Getting Back to the Heart
Reflections on the Second Sunday of Epiphany
RCL Epiphany 2A
19 January 2020
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Isaiah 49.1-7; Psalm 40.1-12 (BAS); 1 Corinthians 1.1-9; John 1.29-42
Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten.
Have you ever felt disheartened? I know that lately I’ve had moments when I’ve felt a little disheartened. I recognized the symptoms when I realized that this last week I found myself humming a poem that I learned when I was a student of German language and literature at the University of Denver. The opening lines, roughly translated, go like this: ‘I don’t know what it means that I feel so disheartened. An ancient story has its grip on my feelings.’ [1]
Perhaps it’s the weather or the time of the year or a symptom of the anemia that’s had me in its grip for the past six months or so. It was in this spirit that I came to this Sunday’s texts.
It is too light a thing.
More than twenty-give hundred years ago a rumour began to spread among the Israelites who had been taken by the Babylonians into exile after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 bce. During the decades of their exile Babylon itself had been conquered by the Persians whose ruler seemed to have a different policy regarding how to manage the affairs of the old kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The new policy, so the exiles had heard, was to let them go home. True, Israel and Judah would remain vassals of the Persian Empire, but at least the people would be home.
Among the exiles a new voice spoke in the tradition of an older prophet. This new prophet we call Second Isaiah to distinguish him from his older colleague. To a disheartened and still trouble community this new Isaiah spoke words of comfort and hope. But in the midst of these comfortable and hopeful words the prophet also spoke words that challenged the people’s vision of the future that lay ahead of them.
Yes, the prophet said, the people had laboured in vain and spent their strength trying to defend their homeland from one hostile power after another. It would seem only fair to allow them to return home, to keep their heads down and to stay out of the sight of the mighty nations that surrounded them. God would do enough for them just to let them go home even as clients of Persia.
But it was not enough, even for a disheartened people, just to go home. Through the prophet God speaks and tells them that it is ‘too light a thing’ for them simply to return home. God has greater plans for them. They will become a light to the nations and be God’s agent in drawing all of humanity into a relationship with the Creator.
Remaining disheartened is not their destiny. Hiding their relationship with the living God under a bushel basket is not their destiny. Being a light to the world is.
We have found the Messiah.
Palestine in the first century ce was not an idyllic place. Rome had occupied it to protect their Empire from its enemies to the east. The glorious but brief days of independence under the Maccabees were past and the religious establishment was divided into factions, each seeking to take advantage of the other.
Into this uneasy and remote place came John the Baptist, a rousing anti-establishment preacher whose message generated fear and hope among rich and poor alike. No private jets, no television production company nor expensive silk suits for John, just walking the Jordan Valley, preaching to crowds of people from farms, villages and towns, and wearing goatskin. It must have been quite the spectacle. It’s no wonder that people for whom the religious and political systems were not working would be drawn to him.
But even John was searching for the One who would lead his disheartened sisters and brothers into the future that God intended for them to inherit. And that person was his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth. So John pointed and Andrew followed his direction and discovered Jesus.
When he discovered Jesus, Andrew learned what his ancestors had learned from Second Isaiah that it was too small a thing simply to follow Jesus. Andrew learned what all disciples of Jesus learn: When we follow Jesus of Nazareth, we become ‘fishers of people’ who draw others into the new humanity Jesus offers us. We have found the Messiah, the Anointed One, the One who shows us God’s future for all creation.
We are called to be priests, pastors and teachers.
Yesterday, on the day we celebrate Peter’s confession of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, clergy and laity from throughout the Diocese gathered with the Archbishop at Christ Church Cathedral to ordain three new priests. It will be their vocation to lead and animate life-giving communities of faith to be a light to the world so that a new generation of people will become disciples of Jesus. As often happens on such occasions, I found myself hearing again --- for the first time --- the words and promises I heard and made thirty-eight years ago on a snowy night in the Cathedral of Saint John in the Wilderness in Denver, Colorado. [2]
Just like the exiles in Babylon I was reminded that it was too small a thing just to wish we, as a church, could hunker down, gather a few familiar folk around us and hope that this time of the ‘spiritual but not religious’ world would pass us by. No. We are to rise up to be light, life and hope, and to share a faith that is ‘religious and spiritual’.
Just like Andrew and the first disciples of Jesus I was reminded that it was too small a thing simply to sit at Jesus’ feet, to hear his comfortable words and to bathe in his compassionate presence. The prophets, old and new, have led us to be among the disciples of Jesus in the here and now so that we can share with others that we’ve found the Messiah, the Promised One.
We are all priests who hold up before the world the water of new birth and the wine and bread of new life. We are all pastors who comfort the troubled, who raise up the fallen, and who gather the scattered. We are all teachers who open up the mystery of God’s extraordinary presence in the ordinary of our daily lives.
I now know why I’ve been feeling disheartened. I’d forgotten simply to return to the heart of the matter and discover that God has always been there waiting in love.
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