The Third Sunday after Epiphany Year B

Epiphany 3B_2021 January 24, 2021 “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” These words were spoken by William Temple who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the early 1940’s. Temple was the son of two British aristocrats and his childhood was spent living in episcopal palaces in England. (His father was also Archbishop of Canterbury, and the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury is known as Lambeth Palace.) But Temple is known for his constant concern for those in need or under persecution, and for his willingness to stand up on their behalf to governments at home and abroad. I first heard this quote shared by the bishop who ordained me, and I will confess that I have revisited it off and on throughout my ministry. In fact, it has, in some ways, haunted me, and I think it should haunt all of us, who work for the institutional church, who spend so much of our life and our love and our labor on behalf of God, trying to assist in the building up of God’s kingdom through the work of building up God’s church. Think about it for a second. What would that even look like to have a church that really only exists for the benefit of those who are not its members? On our absolute very best days, I think we here at St. Thomas come close to this, but if I am honest, I recognize that on most days, we do not. And I know I am as much to blame for that as anyone. Our gospel reading for today gives us Mark’s version of when Jesus first calls his disciples. Immediately before our reading for today picks up, Jesus has been driven out into the wilderness for 40 days where he is tempted by Satan, hangs out with the wild beasts, and is waited upon by angels. Then our reading for today picks up: “After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’” Mark goes on, in his customarily sparse style, to tell us how Jesus walks along the Sea of Galilee and calls each of his disciples who, “immediately” (which is also one of Mark’s expressions that he uses over and over throughout the gospel), leave their fishing nets and their father behind to follow Jesus. In reading the gospel of Mark continuously over the course of 50 days with the Good Book Club, it is especially striking to me in this season that this is only the beginning of the pattern of call of Jesus and the disciples. Throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus calls the disciples and then he sends them out to do good work. He gathers them together again for teaching and then he sends them out again with a task—go spread the good news; go on across to the other side of the lake without me; feed these 5,000 who have followed us here to this secluded place. The call of discipleship is a call that is always changing, always adjusting to the needs of the world. The call of discipleship, the call of the church is never static and unchanging. The only things that are static and unchanging in this life are things that are dead. As another writer writes about this passage: “Jesus will form [the disciples] into a community shaped through time by a pattern of being called and sent. This is the community we know as the Church, whose work it is to share good news, make disciples, help those in need, build a just world, and care for the earth.”i The Greek word that we translate as church is ekklesia. And it means those who are called out. Let that sink in for a moment. The original meaning of the word church is “those who are called out.” “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” I know you are tired of not being able to gather, in this space, all together in the ways in which we have become accustomed. I think it is safe to say that no one is more tired of this season than your two clergy. But the good news that has been forcibly reinforced for us this year is that the Church isn’t just a building. It is those of us who have been called out by Jesus to do his work in a needy world: to feed the hungry; to offer good news to those who sorely need it; to be agents of healing and reconciliation in the midst of conflict and division, and to be united in Christ through our service to others, even at times putting their needs above our own. Y’all know I’ve been reading Christian Wiman’s book My Bright Abyss devotionally these past few weeks. He reminds us that God is always present, always calling us. “Religious despair is often a defense against boredom and the daily grind of existence. [If that doesn’t sum up the last 11 months!] Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that we are distant from God and then seek to make that distance into an intense experience. [Or we generate our own intense experience by focusing on the negative or the dramatic or even stirring it up in our lives, our world, our church.]…God is not absent. He is everywhere in the world we are too dispirited to love. To feel him-to find him-does not usually require that we renounce all worldly possessions and enter a monastery, or give our lives over to some cause of social justice, or create some sort of sacred art, or begin spontaneously speaking in tongues. All too often the task to which we are called is simply to show a kindness to the irritating person in the cubicle next to us, say, or to touch the face of a spouse from whom we ourselves have been long absent, letting grace wake love from our intense, self-enclosed sleep.”ii Your invitation this week is to “let grace wake love from your intense, self-enclosed sleep,” to look for ways to love the world: be kind to someone who irritates your or with whom you disagree; notice and acknowledge someone who would normally be beneath your notice; be intentional in the love you give to the people who are closest to you. Look for ways to be the Church in the world that this world so desperately needs right now: “share good news, make disciples, help those in need, build a just world, and care for the earth.” i. A Journey with Mark: The 50 Day Bible Challenge. Ed Marek P. Zabriskie. Day 2 Meditation by The Rt. Rev. Fred Hiltz Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. Forward Movement: 2015, pp15-16 ii. Wiman, Christian. My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. New York: 2013, pp 108-109.