Homily for The Third Sunday after The Epiphany/Rite-13 Sunday
by Rebecca M. Taylor,
Director of Children's, Youth & Family Ministries
All Saints Parish, Brookline, MA
January 24, 2010
Lectionary: Nehemiah 8.1-3; 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31a; Luke 4.14-21; Psalm 19:7-14
"Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." (1 Cor 12.27)
A couple weeks before Christmas, Jesus came to All Saints Parish.
I know this is true because I saw him. I talked with him.
Let me tell you what happened.
It was 10 days before Christmas – a Tuesday morning. I was working in my office downstairs when the interoffice phone rang. It was Barbara Bembery, our parish administrator. Her voice was hushed and sounded urgent. "Would you come up here, please? I need your help with something," she said.
When I got upstairs to the main office she was standing next to her desk, holding a pair of latex gloves. "There's a homeless guy sitting on the bench in the cloister," she told me. "He's asked me to help him with something and for safe church reasons, I figure it would be good if the two of us are with him."
So we went out to the cloister.
And there he was: a man about my age, dirty, smelly, and I could tell he was in pain. He was wearing a winter coat and a knit hat. He had set his backpack on the bench next to him. He was holding an aluminum cane.
Barbara introduced me and then asked him to take off his right shoe. "I can't," he told us. "Would you mind doing that for me?" So she put on her gloves and started to unlace his shoe.
"What's your name?" I asked him.
"Are you a minister?" he asked me back.
"I work here," I told him. "What's the problem today?"
"I think my big toe is infected," he said, gritting his teeth. "I just need help getting a bandage on it." Nodding his head toward Barbara, he added, "She told me she'd help me."
The shoe was off. We saw that he was wearing two layers of socks. As Barbara peeled the first one off, he pulled up his pant leg a bit and I could see that the lower part of his leg was very dark.
Looking at his foot, I was thinking to myself, "This is not going to be good."
And it wasn't. His toe was round, a couple inches wide. Hanging on the edge of it was a dark, crusty bump. Barbara touched it gently and he winced.
"You need to go to the hospital," I told him.
"I just came from one," he said, and pulled up the sleeve of his coat to show me the plastic bracelet he was still wearing.
"Do you have any clean socks?" he asked me. I went downstairs to the clothing bin and didn't find any.
Picking up his dirty wet socks, Barbara suggested, "How about we just put your socks on the radiator to dry? Maybe that will make you feel a little better."
While I watched, she cleaned his toe with a wet paper towel. Then she put a couple of good-sized band aids on it.
Surveying her work, she told him, "You just sit here as long as you want. We'll be in our offices if you need anything."
And we both went back to work.
About an hour and a half later, I came upstairs again. "Is he gone?" I asked Barbara.
"He is," she told me. "But look what he left behind." And she held up a pencil sketch.
I've made copies of that picture and put it in the pews this morning. Take a look at it now.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches his followers, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40)
What is the "it" about which Jesus speaks?
The answer to that question is in this morning's gospel reading. In Jesus, the mission of God spoken through the prophet Isaiah, became enfleshed:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
By the power of God's Spirit, and with the power of God's help, this became Jesus' job description: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Everything Jesus did, from the moment he left that synagogue in Nazareth to his ascension into heaven to live with God forever, was aimed at fulfilling God's mission to save us from whatever we are struggling with and to assure us that God's favor is always, always extended to us.
So what does that have to do with us today? The answer to that question is in the second reading from 1 Corinthians: "In the one Spirit, we are all baptized into one body and we were all made to drink of one Spirit," St. Paul says. He goes on: "You are the body of Christ and individually members of it."
All of us together – men, women, young people and children of all ages – we are Jesus active in the world today, with the same job description he had, empowered and helped by the same Spirit that he had. That's what the scripture tells us this morning.
So that's how I know that Jesus was here at All Saints Parish 10 days before Christmas.
Jesus was here in the guise a homeless man with an infected toe. "If you do it to the least of these, you do it to me."
And Jesus was also here in my friend Barbara. That morning, she became Jesus when she responded with compassion to our visitor's request for help.
Jesus came to All Saints Parish 10 days before Christmas. And just in case the two of us didn't realize it, he left his calling card. Now I hope you all realize it, too.
Barbara, Mimi, Rachel, and Sarah: One of the big pieces of work that you will be doing as you make your journeys toward adulthood is to discover the special talents that God has given you and the unique passions God has put in your hearts, and to use those special talents and unique passions to make the Kingdom of God more obvious on this earth.
God's Kingdom is already here. Make no mistake about that! But most of the time we are too busy, or preoccupied, or sinful to notice it. But once in a while – in a moment like the one that happened here before Christmas – we catch a glimpse of the Kingdom when hope and compassion are offered to someone who is impoverished or denied freedom in some way, blind to the reality of God's love, or oppressed by something in his or her life.
You cannot discover how to use you talents or how to direct your passions on your own. You need the help of others who care about you: your family, your teachers, your friends, your faith community. That is why your Rite-13 ceremony takes place in the midst of this congregation. In a few moments we will all celebrate as you begin this journey and we will all promise to help you on that journey. I urge you to use us.
Stay connected to this congregation during your teenaged years. Here you will see how people are using their special talents and unique passions to further the mission of God. Stay connected to this church, this Body of Christ, and you will meet prophets, teachers, and healers. You will meet people who know how to pray with music, with poetry, with silence, with acts of compassion for those who suffer. You will meet people who are passionate about the right use of money, about care of the environment, about authentic worship of God. You will meet people who are working for justice and peace. And you will meet seekers – lots and lots of seekers, which is a very good thing because seekers know that there is always more to learn about God and how to be with God.
Each of you is part of something that is much bigger than you are: the body of Christ. All of us are, too. Together we are the hands and feet and voice and ears and heart of Jesus, alive in the world today, working to transform the world into the vision that God has for everyone everywhere. The same Spirit who empowered and guided Jesus empowers and guides us, too. Our scriptures teach us that this morning, as well.
On this Rite-13 Sunday, we celebrate the truth that we are the Body of Christ. We celebrate all the special talents that God has put in this congregation. We celebrate the special talents that God has given to these four young women and we pledge our support to them as they discover, with God's help, how to use their talents in and from this place.
Amen.