Sermon by the Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.
St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, San Francisco
January 29, 2017
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A
When Harry Potter is about to turn eleven, he’s living with his aunt and uncle, who treat him like an outsider, favoring their own son Dudley. Harry sleeps in a cramped closet under the stairs. His story, as he understands it, is he’s an orphan whose parents had died in a senseless car crash when he was a baby. At least that's what he understands, until one night when everything changes.
A half-giant named Hagrid appears and reveals to Harry that he is not simply an orphan with a tragic story, but rather a wizard slated for wizarding school in the fall.
Later, Harry is talking with a wise old teacher named Dumbledore. Harry wants to know more of his own story, of what had happened, and who he really is.
It’s then Harry learns that his parents did not die senselessly in a car crash after all. Rather, they died trying to save him from the evil wizard Voldemort who had tried to kill him when he was a baby.
Dumbledore explains, “Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin.”
This is a transformative moment. Suddenly, Harry is longer an unwanted orphan, an unwelcome outsider. He has a new identity now. He is someone who, from his earliest days, has been deeply loved, protected, cherished, even though he’d known nothing about it. This new sense of himself changes how he lives and acts in the world.
Today’s gospel follows a similar dynamic. Jesus goes up on a mountain to be closer to God. From this higher perspective he looks at the crowd and at his disciples. This higher perspective enables him to see more than what meets the physical eye: that they are blessed.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice.
He’s referring to the ones caught up in a corrupt system, who get ground up by it, whose poverty goes so deep it crushes their spirits--makes them poor in spirit, and reduces them to a constant state of mourning.
He understands the terrible toll this social reality takes on their bodies and families and souls.
But he also spies, at the center of their struggle, a blessedness. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.
The rhythm is striking: blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.
This blessedness is given by God, so it is more powerful that the social-political system that overwhelms them.
This blessedness enables them to lean into life, to withstand whatever the world throws at them.
This blessedness is constantly at work, moving mourning toward comfort, meekness toward inheritance, hunger and thirst toward satisfaction.
And this blessedness has your name on it. This reading is your Harry Potter moment that, if you let it, redefines and transforms you--this dawning realization of who you really are, that you are more than meets the eye, that you are blessed, made in the image of God with an infinite beauty and dignity, a power and strength no one can take from you.
This blessedness is yours in every moment, but especially when things fall apart--when coming up short in trying to pay the bills, or when you get bad news from the doctor, or lose a job, or grieve the loss of the one you love the most.
Blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. Can you get into this gospel’s rhythm, let it seep into the marrow of your bones, especially into those corners of your life where God seems most absent?
Can you pick up the refrain, announcing this blessedness not only to yourself, but to your fellow parishioners in their struggles, and to the larger community we’re part of?
Can you let yourself get caught up in this great work of blessing?
Because it’s not just you and I who could use a little blessedness right now, but so does our world. I’m sure you know what I’m referring to.
This is no ordinary time. Since the Inauguration, the President has signed a cascade of executive orders that threaten the safety and lives of hundreds of thousands of people--refugees, immigrants in this neighborhood, Muslims, indigenous people, Black people, and working people in need of healthcare.
He has directed our government to construct a wall on our southern border, punish Sanctuary cities like ours, facilitate the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and construct pipelines despite the protests of indigenous people. And he has signaled more to come, including rolling back voting rights.
Because of his order on Friday, people fleeing Syria and other war-torn Muslim countries are being turned away in their moment of greatest need--even despite yesterday’s powerful protests at major airports and a partial stay of the president’s order by a federal judge.
This is a time of great cruelty and fear.
I think of the fear that now runs through the entire immigrant community here and around the world. I think of my friend Eva, a domestic worker who fled here from Guatemala 25 years ago for her life and those of her kids. She works sixty-hours a week cleaning homes and looking after children. She’s raised her own kids here, and now helps with her own grandkids. And she’s afraid. Even before the election she sent many of her clothes to family in Guatemala, asking them to keep them for her so that when President Trump deports her, she’ll have what she needs to begin looking for a job and get her life up and running.
The fear among our immigrant brothers and sisters right now is immense.
Whether we like it or not, this is our context. It is in this moment that we must be a blessing, both in what we say and in what we do.
This context gives a whole new meaning to the work we do here at St. John’s every day.
With a historic level of inequality likely to increase in the next four years, we continue to offer a quiet, dry, safe place for homeless people to sleep.
Many people in this neighborhood are running short of food.
You may remember the encampment we had here on 15th Street recently. Each evening, the campers would share whatever food they had with anyone who needed it, inviting passersby to join them. Sometimes there were as many as 30 people lined up to get the food. Many of the people in line were not homeless; they came from the various SROs in the neighborhood, but they had run short on food.
Our food ministries, including the Julian Pantry and a twice monthly free community dinner, are becoming all the more essential in these days of struggle for so many.
- With a law-and-order administration now in office, many understandably predict more police brutality against people of color. Our weekly vigils for Amilcar in front of Mission Police Station and our Nightwalks calling for an end to violence, including violence by the police, now take on a whole new urgency.
- As white nationalism and cries of America First increase, several of us are planning next year’s trip to Nicaragua to join people in rural villages in the simple tasks of building latrines and providing clean, safe water.
- Many experts say the world is much less safe now. The war drums are once more growing louder. Robert Cromey’s vigils outside the Federal Building now become all the more necessary.
- And as people continue to flee the historic levels of gang and police violence in Central America, we are providing Sanctuary for Mirza and Isrrael, helping them with practical needs like housing, food, and clothing, and committing ourselves to stand with them to resist any efforts by Immigration to deport them back to the life-threatening situations they fled.
- And each week this sacred space, with its noble and faded elegance, remains a home to so many others--from Native Americans celebrating their powerful festivals, to meditating Buddhists; from survivors of HIV to our friends at Mission Graduates.
And what makes sense of it all, helps us keep our eye on the ball, is our weekly gathering at this table. Without this moment, none of it makes sense. It’s here at this table that we come to see and understand with the eyes and the heart of Jesus.
Because at the end of these tumultuous days, this one question will remain: Through it all--through all the political upheavals, the protests, the conversations with friends, the victories, the disappointments--have our hearts become more like the heart of Jesus? Have we become more like Jesus--full of more love, more compassion, more joy, more life?
Let me close with this Epiphany blessing from Jan Richardson.
There is so much I want to say, as if the saying could prepare you for this path, as if there were anything I could offer that would make your way less circuitous, more smooth.
There is so much I want to say, as if the saying could prepare you for this path, as if there were anything I could offer that would make your way less circuitous, more smooth.Once you step out, you will see for yourself
how nothing could have made you ready for this road
that will take you from what you know
to what you cannot perceive
except, perhaps, in your dreaming
or as it gives a glimpse in prayer.
But I can tell you this journey is not about miles.
It is not about how far you can walk or how fast.
It is about what you will do with this moment,
this star that blazes in your sky
though no one else might see.
So open your heart to these shimmering hours
by which your path is made.
Open your eyes to the light
that shines on what you will need to see.
Open your hands to those who go with you,
those seen and those known only by their blessing,
their benediction of the road that is your own.
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