Enriched in every Way (Epiphany 2A)

Enriched in Every Way
Homily delivered the Second Sunday after Epiphany (Epiphany 2A RCL)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
19 January 2020; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42; Psalm 40:1-12

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.   

This month’s Poetry magazine leads with a gem by Christian Widman, whom many of us know from his book from a couple of years ago “My Bright Abyss.” 

All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs

All my Friends are finding new beliefs.

This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.

In a highly literary and hitherto religiously-indifferent Jew

God whomps on like a genetic generator.

Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.

Exercise regimes so extreme she merges with machine,

One man marries a woman twenty years younger

and twice in one brunch uses the word verdant;

another’s brick-fisted belligerence gentles

into dementia, and one, after a decade of finical feints and teases

like a sandpiper at the edge of the sea,

decides to die.

Priesthoods and beasthoods, sombers and glees,

high-styled renunciations and avocations of dirt,

 sobrieties, satieties, pilgrimages to the very bowels of being…

All my friends are finding new beliefs

and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track

of the new gods and the new loves,

and the old gods and the old loves,

and the days have daggers, and the mirrors motives,

and the planet’s turning faster and faster in the blackness,

and my nights, and my doubts, and my friends,

my beautiful, credible friends. 

Dizzying days:  as we get older, we see time go faster and faster, and changes more and more.  But at another level, we begin to see the unchanging ground beneath it all, the circular or spiral path of our life both individual and common, and begin to truly wonder what lies beyond this horizon that seems to have settled in our view. 

For me, the face of Jesus is more and more clearly behind it all, a face full of love and acceptance, support, and encouragement and challenge to grow, change, and find our true selves.  I suspect that means being more and more like him, in our own quirky and individual ways.      

Paul begins his letter to the Corinthians with this prayer of thanks:  “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him.”  This is intended, he says, that we be “not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revealing of our Lord,” strengthening us “to the end, so that [we] may be blameless” on that day.  Paul says, “God is fully trustworthy,” since he has thus called us into camaraderie with Son.” 

What does that mean?  A detail in the Gospel today hints at it:  After Andrew and Phillip ask Jesus where he is staying, he says simply, “Come and see.”  They go and remain with him.  When Andrew, in excitement introduces his brother Simon to Jesus, Jesus looks at him and gives him a new name: “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas (which is translated Peter).” 

We often miss the point of this story.  We are more familiar with it as told by Matthew, where Jesus gives Simon the new name only after he has followed Jesus for a while and in response to Simon’s confession of Jesus as Messiah.  There, it is an origins-story about the Church and its leadership: making a pun with “Rock” (what “Cephas” or “Peter” mean), it adds, “Upon this rock I will build my church.  I give you the keys of God’s Realm, and it will overcome all the bad this world can throw at it.”

But John tells a simpler story:  immediately upon meeting Simon, gives him the new name without ecclesiological explanation.  Just as Abram became Abraham to point to God’s promise that he would have many descendants, and just as Jacob became Israel to indicate his God’s ongoing struggles with him, Simon here became “Rock” to show what Jesus is calling him toward: steadfast, solid faith. 

Remember that John regularly is at pains to show how the “Beloved Disciple” is closer to Jesus than even such a figure as Peter.  The Beloved Disciple is the one at Jesus’ close side at the Last Supper, not Peter.  Peter denies Jesus three times during the Passion, but the Beloved Disciple stays with Jesus’ Mother at the side of the Cross.  When Mary announces that Jesus has been raised from the dead, Peter loses to the race to the tomb, to—who else—the Beloved Disciple.   In all this, the Gospel of John is saying that following Jesus and being true to him is more important that high status in the community of faith. 

In this Gospel, Jesus gives Simon his new name to call him beyond himself, to help him find his true self.   And at the end of the Gospel, when the resurrected Lord is talking to Peter, what God is calling him to, his new name, becomes clear:  do you love me, feed my sheep—repeated three times.  He is called to love, to serve. And that is what we are all called to. 

The image of a new name comes from Second Isaiah:

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
    and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
    and her salvation like a burning torch.
² The nations shall see your vindication,
    and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
    that the mouth of the Lord will give.
³ You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
    and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” (Isa 62:1-3)

The idea is found elsewhere in the Johannine corpus, in that most Jewish of all New Testament writings, the Apocalypse of John.  But here, the new name is not for the Holy City and God’s people together, but rather for the individual called by God:

“Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Rev. 2:17)

Note here the stone or rock is not the foundation of the institutional church, but rather a privately held token of what God calls each of us to.  It is so personal, indeed, that no one knows the new name except the one who receives it.   God calls us all to love, all to follow Jesus, but each of us in the way that we alone can do.  This is the purpose of our creation, and the sole source of hope and joy.   

Jesus is calling us to be our true selves, more and more in his likeness. In his light we see light, and we follow him.  As today’s collect says, “Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory.”  It is also expressed in the prayer response to Alma Redemptoris Mater, the Marian anthem we chant from First Advent through February 2 in after the Daily Prayer Office:  “Almighty and everlasting God, you have stooped to raise fallen humanity through the child-bearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Grant that we who have seen your glory revealed in our human nature and your love made perfect in our weakness, may be daily renewed in your image and conformed to the pattern of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.     

The Epiphany season reminds us again and again of “God in Man made manifest.”  Jesus is the pattern and guide:  truly God and truly human, he calls us to follow and take his image and likeness upon us.  It’s doable, because Christ did it and he is the one who powers this process.  Illumined by him, guided by his word and sacraments, we ourselves are kindled, and shine bright, each in our own way.  We put aside the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.  We cast away negative thoughts, emotions, and hurtful words and behaviors, and let love shine out through our words, our acts, and our lives.   Impossible?  I think not.  Hebrews says Christ was like us in all ways but rebellion against God.  He is the one who calls to new life, one more authentically us, more truly who God intended when God created us.  He has already given us a new name, our personal designation, unique and sacred, that calls us to light and love.  It is up to us to find out what it is, and how we best can live into Jesus, the way of love, the truth of love, and the light of love, and let this be revealed in our human nature, and be made perfect in our weakness. 

In the name of Christ, Amen