Preached on Sunday, January 26, 2014 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side. The Scripture readings that today's sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.
Today is Annual Meeting Sunday, and we gather here on this day, as one community at one service of worship. And after this offering of praise and thanksgiving to our God, we’ll retire to Draesel Hall to vote for new Vestry members, have a nosh, hear a bit about the year just past and the year to come.
All the while, we’ll be reminded of what a gift we have in this parish, what a blessing that the Church of the Holy Trinity is to each of us. We’ll see old friends, and new friends, and those who will perhaps someday be friends.
A parish church is all about relationships. Many of you have known each other for years. Others of you have seen each other for years, but haven’t yet become friends, really. But chances are an activity or service project here will bring you together at some point and the season for your friendship will dawn, after knowing of, but not really knowing, each other for some time.
Many of you have watched your children grow up together. Or you’ve shared the deprecations of advancing age together. Some of you have faced a troubling diagnosis, and weathered debilitating treatments, sure in the support of your parish friends, and comforted by the prayers of us all. Some of you have grieved together as one or another of your loved ones have departed for those fairer shores that await us all.
And we have all had fun together. At soirees and fundraisers, greening the church or decorating for Easter. We’ve shared a laugh at parties in the Rectory, at Mardi Gras Talent Shows and summer barbeques. And we’ve worked together, shoulder to shoulder, at MayFairs and Saturday Neighborhood Suppers.
We join together today, of all days, with all those with whom we share common prayer and a common life in this very special, very blessed, very precious place.
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Our lessons from Scripture today are all about relationships. But, not everything is going smoothly in the relationships we read about this morning.
In our Gospel reading today (Mt 4:12-23), there is a passing of the torch, so to speak. John the Baptist has been arrested, and after a time of retrenchment, Jesus takes up the task of preaching repentance to the people of Israel. Jesus begins to assemble his own band of disciples to help him in his work. And in today’s reading he calls two sets of brothers. Simon and Andrew, James and John. Matthew tells us that Simon and Andrew immediately leave their nets and follow Jesus. Then James and John do the same, and Matthew says specifically, that they leave their boat and their father and follow Jesus.
Family units were of great importance in first century Palestine. Jesus would have been known as Joshua bar Joseph, i.e. ‘Jesus, son of Joseph’ similarly to all of his contemporaries. Your family was in a very significant way your identity. But here is Jesus tearing apart families, particularly the family of James and John. They abandon their father Zebedee and take up with this itinerant preacher.
And who knows whom Simon and Andrew leave behind. Matthew tells us they leave their nets and follow Jesus. We can imagine jobs, perhaps a fishing business, maybe a family business like that of the bar Zebedee brothers, are left in their wake. Family members, homes, friends, all left behind.
And what of the relationships between these two sets of brothers? Surely these sibling relationships have been, at least, reoriented away from family and fishing and towards a teacher that is yet unknown, and a ministry that is, as yet, undefined.
The Jesus we find in our Gospel reading today is a disrupter of relationships, if not a destroyer of them. It’s hard to imagine Zebedee ever getting over being abandoned by his sons. The world of these four Galilean fishermen is up-ended by Jesus, and they are ripped out of their lives, torn from all that is familiar and comfortable and told to follow. And for reasons we can only guess at, they do just that.
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Our Epistle reading today details some of the troubles encountered by the fledgling church at Corinth. Paul established the church at Corinth, spending nearly a year and a half in the area preaching and teaching and getting the Corinthian church off the ground. Now he has moved on to Ephesus when word comes to him of divisions within the church at Corinth. The Christians at Corinth have begun to split into separate groups and cliques. They’ve been taught by Paul and Apollos and Cephas, and have started to form factions around the leaders that they agree with the most, that they like the most. There’s some sense that they are aligning themselves according to the leader by whom they were baptized.
They’ve begun to define themselves by their relationships with their leaders and their liturgical life and their like-minded friends, rather than by their relationship with Jesus.
And Paul is not having it. Even though at least one of the factions is aligned around him and his teaching. He asks them, “Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor 1:13b)
For the Apostle Paul, there is only one thing that matters, and that is the gospel of Christ. And for Paul, the gospel of Christ is the gospel of the cross. And Paul wants the people of Corinth to remember that gospel, and to heed that gospel, and to make that gospel the center of their common life, the governing, unifying principal that determines all that they do, the principal that defines who they are.
Because if that is not the central point, the only point, of their life together, then, he says, the cross of Christ will be emptied of its power. And if that happens, then it won’t matter whose faction you’re a part of, it won’t matter whose side your on; because if the cross of Christ is emptied of its power, we all lose.
Paul says that the power of the cross of Christ is the power of God. (1 Cor 1:18) The power of the cross of Christ is the power to save. The power of the cross of Christ is the power to redeem. In the cross, we are saved from death; and in walking in the way of the cross, we are saved from selfishness, greed, self-serving, and the neglect of our brothers and sisters. In the cross of Christ, we are redeemed, and also too, our losses, our pain, our suffering, all of it redeemed, and we are again made whole, we again know peace, such a peace that passes all understanding.
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You know, I love you guys. I really do. I enjoy you; you bring joy into my life. You challenge me. You make me a better person, a better Christian and, not least of all, serving you makes me a better priest. And you make me laugh, you’re so funny and so sweet. You make me weep at your tenderness. And there have been times when I have been so warmed by you that I have thought that my heart might melt within me.
And I don’t just love you; I like you too. I really, really like you.
But I’m not here for you. I’m not here because you are all the things that you are, wonderful as they are, or wonderful as most of them are… I’m here because God calls me to be. Just like Simon and Andrew and James and John. I have been called to this work, in this place, at this time.
And I have news for you. You have been too. You and I both are called by God. You are called into relationship with God and with God’s son, our savior, Jesus Christ. And you are called to hear and to heed God’s Spirit speaking to you, leading you, guiding you, comforting you. Some of you will be here for the rest of your lives. Some of you are, even know, being called elsewhere.
Things are changing all around us. Things are changing within us. But God is calling us, all of us, always calling us to deepen our faith, to strengthen our commitment, to stiffen our resolve to see God’s justice done.
The cross of Christ compels us to come together to worship God, and to serve God’s people. And if we allow the cross of Christ to have its way with us, we will find our relationships challenged, even changed.
But the chances are greater still, that we’ll meet some nice folks along the way. We’ll be brought into community, into new relationships with some folks that we’ll come to know, and like and even love. And if we allow the cross of Christ to have its way with us, we’ll have some fun along the way, and we’ll know no small amount of joy.
But it must be the cross of Christ at the center of all we do. And our primary relationship in this place must be our relationship with Jesus Christ; and not just here, but in every avenue of our lives.
Because the power of the cross will never weaken, the light of Christ will never dim, and the presence of Christ in our lives will always abide with us. And though all the world will change, and parishes will change, and priests and parishioners come and go; the power of the cross of Christ will never fail us.
And when we place the cross of Christ at the center of our lives, in this place if no other, we can be assured of God’s grace, and God’s mercy, and God’s salvation, and God’s favor all ways. +Amen.
(c) The Rev. Mark R. Collins
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