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The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany “Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.” As we gather together this morning for our annual meeting, I’d like us to consider two provocative words, as a way for us to claim more fully our mission as the Body of Christ at St. Mary’s.. The first of these is the word anxiety. The word anxiety itself is derived from the latin angere, meaning to be strangled, to be distressed, to be held in bondage. Now we know something about anxiety. Anxiety is the great dark spirit of our times, laying waste to all that is vital and good, filling us with doubt and despair about our future as a people, as a nation, and as a global community. Even here in Barnstable and at St. Mary’s, we stand within its reach and power. The second word is written large in our collect and lessons, and that is the word abundance. It, too, comes from the latin, from abundantia, meaning to surge from, to overflow from, as in waves flowing from the sea. And the question, it seems to me, as we meet today to chart our future course as a parish is this: Are we, individually and as a parish community, living life abundantly? Are we fully enjoying the liberty God offers us in Jesus, who himself told us, his followers, “I have come to give life, and give it more abundantly.?” In these hard times, when we are distracted by troubles on all sides, are we living freely? Or does anxiety hold us in its bondage, strangling us, cutting off the flow of the undulating Holy Spirit who is the source of our life in Christ? Today, before we deliberate over deficits and the looming challenges before us, I wonder if we can pause for a moment, and take stock in the scriptures given us to mark this occasion. We hear, first, from the prophet Isaiah, who wrote during of the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews in the Sixth Century B.C.E. In Isaiah’s time, there no rhyme or reason to see the glass half full. The twin kingdoms of Israel and Judah were in ruins, the people were enslaved, all hope was lost. Nevertheless, over against the doom and gloom of his day, Isaiah tapped into an inner reservoir of abundant life, causing him to write these immortal words: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. The Lord gives power to the faint. The Lord strengthens the powerless. And those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles.” Today, we hear also from the Psalmist, writing out of the depths of his despair. Yet he, too, reaches within himself to resolve that the life abundant is always near, never out of reach. “For the Lord rebuilds Jerusalem,” he proclaims, “The Lord gathers the exiles of Israel. The Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” And then there is this account of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, dramatically captured in the Gospel of Mark. On that day, when the whole city of Capernaum gathered around his door, bringing to him those afflicted with demons, we hear that he freed those who were possessed by the dark spirits of that time, and released them to live the life abundant. Living on the edge of poverty, possessing nothing in this world, it was Jesus of Nazareth himself who said: “Therefore, do not be anxious, about what you shall eat, or what you shall wear. Do not be anxious about how you will make ends meet. Look at the wonders of life around you, the birds of the air, the flowers of the field, your heavenly Father has infinite care for them. And will not God care for you, precious ones?.” There are, too, these words of St. Paul in his Letter to the Christians in Corinth. As I said in my sermon two weeks ago, the fledgling church in Corinth of 2000 years ago was not all that different from St. Mary’s in Barnstable today. Despite hard times then, there was more than enough to go around. Like us, if the Corinthian Christians had annual reports to write, they too could give strong testimony to the ways God had bestowed upon them the abundance of life, in their outreach to those in need, in their fellowship as the Body of Christ, in their worship of God in proclamation and praise, in the loving care they offered each other. They, like we are doing today, could attest to all the manifold blessings showered on them by the Almighty. We hear, though, that the church in Corinth had given into anxiety, and that this threatened the grace and goodness they enjoyed in their spiritual fellowship. Anxiety ridden, they split into factions. They thought they were better than others. They became myopic. They started to talk behind each other’s backs. They groused and wrung their hands. And so, Paul adjured them to hold fast to the faith commended in them, to remember they were one body, one spirit in Christ, to be all things to all people for the sake of the Gospel, to put behind them anything that would rend asunder their abundant life in Christ. Paul commended them to claim their commission, their upward calling, their truest self. Over against any who would plead scarcity, Paul argued that the riches we enjoy in the our abundant life in Jesus supersedes any want, any shortfall, any deficit, any deprivation we may experience in this life. And, friends, just as it was in ancient times, so it has been in the witness of our more recent forebears.. For 121 years, in this very place, this very parish we cherish, the generations before us, in their own time, in their own way, have taken this biblical testimony to heart. They have faced World Wars, they have lived faithfully through the Great Depression and endured the Influenza Epidemic of nine decades ago. Through thick and thin, they have been devoted in their proclamation of the abundance of life that is known in Christ Jesus. These faithful souls, whose names are etched all around us in stone and wood, and brass, these ones who built this church, and sculpted our gardens, plumbed the hope and grace within them, in the darkest of dark times. And, this morning, it makes me wonder, will a portion of their spirit fall upon us now? Will we be given the will and purpose to embrace the abundance we share in Christ? Will we face into the anxiety within us and around us, so that we, too, may be freed from any unclean spirit that cuts us off from the light and grace given us in Christ? Think of it, friends, if we choose to live the abundant life, God’s Spirit in us can do anything. When our anxiety runs headlong into God’s great abundance, hope is born, and hope becomes the animating force in our lives. And living in abundance rather than anxiety, our stewardship will overflow, our evangelism will be irresistible, our great commission to spread the Gospel will be fulfilled, and we will join the generations before us and the generations that will follow in the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. |
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