Sermon Epiphany 6: God with Us in Galilee--and Allyn!



St Hugh Allyn and their lovely Labyrinth

Text: Matthew 5:21-37

You know, whenever I read this passage that we read this morning, all I can seem to hear is Jesus saying; “If your hand offends you, cut your hands off. If your eyes offend you, pull them out.” And that’s it. I’m done. Jesus sounds perfectly crazy and it becomes hard for me to get to the point of Jesus’ message.

So, before we talk about this passage, I want to set some of the context.

Matthew has a very distinct flow, a very distinct message. The gospel introduces Jesus in the very first chapter as “God with us” as Emmanuel, as the Epiphany of God. God has come to us as a baby born in a barn, as a child fleeing from Herod. God has come to us as a wandering rabbi teaching in the Galilean hills.

Matthew introduces Jesus’ ministry with these words; “The way of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, by way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light; on those who dwell in the region of the shadow of death; on them the light has dawned.” Jesus both starts and spends the majority of his ministry in this region of Northern Palestine, called Galilee.

Now, its important to note that Galilee is considered a backwater region of the Roman Empire. It’s a bunch of small villages and two bit towns with peasants and fishermen. Some scholars wonder if the reason Matthew focuses so much on Jesus’ Galilean ministry is because the gospel itself was written in Galilee many years later, after the fall of Jerusalem. Matthew reminds us that God came to us, not in Rome, the political center of the day; not in Jerusalem, the religious center, but in Galilee, where he grew up and spent most of his ministry. The light has dawned on Galilee, first. Of all the places God could have revealed himself, God chooses Galilee.

There is one more thing to know about Galilee. It, like the rest of the region, is under the rule of Rome. It does not fare very well. It is said that the roads leading from Galilee south into Jerusalem were often lined with crosses—every time there was a rebellion, every time a Roman governor wanted to make a point. The Galileans suffered tremendously under Roman rule. God comes to us in a suffering people.

And on one of these backwater hillsides, Jesus draws a large crowd around him, and he gives what we call the Sermon on the Mount—the longest recorded sermon given by Jesus. Jesus looks at the men and women and children of Galilee—these peasants and these farmers and these fisherfolk—and he says; “You are blessed. You might be poor and mourning and landless now—but you are blessed in the kingdom of God.” “You—you who are told that you are worth nothing, who are told you are at the bottom of the social and economic heap—you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” You are the ones who are going to reveal the Epiphany of God to the world.

Can you imagine how important, how revolutionary those words must have been?

And, then, in our reading this morning, Jesus gets down to business. You blessed people, you people who are the light of the world, you who are called to be part of the kingdom of God—a better kingdom than Rome ever could be—let’s live in light of that.

Jesus is not laying down a bunch of rules so much as he is outlining a new way to live, in light of this kingdom of God. He says—it is not enough simply to not kill each other. You need to learn to love each other, to patch up your arguments. Don’t bring each other to Roman courts—learn to work out your disagreements. Learn to live in love. Learn to live in community.

Its not enough simply not to cheat on your partner. Don’t treat each other as objects, don’t give into lust that demeans and hurts other people. Don’t abandon the one that depends on you for support simply because you feel like it. Learn to live in love, in community.

And be honest and have integrity. Don’t swear oaths—and there were many in the ancient world. Oaths of loyalty to Rome, oaths of honesty in a courtroom, there were religious oaths and vows. Jesus said—be so honest and act with such integrity that you do not need to swear an oath. Learn to live in community.

In other words, treat each other—not like Rome treats you—but treat each other with dignity and respect. Have compassion—that is suffer with—each other. In other words, love one another. This is what love looks like in action.

Nice and easy, right? I know of so many ways I have failed to live in love and live in community. We struggle for the kingdom, we reach for the kingdom, and the kingdom is among us, but it is also not yet.

So, time for introductions. I did my discernment for ordination in a Total Common Ministry church, at St Marks Montesano. Then I decided to go off to seminary. Now, I’ve ended up back where I started, or very close, serving in Aberdeen, back in local ministry in a place I love so much.

Perhaps that is why I love Matthew so much, love the message of Matthew so much. The God who came to us in the tiny villages of Galilee comes to us in the small towns of the Olympic Peninsula. In all of these little towns that most people can’t find on the map, God comes.

And we know something about living in community, don’t we? Something about the importance of staying in relationship with each other when the going gets rough? Like the little towns in Galilee, in our small towns, we have to learn to be neighbors. We have to learn to take care of each other. Its something small towns can teach our larger world, I think. We live in a world that says—look out for #1. We live in a world that glorifies greed and materialism and getting ahead at the expense of other people. Here, in these little towns, we have the opportunity, just like Galilee to model a different way of being in the world.

And I’m working on the street most of the time, in Aberdeen, where there are hundreds of people homeless and the poverty rate is something like 25%. And, there, the message of Matthew is even more important. Every week, I sit down and have conversations with people who are struggling terribly, people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap. And what is amazing, is that I find God there. I find the church there. I find amazing gifts and I find that, indeed, the light comes in dark places. Elderly men who have lost everything teach me about grace; women who have experienced abuse teach me about courage; young people who were born into a devastated economy teach me about hope and survival. We are learning to live in community, to live in love.

So, to you, small towns of the Olympic Peninsula, the light has come, God has made Godself known. The Epiphany, the appearing of God, has come.

You, Allyn and Shelton and Montesano and Aberdeen and the people of God in these places, you are the light of the world.

You, all of you, all of us, are called to live in the light of that grace, to live in community, to live seeking love and relationship. To care for each other in a world that so often seems to have gone wrong.

Sermon Epiphany 5: Christ and Him Crucified

Text: Matthew 5:13-20 and 1 Corinthians 2:1-5

“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

I have always been struck by the way St Andrew’s calls itself a “beacon of light on 1^st and G.”

Epiphany, this season following Christmas, is a time we talk about light. The word, epiphany, means appearing, specifically the appearing of God, of the divine into our midst. It speaks of the in-breaking of God into our world, the revelation of God to us.

We, as the people of God, are supposed to reflect that light. That is what Jesus tells us in our gospel passage this morning. “You are the light of the world.” We are a people so touched and so transformed by the presence of God among us that we reflect it to the world around us.

It sounds like a pretty glorious mission, doesn’t it? It sounds powerful. It sounds important. We are light of the world. Whole empires have been built based on the belief that they offer light to the world.

Is that what Jesus means? You are the light of the world? You have all the answers? You are powerful and everyone should look up to you?

Paul, in our reading from 1 Corinthians, doesn’t think so. We don’t always get around to Paul’s writing in the lectionary or spend as much time with it. But he is probably the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived. He writes this letter—a series of letters in fact-- to the churches he has founded in Corinth, that great Greek city sitting on the Mediterranean. And there is a problem in Corinth. There is all sorts of jostling for power. All sorts of infighting.

And Paul says, no, no, no. You want to know what my message, what the Christian message is all about? You want to know what is truly important to God?

Look to the cross. I have determined, Paul says, to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Look to the cross. Now, what do you think about when you think of a cross? Now, in our churches, the cross is revered. We have gold plated crosses all over the place. All well and good, but do you know that for the first three centuries of Christianity, the cross was never pictured or drawn in Christian art? Do you know why?

Because saying that the one you worshipped was crucified was saying that he was executed for treason in the worst way possible. It was like saying—yeah, we worship that guy that was sent to the electric chair. To Jesus’ own people in Palestine, the cross was a symbol of torture and despair, a reminder of the thousands of crosses that lined the roads at that time. To the urban and cultured Greeks of Corinth, the cross was a symbol of shame, of criminality, something that only happened to low lifes and criminals and ne'er do wells.

But Paul says I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. He goes on and explains that what seems foolish to us, what seems foolish to the cultured and refined Greeks of Corinth is actually wisdom to God. What seems powerless and weak to us, to the world, is where God’s power lies.

God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, not as a wealthy and wise ruler, but as a poor and crucified carpenter. What’s more, the Epiphany of God came in a barn, on a lonely hillside, on a cross to a lonely and forgotten people in a bunch of two bit towns. And finally, in a garden tomb. The Epiphany of God, the Light of God was revealed in weakness. On a cross. God died, in the person of Jesus Christ, at the hands of an executioner. Can you imagine the powerlessness and the shame of that?

Why? Why did God come to us, not in earthly power, but in weakness and shame? Why did God choose to come to us like that?

So that, every one of us who feels alone
who feels ashamed
 who confronts death
 who experiences death and loss
who is ignored
who feels lost or powerless
 who has lost everything…

 would know that God was with us. In solidarity with us.

So, what does that mean for us? What does this mean to be a beacon of light on first and G? It sounds a little less romantic now, doesn’t it? What does it mean for us to follow a crucified God? What does it mean for us?

It means we are a people, not great and good people so much, as people who have experienced the grace of God. We are, all of us, broken people called to follow a crucified master, and live in the light, in the revealing, in the Epiphany of the grace of God.

We are in a time of transition, a time that makes us feel powerless, that makes us feel uncomfortable, that sometimes makes us feel foolish. We are struggling to remember who we are.

If nothing else, let us remember this. We are a people marked by grace. The light we reflect is only the light of the Grace of God in our own lives. We don’t build God’s work. We only reflect God’s grace, we only live in the light of God’s grace.

I had a dear man teach me something about this. I went down under the bridge on Christmas Day—I was with Bonnie Campbell, the priest from Montesano, and there were only a few folks there. We sat down and talked, looking over the river. He said; “You know, Christmas is all about grace. God comes to us and we share with each other and we care for our neighbors and we find grace.” What is foolish to the world is the wisdom of God. In the places we believe are powerless, the power of God is found.

We don’t know what will come next for us here at St Andrews. But I invite you, just for a moment to lay aside your worries and your uncertainties. Trust in the one we follow, this Christ and him crucified. Learn from this wise man I met. Know that in our weakness, God’s power is made manifest. In our foolishness and our mistakes, God’s wisdom is made known.

Trust in grace. Live in the light of grace. Reflect the light of this grace. Because, you are the light of the world.