January 27, 2008 Third Sunday after Epiphany,
Annual Meeting Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
I Corinthians 1 & 2; Matthew 4: 12-23
The Apostle Paul urged the church in Corinth to be of one mind. That
advice could cause distress in a church at Annual Meeting time, as it discovers that
it is of several minds on questions large and small.
If being of one mind is making you anxious that we must all agree on
everything this afternoon, all you have to do to comfort yourself is glance at the
rest of Paul’s letter. He spends much of it advising the Corinthians how to live
together with their differences. He celebrates the different perspectives and
abilities within the church as gifts of the one Spirit, and says that just as an ear and
a big toe can be part of the same body, very different and yet one, so it is with the
church, which is the body of Christ. This afternoon, should we have differences of
opinions, just think as you listen that one voice is our hand and another our heart,
or maybe during the budget discussion, one voice is our eyes and another our
stomach. It may help you keep a healthy perspective and a sense of humor about
our one body.
But then what does it mean to be of one mind, if it does not mean that we
think identically? Paul says that it means for us each to have the mind of Christ in
us with its purpose and wisdom. If we do that, Paul says, we will learn the secret,
hidden wisdom that enables what is foolish-seeming or weak or low or despised,
“things that are not,” to “reduce to nothing things that are.” If we have the mind
of Christ, we will have the wisdom and power we need to change the course of
empires. We will be agents of Epiphany, showing the world the light of God. But
just as we all together make up the body of Christ, it may take all of us putting our
different share of Christ’s mind together to have the mind of Christ that we need.
So how do we as individuals get the mind of Christ? That is the crucial
question as we head into Annual Meeting. It is also the crucial question as we
look around at a world suffering from violence and injustice. It is also the crucial
question as we look within at the mess our own mind can make of our soul, as our
mind leads us into temptation or addiction or compulsion, or into anxiety or
depression or obsession. (Please note: Sometimes these conditions, especially
depression, arise not from within our minds or anything our minds can control,
but from chemical reactions or imbalances within our bodies. Also, people on the
contemplative path have found that the “Dark Night of the Soul” can feel like a
terrible depression and yet be a constructive stage and instrument of grace in our
journey toward union with God. I am talking in the simplest terms here of those
undesirable conditions that we can control or eliminate through proven spiritual
and/or therapeutic means, however difficult gaining control may be.) Our minds
can be full of fear or resentment, selfish desire or rage. How can we get the mind
of Christ?
There are two ways. Both can be seen by looking at how the mind of
Christ manifested itself in the life and teachings of Jesus. One way is to follow
him up onto the mountainside to pray in silence in the presence of God, as will
happen next Sunday in the story of the transfiguration. Or we can follow him into
the wilderness to fast and pray and confront demons, as will happen two weeks
from today on the first Sunday of Lent. We can have the mind of Christ in us if
we take the path of centering prayer or meditation, slowly but surely learning how
to quiet the mind in us that is not Christ, and how to overcome our demons and
open to the Spirit.
That is the contemplative path to the mind of Christ, and if it interests you,
you have a standing invitation to the Prayer of the Heart on Thursday evenings
where we travel together on that spiritual journey.
The other way is the active path, and it is important to note that just as the
active and contemplative were combined in Christ, so they can be combined in any
one of us, and they need to be combined in the body of Christ that is the church.
We see the active part in today’s gospel passage. If we want to have the
mind of Christ, then we need to try to enter into this story imaginatively so that we
can feel and understand how the mind of Christ worked in the human Jesus.
Today’s story begins with the sentence: “Now when Jesus heard that John
had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.” Jesus has just emerged from the forty
days in the wilderness. He has not yet begun his ministry. He went and fasted and
prayed and then confronted his demons and withstood them, and now he has come
back to the Jordan where he began. Forty days ago he was baptized in this river.
Crowds lined the banks and the great John the Baptist filled the air with his
prophetic preaching, calling on people to “repent, for the realm of God is at hand.”
Jesus had heard John’s flaming voice, he had seen the light of John’s torch shining
from his home far off in Nazareth, and he had journeyed here like all the others to
be baptized and follow where John was leading.
But one of the places John was leading was into conflict with the corrupt
and decadent powers of religion and state, and it got him arrested and ultimately
killed. So when Jesus emerged back onto the banks of the River Jordan he found
the crowds gone. Only a few grieving followers remained there in the darkness of
John’s extinguished light. They furtively emerged from the shadows to whisper
the news to Jesus.
It was dangerous to be there, and Jesus withdrew. It was not his time or
place. John’s style was not his style. Baptizing was not Jesus’ calling. He was
not ready to work so near Jerusalem. So Jesus went back to Galilee.
But as soon as he got there, he took up the fallen torch of John and began
preaching in his own way the same message: “Repent, for the realm of God is at
hand,” and he called others to follow him. He began his own ministry—not
baptizing, but teaching about God’s realm and showing people the way to live in
it. He helped those who were suffering, lifting the poor and oppressed, healing the
sick, confronting powers of religion and state—not exactly as John had, but with
the same message and the same light. They were two aspects of one mind—the
mind of Christ.
To see how we can be of this one mind, we need to go a little more deeply
into the story. We need to imagine how it would have felt to be Jesus the moment
he decided to take up John’s message and cause. Imagine the courage it took to
overcome his fear, not only because Herod might arrest him as he had John, but
because there was so much work to do, so much wrong to confront, so much
suffering to comfort and heal. The darkness was so vast and his one light was so
small. He was just a humble carpenter who had been out of work for at least two
months, six weeks of which he had spent not eating. He was weak and lowly and
alone, yet he had confronted the demons that tempted him to go down an easier,
more selfish path, and he felt the Spirit of God flowing through his weakness with
all its wisdom and strength. He felt the light of John shining in him and he took it
up and made it his light for others to see.
To have the mind of Christ is simply to see this same light and have the
courage to pick it up and make it our own and shine it out where and how we can.
This is the way in which we are called to be of one mind, by shining our share of
this one light. When we make this the central focus and organizing principle of
our life, it can have a miraculous effect on those messes in our souls that our mind
can otherwise make—the addictions or anxieties, for instance, that are the result of
our mind’s misspent activity (as opposed to a bio-chemical depression). The light
we shine has inward as well as outward effects, and in both cases, one of the
effects is a form of union, making us one with God and others.
The Pope and bishops claim that they are in what they call Apostolic
Succession—that they are in direct line from the original apostles. The truth is,
every person who picks up the torch that Jesus took from John the Baptist and that
Peter, James and John and Paul and Mary and all the other women and men took
from Jesus, and that all the later Christians took from the early Christians all the
way down to our grandparents and parents to us—we all are one line of apostolic
succession. Every time we do something to challenge wrong or heal the hurting or
shine the light of unconditional, all-forgiving love, we are putting on the mind of
Christ, and we are stepping into the body of Christ. We are not only part of the
same story, we are part of one mind and one body with all the other people who
have ever turned to the light of God and let it lead them and shine through them to
change this world—a light that each person has learned by seeing it shine through
another person in the long line.
The core of that light is so simple. It is the message that John and Jesus
both proclaimed. but it is important that we understand it fully. We are at a
disadvantage because the English translation of the Bible does not convey the full
meaning. The English word repent means to regret our sin and turn away from it,
but the Greek word means that it translates is much more profound. It is the verb
form of metanoia, meaning meta, to change, and noia, from nous, the spirit or
heart or mind. So when Jesus and John say to repent, they mean to “Change you
mind! Have a change of heart! Change your spiritual orientation! Turn to a
whole new way of thinking, seeing and being!”
The second half of their message indicates the direction in which to turn.
“The realm of God is near,” is how some Bibles translate it, but the word
translated as near means literally as close as your hand—close enough to grasp.
The realm of God is not near—it is here!
The core message, the flame of the torch John and Jesus hand on to us, the
thought that the mind of Christ thinks, is the same message as that of this
Epiphany season. It is this: look within and around you. Change your way of
thinking so that you can see that God is present here, now, everywhere, God in all
things, all things in God. God’s realm is here, and if you can see that reality, if
you can look beyond the temptations of your demons or the distress of your ego,
the light of God will fill you and shine through you.
Then everything you do will serve to help manifest God to others and
change the world around you into something more like God’s realm, one small act
of hope at a time. Those who have not put on the mind of Christ, those who have
not undergone full metanoia, will think you are crazy, of course, or foolish, as
Paul put it. “But God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s
weakness is stronger than human strength.”
So as we gather in Annual Meeting today and plan for another church year,
let us do so aware of the long, beautiful and heroic succession that reaches from
John and Jesus through all the Apostles and saints and through Gladys Boyd and
Lillian Vaughan and Floyd Dexter and Rod Webb and all our living elders and
saints here today, and through us to our children in Sunday School who will take
the torch forward when can no longer carry it. Let us take our part in the story by
seeing the light and making it our own and letting it shine here for God’s sake and
the world’s.
Let us pray in silence, letting our thoughts go, letting the Spirit put the mind
of Christ in us to see the light of God that is within and around us right now.
Let us pray in silence…
John Raised His Flaming Voice
John raised his flaming voice
And prophesied, “Repent!”
He made the shadowed souls rejoice
Who saw light’s way and went.
Then Herod feared and fought,
As Herods always will
When wealth and power cloud their thought,
A darkness light would kill.
Dark prison swallowed John
And snuffed his great flame out.
A world of grief despaired the dawn
And sat in gloom of doubt.
But Jesus was not stopped
By doubt or threat or fear.
He took the torch that John had dropped
And said God’s dawn is here.
Long years that light has shined
As Herods do their worst.
Light lifts the poor, it heals the blind,
Death’s shadow work re-versed.
When one flame falls or ends,
Then others lift theirs high.
Do not despair when night descends.
God’s light will never die.
Copyright 2008 Thomas Cary Kinder
Sermon 01/27/2008