Epiphany 3C_2019

3rd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C January 27, 2019 In my opinion, it is the purpose, the true work of the Church to create structures and opportunities for each one of us to be transformed into the image and likeness of Christ. Let me say that again. Years ago, when I participated in the Cooperative College for Congregational Development (which is the sister program to our Diocesan Church Development Institute, which we have a team from St. Thomas participating in now), I learned about a model that shows the different sources of transformation in the life of a congregation. Imagine, if you will, a circle. One the outside of the circle are three different components. First--Study and learning which includes the Biblical witness and personal experience and application. Second—Action which includes stewardship, evangelism, and service. And then third is life in community which includes conversation, food, and silence. But at the very center of these three equal areas, at the center of the circle is worship and prayer because that is the heart of Christian community that feeds and powers all the rest. In our readings for today, we have two rare pictures of worship during biblical times. First, in Nehemiah, we see the children of Israel returned home to Jerusalem after being in exile in Babylon. And as a part of the rebuilding process, they hold a worship service where all the people are reintroduced to the Law given by God to Moses—the heart and soul of their faith. Then in the gospel reading, we have Jesus participating in a worship service in the synagogue in his hometown. He is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolls it and reads aloud: "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." “And [Luke tells us] he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’" Thus, Jesus offers his understanding of his mission to those who have known him longest in the middle of a worship service. (And while everything seems all hunky-dory this week, just wait for the rest of the story that we will have in next week’s gospel.) Transformation is hard. And it’s not something that we readily do on our own. If I’m really honest, I’ll confess that I don’t really want to be transformed into the image and likeness of the Christ whose mission is “to bring good news to the poor. …to proclaim release to the captives/ and recovery of sight to the blind,/ to let the oppressed go free,/ [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” That’s not really part of my agenda, even though I know it should be. Which is why worship is so important that it is at the center of the model, at the heart of a healthy Christian community. And it is why we as the body of Christ need to be in worship together regularly—weekly, even, if possible. We see this being played out in the portion of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this week—a community that was full of all sorts of strife. Paul is reminding them that they are the body of Christ and like a body that they have many members. It takes being knit together over and over and over again through worship together for them to function as a healthy body. When I was in high school, one of my brothers got a rock tumbler for Christmas. Do y’all know about rock tumblers? Well, I didn’t. It was this smallish machine that had an opening where my brother put all these ordinary looking rocks. And then he added some water and probably some salt, closed up the little door, plugged it in, turned it on and left it. And the rock tumbler stayed on in our formal living room for at least a month. And it tumbled and jumbled the rocks together over and over again in that machine, until finally, when the month was over and my brother opened the door, out spilled these beautiful polished rocks. They had knocked all the sharp edges off of each other during their time together in the rock tumbler. It probably wasn’t a particularly comfortable experience for the rocks, but it was certainly transformative. That is why we need to come to worship every week. It is because in and through worship of God together week after week, we are like those rocks in the rock tumbler. We knock all the rough edges off each other, and we are polished by the Holy Spirit to become more and more in the image and likeness of Christ. So this week, I invite you to realistically consider your practice of attending worship. If you need to, look back at your calendar for the last month, the last two months… Have you been in church enough to be polished and shaped in the rock tumbler that is our common worship? Sit with God in this and offer to God how you feel about your practice. Ask yourself before God what, if anything, holds you back? Can you imagine what might happen in your life, what rough edges might get smoothed over, if you made the commitment to God and to yourself to be here weekly for just a month? In closing, I offer to you an excerpt from “a blessing for one who is exhausted” by the late Irish priest John O’Donohue that sums up for me the ongoing gift that weekly worship and daily prayer offer me: “You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through.”

2nd Sunday after Epiphany-Year C

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany Year C January 20, 2019 I have a confession to make. There were many times that I, as a relatively new priest, would say to my colleagues: “I’d rather do a funeral over a wedding any day.” (I think if there are times in our lives when God just laughs and laughs at us, and maybe even says kindly, “Be careful what you wish for” that this was one of those times for me.) But weddings are often so complicated—so fraught with heightened (and often unrealistic) expectations. There’s usually drama, often family drama; and if the couple is especially young, the sense that they have absolutely no idea what they are getting into, and that they are spending too much energy focusing on the wedding and not enough energy focusing on the marriage. But then something changed, and I started doing weddings for older people—people who had been divorced, people whose spouses had died and who had miraculously found love again, people who were past the first blush of youth and getting married for the first time who had worried at many points along the way that they had missed the window and probably would not ever get married. And it was these couples who helped me see past the wedding drama, the family arguments, the ridiculously high expectations and the blissful ignorance to recognize that weddings at their best are symbols of God’s new creation. In our readings for today, we have not just one but two passages about weddings. In the gospel reading, we see Jesus’s first act of his public ministry in John’s gospel which is the changing of water into wine at a wedding in Cana. This miracle becomes one of seven signs in John’s gospel, whose purpose is to reveal the person of Jesus. This first sign is a manifestation of God’s abundance. The second passage about a wedding that we heard today is from the Old Testament reading: Isaiah 62:1-5. This section of Isaiah is known as 3rd Isaiah. Scholars have determined that the lengthy book of Isaiah was written by at least three different writers over three different time periods. The first part of Isaiah deals with Israel’s breaking of the covenant and God’s abandoning them to be taken into exile in Babylon. Second Isaiah focuses on the hope for the return from exile in Babylon back into Israel. And Third Isaiah considers what happens after they go home again. And this portion of Isaiah for today is interesting because it does not start with the “happily ever after.” Rather it starts with the call by the prophet to God to make things right. In fact, the prophet offers lamentation on the peoples’ behalf, demanding that God make amends for forsaking God’s people, that God set things right. The prophet acknowledges that these people have known suffering, and that all is not yet put right, even though they have been restored to their homeland. But then the prophet speaks on behalf of God, assuring God’s people that they are going to receive new names: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken,/ and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;/ but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,/ and your land Married;” This is significant because any time in the Bible, when someone is given a new name (think Abram to Abraham; Jacob to Israel; Simon to Cephas or Peter; Saul to Paul), it is a sign that God is doing something new in the life of that person. God is bringing about a new creation in that person’s life. In Isaiah’s passage for today, God is renaming God’s people and signifying that God is doing something new here, bringing about a new creation, and the new names also signify a change in relationship between God and God’s people, signifying a new commitment to the people on God’s part. The passage concludes with the prophet’s assurance to God’s people that God delights in them, and that God rejoices over them like a bridegroom rejoices over the bride. During the season after Epiphany, we celebrate, remember, and look for the ways that God has been and continues to be manifest in our lives and in our world. In walking with people who were going to be married who had suffered loss (either through divorce or death or long-frustrated hope), I learned about how God works in us a new creation. It is the gift of those who have known lamentation who once again receive God’s delight. I, too, have tasted this loss and delight. I was forced out of the church that I served before I came to St. Thomas. It was the work of a small group of people, and it became a long, drawn-out, public conflict that was incredibly painful to me, my family, and so many others in that church. I was called to that church as priest-in-charge, and on the outside, the conflict was about whether or not the vestry should call me as rector, but as with most conflicts, there was so much more under the surface. Finally, on a Monday in April, the vestry voted not to call me as rector. And that was the most heartbroken I had ever been in my life, and this after months of nastiness and heartbreak. On the next day, a Tuesday, I interviewed via Skype with the St. Thomas search committee. I didn’t know it at the time, but I have since some to realize that was the beginning of God’s work of new creation in my life, in my vocation, and in the life of this church. And not a day goes by when I am not grateful for that gift of love and life and delight again after that season of hardship, heartbreak, and rejection. So this week, I invite you to look for ways that God continues to be manifest in your life and your world. Think about a time in your life when you knew loss, heartbreak, or change and how the Holy Spirit brought new life, new love; how God began a new creation in your life. And then talk to someone about it; share with someone the good news of God’s delight in you. In closing, I’ll pray over you the blessing that I have been using and will continue to use throughout this season of Epiphany: May Christ the son of God be manifest in you, that your lives may be a light to the world. Amen.

First Sunday after Epiphany Year C

First Sunday after the Epiphany-Year C January 13, 2019 Thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. These words from the portion of Isaiah that is known as 2nd Isaiah are being spoken by God to the children of Israel after they have been taken into captivity in Babylon. We don’t know the state of the people, but we can imagine it. They have been forcibly removed from their homeland. They have been told repeatedly by the prophets that they have forsaken their covenant with Yahweh and because of their sinfulness, Yahweh has allowed for them to be vanquished and exiled. They don’t know what the future holds; they are overwhelmed and unprepared for where they find themselves; and they are very, very afraid. Twice in these seven verses, God reassures God’s people that God is still with them, urging them twice in this passage alone: “Do not fear.” But these words of God—“do not fear”—are not empty words in this passage. They are backed by the promise of God for redemption: “I have redeemed you.” Now, this means something totally different for us hearing these words today than what they would have meant to the original hearers. One scholar puts it this way: “To be redeemed according to Israel’s law means to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin…[so] when God redeems Israel, God asserts close kinship, family relationship with them.”i So in this passage from Isaiah, God is telling the people in exile, “do not be afraid. I have claimed you as my family and bought you out of slavery; I am with you, and everything is going to be all right.” This past week, I watched the Netflix movie that lots of folks have been talking about: Bird Box. It’s an interesting exploration about fear and relationships. In the movie, Sandra Bullock plays a woman named Mallory, who is trying to raise two young children under some very unusual circumstances. A global situation has occurred in which normal people who are going about their lives suddenly and inexplicably commit suicide. The survivors identify the fact that there are some sort of mysterious force, creatures, (we aren’t really sure what) at work, and when most people see them, their eyes change and they are provoked to madness/suicide. The survivors cope by covering their windows and staying inside, and they discover that when they do have to go outside, if they blindfold themselves, then they stay safe. (In this instance, what they can’t see, can’t hurt them.) It’s an interesting take on fear, specifically fear of the unknown, and how self-enforced blindness can occasionally help but mostly hinder us in trying to deal with frightening situations in our lives. The other interesting aspect of the movie is that it points to how fear affects our relationships. Mallory and her boyfriend Tom have very different philosophies about how to raise the two young children. Tom wants them to help the children cultivate hope. But Mallory’s philosophy is to make sure that they survive, and it is her philosophy that wins out because the children do not even have names. She calls them “boy” and “girl” and they call her Mallory (even though one of them is her biological child). She is so focused on their survival that she doesn’t name or claim either of them. For me this week, this movie was in sharp contrast to what God is doing for God’s people in Isaiah, and it was a helpful reminder for me of how fear can distort our relationships, but how in God, we find our true belonging. And if the Isaiah reading isn’t enough to remind us of this, this week, we have Jesus’s baptism by John in the Jordan in Luke’s gospel, where God affirms that Jesus is God’s beloved. And we hear echoes of our own baptism in that--when we were “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” It’s easy to remember all this, sitting here in our lovely, safe church, when all is well in our lives. It is a whole different matter to remember all this, to trust in God’s promise that we do not need to be afraid because we are already a part of God’s family, during the hard places in our lives: the death of a loved one, the news of the diagnosis or even the potential for a diagnosis, the child who has gotten into trouble and seems beyond the realm of your help or even your knowledge of how to help. In those times and in those seasons, perhaps it is more helpful for us to remember past times of fear and God’s faithfulness in our own lives. Back when I was a brand new priest and a relatively new mother, I became convinced that I was going to die soon. There was no rhyme or reason to it, no rationality. I just had this feeling that I was going to die. I spent a lot of time thinking about all that I was going to miss in my child’s life. (Jack hadn’t even been born yet.) And I was so sad and so scared. One day, I was driving on the highway in a torrential rainstorm, and I thought, “Well, this has got to be it. This is how I’m going to die.” And I was so afraid. But then I had an epiphany. I had been dealing with an elderly parishioner who was clearly dying but who refused to go on hospice. I had been trying to convince her that hospice would help her, and I was frustrated because she was spending so much energy fighting and denying that she was dying. And I realized that this woman, whose life to me had seemed to be almost over, had just as much passion to keep living as I did. And I was able to feel compassion for her then in a way that I hadn’t before. (You’ll be happy to know that I did not die. After that epiphany, I made it safely to my destination, and I no longer had the feeling that I was going to die.) This week, I invite you to remember a time in your life when you have been afraid and to think about how your fear affected your relationships with God and with others. How was your fear resolved? What did you learn about yourself, about God, about others? At the end of the movie Bird Box (spoiler alert), when Mallory and the children reach a place that seems safe, she gives them each a name, and then she tells them that she is their mother. May you remember this week and always that God has claimed you as God’s beloved, a member of God’s family; and that you have absolutely nothing to fear. No matter what happens. i. Exegetical Perspective for First Sunday after the Epiphany by Kathleen M. O’Connor. Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 1 ed. Bartlett and Taylor. Westminster John Knox: 2009, p 221.