Epiphany 3, Year A 2020

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23
January 26, 2020

Looking from the main entrance to Grace Episcopal
Church, Galveston, just before the Eucharist 1/26/20. 

(Note: Heavy rains overnight left street flooding at Grace and the surrounding neighborhood. A hearty group of 38, most with soaking wet feet, participated in the Eucharist. It would have been quite reasonable to refrain from attending worship under these circumstances....so, as it turned out, those who recklessly waded through the water made an appropriate group to hear the sermon that follows:)

After John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into the region of Galilee, settled in Capernaum, and began proclaiming “good news.” This good news, or Gospel, is summarized in Matthew, “Repent because the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” We have just heard that Jesus brings this news, of the dawning Kingdom of Heaven, down to the Sea of Galilee. To some fishermen there, the Kingdom is experienced as a call to a new vocation.

Later in Matthew’s story, Jesus expands on the good news to a large gathering who find encouragement in the “Sermon on the Mount.” Others will receive the good news in being made whole, in the calming of a storm...even in the unexpected baskets of left-over bread and fish after five thousand people were fed. Repeatedly, the Kingdom of Heaven’s nearness is experienced in different ways by different people and groups. This happens because Jesus brings the Kingdom near to where we are; not where we should be. The hungry experience food, the sick experience healing, the possessed experience freedom, tax collectors and sinners experience forgiveness.

In today’s reading from Matthew, four fishermen are called to follow Jesus on an adventure with the promise of becoming “fishers of people.” The “good news” for them takes the form of Jesus’ invitation to a new life. But did you notice the one character who was apparently not called? The one character who did not go along? Zebedee, the father of James and John, was left behind in the boat. Can you imagine how he might have viewed this call as less than positive? Zebedee’s sons left suddenly, on a whim! Did they consider what leaving their father behind would mean for him? It is not a stretch to imagine Zebedee chiding his boys for being reckless. What are we to make of this invitation for Simon and Andrew, James and John, to leave behind, on the spur of the moment, their families, their responsibilities and commitments?

First, the call is consistent with Jesus message in other places. Leaving the other ninety-nine sheep to go in search of the lost one...isn’t that really reckless too? While at the house of Simon the Leper, a woman will anoint Jesus with extremely expensive perfume. The disciples object to this reckless waste of resources for a very small organization with more pressing priorities. But Jesus defended her spontaneous act of kindness.

This kind of recklessness appeals to me on some level. While, on the one hand, there is risk in making quick decisions without enough thought, on the other hand, I wonder what life would be like without the freedom of spontaneity. Isn’t there a place for stepping out and being open to serendipity? Is some part of our humanity missing, when every decision has to be made in the same calculated way you fill out a tax return? Consider that, on occasion, we do break with convention, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, because it is the only way to be authentic, the only way to be true to our calling.

Second, God’s call to us encompasses all the ways that God is revealed to human beings. Epiphany is the season when the main curriculum is how the Kingdom of Heaven is shown, or made manifest. When I went to confirmation class as a teenager, I was taught that the authority on which our faith is based includes, scripture, tradition, and reason. This is what we refer to as Anglicanism’s “three-legged stool.” That Episcopalians lift up reason itself as an avenue of God’s light means that we are never asked to check our brains at the door when we worship, study, pray, or serve. I value this greatly but am wary of emphasizing reason to the exclusion of the others. When our kiddos were growing up, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time became one of the stories we all read and shared. An Episcopalian, L’Engle was certainly aware of the “three-legged stool.” It is very telling that the antagonist of this novel turned out to be a disembodied brain! Reason can point to God, yes, but beware that reason can also be misappropriated for evil and deception. We are fallen creatures and are all too capable of rationalizing our mistakes to make them look good.

Thankfully, our response to God’s call may tested from the perspectives of scripture, tradition and reason, but this is often in hindsight. Like these disciples in Matthew, sometimes, we are called to respond in the spur-of-the-moment. Now, I like to avoid quick decisions when I can. As a head of school, people often heard me say, “Let me think about that and get back to you.” But, the option to delay is not always available. Sometimes, you sense that waiting to act would lose an opportunity, and you have to trust your intuition.

Might sometimes we ignore to our detriment that religious experience also comes to us as intuition? Perhaps, intuition could be the fourth leg of our Anglican stool.

One of my favorite figures in the history of science is Alexander Fleming. In the 1920’s, he discovered antibiotic properties in saliva. He was suffering from a severe head cold and serendipitously drooled into one of his petri dishes. Later, he would discover penicillin in an equally unorthodox way. I suppose that Fleming was disciplined much of the time, but he was messy enough that his lab yielded unexpected results. And, he was messy enough sometimes...just to follow a hunch. Thanks to Fleming’s willingness to follow mere intuition, many of us are alive today. Perhaps, in figuring out how to move forward in our faith there are times when we too may use a hunch or a feeling. Ponder these in the light of what you know from the Bible and from Church teachings, and ask if they are reasonable.

I can imagine Simon, Andrew, James, and John, all delightfully young and naive, setting out to follow Jesus in the spur-of-the-moment. Does God ever call us to do something that others might see as reckless? Will we be moved to call on someone who is lonely or hurting even though we don’t know them well enough to do something like that? Will we be called to assist a stranded friend even though it might make us late to work? Will we take time to pray even if there is no time to be spared? Will we do something simply for play, not knowing that some profound insight might come of it? The Season of Epiphany is a good time to remember that God’s light shines out in different ways through scripture, tradition, and reason...and yes, sometimes, even intuition. AMEN

Epiphany 2, Year A 2020

Grace Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: John 1: 29-42
January 19, 2020

The Holy Children with a Shell by Murillo c. 1670
(The infant Jesus offers his cousin John a sip of water.)
Museo Nacional del Prado

In John’s Gospel the unique mission of John the Baptist fits squarely with the season of Epiphany. Here we see that “the Baptist” is called to identify and reveal the ”One who will take away the sin of the world.” John the Baptist is not God’s chosen leader, not the Messiah, not the light that has come into the world, but an obedient servant called by God to bear witness to the One who is all of these things.


In this sermon, I expound on three things that jump off the page for me in this Gospel reading. First, there is the particular way that John the Baptist discovered Jesus using a test of sorts. Second, there is the curious designation of Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” And, third, there is the concept of “call” and the telling manner in which Jesus calls his disciples. It is only in accepting this invitation that Jesus will be revealed to us. It is in living the life to which we are called, that the life of God is made known...that Epiphany goes from being a story about Wise Men long ago finding Jesus under a star, a story about someone else in another time and place, to being a story about you and me, in our own time and place, actively practicing the presence of God.


Tests and exams tend to bring on anxiety and negative memories for students and for teachers too. But, my most positive experiences with tests come not from those made for school but from those that form critical moments in some of my favorite stories. These are not paper-and-pencil forms or computer screens, but they are trials nonetheless. Think of all of those knights and pages who tried to pull Excalibur from the stone, and none could except Arthur. Think of all of those maidens who tried to get a foot into a glass slipper left behind at the ball, and none could except Cinderella.


It looks like the Baptism of John was intended not only to prepare the way for the Messiah, but also as a kind of test that would reveal something to John. “The One who sent me to Baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain” is the One who will Baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is the One who is the light coming into the world, the One in Whom the Word became flesh dwelling among people, the One who gives the power to become children of God. So, the Spirit, the very life of God, which comes down from Heaven doesn’t just touch Jesus briefly and move on, but remains with him. It is the same word in Greek that the RSV translates as “abide.” And where does Jesus abide? It’s like a lesson in the Holy Trinity: the Son abides with the Father, the Spirit abides with the Son, all three abide as One. The Spirit descends from Heaven in Baptism, and only in the case of Jesus does the Spirit abide. Heaven has been found on Earth, so there the Spirit remains where the Spirit already was. John sees this and begins proclaiming to his own disciples that Jesus in the Lamb of God!


The Lamb of God language may have reminded John’s Jewish audience of the Passover meal. In preparation for the Passover, each family killed a Lamb to serve, and some of the Lamb’s blood was spread on the doorposts of their homes in order to protect from harm. John further joined the Lamb image with cleansing of sin by saying “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The Lamb was associated with the sacrificial system at the Temple, and this mention helps to foreshadow Jesus death as a sacrifice for sin. In the Gospel According to John, Jesus’ own body replaces the temple. Jesus own body becomes the place where the divine and the human meet. Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice on the Cross supersedes the sacrificial system of the temple. It is by the power of Jesus blood that the wages of sin are paid and we are saved from death’s dark prison. “Destroy this temple,” says Jesus, “and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).


Finally, I wish to note the concept of call, so apropos of the Epiphany Season. We have already seen this in the way that John the Baptist reveals how God called him to identify the one on whom the Spirit remained. Then John identifies Jesus’ own calling as the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.


The concept of “call” continues in the Gospel reading as Jesus is approached by two of John the Baptist’s disciples. They ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” On one level this is superficial. Jesus, where do you sleep at night? But, the author of the Gospel According to John is skilled at using words with more than one meaning. There is a deeper, spiritual meaning to the question posed that could be easily missed the way this is translated. “Staying” is the same word used to describe the way the Spirit abides on Jesus. So the hopeful new disciples, unwittingly ask of Jesus a spiritual question: “Jesus, where do you abide.” In the Gospel According to John, of course, Jesus abides in the Father. This is not something that Jesus can simply tell. The only way to this revelation, the Epiphany of Jesus divine nature, is to begin the journey of discipleship. So, Jesus says “Come and See.”


So there it is. This “Come and See” is a very succinct way of describing our calling as Christians. It is all Jesus asks of ones who would follow him. Those first Christian disciples went with Jesus and remained with him. It was after staying with him that these two early disciples came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, so much so that Andrew went and convinced his brother, Cephas, also to Come and See. The other disciple, curiously, is never named but perhaps he is the one later described as “the beloved disciple.” This unnamed disciple may well be the author of the Gospel According to John who was wishing not to draw attention to himself...if so, by the words he has written, he has invited countless numbers of others to “Come and See” up to this day and including even those of us called here to be in this holy place! AMEN