Third Sunday after Ephiphany – Year C – Bill Harkins
The 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.
The Gospel: Luke 4:14-21
Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. Good morning, and welcome to Holy Family on this Third Sunday after the Epiphany. We are so glad you are here! Well, this is where it all begins: and while the baptism of Jesus is really the occasion—the true beginning—of his calling, today we continue to see the implications of that moment…the “so what” in response to Baptism. And in today’s Gospel and Epistle, it is here that the adult Jesus shows up on the stage of history. In this story and our own stories, baptism means more than repentance and cleansing. Here, theologically understood, baptism issues in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the giving of an incarnational, redemptive identity. We recall that God said to Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved…with you I am pleased.” Although this epiphany is a public revelation in our telling of it, the words come intimately to the praying Jesus, and by extension we all bear witness to it as well. Much lies ahead for Jesus from this point, and we hear in today’s Gospel passage that the people were filled with expectation, especially in his own hometown. He must live out this identity and meet those expectations laid on him, and we do well to pay attention to how the people have been speaking about the anointed one already; remember how the crowds will project their hopes and desires onto him. This too, informed Paul’s vocation—his calling—a calling fully realized in this text for today as he reminds the Corinthians, and by extension each of us, that “we are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” Jesus’ baptism, and his response to it, thus leads us to consider the meaning of our baptism too. It’s “vocation,” a word that has lost much of its resonance through repeated use, both secular and churchly.
The psychiatrist Carl Jung had a sign inscribed over the front door of his home which read, “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.” It is an English translation of the Latin quotation which Jung found as a student when studying Erasmus, the Renaissance scholar and humanist. “Vocatio” is the Latin root of “vocation” andmeans to have a calling, but “calling” in our culture often simply denotes one’s job or career, one’s chosen profession. The notion that it is God who calls us, seems a commonplace piety when we are talking about “church vocations,” calls to “ministry” or “the religious life,” but it sounds more like an afterthought or theological overlay about ordinary life. We tend to think of our vocations as the way we make our living, and avocations — the things we don’t have to do — provide our recreation.
Many years ago, as I first began to consider ordained ministry, Bishop Frank Allan said this to me: “I think we get it backwards in our tradition. We have ordination certificates framed and hung on the wall, and our Baptismal certificate, if we have one, and if we know where it is, is only wallet-sized. It should be the other way around. The priesthood of all believers means just that.”
I agree with this. So, what does Baptism mean, theologically understood, in the sometimes-mundane everydayness of our lives? It means what we witnessed last week at our Ministry Fair. It means the abiding and steadfast work of all the committees who, week in and week out, keep this parish running. It means each one of us, asking where in the Body of Christ we belong, striving, as Paul says, for the greater gifts—that is, being our authentic, true selves as a member of this parish.
In one of my favorite movies, Tender Mercies, which many of us watched on movie night together last year, Robert Duvall plays the role of Mac Sledge, a washed up, alcoholic country singer, who awakens at a run-down Texas roadside motel and gas station after a night of heavy drinking. He meets the motel owner, a young widow named Rosa Lee, played by Tess Harper, and offers to work in exchange for a room. Rosa Lee, whose husband was killed in Vietnam, is raising her young son, Sonny, on her own. She agrees to let Mac stay under the condition that he not drink while working and living there. The two begin to develop feelings for one another, mostly during quiet evenings sitting alone and sharing bits of their life stories. Mac resolves to give up alcohol and start his life anew. After some time passes, he and Rosa Lee wed. They start attending a Baptist church on a regular basis. Mac’s redemption and self-improvement run parallel with his conversion to Christianity. Mac is baptized for the first time, along with Sonny. Afterwards, Sonny asks Mac whether he feels any different, to which Mac responds, “Not yet,” indicating Mac’s belief that his reconciliation with God will eventually lead to transformation, over time—in Kairos, or sacred time.Mac’s response to a fan who asks if he was really “The Mac Sledge,” the country music star— “Yes, ma’am, I guess I was” — suggests that his former self has been washed away through baptism and he is open to the mystery of who he is becoming.During one scene, Rosa Lee tells Mac, “I say my prayers for you and when I thank the Lord for his tender mercies, you’re at the head of the list.” Mac did nothing to guarantee or deserve such a miracle. Despite his at times selfish and abusive past, Rosa Lee takes him in and eventually falls in love with him: It is an undeserved grace, a gift of providence from a simple woman who continued to pray for him and to be grateful for him. Mac experiences his ongoing spiritual resurrection even as he wrestles with addiction, and death, in both the past—Sonny’s father in the Vietnam War—and present—his own daughter in a car accident. He also had to die to his old ways of being in the world. In the church, we call this “metanoia”-a kind of turning around, and healing in the process. One might say that Mac found a new “vocatio”—a new calling—beyond that of being a country music star. He rose from the waters of his baptism with a grace-full gift. He was transformed by love. And so are we.
Our language of vocation is problematic not just in its churchly usage (where the distinctions and congruities of “inner” and “outer” calls can trip us up) but in the more common reality of a multiplicity of calls with competing claims upon the stewardship of our lives. We do not have just one vocation, of course, and we sometimes struggle to balance different responsibilities and relationships. Anointing any one of our vocations as somehow holier than another may be a dangerous thing. Was my role as a professor more of a vocation than my marriage, or as a counselor more important than teaching, or serving for a time among you all most important, or is my responsibility as a citizen less than my relationship to my children, and now, to my grandchildren? The claims of others call out to us, often by name, and often out of genuine need. When Thee Smith, my twin brother in ordination, and I were ordained at the Cathedral, Bishop Alexander said that we should remember that we are not professors who happened to be ordained, but priests, after the order of Melchizedek, who happen to teach. I have found this to be a deeply important and significant ontological understanding of vocation. It is a vocational tapestry that begins right here, at this altar, on Sunday and flows out from there into the world. It is a tapestry of many colors, many threads, the most significant of which is, I believe, our Baptismal thread—guiding, sustaining, enriching the whole. And what if our vocations seem to change during our lives? If what one once felt called to do or be no longer seems right, what then? Sometimes, of course, the covenants of the past must hold us in faithfulness. But sometimes new callings arise, and lives are remade in response. What of those who are adrift, unsure of any calling? Our lovely imagery of vocation then seems naïve, better suited for the supposed stability and limited choices of an earlier age. As Wendell Berry reminds us;
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
In the Episcopal Church we are comfortable with the mystery of asking questions, being curious and open to how God might be calling us into a flourishing and generative future. But consider this: the calling of Jesus in today’s Gospel—scripture having been fulfilled in that moment—is not about a job or a career. It is not a word of mission, sending him into the future; at least, not at the outset. The word of baptism is first about the delight of God in this beloved, this chosen, this child called by name. Not a call to do, but a calling that names us. I love to imagine God delighting in Jesus, and in each of us, as any parent delights in her or his child. As for Jesus, my sisters and brothers, so it is for us. Our first calling, the baptismal calling, is the one that simply loves and names: You are my child. I delight in you. The words embrace us and promise to hold us. This is where it begins, and this is also, we dare claim, the last word, the one that holds our future. Yet between that beginning and that end, this baptismal call will often become a call to action. It will mean mission and ministry and all kinds of tasks. It means what our parish—our entire wonderful parish, from flowers and altars to tractors and caring for these acres, to Eucharistic visitors and to extending hospitality in countless ways, and on and on—what this space looked like last Sunday, and what it looks like every week, as we become the Body of Christ in the world. Anointing is a sign of blessing, but it is also a commissioning. As it was for Jesus, so it is for us, the Body of Christ in the world. Our parents and teachers and scores of others called us and sent us to the vocations of our lives. These vocations have come through human voices and relationships, institutions, and communities; they call to us in all the ways our lives find form and function. The tasks and duties do matter, but what abides — our identity, our belonging, our hope –begins when we hear “You are my child, beloved,” and we are raised to the new life of grace; sustained by the Holy Spirit; given an inquiring and discerning heart; the courage to will and to persevere; a spirit to know and to love God; and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works.” We promise to go forth into the world, respecting te dignity of every human being. And so it is with each of us. I pray that our vocations, whatever they may be and however they are unfolding, are warmed by the Holy Fire that lives in each of us. And so, dear ones, my annual report is this…a love letter to this parish, and a deep bow of gratitude for each of you. In this season of the Episcopal church, changing as it is in so many ways, the “lay led, clergy supported” vision is becoming a reality in this parish. And I pray we remember that the Holy Spirit who anointed us on the day of our Baptism is there to assist, encourage, inspire, and sustain us. I give thanks for each of you, and for the ministries we share in this sacred space, and beyond. Amen.