SERMON - The Third Sunday of Epiphany

Sermon Epiphany 3

Six years ago - halfway through my year as a Deacon, during Epiphany I decided to try to investigate what I had actually done by being ordained….I know this sounds strange, but I needed to try and work out how on earth I ended up working for the Church. One minute you are minding your own business, the next you are a curate…happens all the time.

I spent some time in prayer and thought, trying to re-order and re-discover the things that were important to me. I closed the curtains and locked the door and searched for the truth – the meaning of life – I didn’t find it – not even down the back of the sofa.

Of course, all I discovered was that I needed more time to re-order and re-discover, to read and contemplate – to find my place in the world and in the Church. And then I had to ask the question – is this what its’ all about?

I could spend the rest of my life (apart from mealtimes of course) searching for the truth and questioning the unquestionable. I could become a hermit and retreat to Wentwood to live in a shed, which should give me more time. But as it is, the Benefice needs me to exercise my ministry in the churches and the community, and my family needs me, to be a husband and a father, These are my vocations – and they have an equal importance.

Six years ago I gave up my meditations as a bad job, and went out to visit some people instead. Hoping that those things that were unfathomable at the time will be revealed to me, in due course, but not this side of glory, because I am just too busy.

For the confused amongst us, (this includes me) today’s readings are something akin to a life belt, thrown overboard to stop us sinking as we splash about. They deserve to be looked at closely, and considered carefully. As St. Paul has says, we are being shown the “Still more excellent way”. There is certainly a theme appearing this morning.

In the OLD TESTAMENT

Ezra stands up to read from the Law of Moses. God’s people have lost their way, they have been dispersed by all things worldly, and need to be back on speaking terms with him. They are told that they will have to learn again about God, and to do so they must first live together as a society that is obedient to God. In UNITY they will stand or divided they will fall.

In the NEW TESTAMENT

Paul writes to the people in the church at Corinth. They might have been an artistic, intelligent, clever and determined people, they were attentive to Paul, but he needs to tell them that their attempts to live together in love are not very good, and that they must remember that they must try harder. This reading is also about trying to build a new people, a people fit to be called the body of Christ.

You don’t have to read the Bible for very long before you realise that COMMUNITY is central to any attempt to understand God. You can only go so far with the notion of a personal private knowledge of God before you realise that the STILL MORE EXCELLENT WAY is when we are one body, in co-operation and connection.

In that sense, the readings today are not about spirituality, but about doing God’s Justice, creating God’s community. A community where all are equal, where we rejoice together, and are sad together.

Perhaps this was my life-belt for this week.

The Christian Gospel is social at its’ heart. It MUST be embodied in a community and it will be the life of that community. This is how it is, and it is a central concern of the New Testament that the loss of the community links are the loss of the GOOD NEWS.

If a church is distanced from the community around it – it cannot share the GOSPEL.

In the years to come, we will need to take more seriously the character of the church as a communion of people. A way of being together that enables us all to flourish – we will have to display UNITY with other churches, our communities AND within our church family. Within our church family – no feuds, hatreds, agendas, arguments – together we stand or divided we fall.

We are not simply cogs in the machine, but we are the limbs and organs of a body, the body of Christ. The church should be an organisation of equals, at peace with each other, seeking to bring about a revolution and a transformation elsewhere in society. Without equality in the Church, we can never truly hope to bring a true picture of the love of Christ to others, because others will not see the grace of God in us.

This is shown clearly in the Gospel reading for today.

In the gospel, Christ has returned from the wilderness, and has started his ministry proper. Teaching in the Synagogue. At the time, we are told, that in the green and fertile lands of Galilee there were 204 villages or towns of at least 15,000 people that is at least 3,000,000 people. Jewish law provided that where there were at least 10 families, there was to be a synagogue –so as you can imagine, there must have been thousands.

Jesus has started his ministry at the centre of his life. Firstly back in Galilee, amongst his own people, and secondly in the synagogue, the only real centre of religious life.

Jesus read from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah; “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” And that is exactly what God had done. When Jesus had finished reading, he sat down. This is the significant part that we sometimes miss. In a synagogue, you stand to read and pray, and you sit to teach. This is why the Gospel tells us that Jesus sat. He sat, because he was respected enough at this point to be allowed to teach at the synagogue. Rabbis sat to preach.

Later in the Gospel, it tells us that prophets are never welcomed by their own people, but at this point Jesus was among those he loved, teaching a gospel of love as a Rabbi in his local synagogue.

Of course, as Jesus was following the instruction of the prophets, we should follow the lead of Jesus. We should be bringing good news to the poor and announcing release to the captive. We need not travel to do this, but in our own community, amongst those we know and understand. Before can bring God’s love to the community we need to be respected by the community. And here we are back at the start again.

The ‘Still more excellent way’ involves us as individuals, within the whole body of Christ. We are judged by our actions, what we say and do, by a community that is watching, waiting for us to speak to them directly, of the love of God.

There is a danger that we can become dazzled by our own spirituality. We can spend too much time looking inwardly. It is the easy option, there is little chance of failure, but similarly the rewards aren’t there.

The real challenge is when we lay ourselves open to the possibility of failure. That is what we do when we try to make our community more like the body of Christ. It involves looking outward, and trying to live in love and peace. .

Join together in UNITY - It is simply the ‘more excellent way’ – in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN