Sermon Archive
Readings for 4 February 2007
The Fifth Sunday After Epiphany
Year C
The angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites. The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, you mighty warrior." Gideon answered him, "But sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian." Then the LORD turned to him and said, "Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you." He responded, "But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family." The LORD said to him, "But I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them." Then he said to him, "If now I have found favor with you, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. Do not depart from here until I come to you, and bring out my present, and set it before you." And he said, "I will stay until you return."
So Gideon went into his house and prepared a kid, and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour; the meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the oak and presented them. The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour out the broth." And he did so. Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight. Then Gideon perceived that it was the angel of the LORD; and Gideon said, "Help me, Lord GOD! For I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face." But the LORD said to him, "Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die." Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD, and called it, The LORD is peace.
I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you--unless you have come to believe in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
The Rev. Susan B.P. Norris
devout, looking for the consolation of Israel.
Read “Cross in the Manger,” Ann Weems (p77)
when Candlemas shows up on a Sunday morning.
Surely by now we are finished with Christmas!
(After all I’ve reached “H” on my e-mail listing of thank you notes.)
Macy’s hasn’t played The first Nowell for six weeks.
The greens are beginning to feel “old.”
Why, exactly are the church trimmings still up,
and waiting for us to take them down this morning after 10AM Mass?
Surely there’s a point to this way of doing things?
Well, of course there is a point – there are several,
But what I want to think this morning about the GRACE that shines through a
Candlemas celebration.
All the things I just mentioned are stuff that can get us so
busy we forget about Christmas when it’s actually happening.
We particularly forget about
Christmas’s being all mixed up with Easter and Pentecost --
more accurately, about Christmas’s being
mixed up with our lives ALL YEAR LONG.
So stop for a moment this morning,
and look hard at the familiar manger scene,
the Greens and the lights in the windows and
around the manger, and
the candlelit icon of the Blessed Virgin and Child on the piano.
Before us is one leg of the three-legged stool holding up any life of faith.
That leg is the story of Our God who is living among us.
The creed says, “Et incarnatus est . . . ex Maria virgine, et Homo Factus est.”
(“And was incarnate from the Virgin Mary . . . AND WAS MADE MAN.”)
We believe that God is here, is among us right now
in things large, and in things small,
in people, in places, in experiences of beauty, hope and love.
Simeon was looking for the consolation of Israel –
He found the baby Jesus, with Mary and Joseph in the temple.
Because he was looking for God in the world around him,
Simeon saw the Lord.
He saw God among us right now, everyday, everywhere.
To see the Christ, St. Paul tells us to look for certain things,
“Whatever is true, whatever is honest, whatever is pure, decent, admirable virtuous or
worthy of praise, think about these things.”
We shouldn’t just think about them.
Whenever we see beauty,
kindness, purity, love, devotion, or faithfulness;
understand that we are seeing the presence and power of Christ,
and give thanks for God’s presence in daily life.
That’s what it means to call Jesus the “Light of the World.”
This leg of the stool is our favorite and most human-friendly.
It isn’t very hard to see and be glad for human decency, kindness,
generosity, love and virtue.
It’s one reason that Christmas with its light and peace symbols
is such a universally enjoyed festival.
Ann Weems, our poet, joins Anna in reminding us of the second leg
of that faith stool – the cross and resurrection.
It’s a harder and harsher support – the leg of God who died for us
that we might be saved from sin, evil and death.
But that leg, which we’ll talk a lot about in the coming weeks of Lent
is also here in the manger, in the story of the Holy Innocents –
the babies that Herod killed in a futile attempt to murder the Child Jesus.
It also lives in the fuzzy lambs, who will, when a year old,
be sacrificed for the Passover meal as Mary, Joseph, Jesus and all of Jewry recall the bondage
from which God rescued them in Egypt.
Christ among us is also the God who has died as we die.
Christ has been raised as we will be raised,
by the power that is too great to be overcome by death and destruction.
Because that overwhelming power is among us every day,
we will sometimes see new life coming out of old lives.
When we see that, we should raise our voices in praise to God,
like Old Anna the prophetess who saw in Jesus,
the light of the world shining through the rise
and the fall of the children of Israel.
The Holy Spirit that Jesus sent to the Church after his Ascension
is the third leg of our faith stool.
Epiphany, this season both of the Kings and
of our call to Christ’s mission in the world,
is what we’ve been hearing about in the past weeks.
We’ve heard from Jack at the annual meeting,
from the presiding Bishop in her speaking about
the Millennium Development Goals,
and from our vestry and parish leaders, as we plan for the mission and
Ministry of Grace-St. Paul’s.
I hope you’ve also been thinking of what you can do
In your individual and family lives to bring the reign of God closer to reality
during this very difficult time in our nation and our world.
The Christmas symbol of the Holy Spirit is the great star.
The light which led shepherds, the angels, and the magi to the baby
Jesus in the stable, and the little house in Bethlehem.
There, shining above the manger, is the dream, the vision
the promise which leads all of us through life.
There is the heavenly symbol of the hope which leads us on toward the
realm and the reign of Our God.
So lets look around us, as we pack away the familiar Christmas symbols
and trimmings.
But let’s be careful to pack away only the symbols.
Remember that we can look up anytime we see light during the coming year.
Look up and recall that behind/within the light there is a stable;
and, in that stable, some animals, a handful of people and a great star.
There we see we can see, over and over again, God among us -
the Light and the Hope of our lives,
and of the whole world,
For past week's readings and sermons, please the archive of sermons