Sermons

Jan 22 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

Sermon for January 22, 2006
Annual Meeting Sunday, 3 Epiphany

Jeremiah 3:21-4:2 Psalm 130 I Corinthians 7:17-23 Mark 1:14-20

Two weeks ago we celebrated the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. Remember what comes next in the gospel story of Jesus’ life: he was driven into the desert wilderness, to fast and pray. There he encountered both God and demonic forces. The angels ministered to him so that he could make it through. He wrestled spiritually, internally, and when he came out, he was a different man.

Jesus then began to move out into the world, to heal and teach. But first he had to assemble a community of disciples who would share this journey with him. He called Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John, and others. They left their fishing nets and followed him on foot. Gathered around Jesus, they listened, prayed, and, no doubt, were astonished by his words.

It was an intimate time, like Jesus’ time in the desert wilderness. In this spiritual community, together they wrestled with their own internal demons, their own doubts. Jesus challenged them, and opened their eyes to see things they’d never seen before. They were transformed, and came out of it as different people. Then with Jesus, the disciples too began to move out into the world, healing and teaching. They moved from town to town, encountering all sorts of surprises.

The disciples called others into community, calling them into that internal space together where they would have to confront all their assumptions, their fears, their brokenness, their shame, so that they could then be forgiven, healed and enlightened.

They too were then sent out into the world to do the same. On and on it went over the years. It is the story of the church: calling people into an internal space of transformation in community, where we are confronted, enlightened, healed. Made new people, we then go out and touch others, that they, too might be called, transformed, and sent. The life of the church is always moving like a great spiritual tide: inward, then outward, again and again.

You were called here. Something about this community called to you and asked you to be here. You said yes, and have remained. In this internal spiritual space of community, you hear the astonishing teaching of Jesus proclaimed and you study the teaching of the church. You are anointed for healing and counseled in faith. You confront your demons. You learn to pray and are fed with the sacraments. You examine your life, so that you can turn and follow Jesus more faithfully. In this community of Christ’s body, in this internal spiritual place we share together, you encounter Christ and he transforms you. You come out of it a different person.

What then? If you follow the pattern of the disciples, if you let yourself be carried by the great spiritual tide of the church through history, you are swept back out into the world. Because of your transformation in the Body of Christ, you take more love and reconciliation into your family, your workplace. You spread kindness. You feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the broken, and strive for justice. You are light to the world. You also invite others back into this fellowship so that they might go inward, be transformed in community, and then become more light in the world.

And so the tide comes in, the tide goes out. This is our mission as the Body of Christ. It is our purpose as a church. Listen to our parish mission statement:

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, a welcoming community of faith in the Anglican tradition, invites all God’s people to seek spiritual growth through a life of prayer, study, stewardship, and fellowship, in order that we may be transformed by the love of God in our midst and sent out to serve others.

On this Annual Meeting Sunday, we remember that we are not just a religious club, with dues and meeting times and a secret handshake. We’re not just a non-profit business – or in the current language, a faith-based organization. We are a desert wilderness where angels feed and minister to us even as we wrestle our demons. We are a place of internal spiritual preparation, a staging ground for our service to the world. We are a base camp where hundreds of gospel servants come and go, stopping in to be re-charged and re-nourished for their demanding work in the world.

And so in our Annual Meeting we will read and hear about the ways in which we support our internal, communal life: operating fund and endowment, building and grounds, staff, the cycle of public worship, and so many programs for spiritual growth and education in the faith.

We will also read and hear about the sending out: feeding homeless children in the public schools, training people for ordained ministry, reaching out to the home-bound, starting a new West Side mission congregation.

You may be one of those who is very involved in all of this; or you may need to be more peripheral right now. But whatever your place in this parish community, it is your call as a follower of Jesus Christ to continually make this tidal pilgrimage in and out.

Being a Christian is not merely the vague attempt to be a better person, whatever that means. It is not merely holding to orthodox beliefs and proper moral behavior so that you can justify yourself. The Christian life is a call to spiritual transformation and service to the world. That’s what Jesus was all about: calling disciples to become new people, so that they then might be a light to the world.

I believe that this Christian calling is essentially a mystical process. You may not think of yourself as a mystic – seeing visions and hearing voices. But it is mystical because the transformation that happens to us when we respond to God’s call is not our own doing.

We are made more grounded, more peaceful, more trusting, more capable of love not because we have set these as goals and succeeded in changing ourselves. We are transformed because we say yes to God without knowing where that yes will take us. In prayer and faith, we open ourselves to grace and then in response, the Spirit of Christ works on us mysteriously, like leaven in a loaf of bread.

We then turn around and discover that over time we have been made different people; we begin to resemble the One we follow, Jesus. In response to our openness, he begins to live through us. It is a mystical, grace-filled process of becoming.

The Christian life is mystical in its outward movement as well. For even our service to the world is not our own doing. If it is, it is usually filled with all sorts of pride and self-congratulation. Instead, we are merely vehicles for grace to flow out into the world. It is not our light that we spread; it is Christ’s.

When we get out of the way, when we put aside self-concern, God then has room to move through us and out to others. When we are less driven by fear and attachment, when we are willing to be used for God’s purposes and for the good of all, we just naturally love and serve, because it is the Spirit who works through us.

This mystical life of transformation and service is really what we celebrate today. Yes, it is a day for elections to our governing board and consideration of such practical things as paving parking lots and paying staff salaries. But the whole reason we do these things is so that the mystical process of transformation and service can go on in our time and place in history. And as it continues, we participate in nothing less than the expansion of the kingdom of God.