January 26, 2025 Sermon

FULL TEXT OF SERMON
Fr. Jon Musser, Rector

The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I am sorry that you all were not able to gather last week because of the weather, but thank you for your prayers as we made our trip to and from New Hampshire. We had an extremely fun time, and while you need not fear my departure anytime soon I do think I moved the needle ever so slightly towards Julie appreciating my almost obsessive love of winter. I know most of you think I’m crazy, but I have absolutely relished these last three weeks of dark and biting cold. I’m just built differently from almost everyone I’ve ever met. In fact, years ago, before I met Julie and started the discernment process for the priesthood, I actually looked into the little known career of field psychotherapy for workers in arctic and antarctic industries who experience months of frozen darkness. About ten years ago, I was approached with an opportunity to serve the Anglican Communion’s largest and least populated diocese, the Diocese of the Arctic in the Anglican Church of Canada. To which Julie said, “I love you, but if you go, you’re going alone.”

Appreciating all of this, I have to also acknowledge that this love affair this year has come at a bitter cost. The honest truth is that the reality of these last three weeks of sustained sub-freezing cold here is not just an anomaly but a clear sign that things are not well elsewhere. In fact in this same span of time our brother and sister Anglicans in the arctic have experienced temperatures 20° to 30° Fahrenheit warmer than average, which if sustained over the long term will decimate their livelihood and way of life. And, that is to say nothing of the millions of unhoused or underhoused here in the lower 48 who have suffered tremendously under these life threateningly cold temperatures. It is so very easy for me, for us, to love what we love and ignore or disregard its impact or effect on others and the world around us.

And, this morning I want us to pause and to take stock of who we are, and where we are, and what we are feeling. I fairly suspect that in a number of our sister parishes around the country today folks are going to hear some thematic reflection on, if not outright verbatim quoting of, Bishop Mariann’s now infamous reflection at the interfaith inauguration service held at the Washington National Cathedral this past Tuesday. And, don’t worry I am going to say something about it…however, before that, I want us to take stock of where we are for a moment, and think about who we are, and what our call in God’s kingdom is all about.

Back during the New Deal  in the 1930s, when the Epsicopal Church was filled with prim and proper business types and no nonsense WASPS, we were known as the Republican Party at Prayer; and, in recent years with our embrace of queer folks in ministry and creation care and other issues, we’ve become known as the Democratic Party at Prayer. But friends, careening from one form of identity politic to another does not serve us well. It most importantly does not honor our call to be a kingdom people, striving to serve and proclaim a God who transcends all of these earthly distractions and divisions. Indeed these kinds of earthly divisions and infighting seem very much at the heart of what St. Paul addresses in our epistle today. As he says, “21The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” We cannot belong without each other. We cannot be without each other. For as St. Paul says further, “26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

Bishop Mariann alluded to this reality in her remarks on Tuesday. She began her reflection on the topic of unity, and I was struck by one particular comment that seemed especially fitting for us as a congregation with several current and former first responders in a community with many first responders. Speaking of the power of unity, she said, 

“...it enables us in our communities and in the halls of power to genuinely care for one another even when we disagree. Those across our country who dedicate their lives or who volunteer to help others in times of natural disaster, often at great risk to themselves, never ask those they are helping for whom they voted in a past election or what positions they hold on a particular issue, and we are at our best when we follow their example.”

But, she immediately acknowledged something that is absent from our reading from St. Paul today. She acknowledged the lived experience of uncertain unity. For all this high falutin talk is any of this truly achievable? In her own words she continues,

“Is true unity possible, and why should we care about it? Well, I hope we will care, because the culture of contempt that has become normalized in this country threatens to destroy us. We are all bombarded daily with messages from what sociologists now call the outrage industrial complex.”

And then yesterday, at our annual diocesan convention, she further observed that if we are honest we all participate in this culture of contempt. Like I said, we love what we love and detest the rest. And this then gets to the heart of the gospel passage we have before us this morning. Now, unfortunately since we are celebrating the Feast of the Presentation next week, we will not hear the second half of this narrative. After Jesus sits down the people express amazement, but Jesus sees it for what it is: haughtiness and surprise that he could do what he is doing. And when he calls them out on this behavior they become contemptuous of him and they attempt to run him out of town.

This culture of contempt is so pervasive that we often fail to catch on when we are participating in it ourselves. I absolutely love Bishop Mariann, and I will never cease to defend the goodness and righteousness of her leadership as the bishop of the Diocese of Washington. She has been a literal lifesaver for us. But, as a humble priest, faithfully serving my bishop, I nevertheless want to make an observation. In her now famous plea at the very end of her message, Bishop Budde made reference to those who live in fear of being deported. You can disagree about the rightness of this political topic, but let me draw your attention to another issue for a moment. As Bishop of Washington, Bishop Budde also participated in the public prayer service of President Obama’s re-inauguration in January of 2013, and no mention was made of immigration. The truth is that under Obama’s first term, almost 3.2 million people were either forcibly deported or otherwise returned to their country of origin. This is more than double  the 1.4 million people removed during President Trump’s first term. I’m not criticizing her for calling attention to the issue now, but I just want to suggest this morning that even the greatest of us can have our blind spots and shortcomings. But then, almost in acknowledgement of this criticism, and towards the very end of her reflection Bishop Budde said what I think is the most important point in her whole message. She said, “Perhaps we are most dangerous to ourselves and others when we are persuaded without a doubt that we are absolutely right and someone else is absolutely wrong.”

This friends, this is truly our death knell when it happens. This absolute and under conviction of rightness and righteousness is what ultimately destroys us and our humanity. It moves us beyond just loving what we love and being apathetic about the rest. In arrogance, it leads us to hatred and denial of the other’s human dignity. So what do we do? What is the path forward? Well before Bishop Budde’s plea for mercy she rooted it in humility; and I want to offer humility as the answer for us to reflect upon today. Again, because of our observation of the Feast of the Presentation next week, we will miss one of the greatest reflections on humility in all of Holy Scripture. In chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul continues,

1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

For now we know only in part. For now we see in a mirror dimly. These days immediately before us, but also the many days, months, and maybe years ahead of us are very likely going to be filled with deeper and more significant polarization and division. As kingdom people, may we proclaim the reality of our God who both transcends and unifies. Who resolves the multiplicity of our loves, our hatreds, our divisions and differences into the unity of his oneness and the unity of his singular love. And, I’ll be honest, maybe love is too aspirational of a goal at this time, but let’s at the very least strive for faith, hope, and humility, and in the immortal words of the great Celtic lorica that Bishop Budde also referenced yesterday in seeking faith, hope, and humility may we ever find, “Christ within us, Christ behind us, Christ before us, Christ beside us, Christ beneath us, Christ above us, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love us, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.”

In the name of Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

January 12, 2025 Sermon

FULL TEXT OF SERMON

Fr. Jon Musser, Rector

The Feast of the Epiphany, Year C

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the
Lord has risen upon you. (Is. 60:1)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It was wonderful having our family in town to celebrate various occasions these last couple of weeks. As very often happens with our family, one evening we were reminiscing and got on the subject of the college town where my folks and brother currently live and that several of us have lived in at one time or another. This town is called Conway, and when my mother-in-law moved there in 1977 the population was approximately 18,000; today, the estimated population is just south of 75,000. Needless to say, the place is not the same, and frankly that truth is kind of bittersweet. In as much as growth and revitalization continue to transform the community, the memory of what once was often lingers and is sometimes paired with anxiety and resistance towards what is to come. This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, which in its very nature plays with these thematic juxtapositions: change and resistance / new life and anxiety. In this new year, and in this new season, I want to invite us into a deeper reflection on how these contrasts are experienced in the here and now. How are we finding new life, but also how are we simultaneously experiencing anxiety and resistance to that change? How are we both the wise men - wise people - who seek that which overwhelms us with joy and Herod who fearfully schemes to maintain the status quo and keep everything just the way it is?

This feast day is particularly interesting because, from its earliest celebration, it has had multiple focal points or emphases. Epiphany, which was first observed in Egypt in the late second century, historically celebrated three distinct experiences in the life of Christ: his encounter with the Magi, his baptism in the Jordan River by John, and his performance of the first public miracle at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. These may seem disparate occurrences at first glance, however they all emphasize an epiphany - the sudden revelation or manifestation - of our Lord. So, the Epiphany is not a singular act or moment, but the sum total of all of these moments, or maybe more accurately the reality of every moment in which we experience the sudden and real power of Christ revealing himself to us - “God in man made manifest” as Christopher Wordsworth so beautifully penned.

In the Roman Catholic Morning Prayer office for Epiphany, the antiphon or short sentence recited after the Benedictus canticle reads, “Today the Bridegroom claims his bride, the Church, since Christ has washed away her sins in the waters of the Jordan; the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia.” I love this antiphon because it not only weaves together the three gospel narratives of epiphany, but it also frames them in the present tense together, emphasizing once more that the reality of Christ’s presence among us, and his work of redemption and salvation, are things that happen outside of our rigid conceptions of time and space. The Epiphany is the experience of God revealing himself in Jesus even in this very moment. So, what is our Epiphany, or what are our Epiphanies, today? That might seem like a difficult question initially, but it is in a way the question that we have been asking in the parish hall over these last several weeks. Where do you feel God’s presence in your life right now? But it is more than that. How is God’s presence in your life creating moments of new revelation? What are you seeing differently precisely because Christ is revealing himself to you anew?

Sometime over the several days of Christmas celebrations, I had a wonderful conversation with Warren Flemming about how the Damascus Placemaking festival this past fall opened new insight into the ways in which we might re-envision our community in the future and for the future. I dare say that that is a form of an epiphany experience. When we look around us today, even just here in our own congregation, there are several new faces that were not here two, three, four years ago. There is new life here too, but in that new life is epiphany - new revelation and new insight. In the beautiful imagery of the Magi, how are we again overwhelmed with joy? How are we lovingly compelled to adoration and homage? How are we called to offer our gifts and treasurers? And ultimately in celebrating this day most fully, how in this very moment are we being present to the ways in which Christ is revealing himself anew in this place; and, how is that revelation changing and transforming us for the future? I invite you all to take some time in coffee hour today to think about this and reflect on what your answer might be.

I will acknowledge again, in returning to that sense of juxtaposition that I talked about earlier, that this might be a hard question to answer because of the barriers we put up in front of God’s presence in our lives. One of the most profound truths of Holy Scripture is that in hearing the history of God’s relationship to us, we often find ourselves reflected in both the righteous and the unrighteous. So today, I want to spend just a moment thinking about the pitfalls of Herrod’s anxiety and obsession. He saw, in the coming Christ, a challenge to his status quo. Even as he witnessed the world fracturing around him, he desperately tried to exercise his levers of power to reign in the rising tide of change that he could not control. As we know, in the end, and in the face of God’s revelation - God’s Epiphany - no amount of earthly intervention could stand against the coming of Christ’s kingship. And, that kingship is not simply change verses no change, or “progress” verses “regression”. There were many ways, then and now, in which Jesus calls us back to the roots of our faith, to old ways of doing things long forgotten; but sometimes, whether being called backwards or forwards, what we ultimately experience is a call towards change that we cannot easily control, and I will be the first to admit that that call is very often disorienting and maybe disappointing.

Now please don’t get me wrong here, while I very much doubt that any of us are as evil or dark-hearted as Herrod, I also suspect that many of us face times of disorientation with a similar desire to undermine its disruption to our status-qous and places of complacent comfort. I started by talking about the college town in Arkansas, called Conway. When I was a young boy, not much older than Anna, my maternal grandparents retired there, and back then it was still a small town of only about 20,000 people. I have wonderful memories of eating at a now long forgotten restaurant called “A Place to Eat” and cackling at the Abbott and Costello routine of telling my parents over the phone that I had gone to “A Place to Eat.” And I have very fond memories of going with my grandfather, my papa, over the highway to the old sale barn to watch the cattle auctions. Little did I know then that it was a memory for him too, of the long ago days when he and his brothers would buy and sell livestock to keep the family farm afloat. In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, that sale barn is now my little piece of paradise paved over to put up a parking lot. With the relentless years of unabated development and growth, I often look back on the Conway I knew and wonder about it. I often lament and mourn what has been lost, but I also at times see the good the new future has brought. The moral rightness of one trajectory over another is not easily determined, but what I do know is that change or not, there are those in the community who are even now looking for and celebrating epiphany. Not dwelling on the past, getting neither overly zealous nor overly anxious about what is to come, but in all looking towards Christ and asking, even now, how Christ is revealing himself anew in this place, and how is that revelation changing and transforming us for the future?

I pray friends that these questions may guide our celebration of Epiphany today, and that these questions may guide our ongoing experience of epiphany in the coming time ahead, so that we may most fully experience the newness of Christ’s revelation in place in this new season of life.

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.