Grace-St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Mercerville, New Jersey

Those creeds, (besides correcting any notable idiocies of the preacher,)
Remind us that being baptized, saying that we believe, brings us into God’s household by letting
Jesus be born all over again – within each of us.

It means that a little over 2000 years after that first Christmas,
whose crèche still adorns our altar,
Jesus meets each of us by the water, and calls us to be among his disciples.
In this way - Jesus’ life story begins to be written all over again
in the stories of our individual lives,
and in the story of this parish’s life in community.
In one way, this is a story that doesn’t change from person to person.
The Christian story is always the story of a God who calls each of us by name.
God knows us intimately and calls each of us by name.
How wonderfully reassuring . . ..

But after we are reassured, forgiven, saved, then
what is it that Our God calls each of us to do or be?
What does Jesus ask of us?
That question also has at least one perfectly simple, true and universal answer
Jesus calls each of us individually and in our community as his body, the church,
to be disciples.

In this calling, one incredible mystery eclipses all the others.
God’s way of calling people is to humble herself,
and to take up her residence inside our bodies,
SO THAT, the world may see God's glory in OUR faces.
God’s coming to live in our bodies is what we mean
when we say that we are called, in our Baptism, to become disciples.
"Do you not know,” St. Paul asks elsewhere, “that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?"
Or, to paraphrase St. John’s great poem,
“The word becomes flesh, our flesh, and tents within & among each of us.”
That is, of course, why Christians care so greatly about the health and decent use of the human body (see St. Paul’s letter today.)
A place – a body which is the temple of God, is also a body for which we should care greatly, a body to treasure, a body to protect and respect.

Yet, if Christians stop here when we tell the story of human redemption -
as it is always tempting for us to do -
then we are implying that God’s desire, God’s intention, God’s job is simply to forgive, care for and protect
the particular persons and peoples within whom she lives,
that is, in particular, members of the Christian Churches in all their variety.

Whenever I hear people talking that way,
I also hear again Isaiah’s words to the community of Israel.
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

God certainly has come to live within and among us, and thus to save each of us. This is good news for us and for everyone we meet.
But, it is only ONE point, albeit the starting point, of our priesthood in Christ about which Jack reminded us last Sunday.
Christ came to save us, yes, but Christ also came to be - and Christ has called us to become - lights to the nations that God’s salvation
(Salvation is health and wholeness.)
may reach all people and places on earth and in creation.
We are supposed to be able to walk into a group and say of ourselves
that “Today this reading has been fulfilled in your hearing”
and be speaking the truth in however small a way.
Those ways of fulfilling the prophecy are for each of us, as distinct
As the fingerprints we leave on our silver, and yet, they are also as universal
as Jesus’ call to us to be disciples.

I’m sure that is why our new Presiding Bishop chose to speak to the vast
crowd gathered in Washington Cathedral for her institution,
not about enlarging the numbers who attend church on Sunday mornings,
but about the poor, the prisoners, the hopeless, the sick, and those who are blind.
Today’s gospel was her text, and she spoke powerfully of the vision
which God leaves within all of us.
That vision, here spoken aloud by Isaiah,
Is of a world in which hungry children,
abandoned and sick elders,
victims of rape, tribal and racial hatreds, and violence of all kinds,
the hopeless, the alone, and the morally lost,
are gathered up into a world of peace, plenty, and hope;
of a a place where God’s healing, justice and forgiveness
shine from within and around every human being,
I is a vision that has animated every human culture since Adam and Eve began
their wanderings upon this planet.

This vision of God’s reign, God’s realm, God’s kingdom, God’s ‘New World coming’
is the vision by which Our Lord Jesus himself measured his own life and ministry.
It is also the vision by which God will judge all our human ministries -
our personal ministries, the ministries of the worshiping community
which is our church, and the work of the human community which is our world.
Jesus calls us into relationship with God.
This relationship – we call it being “Children of God” - forgives us our sin,
and makes us “alter Christi” - “other Christs “
priests of God to the world around us.
That means that we are to judge our faith and lives,
using the same standard that Jesus chose for his own life,
because it is Jesus who is reborn within us when we were baptized.

That is why, as members of this beloved parish reach out to each other,
we also encourage you to reach out to people here in Hamilton
and all around the world.

All of us may work toward the presence of God’s reign in very small ways,
in very large ways, and in every size of effort in between.
There is, in God’s church room for the child’s quarters for a heifer project,
alongside the adult’s time spent on an outreach planning committee
to raise money for new houses for hurricane victims.
There is a place for people who sing beautiful songs,
and for those who climb rock walls with our youth and their friends.
There is a place for donating money, and offering car rides,
and a place for gracefully accepting the help and love others give.
We have ways to feed the hungry in Trenton, and in Bangladesh,
to offer education to the poorest people in Haiti,
and to help with books for our own college students.
There are Church ministries to work toward removing the threat of nuclear war,
and there is one to figure out how many jellybeans go into plastic eggs on Easter II.

In all things large and small, obviously holy and apparently secular,
we Christians are offered the change to wonder,
“What is Jesus doing here?”
and to join
our lives to the work of the Lord who has loved and saved us.

And the good news in all of this is?
That God, in coming to live within and among us, has given us the gift of
The Holy Spirit – that is the actual power to accomplish the tasks to which
Jesus is calling us.
We must trust God’s power, and look around us,
to see where the light of the Incarnate Christ is calling us to join
Jesus in his ministry:
that we too may “bring Good News to the poor,
proclaim liberty to those held captive,
recovery of sight to those who are blind,
and release to those in prison.“ --
to proclaim the year of God’s favor.

Will we see this in our lifetimes? Not Likely!
But we will have the joy of being part of the movement of God’s redeeming love,
as the earth is filled with the glory of Our God --
the God who has come in this holy season to live within and among us,
and who sends us out to live the message of redemption.