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.
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