Third Sunday after the Epiphany--The Rev Melanie Lemburg
3rd Sunday after Epiphany—Year A
January 22, 2023
I’ve been reading a book titled The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New
Hope for Beloved Community. The
author is The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, who is a canon on the staff of our
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. In this
book Spellers is writing about the seismic changes that are happening in the
Church since 2020, and she is unpacking some of what she thinks is happening
there. I’m about half-way through the
book, and she is painting a bleak picture, indeed. So, I’ll confess, I looked ahead to the
conclusion (mainly to decide if I could keep soldiering through this
challenging read), and I was heartened by this paragraph:
“No one asks to be cracked open or
disrupted. No church seeks to decline in
membership or stature. Most people don’t
go looking for experiences that will humble them and break their hold on a
treasured identity and culture. We did
not choose to land here in this wilderness; we were shoved by pandemic, racial
reckoning, decline and economic and social disruption. But now that we’re here, humbled and open, we
have a choice and a chance.”[i]
It’s an interesting idea to think about
how a crisis can crack us open, and in and through that process give us a
choice and a chance at something new. It’s
true for us as a church, and it’s true for us as individuals.
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus
is beginning his public ministry in Matthew’s gospel, and he begins it under
the shadow of a crisis. His cousin, John
the Baptist, has just been arrested by Herod after John has offered public
criticism about Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife. In the midst of this crisis, Matthew tells us
that Jesus decides to move from Nazareth to Capernaum, citing the fulfillment
of scripture from the prophet Isaiah for the reason for this move: “Land of
Zebulun, land of Naphtali,/ on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee
of the Gentiles—/ the people who sat in darkness
have
seen a great light,/ and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death/ light
has dawned.”
But what’s interesting about this is
that at the time of Jesus and even at the time of Matthew’s writing, Zebulun
and Napthali weren’t on any maps. They
had been wiped out by foreign occupation 700 years before. So Jesus is starting his ministry under the
shadow of a crisis, in a place that is marked by darkness and failure and loss,
and in an area that is especially connected with the shadow of the occupation
of the foreign power of Rome, under which the people of Jesus’s day lived.
And what is Jesus’ message in this
crisis-shadowed time and place? “Change
your hearts and lives! Here comes the
kingdom of heaven!” (This is from the Common English Bible translation.)
In the midst of crisis and failure,
Jesus offers an invitation to change, to new life, and new hope, and new
opportunity.
When talking about how crisis can be a
time to experience new life, our Wednesday healing service reflected on crises
that they had weathered in their past—how we as a church changed and adapted to
the crisis that has been the pandemic, how they recognized new life and growth
in their spiritual lives after having coming through personal crises. Some of us shared how, even as we are in the
midst of crises now, we look toward tried and tested sources of wisdom or learnings
from how we navigated other challenging experiences to help us look for the sprigs
of new life that are sprouting even now and that we hope will bear fruit on the
other side of this crisis. The gift of
that conversation was also a reminder that community is another gift in the midst
of crisis to help weather and navigate change together.
There have been no shortages of crises
of late. Many here have known the death
of a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a child, a friend. Some have known the loss of a job or
income. Many are tasting the lessening
of mobility or independence. We have
heard a new diagnosis. We have been held
by the uncertainty of waiting for what may be to come. And that’s all in
addition to the changing landscape of the world around us, the changing
landscape of the post-covid church.
But there is good news. Jesus who is God with Us, the very heart of
Matthew’s gospel, doesn’t leave us alone
in our crises. And let me be clear and
say again, I do not believe that God is giving any one of us these crisis, so
please, stop saying that to yourself or about yourself. (God isn’t giving you crisis to handle!) In the times when we are being cracked open
by the circumstances of our lives and of our choices and other peoples’
choices, God moves there—into the moment of crisis, into the no-man’s land—to
make God’s home there with us. And God
calls forth new life, even in the midst of the worst experiences, even when we
are not able to yet see it. And Jesus
acts to spread the good news of God’s love and to heal us. The gift of community, of church, is that we
can help share some of the burden with each other, and we can help each other see
the sprigs of new life which God promises will come.
[i]
Spellers, Stephanie. The Church
Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community. Church
Publishing, Inc: New York, 2021, p 95.
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