Sermon for the Second Sunday of Epiphany, 2018 (Year B)

Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” - John 1:43-45 (NRSV)

Outside of the New Testament, there is no mention in the historical record of the town of Nazareth until about the mid 2nd century A.D. when the tiny town had already become a place of Christian pilgrimage. Some scholars have even suggested that the area of Nazareth was uninhabited during the time of Christ. Archaeological evidence, however, suggests that Nazareth has population of around 400 people during the lifetime of Jesus. Nazareth, you see, was an insignificant town in an obscure part of the Roman Empire. It was not the sort of place that people who mattered came from. It was the kind of backwater that people associate with ignorance, poverty, and, maybe even, cultural conservatism. Nazareth was what we sometimes call fly over country.  It was the kind of place that we pass on the highway and don’t think three seconds about. Nazareth was like those countries we see on the map whose names we can’t remember; or even, pronounce correctly. It was the kind of place we assume we know all about despite never having been. Nazareth was the kind place where those people lived - those poor people, those uneducated people, and those people we are thankful we’re not.

Nazareth was the inner city where we lock our doors and drive quickly through. Nazareth was the old mining town where the mining has left and meth and heroine have come in.  And Nazareth was much like the places where our present day migrants and refugees come from. Nazareth, you see,  is all those places that we’d rather shut our eyes to.

For Nathanael, and likely others, Nazareth was not a place where one would expect anything of consequence to arise. And here Philip was saying to him, “Yes, out Nazareth has come the person who the scriptures - both the books of Moses and the Prophets have promised will come. And that out of Nazareth, God will renew the face of the earth and inaugurate his Holy Kingdom on earth. And that out of small, insignificant, and provincial Nazareth, has come someone who is of universal significance. If you don’t believe me, come and see.”

What Philip was saying sounded patently absurd to Nathaniel and it likely would sound absurd to us as well.  It does not make much sense that God, who is universal, could be embodied in something so particular God, the creator of all things, has become truly human and more specifically has become a mere carpenter’s son from tiny Nazareth. How could the universal become something so particular and how could the creator of human kind become a lowly human being?

And even if God, were to do something like that, wouldn’t he have chosen to become something a little more grand than a 30 something from a po’dunk little town out by the see of Galilee? Wouldn’t he be a king or least someone at least moderately respectable. Wouldn’t God-made-man look a little more like me and less like people I pity or disdain?

By the particulars of his coming; by the fact that God’s light broke into the darkness of this world in Nazareth of Galilee in the Roman province of Judaea, we are taught a powerful lesson as to who God is and what God cares about. You see, God came to bind up the brokenhearted, to heal the sick, teach the ignorant, and give sight to the blind. He did not come to make us feel good about ourselves and to affirm the status quo. He came to organize a conspiracy, a revolution of love. He came to lift up the poor and to topple the rich and powerful.

Liberation Theology, especially the thought of Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, teaches us a powerful concept that we would do well to remember. Echoing the social teaching of the entire Bible, Gutierrez teaches that we are called to have a preferential option for the poor. I will repeat that; we are called to have a preferential option for the poor. That is, our human society, ought to be organized in such a way that the needs of the weak, vulnerable, and marginalized are prioritized ahead of everything else. If we systematically fail to care for the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized and fail to seek ways to end poverty, vulnerability, and marginalization of any kind, then our whole political and economic system has failed. If we fail to challenge injustice in our community, in our nation, and our world, then our Christianity is worthless. One of our fellow members of this St. Thomas community recently said to me, “If we fail to promote justice, the Church has no real purpose.” She was right. Being Christian is not mere hobby that we attend to on Sunday morning or during weekday devotions, it is the center of being and the bedrock of our entire worldview- moral, political, and everything else.

All of us are called to work and strive for justice. Last week, we prayed together the words of the Baptismal Covenant and I asked you on behalf of the Church, “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” And we all responded, “I will, with God’s help.” With God’s help, brothers and sisters, we are called cast off our prejudices and fears. We are called to “Come and See” what this Jesus of Nazareth is up to. We are called to margins of the Empire, to serve our Lord Jesus among the weak and the vulnerable. We are called reach out rather than to enclose ourselves is walls of our own making.

I close with a few words from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose life and legacy we celebrate this weekend. He wrote so many years ago.

“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” 

(http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/pilgrimage_to_nonviolence/) 

So let us recommit ourselves to a living faith and care for those who come from Nazareth, wherever that Nazareth may be.

Amen

Sunday After Epiphany, 2018

The voice of the Lord is upon the waters;the God of glory thunders; *the Lord is upon the mighty waters. 
-Psalm 29:3

This past year’s diocesan convention was a big one. You could even say, it was a once in two-hundred year convention. Michael Curry who is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church was there alongside our own bishops past and present. And at the convention Eucharist, in addition to the hundreds of clergy and delegates, we had a choir of hundreds of voices, a brass choir, and cohort of vergers, crucifers, and acolytes that would give St. Peter’s Basilica a run for their money. Those of you who were present for this event, know what an epic occasion it was. But like all grand ceremonial occasions, the diocesan convention Eucharist left plenty of room for confusion, error, and maybe a little chaos

Before the service commenced the master of ceremonies quickly said a few words describing how we - namely, the clergy - were to process in and take our seats our seats. And of course, most of us were engaged in our own conversations and for all intents and purposes, ignored every word that was said. I mean how hard could it be - you just follow the person in front of you! But of course, that only works, if the person in front of you knows what they’re doing where they’re going. And in this case, the reverend clergyman, like myself, had know idea what he was doing to where he was going. Mid way through the procession, I found myself in the midst of a clerical traffic jam with no one knowing what they were doing or where they were going. Luckily, someone - whose name I won’t mention - but whom many of you know - directed us, or rather dragged us by our collars, to where we needed to be seated during the service. Sometimes, even us clergy - or especially us clergy- need to be put in our place. Sometimes, the path we are on leads only to confusion and disorder and our course needs to be redirected. 

Jesus, in today’s lesson from Gospel of Mark, models the path we are to take on our journey toward heaven through the sanctification of our very lives. And that journey follows a path through the waters of baptism to the shore of the promised country of heaven and communion with God in Christ. 

Water, if you remember, plays a prominent role in the story of God’s people in the Hebrew Bible. It is out of the chaos of the churning seas that the Holy Spirit brings forth life at the time of the Earth’s Creation. Today’s lesson from Genesis speaks powerful of this reality. It is through the Red Sea waters that the children of Israel escape their slavery in the land of Egypt and armies of Pharaoh. It is through the Jordan River that Joshua crossed in journey to the promised land of Canaan. And it was in this same Jordan River that the prophet Elisha healed the leper Naaman. Water, in particular the water of the Jordan River, symbolizes the boundary between captivity and freedom and sickness and healing. Indeed, it symbolizes the boundary that all of us must cross in our journey of faith. 

And so Jesus, descends and rises from the waters of the Jordan River, showing us the path that we too are called to follow. We, like the countless gawkers and spectators who must have been present one the day of Jesus’ baptism, might be meandering on the river bank taking in the spectacle of it all. Some of  you may not know the way you are to go and might find yourselves in a traffic jam like the one at the Diocesan Convention I told you about. 
Listen and follow Jesus into the water of grace, and to that place where God is constantly telling us, “With you, my precious child, I am well pleased.” While most of us here have been baptized and have, in a sense, crossed the Jordan River into the life of grace that we call "being Christian" - all of us are called to renew our commitment to follow Jesus. 

We are called to leave our slavery behind us - whatever it might be - and to follow Jesus into the heavenly country that has been prepared for us. Today we renew our commitment to our baptismal covenant. We are reminded of what we have left behind on the river banks before we descended into the waters of grace. But we are also reminded of the gift of grace that has been bestowed upon as we emerged from those same waters. As we pray the words of the Baptismal covenant, we ought to be reminded of the magnitude of what we entered into when we became Christians. Our very lives have been changed. And in the midst of the tumult, the chaos, and confusion, God has made you new and has pioneered the path you are called to follow. And for that we can only be grateful. 
+Amen

Lancelot Andrewes and the Coming of the Magi

 Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP Collect for Proper 16)

Lancelot Andrews, in his 1622 Christmas-Day Sermon  (http://anglicanhistory.org/lact/andrewes/v1/sermon15.html) exemplifies the four-fold pattern recommended by Thomas Cranmer in the above collect. In Andrewes’ sermon, he takes up the first two verses of Matthew 2, breaking these two Latin sentences down to their constituent phrases, calling attention to them, teaching their meaning, and finally offering a meditation and application of the text to his contemporary situation. It is a method that has its roots in both the Patristic and Benedictine heritage of the English Church. For a twentieth century Christian, Andrewes’ method of preaching certainly seems unusual but, I will admit, there is an elegance to his language and the structure of his argument that is lacking in much of contemporary writing. It is an elegance that was not lost on the modernist poet T.S. Eliot, who directly quotes this sermon in his poem about the crisis of faith, the Journey of the Magi (https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/journey-magi).

Andrewes begins the sermon breaking his text into four constituent parts, all according to their Latin phrasing from the Vulgate:

1. Natus est; or, “he is born.”
2. vidimus stellam; or, “we have seen a star.” 
3. venimus; or “we come.” 
4. adorare Eum; or, “to adore/worship him.”  

With these four phrases, Andrewes will launch into four separate meditations, relating God’s call and the Magi’s response to the movement of faith universally necessary in the Christian’s life. 

For Andrewes, natus est refers to God’s definitive action in Christ. God acts first and man responds. Andrewes writes, “Take natus for granted, presuppose that born He is.” The knowledge of the Incarnation from the appearance of the star instigates the Magi’s movement. In Augustinian terms, it is prevenient - it comes before the Magi’s seeing of the star, their coming, and adoration of the new born Christ. This phrase, for Andrewes’ represents the first movement toward man’s adoration and worship  of God. 

The second movement of the Christian towards Christ, is represented by the phrase vidimus stellam. In seeing the star, according to Andrewes, the Magi came to faith. It corresponds to the Augustinian notion of operating grace. Through the light of the star, the Magi are brought to conversion. It is the cause of their journey to Bethlehem. He writes, “Their vidimus begat venimus; their seeing made them come, come a great journey.” The Magi see and the act, convinced by their faith. 

The third section of the sermon is the longest part and, in my view, is rhetorically the strongest. In the Magi’s coming (venimus), Andrewes sees cooperating grace at work in the journey of the Magi. Having experience God in their lives, they traverse the difficult terrain in Arabia reach the new born king. Andrewes imagines the difficulty of their journey and provides  rich imagery. He writes, “A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off.” He puts the audience in the place of the Magi in the journey and highlights their hardship. Here Andrewes makes a rhetorical turn, using this instance as a means of criticizing the lukewarmness of his contemporaries. He writes, “With them (the Magi) it was but vidimus, venimus; with us it would have been but veniemus at most.” In other words, instead of responding in the present moment, Andrewes castigates his contemporaries saying that they would respond with the less concrete future tense  veniemus  (we will come). The present generation, with their lack of faith, would not have acted so quickly and concretely. And Andrewes even drops a bit of humor into this section joking that for his contemporaries “Epiphany would sure have fallen in Easter week at the soonest.” His words give us pause to reflect on how we would respond to God’s call. “Are we willing to make the sacrifices necessary for conversion to the Christian life?”, asks Andrewes. 

He also sees his contemporaries too concerned with the more ethereal aspects of religion rather than concrete action. He writes, “As indeed, all our religion is rather vidimus, a contemplation, than venimus, a motion, or stirring to do ought.” We, the audience, are proverbial navel gazers, caught up in the contemplative dimension of our faith. Having used Lancelot Andrewes’ Private Devotions in my own prayer life, I know that  he was a man of deep prayer and meditation. However, in this sermon he reminds us that our contemplation, our vidimus, should goad us on to concrete actions - to a life of holiness.

The sermon culminates with the Magi coming to Bethlehem to adore (adorare Eum) the new born king. For Andrewes, the end of the Magi’s journey corresponds to our own coming before Christ in worship. Finding Christ is an active process, requiring discernment. He writes, “Set down this; that to find where He is, we must learn to ask where He is, which we full little set ourselves to do.” We must must continually ask where we might find Christ. In Augustinian terms, we require the gift of persevering grace to continue in our life of holiness toward Christian perfection. And Andrewes continues on to say that we cannot like Herod like remain complacent and find the Christ. The life of faith is both contemplative and active. It requires both the grace to hear what God is calling us to do but also the grace to discern how we are to respond.