Beauty and Life

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 10, 2024

4 Lent B 

          Last Sunday at Lego Church, we heard the story of Jesus in the wilderness.  We talked about the three temptations the devil offered Jesus: power, privilege, and protection.  We wondered in what way the angels waited on Jesus and what Jesus’ relationship with the wild animals might have been.  When it was time for the Lego build, everyone was asked to build a wilderness scene.  Both the children and the adults at Lego Church take the Lego build very seriously and we had some very interesting wilderness scenes.  We had a beach scene that represented one kind of wilderness. We had a wilderness with flowers and friends.  One person built a representation of Jesus in the wilderness with the three temptations.  One very small child put a Lego person in a Lego escape car.  A child after my own heart.  Interestingly, almost all of the wilderness scenes were happy ones.  A beach. Flowers.  Friends.  A getaway car.  None of the scenes were scary.  The children found life and beauty in their wilderness scenes.

          The Hebrew people could use a little life and beauty in the wilderness this morning.  They are brutal in their complaints against God.  They complain about the lack of food and water and insist that God has brought them into the wilderness to die.  While I have never complained to God about not having enough to eat or drink, I have certainly done my share of complaining to God about war, natural disaster, the illness of beloved family and friends, and any number of other things.  And this is hardly the first time the Hebrew people have complained against God in the wilderness.  Plus the Psalms are full of complaints.  So I would really like to know what about these particular complaints has sent God over the edge.  These complaints caused God to send poisonous serpents to bite and kill God’s chosen people.  I would really like to avoid those complaints!

          As utterly bizarre and inexplicable as it is that God would send poisonous snakes to attack God’s beloved people, perhaps we would do well to focus on what goes right in the story.  The people recognize their sin in speaking against God.  They ask Moses to intercede for them, which Moses does.  And God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and tell anyone who is bitten by a snake to look at the serpent and live.  While on the one hand, the story has gone from bizarre to incredible, and where does Moses get bronze out in the wilderness anyway, God’s plan works and the people live. 

          If we try to be like our children and focus on life and beauty in the wilderness, which is admittedly a challenge in this story, what we see is an agent of death, a poisonous snake, being turned into an agent of life.  All the people have to do is look at the bronze serpent being raised on a pole, and they will be healed and live.  The people recognized their sin, repented, believed God could heal them if Moses asked, then did as God asked of them.  In the end, this is a very weird story about life, but it is a story about life.  Psalm 107 is a reflection on this story, praising God for God’s healing word, God’s mercy, and the wonders God does for God’s children.  At the end of the day, even a day like the Hebrews were having in the wilderness, God is a God of love and mercy.  There is beauty and life in the wilderness.

           In a clear reference to the story in Numbers, this morning we hear Jesus say "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." Jesus is not saying that whoever gets the best score on the correct belief test will be saved, whatever the John 3:16 billboards might imply. The cross itself looked like the very essence of the wilderness-a place where God could not possibly be present and where the poisonous snake of death has done its worst.  But once again, God will take an agent of death, this time the cross, and turn it into life.  In the wilderness of the cross, ultimately there will be beauty and life.  In John’s gospel, the cross and the resurrection are two pieces of the same theological statement.  When we look upon the cross on Good Friday, we will also hear words of resurrection in our liturgy.  When we experience the empty tomb on Easter morning, we know that resurrection is possible only because of the cross.  Jesus beckons us to look at the cross, that serpent of death, to feel that wilderness, and trust that out of death, God will bring life.  When we are bold enough to open our eyes and look at Jesus raised on the cross, and trust that life will prevail, then we can also trust that in the midst of the snakes in the wilderness of our own lives, whatever those snakes may be, God will also act to bring life.  There is beauty and life in the wilderness.

                                                                             Amen.

 

         

Focus

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
March 3, 2024

3 Lent B

          In seminary, I took a class entitled “Anglican Church History.”  I enjoy history and took a lot of history classes in college, so I was looking forward to the course.  In the first nano-second of the class, we figured out that our teacher, a graduate student from the University of Chicago, had never taught a class before.  Ever.  But we were kindhearted souls and tried to be patient with convoluted lectures and confusing assignments.  The last straw came when we were given a take home open-book test.  I took the test home, found and wrote all the answers, turned the test in, and was quite puzzled to receive the test back and have one of my answers marked as incorrect.  How can you get an answer wrong on a take home open-book test?  I was just as competitive as a student as I am as a parish priest, even if in a slightly different way, so I was not amused.  At the end of class, I went up to the teacher and inquired about my answer, which he insisted was wrong.  So, I politely got the textbook out showed him where I got my answer.  I got nowhere.  My patience was running thin at this point.  I left the room before I said something I would regret and headed home confused and furious. 

          I wonder if the people in the temple felt that same combination of confusion, frustration and fury when Jesus comes barging in with his whip of cords this morning.  The people in the temple were faithful people, trying hard to live according to God’s commandments.  Cattle, sheep, and doves were sold at the temple to help weary pilgrims procure the unblemished animals God required for the temple sacrifices.  Worshipers had walked for miles to get to Jerusalem for Passover.  They couldn’t bring cattle, sheep and doves with them.  Unless they could buy the animals at the temple, they could not make the sacrifices they had traveled so far to make.  The money changers were required to convert the Roman currency into temple currency, just like we convert currency when we travel to another country.  There is always a fee, and in the case of the temple, there were sales taxes to be paid to the Romans.  Everyone at the temple was trying to be faithful to the laws given by God in the book of Leviticus and the laws of the state as dictated by the Romans.

          So, what is Jesus so upset about this morning?  Which of the commandments are the people breaking?  Fortunately, we hear those commandments this morning in the reading from Exodus.   The people in the temple buying and selling animals for the sacrifice do not seem to be dishonoring their father or mother, murdering, committing adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, or coveting.  So, they are good on the last six commandments.  The problem must be in the first four commandments.  But the people don’t appear to have put another god before God, made an idol, made wrongful use of God’s name, or violated the Sabbath.  Quite frankly, they are doing all in their power to keep the law and honor God with the required sacrifices.  So what is Jesus’ problem?

The temple was thought to be the place where humans encountered God in a unique way, the place where the divine and the human meet.  The claim was not that the temple was the only place where the people encountered God.  The Hebrew people had experienced God in their Exodus from Egypt, during their time in the wilderness, in their exile in Babylon far from the promised land, and on and on.  The claim was also not that the Temple was bad.  There are many examples in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Acts, of followers of Jesus worshipping in the Temple.  But the experience of God in the temple was uniquely holy.  However, in John’s gospel, Jesus is the place where the human and the divine meet.  John’s gospel begins “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….and the Word became flesh and lived among us.”  In that sense, Jesus is the new temple.  When Jesus is asked “What sign can you show us for doing this,” Jesus replies “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”  The resurrection will allow people in all times and places to experience the meeting of the human and the divine in Jesus. 

          The people in the temple are no doubt confused, frustrated, and angry when Jesus shows up this morning and interrupts their faithful activity.  Sometimes we are so busy and so focused on our faithful activity, trying so hard to do everything right, that we fail to see what new thing God is doing right in front of our faces and we get downright annoyed when interrupted.  In our faithful activity in this holy place, we encounter Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, in our music, in scripture, and in our relationships with each other.  But Jesus makes clear this morning that there are other places we encounter Jesus as well, sometimes in places where we least expect to have an encounter with the divine.  We encounter Jesus in conversation with those with whom we disagree or do not understand.  We encounter Jesus in a friendly greeting from a stranger or the opportunity to make a difference in the life of someone we don’t even know.  We encounter Jesus in the anger expressed against the injustices of the world.  Whatever else Jesus is up to this morning, Jesus challenges us not to let our focus on our faithful activity prevent us from seeing Jesus right before our very eyes.                                                                

Temptations

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 18, 2024

1 Lent B

When our sons were young, I used to pick them up after school and wait to hear about their day.  I'm a mom.  I wanted to know how their classes had gone, how the test went, who they sat with at lunch...all the details a mother needs to know.  And every day, without fail, the conversation with a certain child went like this: Me: "How was your day?" Child: "Good."  Me: "What did you do?" Child: "Stuff."  If I probed a little deeper and asked who he sat with at lunch, the answer was “people.”  I suppose that I should be happy that the child's day was "good," he did nothing worse than "stuff" and he had lunch with “people.” But the lack of detail left me with little information about the child's day and a whole lot of room for my imagination to work.

The writer of the Mark’s gospel must have been a similar child.  This morning, we hear that Jesus was driven into the wilderness where he stayed for 40 days, was tempted by Satan, he was with the wild beasts, and angels waited on him. The entire story of the temptation in the wilderness takes one sentence.  The story is so short that we have to hear the ending of the story of Jesus' baptism and the beginning of Jesus' public ministry to make a complete paragraph!  With what was Jesus tempted?  What did Jesus do out in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights?  In what way did the angels wait on him?  Wilderness room service? Did the wild beasts try to eat him or were they nice beasts? Mark gives us little information and leaves a lot to our imaginations.

          The writers of Matthew and Luke must have been similarly frustrated by the lack of detail in Mark's story.  The later two gospels tell us that Jesus was tempted with bread, since he was fasting in the wilderness.  Jesus was tempted with special privilege when the tempter told Jesus that God would send angels to catch him if Jesus would throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple.  And Jesus was tempted with power as the tempter offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if he would only worship the tempter.  Each of these temptations would draw Jesus away from the God who had claimed Jesus as God's beloved son at Jesus' baptism and prevent Jesus' work in the world.

As we gather on this first Sunday of Lent, we might think for a moment about the ways in which we are tempted away from being the children of God we are called to be. What forces keep us, both as individuals and as Christ Church, from doing the powerful work God has given us to do?

First, I believe the tempter says to each of us "What you, one little person, has to offer, does not make a difference.  So why bother?"  The tempter knows that if each of us can be persuaded that our little bit does not matter, life here will grind to a halt and we will be unable to do anything to make the Kingdom of God a more present reality.  The tempter wants us to think only about our one pledge, our one voice, our one bottle of laundry detergent, and forget that when we all offer what we can, we make a powerful difference in the world.  The tempter says "Keep what you have and use it for yourself, where it will make a real difference."  Scripture says that we are the body of Christ, and when all of the parts, no matter how small, work together, gospel work is done.

The second temptation is the follow-up to the first temptation.  The tempter says "Don't worry-someone else will do it" whatever "it" might be, and the possibilities are endless.  The need might be serving on the vestry or the need might be cleaning up after an event.  The need might be singing in the choir or the need might be serving as an usher for a special service. The need might be serving on the Altar Guild or making a meal for Youth Group and Lego Church.  When the tempter can convince us that someone else will meet that need, the tempter wins because nothing happens.  As long as we think that someone else will meet the need, we cannot move forward.

          The last temptation is a "I don't have time.”  The tempter says "you are far too busy and important to take time for worship and study, much less ministry."  We are busy, all of us.  But if we think God cannot run the world without us for a few hours a week so that we can worship and be renewed, we have decided that we are God.  And the tempter does love that.  Our relationship with God takes work, just like every other relationship we have.  When the tempter can convince us that we don't need to do that work, the tempter wins.  If we want our relationship with God and our relationships with fellow Christians to sustain us in good times and bad, we have to do the work of building and maintaining those relationships.

These temptations and others like them try to keep us from being the people God has created us to be.  When we fall for those temptations, we are unable to do the work God has given us.  When we keep our focus on who we are called to be as God's beloved children, and what we are called to do to make the Kingdom of God more present now, the angels will be with us and the wild beasts will encourage us.  Our relationships with God and each other will be strong, and our ministries will flourish.  And the Tempter will not stand a chance.                                           Amen.

Treasures

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 14, 2024

Ash Wednesday

          My favorite part of Ash Wednesday and Lent is undeniably the Lenten devotion booklet that we create together.  The booklet contains a reflection for each day of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter written by a parishioner or friend of Christ Church.  Some of the reflections are written by our children and youth.  Others are written by those with many Lents under their belts. Some reflections are poignant, others challenge us, and some have a touch of humor.  Collectively, all of the reflections speak beautifully about our connections with God, each other, and the world around us.  Each of the reflections is a living example of Jesus’ words at the end of today’s gospel reading.  “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

          Ash Wednesday and Lent offer us some treasures so that we know where our hearts are and where they might be better aligned with God so we can be the people God calls us to be.  In the Litany of Penitence which we will pray in a few minutes, we confess the many ways that our hearts are self-centered.  Greed, envy, negligence, failure to forgive, exploitation, anger, dishonesty, prejudice, waste and pollution-it is all there right before us and God in our prayers this day.  Those prayers point us to the many places where we misplace our treasure and thus our hearts. 

          However, the disciplines or treasures of Lent are not punishments for our misaligned hearts.  The disciplines of Lent help us see where our values have gone astray and where we can realign our hearts to better live into our lives as people of God and followers of Jesus.  Jesus also warns us not to take on these disciplines in order to be seen by other people, for that completely defeats the purpose of realigning our hearts to be more in tune with God.  On Ash Wednesday, Jesus gives us three treasures to help us find our true hearts.

          The first practice is almsgiving.  Alms are offerings, whether of money, or time, or of talent.  If we are thoughtful and intentional about our almsgiving, we give in order to recognize our connection with those who have less, who need food or clothing or shelter.  If we are sacrificial about our almsgiving, we go without so that someone else has what they need.  At our Shrove Tuesday pancake supper last night, our offering was a benefit for Habitat for Humanity, making home ownership, something many of us take for granted, possible for those with very limited income.   Or we make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for those who are hungry, warm knitted items for those who are cold, or provide laundry detergent for those who experience more month than money.  Almsgiving helps us recognize the needs of others, value what we have to offer, and treasure the opportunity to serve.  Almsgiving orients our hearts to the needs of others.

          Secondly, Jesus instructs us to pray.  Prayer is a treasure that gives us time with God as we offer God the cares and concerns of our hearts and listen for what God may ask of us.  When we pray honestly, prayer connects us with God, with those for whom we pray, with those we need to forgive, with those whose forgiveness we need, and with ourselves as we reveal to God the deepest longings of our hearts.  When open our hearts and make ourselves vulnerable to God, our hearts are changed.

          Lastly, Jesus gives us the treasure of fasting.  There are many ways to fast, all of which help us recognize our dependence on God and our connection with each other.  We may abstain from certain foods or practices, and that can be helpful.  But there are many other ways to fast.  I know of a church that posts a banner in front of the building that says “This Lent, keep the chocolate and give up bigotry, judgement, misogyny, hatred, bias, and divisiveness.”  That makes giving up chocolate look pretty easy!  Pope Francis suggests that if we want to fast this Lent, that we fast from hurting words and say kind words, or fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude, or fast from selfishness and be compassionate, or fast from words and be silent and listen.  Fasting forms our hearts as we are reminded of our dependence on God as we struggle to go without that from which we fast as we move away from actions that divide us and toward actions that bring wholeness and healing.

          “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  In First Thessalonians, from which we do not hear on Ash Wednesday although I wish we did, the apostle Paul writes “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances.  For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”  Jesus puts it more succinctly today when he says “Do not look dismal.”  I believe that our Lenten practices can be rooted in joy-not necessarily happiness, but joy as we seek to find our true hearts in the treasures of Lent. 

                            

                                                                                                Amen.

Turning Corners

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 11, 2024

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany 

          Today is my father-in-law’s 92^nd birthday.  Don and I spent Friday and Saturday in Springfield celebrating this milestone with Fred, his wife Babs, our two sons and two of our grandchildren. In many ways, Fred is the same person I met over 42 years ago-honest to a fault, kind, loving, and willing to question and think deeply about matters of faith.  And yet, when I met Fred, he was a faithful Southern Baptist and now he is loyal and devoted Episcopalian.  He wrote and self-published his autobiography 10 or 15 years ago.  The book is entitled “Turning Corners: And recognizing untenable positions.”  Fred was raised by very conservative Baptist parents who did not allow dancing or playing cards, or movies, much less other vices. The part of his upbringing that Fred internalized was the willingness to follow Jesus.  The part of his upbringing that Fred turned from over the course of many years was the specifics of how to do that.  Throughout his 92 years, Fred has recognized what was tenable for him and what was not, and kept following Jesus just in different ways.  He meandered through less conservative Baptist churches, then a Methodist church or two, then wound up living in Springfield where Don and I lived and he joined the Episcopal Church, attending worship, Christian education, and coffee hour every Sunday until just recently.  His best friends at church are gay, he enjoys a beer or a glass of wine, playing cards, and is fully and completely Episcopalian.  I am sure the 20 year old Fred Reed never saw the 92 year old Fred Reed coming!eHeHHHhhhhhhhhHThe ptHtHtHE ttTHTHttH     1tTtHE tHE The

          I think of Fred and Turning Corners this morning when I see Jesus take Peter, James, and John up the mountain where Jesus is transfigured in the presence of Elijah and Moses.  On that mountain, Peter, James, and John turned a corner in their understanding of who Jesus is and what it means to follow Jesus.  Just prior to their trip up the mountain, Peter misunderstood Jesus so badly when Jesus predicted his suffering and death that Jesus said to him “Get behind me Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  Then Jesus tells his disciples and the crowds that those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel will save it.  Jesus has hard teachings about what it means to be his follower.  When Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain, Peter is probably still stung by being called Satan, and all three are likely confused by the whole bit about losing their life and saving it.  That was not exactly what they had in mind when they left fishing behind and took off to follow Jesus.

          And yet, now they stand on the mountain with Moses, Elijah, and the transfigured Jesus and my guess is that they feel a bit vindicated in the midst of all of that glory.  This is more like what they had in mind when they said “yes” to Jesus’ call.  No doubt they feel a bit of privilege since they are the only disciples to be treated to this incredible experience.  Peter wants to build three dwellings on the mountain, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, which seems a little odd since Peter is a fisherman not a carpenter.  But however Peter thinks he might accomplish that on the top of a mountain and with his fishing skills, the point is that Peter sees Jesus with new eyes now, even if he still does not understand.

          When the cloud overshadows them, a voice proclaims “This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him.”  In other words, the voice is saying “Jesus is right.  Pay attention.”  The point is not the glory.  The disciples will still fumble about and get things wrong, deny Jesus and flee the crucifixion.  But they will also go on to start a new movement and build the Church.  The glory helped them see Jesus in a new light, listen more closely, and understand themselves as followers in a new way, even if only in hindsight after the resurrection.

          This morning we will baptize Isabelle Gugleilmi, making her a follower of Jesus.  Baptism is a mountain top experience where we, too, hear the voice of God say, in the words of the church, “This is my child, my beloved” just as Jesus heard those words at his baptism and at his transfiguration.  Baptism also sends us down the mountain and into the world, following Jesus where Jesus leads, which is not always where we thought we were going.  Like the disciples, we will still fumble about and get things wrong, sometimes very wrong.  But following Jesus as we seek and serve Christ in all people, respect the dignity of every human being, and work for justice and peace will take us places we never imagined, challenge our understanding of Jesus, and transform us in ways we never saw coming, sometimes only in hindsight.  As Jesus told his disciples, following him will take us to the cross, through pain and suffering and into new life. 

          So today, we sing great hymns and bury the Alleluias on this little mountaintop that we create here.   Then we turn the corner and journey into Ash Wednesday and Lent, the betrayal, trial, suffering and death of Jesus.  Following Jesus means following Jesus and allowing ourselves to be changed by the journey, whether than change comes in an instant or over many years and decades.  If we follow faithfully and open ourselves to the journey, we will arrive at Easter ready to be transformed by new life.

                                                                             Amen.

         

Rise & Serve

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 4, 2024

5 Epiphany B 

          I have a recipe for a confection called “earthquake cake,” which, as you might imagine, involves no small amount of chocolate.  The cake has only 5 ingredients so when I make it for a party, I like to ask the guests what they think the five ingredients are.  This involves stopping for a moment and slowing down, trying to savor each bite of this dense, luscious, dark chocolate cake to discover what the ingredients might be.   The first guess is usually sour cream.  No.  Then we move on to heavy cream.  Also, a no.  Cocoa powder? Not a chance.  The five ingredients are a pound and a half of chocolate, 8 eggs, 2 sticks of butter, a little flour and some confectioners sugar.  Put all of that together in the right order and the right way, and you have one amazing, dark, dense, chocolate delight.

          This morning, we need to stop for a moment and savor the gospel reading to figure out what the ingredients are in this healing story.  On the surface, the ingredients seem to be one part bad mother-in-law jokes, one part gender stereotyping, and one part trying to get Jesus to heal every single sick person in town.  We may not find chocolate, butter, and eggs when we stop to savor the story, but we will find some scriptural equivalents that help us understand the whole passage.

          First, Simon’s mother-in-law has no name.  While that is depersonalizing and annoying, her lack of a name also opens the possibility that all of us might identify with her, not as a woman but as someone who has been healed.  When Jesus enters the house, he takes the woman by the hand and lifts her up.  What is lost in translation from the original Greek text is that the same word that is used for “lifted up” is used in at least 5 other healing stories in Mark’s gospel, including when he raises a little girl from the dead.  Later in Mark’s gospel, Jesus refers to himself as being lifted up when he tells the disciples that after he is raised up he will go before them to Galilee.  So there is even more going on here than a simple healing.  This is a resurrection story.

          Immediately after she is healed, Simon’s mother gets up to serve Jesus and those with him, which has opened the passage to much criticism about gender stereotypes in the gospel.  These words can sound abrasive to our 21^st century ears and with good reason.  However, again, the meaning is lost in translation.  The Greek word that is translated “serve” is the same word that is the root of the word “deacon.”  Deacons in the book of Acts are those people set aside to serve, to make sure all are fed, clothed, and housed.  Those deacons are the model for the diaconate, an ordained ministry that models service and leads all of us into deeper awareness of the needs of the world around us and how to meet those needs.  Our own Gretchen Green is one such deacon.  So, while Simon’s mother-in-law does get up off her sick bed and serve, what she models is not servitude, but service as the appropriate response to resurrection.  Jesus himself said “I have come not to be served but to serve.”  In the reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul is very clear that his ministry is to serve. 

          Word gets out about Jesus’ ability to heal and the whole city shows up at his door, bringing all who were sick or possessed by demons.  Jesus healed many, we are told, but many is not all.  He did what he could, then went to a deserted place to pray.  Simon and his companions came hunting for him.  Hunting is a strong word.  They wanted to take Jesus back to finish what he started and heal everyone.  But Jesus keeps moving forward, proclaiming the good news in new places.  And likewise in the 1 Corinthians reading, the apostle Paul serves, saves some, and moves forward.

          When we stop for a moment to discover all of the ingredients that make up the gospel reading, rather than seeing a message that diminishes woman or provokes bad mother-in-law jokes, we hear that the appropriate response to being healed, being lifted up, no matter who we are, is to serve.  What would the church, and the world for that matter, look like if everyone who was healed or loved by Jesus responded by serving others?  What would the church look like if we really faced forward all the time, not looking back at what we have done but looking forward to what we can do, seeing the needs of the world with forward facing eyes and responding?

          What Simon’s mother-in-law teaches us is that while resurrection is a gift, resurrection also demands something of us.  In baptism, we are joined with Christ in his death and resurrection as a gift.  In our baptismal covenant we promise to live as resurrection people.  Simon’s mother-in-law shows us what that means. As a church, Christ Church has experienced resurrection over and over again, most recently as we have moved forward from the pandemic, but this church has moved forward from even greater challenges.  Whether as individuals or as a church, resurrection is a gift that calls us to move forward and to serve, demanding that we actually live the new life we have been given. 

                                                                             Amen.

         

         

Values

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
January 28, 2024

4 Epiphany B/Annual Meeting 

          From a very young age, our sons Slocomb and Caldwell have been quite clear about what they value in a church.  First and foremost when they were young was coffee hour, and not just the treats although those were certainly important.  Was coffee hour fun?  Did the adults talk with them or just get on their case for being too loud or having too many cookies?  They took a very wholistic approach to their evaluation of coffee hour.  Secondly, while they enjoyed being with their peers at church, they also valued their relationships with adults who were not their parents.  Did the adults really care about them, listen to them, and involve them deeply in the life of the church, or did they just want to say that the church has kids and then expect them to serve the pancakes at the pancake supper and otherwise stay out of the way?  Those two kids could accurately size up the values of a church in about a nano-second and could be brutal in their assessment. 

          This morning, we see a bit about what Jesus might value in a worshipping community.  The very first thing Jesus does after he calls his first four disciples is take them to the synagogue.  So this community must be important.

          Since this is the first thing Jesus does with his disciples, right off the bat we get the message that worship is a priority for followers of Jesus.  In our own worship life over the past year, we have grown in numbers, in energy, and in joy.  And yet, we still have Sundays where a visitor would wonder where all the people are.  If we go to a restaurant that is empty at peak hours, we wonder what is wrong.  If we go to a restaurant with a waiting list, we are excited for the experience.  The exact same is true for people visiting a church.  Our presence matters and tells people that worship is a priority for disciples of Jesus.

          In the synagogue, Jesus encounters a man said to have an unclean spirit.  We don’t know what that means, exactly, but likely the man has a mental health concern.  What matters to me is that the man was in the synagogue, showing that everyone was welcome there, and Jesus did not pass judgment.  Jesus just healed the man, demonstrating radical hospitality.  Inclusion is a priority for followers of Jesus.

          The healing of the man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue also shows that a worship community is called to be a place of healing.  All kinds of healing can happen at Christ Church.  Yes, Allan and Daniel offer healing prayers each Sunday.  But just as importantly, we can be a congregation that offers healing to those who have been wounded by church or society due to sexual orientation, marital status, race, economics, or anything else that humankind lets divide us.  Being a place of healing is a priority for followers of Jesus.

          Lastly, after experiencing Jesus in the synagogue, Jesus’ fame began to spread throughout Galilee.  How did that happen, you might wonder?  It wasn’t via Facebook or text message or TicTok.  Jesus’ fame spread because people talked.  It’s that simple.  Sharing our experience is a priority for followers of Jesus.

          Based on this passage, and this passage alone, Jesus values four things in a worshipping community.  #1: People show up for worship.  #2 Everyone is actively welcomed and included.  Coffee hour probably falls in this category, as does the full inclusion of children and youth.   #3 Be a place of healing from life’s wounds.  #4 Spread the fame (and the love) of Jesus. 

          On this Annual Meeting Sunday, we can take stock of what people experience when they walk through our doors and how they experience a lively and vital church.  They, like my sons, will size us up based on the welcome and acceptance they experience, and whether this seems to be a place of healing or division.  Last May, I gave you the top secret super simple method for becoming the church we want to be, with vibrant worship, great hospitality, an active children and youth program, amazing music, and meaningful outreach among other things.  Here is the super simple method again: Be That Church.  We have been doing that together through thick and thin over the last 8 years.  I will say this over and over again as we move through these next three months together before I retire at the end of April.  Just Be That Church.  When each and every one of us works to be the church we want to be, Christ Church will continue to grow and flourish for years and decades to come.

                                                                             Amen.