Making this Day Holy Nehemiah 8:2-10, 1 Corinthians 12: 12-27, Luke4:14-21 January 25, 2004, on the occasion of the Annual Parish Meeting The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi What appropriate readings for today's gathering. Our opening lesson from Nehemiah tells of the re-establishment of the rule of the Law of God after the Babylonian Exile. Finally returning to Jerusalem one of the first things that Ezra, their priest and scribe, had to do was to re-establish the pattern of worship which had been destroyed, because their service of God was radically incomplete unless and until their common worship was restored. This morning's lesson tells about the process he followed to teach the people what it meant for them to be God's people, because that had been lost in the exile. They had their faith, but they did not have their identity as the people of God. We then heard from Paul's letter addressing conflicts in the church of Corinth. This conflict involved what some considered interpretation of forgiveness as an excuse for immorality. It involved who had and didn't have special knowledge of God and God's will. In today's lukan reading, we get a glimpse of Jesus' earthly ministry. After his baptism and wilderness time, Jesus returns home. Crowd buzz began immediately. Before he did much of anything, he was "praised by everyone." Had people heard his message and been moved by it? Not at all. They were in love with their own enthusiasm. He also responded by reading Scripture to them, reading from Isaiah during the time of the Babylonian exile: about bringing good news to the poor, releasing those in bondage, giving sight to the blind, freeing the oppressed. He concluded telling them this was what he came to do. We may find consolation that little of human ways change substantially. We still lose sight of being the family of God. We still create divisions within the Body of Christ over who best knows the mind of God and who warrants God's grace and who doesn't. We still have enthusiasm about the Jesus we expect while avoiding the Jesus who came to fulfill Scripture. The good news is that God remains patient. The question is how have we and how will we answer God's patient invitation to let this day be holy. First, we would do well to see ourselves through a lens that reflects our similarities with the Christian community of first century Corinth. Ironically, we hear this text and hold our annual parish meeting on the heels of the American Anglican Communion gathering in Plano, Tx. and only two weeks before our diocesan Council meeting which will wrestle with conflicts arising from the Episcopal Church's General Convention this summer. Once again, as it has since its inception, the Church, specifically the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church of the USA, finds itself in conflict involving interpretation of God's grace as an excuse for immorality. Once again the Church finds itself in conflict involving claims of having special knowledge of God and God's will. These have been the arguments - from both sides - of the issues of the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson. Please hear me, those on both sides of this issue have committed acts of which Paul warns the first century church in Corinth. Paul called on them to live in love and charity with one another. Using the simile of the human body, Paul emphasized that each of us is necessary for the good of the Body of Christ. None of us has all the gifts of the Spirit, none of us perfectly interprets God's instructions of how to live in community, and none us has perfect insight into the mind of God. Therefore, it is critical that rather than fragmenting and tearing the limbs from the body that we hold the body together because only together will we live as God wants us to live and will we have the greatest insight into the will of God. By its unilateral decision to consecrate Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church in essence said to the rest of the Anglican Church, "We have no need of you." However, we will not correct this error by now tearing apart the body of the Episcopal Church. Paul's letter tells us that our sin is not in the issues that we debate, but in our beliefs that only we have it right and that we can continue to tear off the limbs of the Body of Christ and expect the Body to survive. Many times I have heard people say something like, "It would be much easier to serve God if I didn't have to deal with all these people." The Bible, however, knows nothing about individuals apart from the community. Abraham was called out for the express purpose of being the father of a people. Moses was called for the express purpose of leading the people out of slavery into the Promised Land. And for forty years, because of the stubbornness and willfulness of these people he had to struggle with them in the desert. Whether on this issue or some other, regardless of which side we may find ourselves, the Body of Christ is complete only when we encourage everybody to belong, and when we participate as well. When our words judge or condemn, when they exclude, then we tear down rather than build up the Body of Christ. Today's liturgy juxtaposes the story of Jesus reading in the synagogue with the story of Ezra reading the law to people upon their return from exile. As we move into a new year, my hope and prayer for Resurrection is we will hear Ezra's call to bring about the holy day of God, that we will understand ourselves as a body, the Body of Christ, of which all parts are essential, and that we will expect to encounter Jesus' mission of rebuilding our hearts in unexpected ways. The Jesus Christ we behold so vividly in today's Gospel lesson is very much the Jesus Christ each of us needs to know in the ordering of our so often complex and challenging lives. He wanted followers, but their following had to be grounded in who he was, not in what they wanted him to be. The Jesus Christ who today begins his public ministry in a synagogue in rural Nazareth is neither what the people of Israel were expecting nor what we sometimes want intruding in our lives. No, this Jesus came to challenge, not to punish, not to condemn, not to do harm. He came to bring glad tidings, to proclaim liberty, recovery of sight, release from all the things that torment and distract and dehumanize each of us - a message we and the world around us so desperately need to hear. The problem is today, on this planet, the church is the only body that Christ has, which is to say that you and I are the only bodies Christ has. He has no hands to reach out to people except our hands, no feet to go to them with except for our feet, no other eyes to see them with, no other faces to show them his love. If we can do this - show forth Christ in our reaching and our seeing, act as Christ's body, manifest good tidings - then our lives will be made more bearable. This brings us back to Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Like our bodies, the community of the faithful is a mixed bag of the necessary, the nice and not so nice, the occasionally good-looking and not so good-looking. And also like our bodies, in the Body of Christ, all our parts are needed and are dependent upon one another for the fullness of our life. Also like our bodies, not all of our parts in the Body of Christ are very nice, or very polite, or generally spoken of in public. The God who made us, made all of us, knows all of us, loves all of us, forgives all of us, and binds all of us into one Body. Let us not forget we don't make the Body of Christ. God does. We don't provide the gifts which keep the Body of Christ alive and functioning and doing God's work in the world. God does. We don't define who or what belongs in the Body of Christ. God does. And so for us to take good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, we must recognize that God has called us together as a parish, not only with our differing gifts, but with our differing views. Our mission today is not how to prove our views to those with whom we disagree. Instead our mission is to learn how we who hold opposing views can still hold each other close, to love and serve God even as we disagree about what God is saying. Our mission today is to draw others into this worship space and into this parish family to hear the Good News and to seek to have those with whom we worship and with whom we share the task of proclaiming the Good News to be an ever expanding body with very different parts.