Because We Are Called
Reflections on the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
RCL Epiphany 3A
26 January 2020
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Because I was called.
Will Campbell was a Baptist minister, writer, teacher and activist who was well-known as a white Southerner who worked tirelessly for the civil rights of African Americans in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In 1978 he wrote an autobiography entitled Brother to a Dragonfly. While the book looks closely at Campbell’s relationship with his brother, it also tells the story of Campbell’s relationship with the local Baptist minister who was a sort of mentor for him.
He was, to be frank, an unusual Baptist minister. He loved a good cigar, good whiskey and a dog who knew how to hunt. He was also known for what we might politely call ‘colourful’ language when things weren’t going quite his way.
One day Campbell and his mentor were out hunting for birds. After a wretched day with many missed shots and nothing to bring home, Will’s mentor sat down on a log and let loose with a tirade that scorched the air around him. After such a tirade, Campbell plucked up the courage to ask him a question that had been itching in Campbell’s brain for some time. ‘You smoke. You drink. You cuss.’ said Campbell. ‘Why did you ever become a Baptist minister?’ His mentor looked up at him and said, ‘Because I was called, dammit!’
I can imagine Simon and Andrew and James and John in their later years being asked why they had put up with being arrested and imprisoned, being persecuted and impoverished, perhaps even being asked why they were willing to give up their lives for Jesus of Nazareth. ‘Because we were called, dammit!’
And we too are called.
Who are we?
When the first Christians were asked what they were, they answered that they were an ekklhsia. It’s a Greek word originally used to describe the formal meeting of the citizens of the Greek city states to debate and to make decisions for the good of the poliV, the city. We chose a word that made it abundantly clear that we were a political community. Our concerns were not just with the world to come but with the world as it was, in all its glory and in all its squalidness.
We knew then what we know now. People need a place of help, hope and home. We all need help because making through life by oneself is not only impossible; it’s inhuman. We all need hope because life can sometimes become quite bleak and we need a horizon to look towards. We all need a home, physically and spiritually, where we can be ourselves and know that we will still be loved.
Who are we here to serve?
Those same early Christians were a subject of scornful admiration to many of their non-Christian neighbours. When Christians were imprisoned, other Christians would risk revealing their identity in order to bring food, medicine and clothing. When Christian communities in other parts of the world were in need of support, Christians far and near would give of their resources to alleviate the suffering of others. Widows, orphans and young women of poor families knew that they would not be forgotten.
What particularly annoyed the early Christians’ neighbours was that we had the nerve to care for all prisoners and for all people who were in any need or trouble. We have letters written by non-Christians to local magistrates and religious authorities criticizing them for doing less than those abominable Christians.
Writing in the 1930’s, William Temple, then Archbishop of York, would write that the church was the one human community that existed primarily for its non-members. Fifty years later the Anglican Church of Canada would adopt a baptismal covenant that asks us to promise “[to] seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving [our] neighbour as [ourselves].”
Serving our neighbour is not something added on or an activity on the side. It is at the heart of our identity.
What do we stand for?
In a world that seems to be beset by religious and political fundamentalists, by demagogues and unprincipled abusers of the people’s trust, it is important that we known what we stand for.
We stand for a faith rooted in the proclamation that Christ has died, that Christ has risen and that Christ will come again.
We stand for a faith that is nourished by prayer, by the proclamation of God’s Word and by the breaking of the bread of life and the pouring of the cup of salvation.
We stand for a faith that believes that resistance to evil, in what form it takes, is never futile and that forgiveness and reconciliation is always possible.
We stand for a faith that strives for justice and peace and that respects the dignity of every human being, no matter who they are, no matter whom they love, no matter what faith they profess or do not profess.
We stand for a faith that recognizes creation as God’s greatest gift to all life and that this gift must be sustained and renewed.
What is God calling us to do and become next?
In exactly four weeks’ time this is the question that we will answer, only in part, at the annual Parish Vestry. Our Vestry is sometimes seen primarily as a meeting for the review of the year that has passed, for the election of parish officials and for the passing of the budget for the coming year.
I actually believe that Vestry is a moment when we ask ourselves what God is calling us to do and to become. We might need to do a bit more thinking about who we are, who we are here to serve and what do we stand for. After all, life does not stand still and simply maintaining the status quo is a recipe for stagnation and eventual irrelevance. Vestry is one of those times when we think about these things in the light of our hopes for the future of our Parish and of our wider community.
So let’s be ready. Perhaps while we reading our reports and drinking our coffee or tea in the Parish Hall, we’ll hear a voice that says, ‘Come, follow me. And I will make you fish for people.’ And later, when we’re asked why we’re working so hard to build a place of help, hope and home in the centre of New Westminster, we simply say, ‘Because we were called, dammit!’
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