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.