St. Mary's Regina

            There have been a few glitches in my life this week.  I won’t list them, but I was unexpectedly called to preach this morning because of illness. So in full disclosure, I have borrowed a large portion of this morning’s message, written by Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor,in her book “Home by Another Way” pp 39-41. 

Have you ever had a day when no matter what you tried, you could not get your work done?  A day when all your plans and schemes and lists and organization skills were in place and still, at the end of the day, you had nothing to show for all your hard work? Do you remember the feelings you felt?  Were you discouraged, frustrated, angry and tired?  Were  there other people depending on you and so they felt let down?  Our failures often have a domino effect on other folks.  That is what has happened to Simon and James and John and unnamed others…the village fishermen…when they pushed their boats onto Lake Gennesaret to go fishing.  

            Faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is Love.  Faith, hope and love…these three remain…outlast all other things, but the greatest of these is Love. These words are beautiful words, familiar words. They hold a truth that most of us appreciate and value. The truth is that love is very powerful.  

L-O-V-E is one of the most over used words in our English language.  We use the word Love to describe the things in our life for which we feel passion and there is quite a range of things that we love.  We love certain foods, sports, activities, books and of course, people.  I love chocolate and I love my family but the two feelings are hardly comparable.  And yet we use the same four letter word to describe them both. 

Well, I won’t pretend this is ideal.  Doing church this way, through a computer screen, has borne home to me how disconnected I feel from all of you.  How are you?  Are you doing okay?  Have you got anyone asking you those questions face to face these days?  All of the distance the pandemic has created between us has also made me think about how profoundly true it is that one person cannot be all things to all people.  You know, when Claude is here, I tend to be content to let him try and fill that role.  Claude was the conduit for me to all important information about what was going on in people’s lives.  That’s how I found out who was sick; whose relative had died; who had a new grand-baby.  The rest I could fill in when I saw you on Sunday mornings.  But now, Claude’s not here, and neither are you, except through a computer screen.

But the pandemic is only one factor in my sense of disconnection from all of you.  After all, I could pick up the phone, couldn’t I?  Don’t think I haven’t thought of it numerous times over the last two years.  The reasons I mostly haven’t done that are personal failings I cannot, unfortunately, blame on a virus.  Inertia is one.  It is, after all, much easier not to do something!  Another other is energy.  On the introvert/extrovert spectrum, I’m in the 90th percentile on the introvert side.  Literally, conversations exhaust me.  Which gets twisted up with how much I love you and want to know about your life.  Result: inertia.  The third reason is depression, which either causes or is caused by the other two; I’m not sure which.  But man: it is January.  It’s dark, it’s cold.  I am so over this pandemic.  And so depression has set in.  And that just coats inertia and exhaustion with a nice brain fog.

So the result is that while I think about you all the time, and I’m worried about how you’re coping with the dumpster fire that is our lives these days, I am wholly inadequate to do anything about it.  But thankfully for me and for all of you, that is not how being brothers and sisters in Christ works.

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he gives what is, in my opinion, the most useful metaphor about what Jesus’ Church is.  It is a body, full of distinct parts.  Eugene Peterson said about Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “When people become Christians, they don’t at the same moment become nice.  This always [seems to] come as something of a surprise.  Conversion to Christ and his ways doesn’t automatically furnish a person with impeccable manners and suitable morals.

On this Second Sunday of Epiphany, we continue our reading about the manifestation or revelation of Jesus Christ to the people, cultures and the nations of the world. 

One may ask why Jesus Christ should be revealed to us? It is because Christ is the Son of God who has revealed God’s love for us by offering to be the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. According to the Gospel of John, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart (bosom), who has made him known” (1:18). 

Epiphany is also about the compelling personal transformation as become aware and accept the new identity that uplifts us beyond our normal life to the new lifecycle of love, hope and faith.