Bound to each other. January 27, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

You have probably all heard of the “Trolley Dilemma,” which is a thought experiment first proposed by a philosopher named Philippa Foot back in the sixties. The dilemma is this: You are standing on a city street and you see a trolley hurtling out of control down the tram tracks. And you also see five workers on those tracks, who will soon be run over. But you have sharp vision and quick reflexes, and you notice a lever by the tracks and you realize that you can divert the trolley onto another track, where there is only one person working. So, do you let the trolley run over the five workers, or do you divert it, killing the one worker on the other track? Then a variation was added. It’s the same scenario — a trolley racing out of control — but this time you are on a footbridge above the tracks. You see that five workers are about to be run over, but you also see a very large man standing next to you on the bridge. If he were to fall onto the tracks, he would be killed, but his body would certainly stop the trolley and save the five workers. Do you push him off the bridge or not?

A number of studies have been done with this dilemma. Most people, it turns out, would pull the lever and divert the train, but most people would not push the man off the bridge. This raises all sorts of interesting questions, but let me propose a similar but different thought experiment. I heard it years ago and it has haunted me since. Say you are given divine power to establish the Kingdom of God. Billions of people would live in justice and peace, devoted to works of goodness and beauty. The only catch is that one person would have to be excluded. Everyone would enjoy bliss forever except for that one person, who would spend eternity alone, weeping in the outer darkness. Would you do it? Would God do it?

Can we ever think of any person as expendable? Can we ever say to another human being, “I have no need of you.” Well, Paul insists that members of the Body of Christ cannot say that. He drives the point home to those fractious and divided Corinthians: The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” This is an inconvenient teaching, of course, because we can all think of people we would rather not deal with, in church or anywhere else. I have been blessed over the course of my ministry to find 99% of my parishioners easy to love, but there has always been that one percent. I think of one man in a previous parish, named Bill, who gave me heartburn on a regular basis. We disagreed on, um, everything. For him, church was primarily about the building and changing nothing. He hated many of my sermons and told me so. He had a caustic tongue, and often lashed out at other parishioners. He kept grudges and carried on feuds for years. And there were many moments, I confess, when I wished he wasn’t there. But as luck and karma would have it, he had lots of health problems, and was in the hospital frequently. Which meant he and I could enjoy lots of quality time with each other. One day, when he was brought into the ER with a heart attack, I went to see him, praying as I walked in, “God help me!” He looked awful, and told me what was going on. So I anointed him and prayed for him, and then he looked at me from his bed and said, “Thank you.” And I had an epiphany. The Spirit opened my eyes and my heart and I knew that Bill and I were in this together. I would not be saved apart from that man.

Now, of course, we all need each other for practical reasons. We learn from each other and we depend on each other in the sharing of talents and resources: I need Steve to be treasurer, I need Daniel to play the organ, I need Chris to be an acolyte, I need all our lay leaders to do the great work they do because I can’t: I don’t have the gifts or the ability to do what they do. And that’s true for all of us. But I need to be very clear: the message today goes way beyond practical assistance. Paul acknowledges all the different gifts and roles we have, but at the very end of the passage we heard today, he says, But strive for the greater gifts. And the greatest gift of all, as he will tell us in the very next chapter of First Corinthians, is the gift of love. Ultimately we are bound to each other not for utilitarian reasons, but purely for the sake of love. God loves because God is love. Love needs no practical justification: love is its own purpose, its own end, and its own reward.

That shines out in the Gospel, when Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah words of all-encompassing love: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor . . . release to the captives . . . recovery of sight to the blind . . . freedom to the oppressed. Everyone matters. No one is expendable. We cannot say to people of different races and different religions, “I have no need of you.” We cannot say to immigrants desperately searching for a better life, “I have no need of you.” We cannot say to the young man in prison, “I have no need of you.” We cannot say to the old woman in the nursing home, “I have no need of you.” This goes beyond issues of mere justice: including and caring for everyone is not just the right thing to do. In the Kingdom of God, it is the only thing to do. That is what love does and, as Jesus makes clear over and over and over again, love is what it is all about.

And if you’re thinking right now, “That’s way too hard,” well, I hear you. Following Christ will challenge us to the very core of our being, but he told us as much. After all, the central image of our faith is a man whose body and heart are broken on the cross — and who lives in joy and reigns in love, even still. Living in the Spirit of Christ will stretch our minds, expand our souls, and at times, break our hearts. But it is the only way to experience eternal life, because there is no life apart from God, and God is love.

So look around you today and throughout the week. Liberals, you will not be saved apart from conservatives. Conservatives, you will not be saved apart from liberals. White people will not be saved apart from black people. Rich people will not be saved apart from poor people. Americans will not be saved apart from non-Americans. The Spirit of Christ will gradually, painfully teach us what it really means to love, but it begins with this basic truth: we are all in this together — or we are not in it at all.

Encountering God in the unexpected. January 6, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Matthew 2:1-12

It’s January 6th—a very special day in the Church – the Feast of the Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ.  As we heard in our reading from the gospel of Matthew today we celebrate the wise men’s visit to the child Jesus.  And those wise men have captured our collective imagination.  You, like I, may have a few of them around your house rubbing elbow with shepherds in a nativity scene.  Almost universally we imagine them with long flowing robes, beards, and turbans.  Sometimes we think of them as kings, like in the hymn we sang this morning.  Now it’s not my intention to burst anyone’s bubble here, but odds are these men were not kings at all – that notion likely came from Psalm 72 because it speaks of foreign kings paying homage to God’s Messiah.  Even referring to them as “wise men” puts us on shaky ground.  Despite the reading in our translation, the original Greek calls these men magi - which was a class of priest-astrologers of the Zoroastrian religion.  Given that, the east from which they traveled, was likely the Persian Empire which means that they surely did not arrive on the night of Jesus’ birth nor twelve days later, but more likely a year or so after the big event.  And the names Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar are ones that tradition has given them.  It’s really anyone’s guess along with how many magi there were - two, three, ten, thirty?  The number three just comes from the number of gifts given.  We actually know very little about the Magi apart from the fact that they were foreigners and definitely not Jewish.   And add to that one more thing - probably the most important thing to know about them.  That is, they had an openness of spirit that enabled them to first notice and then follow a star that did not provide them with all the answers. They were willing to set out on a journey with an end that was not clear at the beginning. 

But they had some ideas.  Since they were looking for the child who had been born King of the Jews it was natural to expect that they would find him in Jerusalem, the seat of Jewish power. So upon their arrival they began to ask around.  Now here would be a perfect place to insert some joke about how uncharacteristic it is of men to ask for directions.  But really that’s an old joke for a different time.  In today’s world no one, man or woman, asks for directions anymore.  Want to find out how to get from point “A” to point “B”?  Just plug it into your GPS and voilà within a matter of seconds a custom made map appears with the route highlighted and your destination flagged along with the miles it will take to travel, how long it will take to get there, and notifications about any potential slow-downs.  There’s no guesswork, no ambiguity.  The journey is clearly laid out and plans can be made accordingly.

Obviously, the Magi had no technology at their fingertips which, perhaps, was part of what helped them to remain flexible and open to readjusting their expectations.  Now when they arrived in Jerusalem they must have thought that their long journey was over.  But instead it was there where things took an unexpected turn.  First of all, when they inquired about the newborn king no one knew what they were talking.  It took a while until King Herod, after consulting with the Jewish leaders, informed the Magi that the Messiah was to be born not in Jerusalem, but Bethlehem.  Who would have thought?  We take it for granted that the Magi took this news in stride, but it really is quite remarkable.  They do something that is, indeed, very wise and yet often very difficult to do – they let go of their own expectations trusting that the one whom they seek may actually be found in a way and a place that they never expected.   So they continue their journey to the backwater town of Bethlehem.  And when they find what to all appearances looks to be a regular child born to a peasant mother in a humble home they aren’t disappointed by this unlikely scene.  Rather they are overwhelmed with joy – joy that comes with encountering God even, or maybe especially, in the unexpected. 

We call that encounter the Epiphany – when God in Christ is revealed to the Magi, who really serve as a stand-in for all of us.  For Jesus came into the world not for a certain, select group people, but for everyone.  And just as it was then, so it is now that God’s desire for us to know the light of Christ’s presence in our lives.  Now often we think of such manifestations or epiphanies as big “aha” moments.  Perhaps you can think of such a time where you experienced a deep peace in the midst of crisis, an inner knowing when nothing at the time was knowable, or a release that came forgiving someone who had terribly hurt you.  Those are spiritual experiences are special and should be treasured.  However, if epiphanies are that remarkable and rare, something that happens just a handful of times in one’s life, if you’re lucky, then, honestly, there’s not much to celebrate today.

But thank God that is not the case.  The Epiphany of our Lord Jesus Christ didn’t just happen when the journey was finished and the Magi arrived at Jesus’ house.  Rather their entire experience was epiphanal.  Seeing the star at its rising, traveling to Jerusalem, continuing on to Bethlehem, seeing the child in his humble surroundings, offering him gifts, then traveling back home by another way – all along that journey the light of Christ shone and God was being revealed.

As we begin a new calendar year most, if not all of us, have plans about how we’d like this year to go.  And, if we’re lucky, some of those plans will go off without a hitch.  But eventually, as we journey into this new year we will encounter the unexpected.  But as people of faith our lives are not to be about clinging to neatly laid out plans, counting on some kind of spiritual GPS to provide us with all of the details of our route.  Rather, following Jesus means that we journey on a path where few things are certain and flexibility and openness are necessary – necessary so that we are able to readjust or sometimes even let go of our expectations trusting that the one we seek and, more importantly, the one who seeks us is found in ways and places that we never expected.  Epiphanies don’t just happen when we arrive at our planned destinations.  They happen throughout the journey – in all sorts of places and under all sorts of conditions: in homes and in hospitals, in arguments and in reconciliations, in bible studies and in business meetings,  in grocery stores and in bars, in mangers and even on crosses.  The light of Christ shines and epiphanies are happening all the time, often in the most unexpected of places - sometimes even sometimes in church - and that is something to celebrate!