THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

January 27, 2008

Amos 3:1-8

I Cor. 1:10-17

Matthew 4: 12-23

Year A

In a wonderful Peanuts cartoon Lucy is in her five-cent psychiatry booth when Charlie Brown stops by for advice. Lucy says, “Life is like a deck chair. On the cruise ship of life, some people place their deck chair at the rear of the ship so they can see where they’ve been. Others place their deck chair at the front of the ship so they can see where they’re going.” Charlie looks rather puzzled, but Lucy continues and says, “Which way is your deck chair facing Charlie?” Without hesitating Charlie says, “I can’t even get my deck chair unfolded.”

All of us can understand that sentiment to one degree or another. Sometimes it feels as though we have as many problems, if not more, than Amos or the people in Corinth, with whom Paul is so fed up today.

Amos was a shepherd and grower of sycamore trees. Preaching wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time. But he was certain God had called him to do just that – at a time when Israel’s complacency had led her into a situation of great threat. He reminded Israel that in being chosen BY God she was also responsible TO God.

Paul told the people at the church in Corinth their behavior was completely unchristian. Apollos was a fine preacher, the favorite of the intellectuals. The Jews there were loyal to Peter while the pagan converts stood behind Paul. And Paul told them he didn’t want any part of their divisiveness because the only important loyalty was loyalty to Christ.

In today’s gospel the imprisonment of John the Baptist seems to be a turning point for Jesus. He left Nazareth and took up residence in Capernaum. The entire region, called Galilee, was densely populated because it was the most fertile part of Palestine. And although the people there had a reputation for hot tempers, they also had a reputation for openness to new ideas and for being people of courage.

No doubt Jesus was looking for both of those things because his ministry was a radical departure from Judaism. First of all any rabbi worth his weight in prayer shawls never went looking for disciples; disciples looked for a teacher. But in the gathering of Jesus’ disciples there is no hint they were looking for anything.

Sometimes in popular American evangelical Christianity people say something like, “Since I found Jesus” or “Since I gave my life to Christ”. But that’s not how scripture says it happens. Scripture is full of stories about people who were busy minding their own business when God intruded.

Because Moses had killed a man in Egypt he was hiding from the law in Midian when God put his finger on him to go back to Egypt to give Pharaoh a piece of God’s mind. That was the last thing on earth Moses wanted to do. Plus that Moses said he had this problem giving speeches. But God wouldn’t take that for an excuse.

The little boy Samuel, asleep in the middle of the night in the temple, kept waking up to hear his name being called. Thinking it was the old temple priest Eli, he kept waking Eli up. By process of elimination it turned out to be God, but one wonders what kind of God would call a child to do a grown-up’s work?

Young Isaiah didn’t want any part of temple worship, yet it was in the middle of exactly that when he heard God say, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” Isaiah said “Not me! No thank you. I’ve got all kinds of bad behavior baggage I’m carrying around.” And God said “Perfect. Just the sort of truth teller I’m looking for.”

God shows a relentless resolve when it comes to calling, but most of us are just as resolved to ignore it.

Have you ever noticed that in today’s gospel, when Jesus summoned James and John to follow him, it doesn’t say only them? What about Zebedee, their father? Maybe he had arthritis and couldn’t walk half a block or maybe he was just too comfortable right where he was. We cannot know. What we do know is that only those who followed found out who Jesus was. It is the same for us.

Like the church at Corinth to which Paul writes today the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion seems caught in a quagmire of destructive behaviors. Christianity says the Gospel is Good News because it reveals God’s healing love and mercy poured out for us. This amazing news, this light, is entrusted to us to deliver to the world. But what kind of news are we delivering? Our conflicts, our shrinking membership, indicate that a lot of people aren’t hearing much good news of any kind from us.

We are told in Amos today that God chose Israel over and above all other nations. God says, “You only have I known of all the peoples of the earth.” Why was Israel chosen over and above other nations? No one knows for sure. Janice Joplin used to sing, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin left to lose.” Perhaps Israel, being a migrant tenting people, with nothing left to lose, were the ones most open to hearing and responding to God’s call swirling around them as the wind whipped through the desert.

The losses experienced in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion are not just about numbers; they are about faithfulness, integrity and the kind of bad behavior that deeply pained Paul. The word crisis means “opportunity”. Is it possible that as Israel was given the opportunity to hear God and respond to God, so too are we?

An article in “The Christian Century” this week says that the mega church phenomenon in this country is beginning to falter a bit. In their own research the famous mega church of Willow Creek, in the Chicago area, has found that spiritual growth simply is not happening.

Researcher Diana Butler Bass, writes “I have interviewed dozens and dozens of people throughout the United States who used to belong to churches like Willow Creek but left them in order to become Presbyterians or Lutherans or Episcopalians. Ex-members of the mega churches have sort of rediscovered a level of being Christian that they are unaware of.”

Are we prepared to feed the hungry people who might come our way? And what shall we feed them? Shall we feed them the bread of division or shall we feed them the Bread of Life?

Many of the heresies of the church arose just after periods of persecution. During those persecutions, the church was too busy just with surviving to afford internal strife. It seems the more comfortable the church becomes, the more it is troubled by political infighting. On the other hand the church at work is a church at prayer and the church at prayer is a church at peace within.

Writing in “The Lessons of History” Will and Ariel Durant say, “The future never just happened. It was created.” That is true for the church, for all the things to which God calls us.

As one writer says, “To be a Christian is not to believe a half dozen impossible things before breakfast. It is to be intellectually open to the possibility that something’s afoot, that the life you live may not be your own, that God really does mean to have God’s way with the world through you. It is to believe that God really is determined to have you, come what may, that God has plans for you.”

To the disciples Jesus went and said “I have need of you”. He did have need of them; as he has need of us. I pray that when God calls we will respond; with our feet as well as our hearts.

AMEN

The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Edwardsville, Illinois