions refer to today as The Purification of Mary.

The second reason this day is significant is because, as is he is their first-born son, Joseph and Mary are bound to present Jesus in the Temple.  It harkens back to when God spares the Hebrew’s first-born males from the plague visited on the Egyptian sons and livestock. Joseph and Mary either can offer Jesus for a lifetime of service in the Temple or they can redeem him for themselves by making an offering.  They chose the second option and make the least expense sacrifice available, an indication of their meager resources. 

Look again at our Collect of the Day where both of these themes are highlighted:

Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord…

So, one focus on The Presentation is the Christian call to be sanctified, to seek both holiness in your life and God’s will for life. 

But why all the candles?  Well, today is also known as Candlemas or Candle Mass; a celebration dating back at least to Constantinople in the 6^th Century when a candlelight processional is ordered in an attempt to stave off earthquakes and pestilence.  It seems to work, and the practice soon spreads.

The image of light has a long history in biblical writings and records.  It becomes especially prominent at The Presentation because, while in the Temple, the Holy Family encounters an elderly man by the name of Simeon.  He sequesters himself here for years as he awaits the fulfillment of a promise God has made to him: You will not die before you see the Savior. 

He greets the Holy Family, takes the infant Jesus into his arms, and says,

Lord, you now have set your servant free,
to go in peace as you have promised;

for my eyes have seen your Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see,

a Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory to your people Israel.”

One way The Feast of the Presentation invites us to celebrate God’s Light coming into this world is by blessing the candles used in our various church services.  My thanks to Marty and Bunny who put together the array of candles before you which I will bless in just a few moments.  We decided on a simple display rather than doing what some churches do – hauling out all the boxes of candles we have storied away throughout the church.  The mass of them would be impressive, but the arrangement not nearly as pleasing. 

Before the advent of electricity, candles and oil lamps provided much of the light necessary for people to gather for a service.  Today their presence is largely symbolic and spiritual.  Do you know why there are a minimum of two candles on the altar every Sunday?  To remind us of Jesus’ promise, “When two or three are gathered together I am in the midst of them.”  This is part of the symbolism.  Spiritually, they invite us to a place of mystery, solemnity, and contemplation.   Their light has a way of inflaming the Light of Christ within us.

I will also bless candles for you to take home.  When you find yourself in a moment of personal darkness, I invite you to light your candle and from the card to read the scripture verse and offer the prayer.  I pray this simple, holy act will lighten your darkness.

If, come Lent, you are searching for something more meaningful than giving up liver or lima beans, may I suggest you set aside 5-10 minutes each evening to light a candle and read The Order of Worship for the Evening, which begins on page 109 of the prayer book.  I guarantee during these dark months and during difficult times you will rejoice as Simeon did when his eyes beheld the Savior whom God has prepared for all the world to see. 

About Christian Diversity

 

I Corinthains 12:12-31

Luke 4:14-21

Epiphany 3 / Year C

In our reading from I Corinthians, St. Paul continues to address a serious problem in their local church.  Today we would say its membership is multicultural.  A huge variety of people have responded to the Gospel and are bound together as a family in Christ.  Some are Jews, others Greek.  Some have been free all their lives, others are slaves.  Within one congregation there is tremendous diversity around ethnic origin, social status, economic prosperity, and life experience. 

From what Paul writes, we can deduce three things he believes about their situation: 

First, diversity in a congregation is to be expected.  Using the metaphor of the human anatomy, Paul says a body of people consists of different parts.  The hand is not the foot; the ear is not the eye.  Each is different, distinctive, unique.  This was their reality then; it is our reality today; more so in society as a whole than in our parish.

Second, Paul acknowledges diversity is a challenge.  We gravitate naturally to people who look like us or act like us or think like us or earn like us.  Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, young and old, high-tech savvy and no tech ability, rock and rap, evangelical conservative and mainline liberal, Hokies and Hoos: we all have to learn how to get along… and this can be a real challenge.  In fact, even in a homogenous group, people sniff out differences and divide accordingly. 

So here is the third thing Paul says about the challenge facing the church in Corinth: Diversity, which is a reality and a challenge, is also a blessing.  Within their wide variety of people and experiences there is an incredible array of gifts and abilities.  Just as the human body needs individual parts to carry out distinctive functions, so too does a community of faith, and so too does our country, and so too does our world.

This giftedness in diversity does not happen by accident.  Paul states it is a direct result of the intentional work of God’s Spirit.  In fact, we can say a lack of diversity within a group or within society is an indicator God’s Spirit is being withheld or ignored or frustrated. 

In our Gospel reading, we hear of a time when Jesus returns to his hometown and goes to church on the Sabbath.  In our parish, various trained members of the congregation read assigned lessons and the ordained professional – me – comments on them.   We don’t know if in the synagogue individual members are assigned to read and comment on a specific day and we don’t know if the readings are assigned by something like our lectionary or if they are chosen by the reader, but in any case, on this particular day Jesus is the reader and the lesson comes from the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

   because he has anointed me

 to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed.  These people, be they spiritually poor or financially poor, captive in a literal sense or in a figurative one, lacking vision or lacking insight, oppressed from without or oppressed from within, are a part of the diversity of a community.  They are a part of our reality, our challenge, and our blessing.  That Jesus claims them to himself in the inaugural moments of his public ministry says something important, doesn’t it.  He is not willing to forsake a single person, especially a person who the rest of the group might consider to be dragging them down or holding them back.  Jesus sides with the most vulnerable members of the group specifically because they are the ones at risk.  They are the ones in peril.

I used to carry in my prayer book a post-it note on which I had written a quote by Evelyn Underhill, the English writer and Christian mystic.  I put it in my prayer book in order to see it every time I opened it at the beginning of a service.  Here is what the note said: 

“In the Kingdom of God,

    no one is adequate, but everyone is dear.” 

I wanted to remind myself my own shortcomings in no way removes me from God’s love and keep.  I also wanted it to define how I looked at each person attending the service: the acolyte who can’t remember what to do, the altar guild member who is obsessing about a wrinkle in the hangings, the usher who seems oblivious to the visitor, the choir member whose not-so-alto voice is giving me a spitting headache, the parishioner who visits the land of nod during the sermon, the person poised to point out a typo in the bulletin, the small child who, noisy, squirming, proclaims “I have sat still long enough”: none – starting with me – is adequate, but each – including me – is dear.  To use some common slang, this is how we roll as the body of Christ.

Every faith community is as strong as these four elements:

The faith and faithfulness of its members.

The quality of the relationships within the faith community.

The care and concern it expresses for those outside the faith community.

The level of leadership rising up within the community.

Each of these four is essential.  If one is lacking the effectiveness of the faith community is diminished and its future vitality is in peril.  Today’s readings remind us to focus on the quality of our relationships: to value and build on our diversity and to recognize a telling mark of our common life is seen in our acceptance of and our compassion for the least and most vulnerable in our midst.

The People at Cana

 

John 2:1-11

Epiphany 2 / Year C

This morning we learn about Jesus’ first miracle recorded in John’s gospel.  He is attending a wedding festival, which, at the time, is a celebration lasting up to an entire week.  At some point during the prolonged gathering the wine runs out.  So Jesus, in a nonchalant manner, converts the water used for hand and foot washing into the best wine of the feast.  The account itself contains a diverse cast of characters we should get to know.

First there is Mary, the mother of Jesus.  She is at the wedding to celebrate.  Because she is not a part of the immediate family, she has no specific duties to tend.  Still, she is taking in everything and is keenly aware of how things are going.  She senses the struggles of others and feels their pain.  Because she is a deeply spiritual person, Mary brings the needs of others in intercession to Jesus.  It is fair to say he would never have changed the water had his mother not placed before him the need for more wine. 

Then there is the chief steward.  He is working incredibly hard trying to ensure the event is a success.  He is the person who tends to the details.  He is the one who must stretch the precious resources to meet the numerous needs of the celebration.  He is the one doing his best imitation of the little boy who plugs the holes in the dyke with his fingers.  He is the one on whose leadership everyone else depends.

Next there are the servants.  They too are not invited guests.  They are here to serve the needs of others.  They are not the chief steward who is charged with anticipating what is needs of others.  They must receive direction before they act.  But once given their marching orders, you can count on them to march, even if the order is to serve drinks from the water in the cleansing jars.

Then there are the disciples.  They are the new folks on the scene; a hodge-podge collection of people who have recently gathered around Jesus.  They do not know him as well as the others in the story.  They do not even know each other.  But they find themselves at the celebration because they have been invited to accompany Jesus.  This, for them, is a time of discovery.  It is a time to bond together.  They are not going to be asked to intercede, like Mary, or lead, like the chief steward, or to give of themselves, like the servants.  All these things will be asked of them later and at a much higher level, but not today.

The final character in the story is the bridegroom.  While the narrative focuses on Jesus, the people at the event our Lord is attending are focused on the ‘man of the hour.’  A profound joy has come into his life and he wants to share the good news with those closest to him.

I suppose the lesson to be drawn from this story is Jesus’ deep desire to keep the party going… even to make it better than before.  It is a story about sustainment, rejuvenation, and even revival.  By describing the rich diversity of actors at the wedding, John wants to draw us into the story.  He wants us to see here and now in our time what those people experienced that day at the wedding.  And, if you shift the setting of the story from the wedding to the life of our congregation, it has something insightful to say to us on the occasion of our Annual Meeting.

Like Mary, we have people who are acutely tuned in to the burdens of others.  They intercede, through prayer and action, to embody God’s abiding presence for those who are in a challenging place.

Like the chief steward, we have people whose goal is to make this church the kind of place where others can find God and know God’s love.  They perform miracles with the resources at hand.  Day after day, week after week, they joyfully offer their leadership and labor in service to others for the glory of God.

We have many whose contributions mirror those of the servants.  They are hard-working, dutiful, team players. When asked to help, they will help – without hesitation, without compliant.  They understand the value of servanthood and offer what is needed when it is asked for.

In the disciples I see the most recent members to join our parish family.  They have been drawn here from diverse walks of life for many varied reasons.  One thing binds them together: they sense the presence of Jesus here – perhaps in our worship, or in our common life, or in our care for one another.  They are learning about us and about one another.  They are enjoying the party and some day will take on a significant role in our common life.

Just as with the bridegroom, there are times in life when each one of us becomes the focal point of our faith community.  It may be an occasion of great joy or a moment of deep loss and sorrow.  You will be lifted up and receive the love and support of the parish family all the while discovering first-hand how deeply God loves you.

Let’s celebrate how the same kind of people who gathered at the wedding feast are assembled here today.  Well does Paul observe in our second reading there are a variety of gifts in a faith community, but it is God who allots, then activates them all.  

So, there they are at the wedding and here we are in the midst of the 383^rd year of our parish’s existence.  More than once over this span of time the wine has run out, yet always Jesus finds a way to renew our life and work as a congregation.  As the experience of COVID fades into the past, it feels as if a new wine is flowing.  Thanks be to God.

The sign which Jesus performs in Cana wonderfully transforms the festival at hand.  It averts disaster through such an understated miracle chances are most people are not even aware it has occurred.  All they know is the wine served toward the end of the celebration is even better than the wine served at the beginning.  We give thanks the same feeling of joy and vitality which kept the Cana festivities going, by the grace of God, flows through our parish today.

Ever-Widening Circles of Fellowship

 

Epiphany 1 / Year C

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

This is one of my favorite collects in the prayer book:

O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world.  Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children… (p. 840)

This prayer gives me language to articulate my core understanding of the nature of God, the relationship which exists within the Holy Trinity, and the fundamental reason for all reality:

1.       God, who is manifest in three co-equal parts, exists in relational harmony.  

2.       God calls forth all creation out of a desire to experience relationship beyond God’s own Self.

3.       Because this is the reason for our existence, our purpose in life is to seek ever-widening circles of fellowship with one another, with all creation, and with God.

Our gospel reading speaks of the relationship which exists within God’s very being.  Present is the Voice of God, the dove-like manifestation of God’s Spirit, and the Word of God made flesh – Jesus.  It is, perhaps, the most dramatic and most vivid revealing of God’s relational harmony in all Scripture.

In the reading from Isaiah, we hear the words God speaks to exiles in Babylon.  At the time, the only way God’s people can make sense of this situation is to understand it as God’s wrathful judgment for their wanton disobedience and sin.  Isaiah sees God’s nature in a very different way:

Thus says the Lord,
he who created you…

he who formed you…:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine...

Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,

…I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you;

I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’
and to the south, ‘Do not withhold’;

bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the end of the earth -

everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”

We hear in this God’s longing to be in ever-widening circles of fellow by drawing us into God’s perfect relational harmony.

Here is some background on the second reading about the Samaritans and their ‘partial’ baptism: 

·             When the Assyrian empire captures the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8^th century BC, they resettle the region.

·             Some of the Israelites in Samaria intermarry with these people, who everyone else considers to be gentiles and pagans.

·             Samaritans have different practices from orthodox Jews, among them accepting only the first five books of the Old Testament and worshipping at Shechem rather than Jerusalem.

·             For these and other reasons, Jews (and the early Church) consider them to be ethnically and religiously unclean, regard them with deep distain, and shun every and all contact with them.

Philip, an energetic, spirit-filled deacon in the early Church, finds God’s Spirit leads him to Samaria and so he begins to preach.  He matches words with healings and exorcisms.  Large numbers convert and wish to be baptized, but in a curious result, they receive Jesus through this sacramental act, but not the Holy Spirit.  Peter and John travel north to Samaria, investigate, and personally conduct another baptism which confers the Holy Spirit them.

Scholars have puzzled over this account.  Why isn’t one baptism sufficient, which we Episcopalians hold sacrosanct?  Well, the answer seems to be drawing Samaritans into the Jesus movement is such a radical, new development, it requires the early Church to be especially present to witness God’s aspiration to grow the faith in ever-widening circles of fellowship. 

Ever-widening circles of fellowship.  Is this not a perfect way to describe our life’s work and call?  Consider this: unless you are a twin like me, your first experience is as a solitary individual in a womb.  At some point before birth you begin to respond to your mother’s touch and voice – your initial circle of fellowship.  Typically, once born, your fellowship widens to include a father, perhaps a sibling or two, and maybe some grandparents. 

This small circle expands again, drawing in extended family and daycare providers.  Playmates come along.  You sense yourself a part of a wider community know as a church, then a school, and on it goes into adulthood and beyond.  You invest a lifetime developing ever-widening and increasingly diverse circles of fellowship because this is how God created you to be.  One way, then, to describe sin is as a rejection of this call by choosing to remain in a small, narrow existence with a homogenous group of people who are just like you.  To do the opposite – to reach out to an increasingly diverse group of people – is one way we express we are created in God’s image.

Did you see any of the memorial service for President Carter held at the National Cathedral?  Regarded as a person of deep and authentic faith, one of the things which struck me was the depth and bread of his relationships.  He began his life in his mother’s womb, as we all do, but over the course of 100 years his circle of fellowship grew to include people of high and low stature, from folks who attended his weekly bible studies to national leaders from all over the world, from people willing to pick up a tool and help him build a house to diplomates working with him to insure the integrity of a foreign election.  President Carter will be remembered for many things, but I will always think of him as a faithful Christian who embodied God’s deep desire for each of us to enrich our lives (and thus the world) through ever-widening circles of fellowship.