Epiphany 2, Year C

It is one of the deep joys of my ministry here to be able to experience the ministry that all of the people in this congregation act out. I came across a quotation for clergy that said, “The key to ministry is knowing what not to do and not doing it.” [David Steele]. There is a lot of truth in that because there are so many things that are much better done by the laypeople of the congregation, and the minister does well to let the entire body do those things, rather than just one individual.  I really enjoyed being away on vacation the past two weeks, not only because I enjoyed it myself, but also because it gives me a renewed appreciation that the ministry of the church is not entirely dependent on me; I am grateful there are a variety of people who put a variety of gifts into service so that worship and ministry and mission are carried out.  As I was reading today’s passage from 1 Corinthians 12 about the Spirit giving each of us different manifestations of the Spirit for the common good, I was reflecting on the ways that happens here for the common good here at St. John’s, the way that people offer different gifts of hospitality, or administration, or preaching.  Spiritual gifts of compassion, spiritual gifts of healing, spiritual gifts of prayer, spiritual gifts of wisdom, all of these are part of the body of Christ.  You have been expressing your gifts of compassion and hospitality by serving our neighbours at the Gathering Place dinner, and getting ready to continue doing so at the upcoming Saturday soup suppers.  Behind the scenes, people use their gifts of administration to keep track of the church finances and the needs of the building, including the tasks of bringing in the recycling bins or delivering our food donations to the food bank.  You welcome new people with hospitality, teach the children, pray for one another, care for one another and our neighbors in our community and beyond.  You participate as readers, sidespersons, chalice bearers, chancel guild members, community corner members, Bible study participants, videographers, production volunteers, coffee hour hosts, singers in the choir, the list goes on.  You reach out with a kind word, and encourage each other.  Today’s scripture talks about the spiritual gift of hospitality, and many of you have signed up for the Invite, Welcome, Connect workshop today to learn how we can cultivate that spiritual gift even further, as we cooperate together as part of the body of Christ. 

I also want to provide some encouragement about dealing with the things that sometimes hold us back from fully activating our spiritual gifts.  So first I want to say: don’t drink poison. This is the first of three things that I hope you remember from today’s sermon.  You can take it literally and it is very sound advice. It does damage to your health if you drink poison. It is also very sound advice if you interpret it more broadly.  There are all sorts of poison that we can choose to drink or not drink. There are all sorts of poisonous things that we can choose to internalize or not.  There are people who say poisonous things that can make us feel diminished.  For instance, there are all kinds of people who out there who disapprove of or condemn or reject or hate everything I’ve done in entire life: my ordination as a priest, the way I raised my kids, my marriage, my divorce, what I ate for breakfast, what I do and don’t spend money on, what I wear, who I vote for, how I worship. And if I’d done the opposite thing, there are other people who’d disapprove of or condemn or reject or hate that too.  That is their business.  What is my choice is whether I want to take the poison that they have in their hearts and drink it myself. Do I want to keep repeating their poisonous words in my head? Do I want to take in their hostility?  Do I want to take in their anger? Do I want to take in their condemnation, their rejection, their hatred?  Or, do I just want to go on my merry way without any of it?

The poison may be sitting on the table in front of us, or someone may hand us a bottle of poison, but no matter who it is that hands us the bottle of poison, it is always our choice: do I want to take that in or do I want to leave it outside?  There is a quote I love from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” And the wonderful thing about not drinking the poison is that it means that the poison doesn’t infect our hearts.  It doesn’t cause us to feel inferior.  It doesn’t cause us to disapprove of ourselves, or reject, condemn, or hate ourselves.  It also enables us to avoid the temptation to become poisoners ourselves, to avoid the impulse to respond to poisoners by condemning them, hating them, rejecting them, being angry at them, and filling our hearts with malice.  Who needs that? 

The second thing that I want to say is that, while I love you all dearly, we are all a bunch of sinners here.  Martin Luther was following the tradition of many theologians before him when he summed it up by saying that each of us is both sinner and saint.  We have in us that which is holy, that which is of God, that which is the Holy Spirit working within us and we have also got a whole bunch of our sins.  So if someone comes into a church and says, “Aha! I see a sin there, in my neighbor” we can say, “Yeah, we knew that already.  We’ve always known that.  We’re all a bunch of sinners.”  There can be an impulse to reject others who have sins in them.  There are plenty of people throughout history who have done that. The difficulty with that is, no matter how many other people you push away with their sins, you can never purify the church, because even if the church is only yourself, you are left with all of your own sins.  

And if we decide that we are mad that sins exist in our neighbors, and decide that we want to distance ourselves from that and reject them, we miss two things: we miss a sense of humility about our own hearts and our own sins, and we miss all the wonderful things that God provides for us through the others in our community of faith.  

There is a quotation from Teresa of Ávila that says Christ has no hands, no eyes, no feet in the world but yours.  That is true.  It is important to remember, though, that when Saint Teresa was saying that, she was not talking to one individual.  She was talking to all of the nuns in her order.  If the well-being of the world depended on any one of us, we would be in really big trouble.  The good news that Paul tells us in today’s passage, is that we all have different spiritual gifts, we all have different strengths, and that we can all cooperate together in doing good and holy things in the world around us because we are together the body of Christ.  And the more we get into the habit of not drinking poison, the more often we will recognize our own gifts and the gifts in one another.

We have an alternative to drinking poison. While my daughters were visiting, we looked at some old photos together.  There was one time when they were young, and I was taking a selfie on my phone, and they both jumped into the photo and were photobombing it by making all sorts of goofy faces, and I said “do you want me to put this on Facebook?” and they said “no, no, we don’t want you to put it up on Facebook.”  So what they came up with instead was that each of them took one of her hands, and curved her hand into half of the shape of a heart, and they put their hands together in the shape of a heart over my head so I could take a picture of myself with their heart over my head.  

That brings us to the third thing I hope you will remember from today’s sermon.  The first is, “Don’t drink poison.”  The second is “We’re all a bunch of sinners here.”  Now that you know that your identity isn’t determined by the poison that’s out there, I want you to remember the third thing, which is that the best picture of your identity is that you are walking around every day with a heart over your head.  The good news of the gospel is that your true identity is someone who is deeply loved. As today’s reading from Isaiah puts it, “You shall be called My Delight is in Her…As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” [Isaiah 62:4-5] So what I would like all of you to do today is a physical gesture, in which you take your hands.  Hold up your hands in front of you and curve your fingers around a little bit like this, and touch your fingernails together, and your wrists together like this so you have a heart. Great. 

And I would like you to put that heart over your head as a symbol of your identity: that you are God’s beloved. 

And I want you to look around at all the other people in the congregation to see the hearts over their heads as a symbol of their identity as God’s beloved.  And to remember, the next time you see anybody in this congregation, that heart over their head, that they are God’s beloved.

And for everybody you meet throughout your life, you can picture a heart over their head and remember that they are God’s beloved.

They’ve got their sins, we’ve all got our sins, and in the end, our truest identity is that we are beloved children of God.