| To contact us: Calvary Episcopal Church 667 Mount Road Aston, PA 19014 610-459-2013 OFFICE mail@calvaryepiscopalrockdale.org |
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| SERMON 4th Sunday after the Epiphany February 1, 2009 The Rev. Kristine Hill |
| 667 Mount Road, Aston, PA 19014 610-459-2013 |
| Small Parish - Big Heart The little church you've been looking for! All are welcome! |
| Our Mission: To worship the Lord To serve the community To grow the church |
Deuteronomy 18:15-20 1st Corinthians 8:1-13 Mark 1:21-28 |
| The Rev. Kristine Hill, Interim Rector |
At Grace Lutheran, in Houston, we decided it was time to make a pictorial
directory of our congregation. It had been years since we’d had one -- no one
even remembered when. So we formed a committee and they chose a company
to work with, picked a couple of Sunday afternoons when pictures would be taken
(Grace was a smallish congregation, like Calvary) and set everything up. On the
chosen Sunday, a representative from “Great Shots Photography” came to Grace
to sign folks up and take down their initial information. A committee member
showed her to the library and made sure she was comfortable. Shortly thereafter
Ricardo and Miles Rodriguez, a father and son and long-time Grace members,
arrived early for Church. As was their habit, they went to the library to see if
there was anything they wanted to read. They each found something and sat
down.
At the time, Rick (who worked for NASA by day and was an artist in his spare time)
wore his black-hair long, which brought out the Indian features in his Mexican-
American heritage. Miles, tall and slender, was still in high school; he would later
attend Harvard. Both of them were always dressed nicely, very clean, didn’t even
have tattoos, but the woman from “Great Shots Photography” grew anxious. She
asked them “what are you doing in here?” They said they were reading. She told
them they had to leave. They said they were members of the church. Becoming
yet more agitated, she insisted they leave. When the committee member was
summoned the woman from “Great Shots” explained that two Mexicans had
frightened her by coming into the library and sitting down. She remained adamant
that they not return while she had use of the library. We were all perplexed by
her behavior, and quite dismayed with the services rendered by “Great Shots
Photography” - (not its real name).
Jesus went to the synagogue one Sabbath to teach. Many people were drawn to
his teaching because he spoke not like someone well educated, but as someone
with a genuine, personal knowledge of God. The people hung on his every word;
they turned to their neighbor saying, “did you hear that? This is amazing.” When
he had been speaking for a while, a person with an unclean spirit, a tormented
soul, approached Jesus and abruptly asked him: “what are you doing here?”
There’s a conversation stopper. “Why have you come here, Jesus? Are you
looking to destroy us?” – the man asked. Hmmm Who is this person that
challenges Jesus so directly? What does he mean by “are you here to destroy
us?” Destroy whom? The unclean spirit? the man himself? some subgroup of
people in the synagogue? And what was an unclean person doing in the
synagogue, anyway, right there with everybody else?
Because in those days, in that religious community, to be “unclean” was to be
contagious. A person who was unclean in any way (all the means of being
unclean are spelled out in scripture and in accompanying religious writings) --
anyone who was unclean had to stay away from decent people, from “clean,”
wholesome, regular people. If folks like us, who are “clean,” who live ‘good’
lives, had contact with someone who was unclean then we became contaminated,
too. Being unclean was serious business. Everything you touched became
polluted. Therefore, you had to stay away from your family, your home, your work,
your friends, the synagogue, the Temple… you were ostracized, expelled from
daily life until you could be made clean again. Only then you could re-join
society, enjoy human community again.
So this man confronts Jesus in the synagogue asking “what are you doing
here?” when the question might well have been reversed. The unclean man was
the one who was out of place. You can bet nobody was standing near him --
they didn’t want to catch his social disease. A holy person, especially, would
have avoided someone unclean; contamination would render a holy person unfit
to perform his religious tasks. It would be degrading. Of all those present, Jesus
should have given that man the widest berth. But from what we read, Jesus did
draw back from the man; he did not react with fear or disgust. Instead he
commanded the unclean spirit to come out and leave the man alone. The spirit
obeyed and the man was released from his captor. We don’t know exactly what
was going on with that guy, but he was being tormented by a foul, chaotic spirit.
Jesus evicted the spirit and left the man calm and right with himself. He was well
and whole. Not only that, but being made “clean” he was able to return to his
family, his job, and his home. He was a member of society once more. He was
restored to life, to the human community. This is what Jesus does, not only
heal us, but give us back our humanity, and our place – a dignified place – among
our fellow human beings.
We don’t usually think or speak in terms of “unclean spirits” today. That Sunday
morning at Grace when the representative from the photographic agency insisted
that two of our members leave the library, no one said of it: “we encountered an
unclean spirit.” But perhaps we did. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and
renew a right spirit within me,” we pray using the words of the 51st Psalm. We
are not unfamiliar with the idea of unclean spirits, of needing God to break into
our lives and clean us, straighten us out, enable us to see correctly, to make us
whole again -- not just as individuals, but as people in relation to each other.
“Create in us clean hearts, O God, and put new and right spirits within us.”
Imagine if Jesus came to teach here one Sunday morning (let’s say we suspected
it was Jesus, but some of us had doubts). His teaching was unlike anything we
had ever heard. New-comers began gathering at the doors, and long-time
members mumbled in awe, “who is this guy? He’s amazing!” When he spoke, it
didn’t sound like something he had learned; it came from within himself, as
though the truth resided inside him. A ripple of excitement ran through the
crowd of people hearing him talk about God. Everyone was energized, and yet
some held back, unsure. Who among us, do you think, would be the one to say
to him: “what are you doing here?” Who would be the one to wonder whether
this man had come, not to save, but to destroy us? Would it be you?
My friends, I fear it might be me. Sometimes the world seems to change right
out from under us in an instant. Change doesn’t actually happen that quickly; we
probably were not paying close enough attention as things happened gradually,
but it seems like we wake up one day and everything is topsy-turvy – doesn’t it?
Were Jesus to show up and start teaching here at Calvary, undoubtedly I would
be the first to question him. I would worry that he was challenging my position as
clergy, making pastors and rectors obsolete, nullifying my means of making a
living. ‘With Jesus here teaching, who will need me?’ I might think, and from
there, begin to fear for my job security in these tough economic times. Such
concerns might prompt me to say, “what are you doing ?” before I could think
better of it and shut my mouth.
It is tough to face uncertain times, to encounter new faces -- such things
unsettle us. Right now, the future in our nation, in our world, is utterly unknown,
what with our fragile economy. And your future, here at Calvary, is in a state of
flux. You have no Rector and, for a time at least, will have no interim rector
either. We’ve built some good momentum lately -- naming Calvary’s strengths,
talking about aspects of ministry that are important to members, dreaming of ways
to expand what is good and make it better. Can that momentum be sustained in
the absence of a Rector? Will Calvary continue to see and believe in its
strengths and abilities until it finds a new Rector? Can the members hold
together and keep moving forward without getting discouraged -- by the
difficulties of a parish without a priest and by the difficulties we all face in these
tough times? This is a period of great uncertainty for the world, the
neighborhood, and for Calvary. Surrounded by so many unknowns, we may
respond by wanting to protect ourselves-and-our-positions a bit more, by
becoming less open to each other, by exaggerating the differences and conflicts
between us, and by bickering over trivial issues. Fearful times are the perfect
opportunity for rancorous, restless spirits to come and brood within us --
darkening our mood, crushing our hope.
But we are not forsaken. God has claimed us as God’s own. We are not stuck
in the misery of gloomy thoughts and troublesome spirits. God has brought us out
of the forces-of-death to live in the brightness of his Son. Every time we gather
here for worship Jesus stands among us. The Holy Spirit brings us here on
Sunday mornings and Jesus is present from the moment the service begins:
“Blessed be God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit and blessed be his kingdom, now
and forever. Amen.” No clamorous, judgmental spirit has a chance when Jesus is
here. For as our worries crowd-around, expressed or unexpressed, asking “what
are we doing here? Nothing is changing?” … as our judgments break loose and
we think “what are ‘they’ doing here? They’re not like us.” … as our impatience
gets the better of us and we snarl “what is that committee up to? When will they
get us what we need?” … as our insecurity intensifies and we wonder “what is
she doing here, criticizing me again? When will she leave me alone?” -- Jesus
comes to us and says to those bitter, inharmonious spirits: “be silent! Come out
of this people!” Jesus restores our peace, our sanity, and our right relationships
with each other. Jesus loves Calvary church -- look at the evidence, all the
wonderful things that have happened among us these last five months; who
would have expected that? Jesus loves Calvary church -- I know, because it is
easy to love you. Your Lord who loves you, will not let you be overwhelmed by
difficulties. Tried and tested? maybe so, but overwhelmed or defeated? No.
What we have gained being together these last five months has been no
accident. Nor has it simply been due to our great skill -- yours and mine. By the
grace and goodness of God our worship has been enhanced with members lifting
the cross in procession, carrying the torches and the Bible; our Sundays have
been blessed with increased participation in children’s Sunday school, with two
baptisms and the reception of new members. We have rejoiced in several
weddings and have partaken in a fun-filled, timeline review of our history which
brought us the beginnings of a vision for our future. God has been good to us,
bringing us countless blessings -- some we might have foreseen, but others that
were a complete surprise. Christ is everywhere among us in this congregation.
The Lord has been with us thus far along the way; he will remain with us as we
face the days ahead as well.
Being here at Calvary has been a blessing to me; all of you have been a
blessing in my life. I thank God for you, and I know God will continue to make
the love of Christ known through your worship and your witness. Blessed be
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and for evermore. Amen.
directory of our congregation. It had been years since we’d had one -- no one
even remembered when. So we formed a committee and they chose a company
to work with, picked a couple of Sunday afternoons when pictures would be taken
(Grace was a smallish congregation, like Calvary) and set everything up. On the
chosen Sunday, a representative from “Great Shots Photography” came to Grace
to sign folks up and take down their initial information. A committee member
showed her to the library and made sure she was comfortable. Shortly thereafter
Ricardo and Miles Rodriguez, a father and son and long-time Grace members,
arrived early for Church. As was their habit, they went to the library to see if
there was anything they wanted to read. They each found something and sat
down.
At the time, Rick (who worked for NASA by day and was an artist in his spare time)
wore his black-hair long, which brought out the Indian features in his Mexican-
American heritage. Miles, tall and slender, was still in high school; he would later
attend Harvard. Both of them were always dressed nicely, very clean, didn’t even
have tattoos, but the woman from “Great Shots Photography” grew anxious. She
asked them “what are you doing in here?” They said they were reading. She told
them they had to leave. They said they were members of the church. Becoming
yet more agitated, she insisted they leave. When the committee member was
summoned the woman from “Great Shots” explained that two Mexicans had
frightened her by coming into the library and sitting down. She remained adamant
that they not return while she had use of the library. We were all perplexed by
her behavior, and quite dismayed with the services rendered by “Great Shots
Photography” - (not its real name).
Jesus went to the synagogue one Sabbath to teach. Many people were drawn to
his teaching because he spoke not like someone well educated, but as someone
with a genuine, personal knowledge of God. The people hung on his every word;
they turned to their neighbor saying, “did you hear that? This is amazing.” When
he had been speaking for a while, a person with an unclean spirit, a tormented
soul, approached Jesus and abruptly asked him: “what are you doing here?”
There’s a conversation stopper. “Why have you come here, Jesus? Are you
looking to destroy us?” – the man asked. Hmmm Who is this person that
challenges Jesus so directly? What does he mean by “are you here to destroy
us?” Destroy whom? The unclean spirit? the man himself? some subgroup of
people in the synagogue? And what was an unclean person doing in the
synagogue, anyway, right there with everybody else?
Because in those days, in that religious community, to be “unclean” was to be
contagious. A person who was unclean in any way (all the means of being
unclean are spelled out in scripture and in accompanying religious writings) --
anyone who was unclean had to stay away from decent people, from “clean,”
wholesome, regular people. If folks like us, who are “clean,” who live ‘good’
lives, had contact with someone who was unclean then we became contaminated,
too. Being unclean was serious business. Everything you touched became
polluted. Therefore, you had to stay away from your family, your home, your work,
your friends, the synagogue, the Temple… you were ostracized, expelled from
daily life until you could be made clean again. Only then you could re-join
society, enjoy human community again.
So this man confronts Jesus in the synagogue asking “what are you doing
here?” when the question might well have been reversed. The unclean man was
the one who was out of place. You can bet nobody was standing near him --
they didn’t want to catch his social disease. A holy person, especially, would
have avoided someone unclean; contamination would render a holy person unfit
to perform his religious tasks. It would be degrading. Of all those present, Jesus
should have given that man the widest berth. But from what we read, Jesus did
draw back from the man; he did not react with fear or disgust. Instead he
commanded the unclean spirit to come out and leave the man alone. The spirit
obeyed and the man was released from his captor. We don’t know exactly what
was going on with that guy, but he was being tormented by a foul, chaotic spirit.
Jesus evicted the spirit and left the man calm and right with himself. He was well
and whole. Not only that, but being made “clean” he was able to return to his
family, his job, and his home. He was a member of society once more. He was
restored to life, to the human community. This is what Jesus does, not only
heal us, but give us back our humanity, and our place – a dignified place – among
our fellow human beings.
We don’t usually think or speak in terms of “unclean spirits” today. That Sunday
morning at Grace when the representative from the photographic agency insisted
that two of our members leave the library, no one said of it: “we encountered an
unclean spirit.” But perhaps we did. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and
renew a right spirit within me,” we pray using the words of the 51st Psalm. We
are not unfamiliar with the idea of unclean spirits, of needing God to break into
our lives and clean us, straighten us out, enable us to see correctly, to make us
whole again -- not just as individuals, but as people in relation to each other.
“Create in us clean hearts, O God, and put new and right spirits within us.”
Imagine if Jesus came to teach here one Sunday morning (let’s say we suspected
it was Jesus, but some of us had doubts). His teaching was unlike anything we
had ever heard. New-comers began gathering at the doors, and long-time
members mumbled in awe, “who is this guy? He’s amazing!” When he spoke, it
didn’t sound like something he had learned; it came from within himself, as
though the truth resided inside him. A ripple of excitement ran through the
crowd of people hearing him talk about God. Everyone was energized, and yet
some held back, unsure. Who among us, do you think, would be the one to say
to him: “what are you doing here?” Who would be the one to wonder whether
this man had come, not to save, but to destroy us? Would it be you?
My friends, I fear it might be me. Sometimes the world seems to change right
out from under us in an instant. Change doesn’t actually happen that quickly; we
probably were not paying close enough attention as things happened gradually,
but it seems like we wake up one day and everything is topsy-turvy – doesn’t it?
Were Jesus to show up and start teaching here at Calvary, undoubtedly I would
be the first to question him. I would worry that he was challenging my position as
clergy, making pastors and rectors obsolete, nullifying my means of making a
living. ‘With Jesus here teaching, who will need me?’ I might think, and from
there, begin to fear for my job security in these tough economic times. Such
concerns might prompt me to say, “what are you doing ?” before I could think
better of it and shut my mouth.
It is tough to face uncertain times, to encounter new faces -- such things
unsettle us. Right now, the future in our nation, in our world, is utterly unknown,
what with our fragile economy. And your future, here at Calvary, is in a state of
flux. You have no Rector and, for a time at least, will have no interim rector
either. We’ve built some good momentum lately -- naming Calvary’s strengths,
talking about aspects of ministry that are important to members, dreaming of ways
to expand what is good and make it better. Can that momentum be sustained in
the absence of a Rector? Will Calvary continue to see and believe in its
strengths and abilities until it finds a new Rector? Can the members hold
together and keep moving forward without getting discouraged -- by the
difficulties of a parish without a priest and by the difficulties we all face in these
tough times? This is a period of great uncertainty for the world, the
neighborhood, and for Calvary. Surrounded by so many unknowns, we may
respond by wanting to protect ourselves-and-our-positions a bit more, by
becoming less open to each other, by exaggerating the differences and conflicts
between us, and by bickering over trivial issues. Fearful times are the perfect
opportunity for rancorous, restless spirits to come and brood within us --
darkening our mood, crushing our hope.
But we are not forsaken. God has claimed us as God’s own. We are not stuck
in the misery of gloomy thoughts and troublesome spirits. God has brought us out
of the forces-of-death to live in the brightness of his Son. Every time we gather
here for worship Jesus stands among us. The Holy Spirit brings us here on
Sunday mornings and Jesus is present from the moment the service begins:
“Blessed be God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit and blessed be his kingdom, now
and forever. Amen.” No clamorous, judgmental spirit has a chance when Jesus is
here. For as our worries crowd-around, expressed or unexpressed, asking “what
are we doing here? Nothing is changing?” … as our judgments break loose and
we think “what are ‘they’ doing here? They’re not like us.” … as our impatience
gets the better of us and we snarl “what is that committee up to? When will they
get us what we need?” … as our insecurity intensifies and we wonder “what is
she doing here, criticizing me again? When will she leave me alone?” -- Jesus
comes to us and says to those bitter, inharmonious spirits: “be silent! Come out
of this people!” Jesus restores our peace, our sanity, and our right relationships
with each other. Jesus loves Calvary church -- look at the evidence, all the
wonderful things that have happened among us these last five months; who
would have expected that? Jesus loves Calvary church -- I know, because it is
easy to love you. Your Lord who loves you, will not let you be overwhelmed by
difficulties. Tried and tested? maybe so, but overwhelmed or defeated? No.
What we have gained being together these last five months has been no
accident. Nor has it simply been due to our great skill -- yours and mine. By the
grace and goodness of God our worship has been enhanced with members lifting
the cross in procession, carrying the torches and the Bible; our Sundays have
been blessed with increased participation in children’s Sunday school, with two
baptisms and the reception of new members. We have rejoiced in several
weddings and have partaken in a fun-filled, timeline review of our history which
brought us the beginnings of a vision for our future. God has been good to us,
bringing us countless blessings -- some we might have foreseen, but others that
were a complete surprise. Christ is everywhere among us in this congregation.
The Lord has been with us thus far along the way; he will remain with us as we
face the days ahead as well.
Being here at Calvary has been a blessing to me; all of you have been a
blessing in my life. I thank God for you, and I know God will continue to make
the love of Christ known through your worship and your witness. Blessed be
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and for evermore. Amen.