Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on January 26, 2025, the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

One of the downsides of modern consumer culture, especially since the advent of the internet and social media, is a tendency towards comparison. Am I dressed as well as my friend? Do they drive a better car than I do? Are they ranked higher at work? Do I live in a better or worse zip code? Do they have less debt, higher income? Can they afford to have kids, own a house, replace a roof?

Not only do we have a tendency towards comparison, but the categories by which we compare each other have multiplied wildly: no longer just the classics of conspicuous consumption, house, car, clothes; but now intangibles, too: degrees of fulfillment, happiness at work, value added to society, mMeaning we’ve made or drawn.

With so much comparison flying around, there’s no time to gather the skill or the resources to make a substantive effort. And so we fall into the expedient of performance. Given limited time and resources, if I can at least look like I belong within the constellation of people and causes I care about, then it doesn’t really matter if I actually do belong, if I’ve really earned my place or not. But I don’t have to tell you the effects this has on a person’s psyche. We know the truth about ourselves, even if we’ve managed to hoodwink the world. So, the great promise of mass manufacturing and an internet-connected world devolves into a spiral of ever-increasing loneliness, with an ever-decreasing sense of place or merit.

But you didn’t come to church this morning to hear a priest decry the evils of modernity or social media — so why do I bring this up? Because these kinds of trends seep very quickly into the church, too, and into our lives of faith. When we talk about the health of the Episcopal Church, or any given parish for that matter, rarely do we talk about the actual condition of people’s souls. Instead we’re concerned with how well we look in public, whether thepeople whose opinions we respect think well of us or poorly. We wonder, are we doing enough? By which we always mean, are we doing as much as others? We have a monthly feeding program; others have a weekly meal. We collect coats in winter; others have a whole clothing pantry. We host a drop-in clinic; others have established whole schools for disadvantaged youth. 

Are we doing enough? Underneath the question is always the worry, am I doing enough? And underneath that, am I enough? I wonder, whose response are we afraid of? wWhence comes the judgement we’re so eager to put off?

Notice I’ve gotten a good ways through this sermon without any mention whatever of God. That’s intentional, because I don’t think this line of thinking has anything whatever to do with God. If we identify that voice with God, the voice that says we are never enough, then we are sorely mistaken. The accuser is not God, but rather the devil. Remember that great line from the revelation to St. John, when the devil and all his angels are cast out of heaven, “Rejoice, O heaven, and you that dwell therein, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.”

That’s very welcome good news, especially in our comparison-driven day and age. But if that’s the case, that the accuser does not speak truth, then what other standard is there? What else do we have to stand on, how do we know if we’re doing the right thing, going the right way, valuing the right things?

This is where our readings today suddenly speak with a voice of deep compassion and love. In Nehemiah, the people of God have returned from exile, the temple has been a ruin for decades, Jerusalem a waste, its walls broken down. They have returned to build a life amid the rubble of a past, a civilization, that is no longer. Ezra reads to them the Law of God, and they weep, because they know they have not kept it, indeed they could not have kept it, in exile from Jerusalem and its temple. If the point is comparison, they know they don’t measure up and that it would be futile even to try.

But Ezra is gentle, even tender with them: hearing the Law as they have is a cause for celebration and joy, not for tears. The Law as he reads it is not there to judge the people; rather it is there to create the people, to establish a covenant between them and the Lord their God, by which he would be faithful to what he had promised. Fulfilled or failure, their society is shaped, created, by the gift of that covenant, and they are united in a shared longing to see it in its fullness.

St. Paul is just as tender with the Corinthians. Like ours, Corinth is a rich society: they are heir, in continuous succession, to all the greatest treasures of Greek language, history, art, and thought. They are proud of who they are, and it pains them to think they might be deficient in any matter of virtue. But just like the tragic heroes of their great dramas, this creates a deep underlying vulnerability: they do not see a need to learn from or to honor anyone who is not like them. So, they are not the great, magnanimous lords of the earth their imagination makes them out to be; rather they are small and mean. They do not need to be brought down to size because they cannot get much smaller; rather they need to grow, grow into the full body of which they are merely a member. They had made the mistake of thinking, perhaps, they were the whole body, when it reality they were merely a part, maybe even so small as a hair. But the hair is proud of the body it adorns, and so Corinth may be proud of the Body into which it has been baptized.

And what body is that? Well, the body of Christ of course. And there lies the answer to all our modern anxieties, our fear of not measuring up, of needing to be everything to everybody, or seeming as if we are in any case. To these anxieties, the Gospel replies not with advice to do yet more. Rather it replies with a command: that we grow up. Not that we do more, but a command that we grow up: grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ, in whose image we were made and into whose Body we have been baptized, in all our magnificent specificity. 

That will require certain things of us, but the point is to grow, to mature, to live — not to accomplish tasks, tick boxes, or look the part. There are too many boxes for us to possibly tick them all. The whole Body is too large for us to possibly accomplish its every whim. And so instead of comparing ourselves to each other, to the Law, to our own past or to our idealized, imagined future, our duty and our joy is simply to grow up, to live, into the fulness of the stature of Christ.

A big part of growing up is not being afraid: not being afraid of our failures, of our sins, of our nightmares. Maybe you know the famous statistic, by far the most frequent command in the Bible is “Fear not; be not afraid.”

Another part of growing up is making peace with the things we have said “No,” to, the opportunities we have not pursued, or for that matter the opportunities that have said “No,” to us; making peace with the doors that have closed, so long as they are truly closed and not merely blocked with our own baggage.

Another part of growing up is making peace with our own limitations. I am sorry to tell you all I will never be a professional football player. Part of that is total lack of natural talent, another part is that I have redirected all my cultivated practice to things that interest me more. I admit it does not grieve me very much to lose this particular future, but other lost futures do grieve me, large and small, and I’m sure you have your fair share of these too.

Part of growing up is making peace with all of these, and making peace in the only way Christians ever make peace with anything: by remembering that Christ’s cross takes both what is best and what is worst about human nature, the world, and every possible story, and offers it all to God. 

On the cross Christ offers it all to God, that God may give it back again, and God does give it back again transfigured beyond all possible corruption or decay, free from sin and death; that now may flourish only light and life where before was sorrow and thorn; that now may grow bright and solid joys where before was only type and shadow.

We remember, and so we live: as Christians we are created by this act of living memory, no more, no less. By this act of living memory, not by point of comparison or degree of accomplishment, or public recognition. By this living memory alone. By it we are kept in touch with Christ our Lord and with the rest of his body as well. In this living memory we are freed, freed in the very depths of our souls: freed from the whispers of the accuser, freed from the pressures of comparison, free to grow into the image in which we were made, free to rejoice in all things, giving thanks for the treasures of grace revealed in all people and in every created thing. 

For Christ has conquered death and hell, and by our baptism we are members of his own body. We have nothing to prove, to ourselves or anybody else. But rather we grow up to tell the tale afresh in whatever small way is ours to say. So the whole world may see and know: there is good news for the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed: for wherever Christ is, there is the year of the Lord’s favor, and with him is every fulfillment for evermore.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.