3 Epiphany A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi3_RCL.html
We are a very foolish congregation. I hope we stay that way.
We’re perched here on 82nd Avenue. Other churches have fled this street. We reach out to people who do not have deep pockets and big bank balances. We proclaim the love of God in the lives of people who have every reason to doubt that God loves them or that their lives mean anything to anyone. We come to be with one another, living, serving, celebrating, forgiving, getting back up when we fall.
We are a very foolish congregation. I hope we stay fools.
Paul tells us it is important to be foolish. If we’re foolish, we just might be living the message of the Cross: foolishness to some, the power of God for those who live it.
I think we’re ready to live like fools only after we’ve seen the darkness. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
I was a much younger man when I was hired at an Episcopal social service agency in Chicago. I soon learned that the heart of the agency was a recovery group that oversaw long-term residential treatment for addiction. Those who worked in the recovery house and those who supported it were all recovering from addiction.
It was those men and women who first taught me about grace, really taught me about grace. They told me stories about their personal hells, how they had looked into the depth of despair, gazed into the end of their own lives as a real possibility, just another doper, another dead drunk. At some moment, light shone. Perhaps it was the acceptance and friendship of a sponsor. Perhaps it was a stubborn stir in their own hearts that refused to surrender the shattered remnant of their lives to the garbage can. Those who shared their stories with me spoke of this humbly, as a gift. Everything that happened after this, the daily walk, one day at a time, sometimes one hour or one minute at a time, was pure gift, pure grace, pure light.
The tribes that the prophet speaks of today, Zebulon and Naphtali, were shattered and humiliated, seeming at the end of their story, living on the edge in a despised land. But it was there that light shone, a light not just for them but for us all. We’re reminded that it is among those who seem defeated, broken, ignored, on the edge, that light breaks forth.
And Jesus’ own ministry, and his first call of disciples, begins after the imprisonment of his cousin John. Every once in awhile the powers of the world demonstrate how foolish it is to resist them. Herod had shown that “resistance is futile” by jailing John. I do not think anyone believed that once John had gone to Herod’s dungeons that he would emerge alive. It was foolish to attract the attention of Herod, or the Romans, or the temple guard. Crosses stood along the main roads with the bodies of those who had, a foolish death for fools.
But here is where the light shown, the light of a new message of liberation and hope and the gathering of scattered people. It was here that the foolishness of the light and those who dare to trust the light began to drive the power of darkness before it. It still does.
It’s a foolish thing to dare to believe that light is stronger than darkness. It’s a foolish thing to believe that we are a graced congregation, gathered from whatever darkness and defeats have left their mark on our lives. It is that very foolish part of ourselves and our community that the divine spark can kindle into light. The Collect today says “proclaim to all people the good news of his salvation.” That’s not about convincing people of doctrines. That’s humbly sharing and showing that light has shown in the dark places of our lives and in our world. That’s showing how an insignificant-seeming life can be set ablaze by that mysterious spark that comes as a gift.
If we’re feeling foolish and at the end of our rope, maybe it’s then that the divine light can really do something with us!
