Call of the Disciples/Annual Parish Meeting, Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Today we hold our annual meeting. We’ll look back at the past year and forward to the one ahead. We’ll say farewell and thank you to four members who have served with so much dedication and expertise on the Bishop’s Committee, and we’ll elect new members of that committee. We’ll approve a new budget. It will be a meeting that is informative, necessary to our life as a parish, and maybe even a little fun as well.

Much of our time will necessarily focus on our own internal life as a community. Yet as we reflect on our life together, it’s important to reflect as well on the larger context in which we as a community worship and minister.

Mark does this in today’s gospel. Just before he tells us about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he tells us the context in which that early ministry occurs. It begins immediately after John the Baptist has been arrested, handed over to what will eventually be his death by beheading.

This was sobering news to everyone.

John was the one who had called for a change, invited people repent, to turn away from life as they had known it and turn another way, toward life.

• In a society of glaring inequality like ours, when the crowds asked John, “What then shall we do?”, he told them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” 
• In a time when tax collectors, like Wall Street tycoons of our own day, were ripping people off, especially the poor, he told them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” 
• When law enforcement officers and soldiers asked him, “And we, what shall we do?”, he told them, “Stop abusing your authority, stop making false accusations against people, and stop taking bribes, be content with your pay.”

It was a new social order that John had envisioned, new ways of living in the world. And in this morning’s gospel, everyone knew that John had been arrested on trumped up charges, and were angered by it.

It is in this context that Jesus emerges after a long sojourn in the desert. And he decides to carry forward John’s message and vision. To help him do that, he calls the first disciples--first Simon and Andrew, then James and John. “Come, and follow me.”

They cannot free John.  But they can take up his work, as they have taken up the nets in the sea. They can become fishers of people.  And they know what that means--it means doing what John had been doing. This is the context in which Jesus and the first disciples begin their life and ministry together.

Sometime religious people get this wrong. We lose sight of the context, the times in which we live. We get caught up in our own little worlds, we lose perspective, and our priorities get all screwed up.

In October 1917, the Russian Revolution was in full swing. The Tsar had been overthrown, the Bolsheviks were taking control of the country. In that very month, the Russian Church assembled in council. The passionate debate of the day was about the color of the surplice, one of the vestments to be worn in liturgical functions. Some vehemently insisted it had to be white, while others, with equal vehemence, insisted it had to be purple.

With the whole world on fire around them, they chose to focus on the color of liturgical vestments. I don't want to dismiss the importance of things like vestments that can add so much beauty and depth to our liturgies. Rather, it's simply a matter of perspective.

Jesus once chided the religious leaders of his own day for failing to pay attention to their own context, the signs of their own times: He said, "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' "And in the morning, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?”

So it’s important for us, as we go into our annual meeting, to discern the signs of our times, to be aware of the context in which we meet, in which we are church, in which we establish and ratify our priorities for the coming year.

I can’t name every facet of our context, but let me throw out a few.

• Certainly there is our larger world: The brutal terrorism by the Islamic State, the ongoing assaults against the Palestinians, the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the growing prejudice against Muslims, the prevalence of torture as our own Rebecca Gordon has reminded us, the growing number of police officer involved killings--from Michael Brown in Ferguson to Alex Nieto on Bernal Heights here in San Francisco.
• And there is the ongoing struggle of immigrant families in this country just to stay together. We helped keep the family of Ricardo, Amelie, and Nicole Martinez together, and we joined millions in pressuring the White House to offer some relief. And, happily, President Obama came through for five million immigrants. But although this is amazing news we never thought we’d see, it still leaves six million other immigrants at risk. So this ongoing struggle for justice remains part of the context in which we meet today. 
• Our neighborhood is being rapidly gentrified. As luxury condos spring up, the market value of surrounding homes and apartments skyrockets. Landlords raise their rents, and many families and seniors and people with disabilities get forced out. Some of us in this community of St. John’s are at risk. This, too, is part of our context. 
• And there is the matter of violence. A story… 

Because of the Nightwalks we’ve been doing with other faith communities in the Mission, I was asked by an extraordinary police officer if our parish could help a young man who has been trying to break free of the gangs. He had been released from prison, and had had enough. And he had fallen in love with a young woman he hoped to marry. He needed some work to help him get a footing in a new life. As the saying goes, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

We were able to find some odd jobs for him around the church and in the neighborhood, and eventually Wes Walton got him a job as a dishwasher. The guy worked really hard, he was determined to begin a new life. His fiancee was so proud of him. More importantly, he was proud of himself. For the first time, he could imagine having a life.

Last Wednesday evening, he and his fiancee were in a car with two other people over in Oakland. They were going to pick up some of their belongings at her aunt’s house. On their way there, a car pulled up alongside of them and fired two shots at their car. One bullet struck his fiancee in the head. She slumped onto his chest, her brain dead on the bullet’s impact.

Just as he was making strides toward a new life with the girl he loved, this devastating tragedy struck. This man is now in trauma, and some of us worry that he might lose hope, give up, and go back to the streets where he will certainly be killed. Several of us in the community are trying to surround him with the needed support so that, if he chooses, he can still make a new life for himself. We think he’s worth the risk; that with the right support, he stands a chance.

Pray for him. And since his story is typical of so many other young people caught in the slavery of gang life, pray for them as well. They are part of the context in which we gather for Eucharist each week.

I could go on to include many others who form the context of our life as a community: the many who come to our Saturday food pantry, the young people working hard to stay in school at Mission Graduates, the people of Nicaragua needing fresh water, and the many victims of the brutal wars Robert Cromey so faithfully protests outside the Federal Building each Thursday.

Today, as we at St. John’s rightly reflect on the many important aspects of our internal life as a community, we remember our context and some of the people we carry in our hearts each time we gather at this table. They are part of us, and we are part of them.

In fact, just as Jesus in his own context gathered the first disciples, our ministry to the people I’ve mentioned just might be some of the very reasons Jesus has gathered us here in the first place.

The Flight into Egypt, The Rev'd. Richard Smith, Ph.D.

A few months ago, I spent a couple of days in El Paso along the US border with Mexico. At the time, thousands of immigrants were fleeing to the US from their homes in Central America. While there, I met a young Honduran mother of three named Beatrice.

She said that in her pueblo, the day after the teachers at the local school had received their annual bonuses, a sign appeared on the front door of the school telling them to hand over those bonuses to the local gang. The sign said that each day they refused, one child from that school would be abducted and killed. The next day, a child was missing, and the next day another, and the next day another. Finally, after eight straight days of children being abducted and killed, Beatrice packed up her three kids and, under cover of darkness, headed north to the US, hoping to find safety.

Beatrice is not alone. In this parish, we have met Ricardo and Amelie and Nicole, an immigrant family who fled violence in Guatemala seeking refuge in this country. Millions of others have made the same choice, taken the same risks of becoming immigrants, gathering their children and fleeing for safety, traveling in darkness, not always knowing where they were going and what they would find along the way.

And this immigrant journey is a central theme in the story of Jesus who has no place to lay his head, who faces rejection in his own land and from his own people, who dies as an outcast outside the city walls.

In today’s gospel from Matthew this immigrant journey is writ especially large.

King Herod is threatened by the birth of Jesus, who is called King of the Jews, and in the hope of catching and killing him, he seeks to kill all the male children under the age of two.

In the midst of this slaughter, a tip-off from an angel sends Joseph packing up his family hoping to find safety in Africa, in Egypt.

Down through the centuries, millions of refugees have found strength from this story, because it has reminded them that in their often perilous journeys, they are not alone, that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have gone before them precisely as immigrants.

What is true of Jesus is true for us, his followers. If we follow Jesus, then we, too, will know the lot of immigrants--perhaps not literally as the Honduran woman I mentioned, or as Ricardo and his family, or, for that matter, as our parents and grandparents who migrated to this country--if not literally, then figuratively, perhaps even spiritually.
This is our lot as followers of Jesus. We are immigrants who are called away from the ordinary and proper, the familiar and the comfortable places, to a new land that God wants to show us.

“Leave your father and mother.” “Let the dead bury the dead.” “Keep your hand on the plow and do not look back.” “Sell what you own, give the money to the poor and come follow me.” The gospels are relentless, calling us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home.

This uprooting can sometimes involve a risky in-between time, when we’re like a trapeze artist in mid-air who has let go of one rope, but has not yet caught hold of the next one. A time of both great excitement and great vulnerability, of grieving for what we’ve left behind, and anticipating what has not yet clearly emerged.

I suspect that in various ways, each of us has already known the lot of an immigrant, whether literally or figuratively. Sometimes we made the choice consciously and deliberately. Other times, we didn’t have to seek it out; it arrived at our doorstep:

• The job that once seemed so promising began to unravel, and you had to move on
• The relationship that suddenly ended
• A transition into another phase of your life, perhaps from school into the workforce, or from the workforce into retirement.
• Or the moment you knew you had to take that next step out of the closet, or the first step toward sobriety

Whether the migration is something we have consciously chosen or not, it always involves a displacement. This can involve moments of grief and confusion and risk. This is the immigrant journey we as followers of Jesus are called to embrace.

What can happen in our work lives and relationships can also happen in our lives of faith. Our old images and understandings of God can suddenly no longer work, and we go through an in-between time of exploration, of being an immigrant waiting for God to reveal new images, new understandings of who God is. This can be a time of confusion and anxiety when we’re not sure where God is or if we even have any faith at all. Or perhaps we find that our old spiritual practices, the old prayers and rituals and symbols that once structured and gave meaning to our lives, no longer comfort and enliven us, and we must seek ways to make them come alive again, seek new ways of connecting our hearts to God and to others.

Why is it so important to embrace this immigrant journey? Because when we embrace this journey, we cast off the illusion of “having it all together” and we remember the vulnerability we share with our fellow human beings of every race and gender and language. We remember our complete reliance on God, and discover each other as members of the same human family with whom we can share our joys and sorrows.

These are the days of Christmas when we remember the mystery of the incarnation, of God becoming human and vulnerable like us. When St. Paul speaks of this great mystery of the incarnation, it’s as though he is describing Jesus as the immigrant par excellence. “His state was divine,” Paul writes, “yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are…”

Perhaps no one has undertaken a more radical migration. In the incarnation, God did not remain in the place that was proper and familiar to him, but left it behind and moved to the condition of a struggling and vulnerable human being.

God left behind his heavenly place and took a humble place among us mortal men and women, so that nothing human would be alien to him and he could experience fully the nobility and the joy, the brokenness and the tears of our human condition.

This is what we remember in today’s gospel story in this season of Christmas, that in Jesus we find the immigrant in whom God’s compassion becomes flesh. And this is what we ourselves are called to in today’s gospel story, to become, each in our own way, immigrants like Jesus, as vulnerable and compassionate as he is.

I have some questions for you, and perhaps we can take a few quiet moments to reflect on these:
In what ways, in your own life story, have you already been an immigrant, either  literally or figuratively?

• How did you experience the vulnerability that goes with being an immigrant? What did it feel like to be vulnerable in that way? How did that experience make you more compassionate?
• In this new year, how might you be called to leave behind the familiar and comfortable and begin the risky journey to a new and unknown land?

Christmas 2014, the Rev'd. Richard Smith

Time to hit the pause button. Drop everything. Immerse yourself in the story you’ve heard so many times before--about the simple shepherds in the field watching over their flocks at night, and suddenly in a starlit sky there come the angel and the heavenly host proclaiming good news to all of humanity, and the shepherds go and follow the directions of the angels and they find Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus lying in the manger.

Drop everything--the thoughts about last minute shopping, the worries about tomorrow’s dinner, regrets about the present you forgot to wrap, the cards you forgot to send--drop everything and let yourself get lost in this amazing story. Savor the richness of it with all its heavenly peace where all is calm and all is bright. Savor this as fully as you possibly can.

I know, I know. There is a great irony in my telling you this. Except for the Giants winning the World Series, all in all it's been a bleak year. The world has not been all that calm or bright, and, God knows, we’ve been a little short on heavenly peace this year. It is an irony to tell the story of Jesus’ birth on a night like this after a year like this.

• Children slaughtered in Pakistan, innocent lives ending in beheadings, and a new, brutal terrorist state rolling across Syria and Iraq. The irony of this holy night.
• African school girls kidnapped, legions of women around the globe abused, and the rape culture in our own country. Not very calm and bright is it?
• Atrocious torture by our government that continues to this day
• In Ferguson, Staten Island, and too many other places, black and brown men killed by police, and in Brooklyn, two NYPD officers with young families murdered by a career criminal. The irony of this holy night.
• The other night I stood on Bernal Heights with the parents of Alex Nieto, the young Latino killed by four police officers. At the site where he was killed, we said a prayer. This is their first Christmas without him. For them, this night is neither calm nor bright, but carries more than a few tears. The irony of this holy night.
• I spent yesterday afternoon with a young man and his girlfriend. Like Mary and Joseph, they are pregnant, and like Mary and Joseph they have no place to stay, have spent many nights on the streets. He has a troubled past and is now trying redeem himself, turn his life around. He’s been looking desperately for a simple, low-skill job but no one will hire him. The irony of telling the story of Jesus’ birth on a night like this.
• And here in our own community, we have watched, often with a helpless feeling, as our own beloved Jackie and Tikhon and Nico and Cecil have struggled with serious health issues.

We all get it: It is ironic to tell the story of Jesus’ birth after a year of so much struggle like this past one.

But do it we must, because on this night a child is born. And whenever a child is born, the whole world stands still, and we humans drop everything to stand once more in amazement and hope. Maybe a smile comes over your face, maybe a tear of joy wells up in your eye. We can't help ourselves. It's what we do.

If only for a brief moment, all the sadness and tears and death of the year give way to life and joy and a reason for hope. It's enough to keep us going, a moment like this, as we relax into a peace that is holy and into a time where time itself seems to stand still, and the sounds of violence and gunshots are suddenly far away, overcome by angelic voices drifting through a starry, cold night.

After feasting on this story of the Savior’s birth,  there will be time enough for you and me to get back to work, to once again pick up our gifts and go to work with God

to feed those who come to our Julian Pantry in need of food, 

to stand with our LGBT sisters and brothers and the many immigrant families still being torn apart by our broken immigration system

There will be time enough for us to resume our Nightwalks to end the violence on the streets of our neighborhood, to stand in silent vigil against our country's wars, to work with our friends in Nicaragua for clean water in their villages

There will be time in the days ahead for these things, but for now, we step back from it all to enjoy once again those visions of angels and shepherds, and the manger and the baby in the straw, and the animals, and Mary and Joseph; to sing out all the old carols; to relish the warm and wonderful family memories that we treasure and hold dear; the colors and sounds and scents and flavors that add to the richness of this feast.

These things warm us in the winter, comfort us and give us hope. They brings us back to childhood--every Christmas, year after year after year. Amazing. Just today, just for this one day, let this moment be comforting and traditional. Let it be familiar and warm and loving. Let it nourish and strengthen us for the year ahead.

Garrison Keilor with his down home humor puts it this way: 

...a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Gentle people of St. John's, gentle guests, on this dark winter night, let us once more savor the story of our Savior's birth, and this feast in all its richness, so that we can keep our campfire burning.