February 2, 2025 Sermon

St. Anne’s Episcopal Church - Damascus, MD

February 2, 2025

Fr. Jon Musser, Rector

The Feast of the Presentation, Year C

Malachi 3:1-4

Psalm 84

Hebrews 2:14-18

Luke 2:22-40

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

I invite us all this morning to start by taking just a moment to breathe deeply. This moment may we feel the spirit of God in this place. The spirit that Hebrew רוח means literally not only spirit, but wind, breath, the very breath of God. The very breath we now breathe together. The dwelling of the spirit in this place. I want us to start here this morning because this has been an extremely tragic and chaotic week, and at a very basic level we need to remember to breathe and to be reminded that each breath is a moment of connection to our creator.

I love transportation. I have a photo of my dad and me on a plane to west Texas when I was something like two years old, and I remember at about Anna‘s age being mesmerized by the towering 4-4-0 Katy #311 locomotive that’s at the National Transportation Museum in Keyes Summit, Missouri. My grandfather as a young boy himself had watched that exact engine steam across those same high Texas plains that I would fly over decades later. Transportation just has a magic for me whether a train, a plane, a humble car… in my mind transportation is inherently linked to the idea of being on a journey, pregnant with the possibility of adventure with hopes, dreams, and trust in a transformed life. And then in the blink of an eye it can horrifically literally come crashing down. It’s been so hard this week to witness the tragedy unfolding down in Washington. My heart was wrenched watching the fallout from the plane crash and thinking about how many times I’ve flown that exact path in and out of National Airport, coming up the river, swinging out at that last moment to land. How many times I’ve thoughtlessly sat there with the whole world, my whole life, in front of me on that plane.

Aspirations, what this life could be with its hopes and dreams, are at the very heart of what we hear today in this Feast of the Presentation. Hopes and dreams that are not shattered but brought to fruition And I wonder what it means to have such dreams when things seem so hopeless. There’s another question that was brought to my mind in reading our reading from Malachi. If we pay attention, the prophet asks who can abide and who can stand in the day of the Lord, and if we remember that the experience of our faith is the experience of the “already but not yet-ness of Christ”, having already come among us as God incarnate in Jesus, we have one sense of an answer. There were those who stood and abided in the moment of God’s first coming among us. Today we have the examples of Simeon, Anna, and the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph standing and abiding in the day of the Lord. And when I think about that I wonder what their witness says about what it means to abide and to stand. What does their witness say about hope in times of hopelessness? Then, on Wednesday, I was driving back from a lunch conversation with a colleague and the answer came to me as I was listening to a radio commentator talking about the chaos of this present moment and the complexities and challenges that we face as a society, a world, and as a community here within the United States. They said that so much of what we have before us is reflective of the fact that we are at the “apogee of distrust.” And I realized that this is the answer to the question. Simeon, Anna, Mary, and Joseph showed a sense of trustfulness in a similar time of district. That they reclaimed and proclaimed trust in God even though there seemed to be so very little to trust.

Apogee was an interesting word to use there because in some sense, we often use it in the expression of something being at its height: that we are the height of distrust. However, it also has a celestial or cosmic sense in that it is the point in an orbit at which an object is at the furthest distance from the the the center it is orbiting around. So there is both the sense of a static concept: being at the height; and a dynamic concept: a temporary sense of distance from which we can circle back around to trustfulness, to hopefulness, to a sense of dreaming for a better world and a better time.

So I want to invite us this morning, as we celebrate the Presentation to be captured by the sense of trust that is displayed in the narrative. The first reference to the Messiah in the Bible is a sense of the Messiah as a prophetic coming presence of God, who will put the world to right. This first reference is by Moses in some of his departing messages to the people of Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy. And if we think about it, this was over a millennia before Christ actually came, before God became manifest in Christ. Centuries and generations of faithful hoped and dreamed for the Messiah, and that hoping and dreaming was often in contexts that were very dark, uncertain, and fraught. There’s also a very ancient tradition of the church that suggests Simeon himself was of a supernatural old age. That he had been one of the 70 who translated the Septuigent (the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek in the fifth century BC), and that he was a bridge or a link between the end of the prophets, and the age of the prophets, and the arrival of the Messiah. The tradition is that, as the scriptures say, he would not see death until this moment in which he could witness the presence of God in the personhood of Christ. This is the sense in which trust and hope are the central themes of the Presentation. It is the central message for us today, in a moment in time that seems so very fraught and hopeless. It goes beyond just an ethereal sense, or cognitive intellectual sense, of reclaiming hope today. After our service concludes we will move into the parish hall for our annual meeting. There’s a lot before us: a lot of challenges, a lot of uncertainty - but in the midst of that may we seek to proclaim and reclaim trust and seek the brighter future of God before us. Because, friends, even in the darkest hour Christ shows forth the light of the world into this darkness. May we feel the light of that presence today. May we trust in the light of that presence. And, may we let it guide us into all hopefulness, into all believing, and may we see and experience the greater love and light of God ahead.

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

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.