Things Passing Away, Things to Come: a sermon for Year B, Epiphany 3

Preached on Sunday, January 25, 2015 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.

I don’t want to speak too long today, because it’s Annual Meeting day. We’ve got some work to do, some vestry members to elect, and we’ve got some fellowship to share, which is, in many respects, the purpose and best part of the Annual Meeting.

But today’s readings offer some interesting comments and parallels with what we are all about today, our present and our future, about  the call of God to ministry; and about some of the hardships that ministry sometimes entails.

Our first reading this morning is from Jonah, and it’s not the famous whale story that Jonah is duly famous for. It’s about God calling Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh, and to pronounce God’s condemnation upon the inhabitants of that sinful city. The upshot is that the people of Nineveh hear God’s warning from Jonah, and they heed it. And then God changes his mind about the punishment that he has planned for Nineveh. God changes his mind… Later this morning, you are going to hear some reports that will challenge you to, perhaps, change your mind about what you think about this parish, and what you will do for it in the future.

This is the year in which the Vestry will call a new rector to lead this parish. Many of you have been waiting for that day with great anticipation, but our psalm verses today offers a different view. “For God alone, my soul in silence waits. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, my refuge,” our psalm verses say. God along is my salvation, it’s good to remember that on the eve of a new rectorship. Often, I think, we can place that expectation on a new rector. Hoping she will be our salvation, and fill the coffers with new pledges and fill the Sunday school with shiny faces and fill the pews with new congregants.

Paul tells the people of Corinth that the present form of this world is passing away. And that is true for us. My time among you is coming to a close, and a new rector will be with you in my stead -- no one can say when, exactly, but we know it will be soon. No one likes to here that, that change is coming that the present world is passing away. But it is ever thus, everyday, what is old passes away and what is new comes. It’s the rhythm of life, it is the order of God universe. Present things are not what we cling to, nor should they be, as our psalm verse says, not things, but God is our stronghold, our rock, and our salvation. Not priests, or old practices, or present times. God who was and is and is to come is the only thing that endures, and it is to God we cling to every day of our ever changing lives.

And in our reading from Mark, there is a pivot point in the story of Jesus. John is arrested, and soon will be executed. And Jesus goes to Galilee. In this passage in Matthew, it says that Jesus withdraws to Galilee -- with good reason, preachers and prophets are being arrested and killed in Judea and Jerusalem. It’s a good time to reassess and take stock of the threat, and to prepare for what’s next. But notice that as John’s ministry comes to an end (tragically), rather than withdraw permanently from the field because of the loss of a leader, Jesus steps up to the plate to take the mantle of prophecy and preaching upon himself. He calls together Peter and Andrew and James and John. He calls on some fellow believers to follow him as he prepares to preach the gospel of good news, of repentance and mercy to the people of Israel.

That’s a great image of the change that Holy Trinity is undergoing even now as the present times pass away and new ones come. As I’ve said to you, interim pastors ore often compared to John the Baptist in that we prepare the way for the one who is to come. And my time is drawing to a close -- I hope to be well and truly gone before my arrest and beheading. 

But someone is preparing to come, someone is being prepared to come among you, even now. And when he or she gets here, he’s going to call upon you, just like Jesus calls upon Simon and Andrew and James and John. It’s important for you to get ready for that call -- and like the people of Nineveh to hear and heed that call. Because the success of your next rector depends on you, and who you prove to be, what sort of leaders will rise up among you, and what sort of followers you will be when you heed the call to help make the next rectorship successful. Your next rector will need ready hands, and faithful hearts to support his or her work among you. He won’t be your salvation. She is not going to face the future for you, but with you. And the steadfast love of God with be what sustains you all into the glorious future God has planned for you.

Get ready. Hear and heed God’s call. Prepare yourselves for the time ahead, for your best days are ahead of you, and your God is already there, with bountiful and steadfast love to help bring about all the glorious things you will be. +Amen. 

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

The Cross of Christ: a sermon for Year A, Epiphany 3

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