The Rev. George Yandell
January 21, 2007
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
This sermon is also available in audio
It was early one snowy winter morning. I had gotten up to take the dog for his walk. I heard my first-born, Abby, stirring in her crib. I got her up, put her in the Snuggly on my chest, and put my heaviest down parka over us both, and ventured forth, with the dog pulling heavy on his leash. We walked in a silent Memphis predawn—just us and the softly falling snow.
Abby's head was at my chin—she was toasty warm next to me, and she was craning her head to see the snow. She looked up as we passed under a streetlight—and she pointed up with her little hand, and said her first word—"ite." I laughed with joy. She said it again because it gave me such delight. She and I had entered a new world together. We would be able to grow in our relationship in marvelous new ways because she had begun to speak aloud.
What a leap we make as children when we move from single word identifiers to connecting them in language. No matter how many ways I find it explained, nothing quite gets at the mystery of how we develop grammar for ourselves. Grammar and syntax can't be taught. The leap from naming a thing to linking it to action, now, is a huge leap in consciousness. Something drives us at very young ages to relate objects and descriptions together. This intent for relationship emerges in us—"Light bwight," Abby would say later on. Now she tells me about molarity and polarity in her honors Chemistry course. And I smile in wonder.
Information theory emerges from quantum physics. The randomness, the chaos of the cosmos has underlying deep structures, or patterns, physicists tell us. There is some order that is like a grammar of the universe. The observer is related to what's being observed. It's like there's a DNA of matter and energy that is imprinted within us as well as in the stars.
Frederick Buechner writes:
In the entire history of the universe, let alone in our own history, there has never been another day just like today. There will never be another just like it again. It is the point to which all our yesterdays have been leading since the hour of our birth. It is the point from which all our tomorrows will proceed until the hour of our death. If we were aware of how precious it is, we could hardly live through it. Unless we are aware of how precious it is, we can hardly be said to be living at all.
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows God's handiwork,” says the 19th Psalm. In the face of this wonder, the psalmist prays, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer." The point is to see today for what it is because it will be gone before we know it. The glory of God is displayed in every moment, creation is fulfilled today, if only we can perceive it.
You and I link everything we were to everything we will be in this moment. We are speaking and being spoken in the deep structures of the universe whether we know it or not.
The first "name" for the followers of Jesus, "The Way," was the answer to Thomas's question, "Show us the way... " and Jesus answered, "I am the way... ". A person, not a system nor an orthodoxy, but a person linking himself to his friends.
Connecting them in the cosmos to God.
It is this quality of life toward which we aspire. We walk The Way. Church is not "the faith," but the "faithful”. We connect ourselves willingly to be a certain way and walk a certain way and take the accompanying risks.
The people in Jesus' village had found ways to survive Roman oppression and an arid, self-serving religious elite, and to make the Scriptures safe and customary. They had repeated familiar words so many times in the same old ways that they had stopped hearing them. Their foundation had become recitation, not revelation. We have done the same things.
Now comes Jesus to say that the truth is, well, true. What God said is what God now does. Rather than recite, Jesus read. Rather than go on to the next routine, Jesus spoke to the Word. Rather than weave a safe garment for wearing into a cold world, he said, "Today this scripture has come true as you listen."
When Jesus read Isaiah's prophecy, he presented the nature of God's kingdom—Jesus opened that kingdom right then and there to the people of his village. He said that God's kingdom came with Good News of an entirely different order than the Good News of Rome's empire, which was Peace through Victory. The Good News of God's kingdom was and is peace through justice.
The Paul class wrestled last Wednesday with the question of how Paul and Jesus perceived God's kingdom. We slammed up against the truth that heaven is one thing, but participating in God's kingdom now is what Jesus and Paul lived and died for. And we can only enter that kingdom as a people, together, not individually. God's intent is for us to respect and love one another so that the words of Isaiah come true now, as we cooperate with God's intent, made clear through God's prophets, God's Son, and the theologian/mystic Paul.
That's when we hear the deep meaning of Paul's instruction to the Jesus followers in Corinth. The Body consists of many members—to be In Christ, to be participants in Christ's resurrection, we've got to be together in our actions of faith. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
Folks, this is the kingdom of God—this is the Body of Christ, resurrected, living in Christ's presence, now. As Paul wrote, “In Christ, there is a new creation.” We are the new creation, and the kingdom's full flowering depends on our cooperation with God's justice, as Isaiah prophesied it, as Jesus taught and lived it, and as Paul spread it as good news, countering the empire's propaganda.
God has fulfilled the way in us. Isaiah's words on Jesus' lips tell how we connect to God. Our relationship to others reveals our relationship to God. It is now ours together to deepen the experience, to be those who link our fellows in this world with the deep structure of God's intent. With Jesus, and the others who follow The Way, we connect to a new order. What we detect of God's intent fulfills us, makes our words and actions count. The old words became a new truth.
We link to God as we link to one another in bringing good news to the poor, announcing pardon for prisoners and new sight to the blind. As we set free the oppressed, we proclaim this moment to be God's. It is speaking truly the deep grammar of life... a new reality, a new becoming. I believe God laughs with joy when we make this connection.
Copyright ©2007 Calvary Episcopal Church
Gospel Reading:
Then 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 favour. 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." NRSV (New Revised Standard Version)