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Second Sunday in Christmas
January 2, 2005 Sermon by Rev. Aron Kramer, Associate Rector

“I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.” This is a line from the Ephesians reading, have you ever heard this said of you or your involvement in the church or of the church itself? Or maybe you have heard something more like “I have heard of your Church and all the good things it does.” The question is one of reputation, how is our reputation in the community and how do we receive our reputation in this community? Is our reputation important, is what we do in the community and is our standing in the city of Duluth important? That is a good question because it also speaks to the dilemma of how we market our Church, how do we “compete” with other Churches. Some people will say you should never steal sheep from other parishes, others say lets go, get as many bodies as you can. What is our approach?

I hope that our approach in the next year will be one of simply sharing and telling our story. Not shyly waiting to be called upon to share our story, because if we wait we will never be asked, rather unabashedly telling people how happy we are here. Now I say happy because I couldn’t think of another word, but what is it that we feel as members of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Are we happy, are we spiritually fed, is it just rote tradition that makes come back every Sunday? Are we having fun, are we doing God’s work in the world? What is it for you, as a member of this faith community, what would you tell your friends and neighbors about this Church. What would you share with them? I know I have told you this over and over, but when I do marriage counseling I tell people they will never want to leave, they will totally fall in love with this place. Am I over exaggerating? Is that too big of an expectation to place on all of our shoulders? Or is this truly a place that people will fall in love with?

In the Ephesians reading, Paul says, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints” saints is not talking about the people who have gone before, the ancestors, Paul is specifically referring to the members of the Church at Ephesus, he would call each of you saints, members of a faith community that believed passionately in Jesus Christ. We each are saints, and as saints we have a big responsibility on our shoulders, a reputation so to speak, to carry out into the world. The appropriate response to evangelization is all about the reputation of a faith community. How do people respond to our evangelization, our story of God with us, how do people respond to our story. If confusion or ambiguity about what our story is or even how to spread our story, look no further than the Jeremiah reading in today’s lectionary.

The Israelites have just been captured and transported by the Babylonians into a far away land that was inhospitable to their culture and traditions. They were at the brink of hope, almost losing all possibility of what hope could offer. They were exiled, and yet Jeremiah is able to sing with them, is able to offer them great hope of a feast that will last forever. Jeremiah talks about how even the weak, the blind, the lame and those with child, those in labor will all walk along a path made straight that will afford them a clear journey to the one place all of our hearts long for: God’s home. The Kingdom of God, the home where our God resides, is where each of us truly longs to go. Why is it so difficult for us to express our own individual longing for God? Why is it so difficult to express to the world how we long to be in the arms of God? Are we an exiled people as the Israelites in Jeremiah’s reading were? No, but are we not scattered? Are we not spread throughout the earth and would it not be a great and wonderful thing to come together and be one, come home to the embrace of someone who truly loves each of us? What would that look like and what it be like? Jeremiah says it would be a great feast, a feast like no other, a feast that would last forever, with plenty of food, wine and drink. Each of us would become like a watered garden Jeremiah says, never to be thirsty or languish again, it’s all right there in the Jeremiah reading.
The Psalm also speaks of transformation and the coming together of the world to celebrate the glorious God that we all worship and praise. God’s home is a place we long for, a place we desire to be. Happiness and prosperity will flow through our world and through our lands, transforming us into celebrating joyous children of God who become one in all we are and all we do. What does that look like for us as a community of faith, a small gathering of God’s people, who have a particular taste for liturgy and social justice in the world? How does our reputation created through the actions and mission we do, how is our reputation perceived in the community we live and breathe in, how does the way we tell our story express our longing to be one body in Christ and God? Because it is time now to start dusting off that reputation of ours, time to dust off those old perceptions of this place and build anew, or at least polish up our own image in preparation for strengthening the foundation of our story as a faith community. We are waiting to receive a new rector in the next year, and this is the time when we all desire to be very clear about how we live in this community of Duluth, how we are preparing for the return to God’s home and the feast that will follow.

The Gospel of Matthew is a bit disturbing, because it begins the exile of Jesus, the wise men come and offer gifts to the Christ Child and shortly thereafter the Holy Family is set into motion. They are off, the peace of the Birth of Christ and the peace of the time is over, the ministry of Jesus begins through the exile of Joseph and Mary to Egypt. Our time of waiting, Advent has come and gone, the birth of Jesus Christ has come and gone. Now the Christ Child is in flight, on his way to Egypt to try and not be killed by Herod. The verses that are missing in today’s Gospel are the ones that describe the slaughter of the children in Bethlehem who were under 2 years of age. You see, right from the beginning, Jesus was a threat to the political and social powers of the time. Jesus was a threat to usurp the power that Herod and his sons held as pawns of the Roman Empire. Jesus was never at rest, always on the run, always in danger of attack or some other form of death or threat.

What does the exile of the Holy Family mean for us, does it mean we are exiles? No, but it does bring us back to the urgency and importance of God’s work in the world. It does bring us back to the fact that God’s work is never done, and it is never too late to start something new, or improve something old. It is never too late to move, to act, the Tsunami in South Asia is an example. It happened on Sunday, the day after Christmas, we were celebrating the birth of the Christ Child and shortly after that thousands of people were exiled from their homes, over 120,000 people were killed. Where is God in all that and how can we even sing about the Glory of God as we see the death toll fly higher and higher? Our reputation is one of compassion and generosity, how we respond to such an event is important, there are leaflets available that outline ways to help support the relief efforts, if you have a desire or are able to help, please do so. We all are the body of Christ, we are all connected in one way or another through the love that God has for each of us. We must pray and act as best we can as children of God to help those in need, those whose lives have been forever changed. We must think of more than ourselves, fairly unaffected by the devastation, and spread our arms to embrace all those who need compassion and care in this dire time.

How people respond to the evangelization we do is an important indicator of our health as a parish, our excitement about our ministry and our faith in Jesus Christ and God. It is also a great indicator about how we love each other, how we bring hope to the world. As in the end of the Gospel, Jesus and Mary and Joseph all returned to their hometown, and although they still lived with the fear of the political authorities, they also were happy, and well. Let us dream that we can all one day be taken up into the great embrace of God and made one people, whole and happy. Let us hope for a future that will bring us joy and light, but most of all let us hope now, and today for the strength and courage to act on the love that we feel as a faith community and the ability we all have to tell our story of God’s Kingdom, of God’s presence in the world to all people.