An Infectious Dis-Ease
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue preached this sermon at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church
in Tifton, Georgia on January 27, 2019
An Infectious Dis-Ease
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a and Luke 4:14-21
“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.”
Jesus is fresh back in Nazareth after his baptism in the River Jordan and the 40 days of fasting in the wilderness that followed. After 30 years living among us, the second person of the Trinity is in his home synagogue in Nazareth ready to begin three years of active ministry.
The scroll opened to Isaiah and in this passage the Prophet proclaims good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. Soon after this the lame will be walking, the deaf will hear, the blind will indeed see, and even the dead will be raised.
As much as he is bringing Good News, Jesus is also pointing to some of the many ways in which the world is far from heaven on earth. He does name, after all, that some are poor, some are captive, others are blind, and yet others are oppressed.
Jesus came and lived among us, revealing God’s own heart as he cared for the poor and the outcast, the lost and the lame. Jesus saw, really saw and loved, the Samaritan woman at the well; the lepers who others avoided; the woman hemorrhaging for years suffering from physicians and losing all her means in the process. Jesus showed compassion for people wandering like sheep without a shepherd. And at times, what he saw broke his heart, such as when he wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus and when he chased merchants from the Temple as they were concerned with commerce rather than worship. Jesus came to turn the world upside down, which was really turning it right side up again.
In so doing, he set an example for us. We are to give as Jesus gave, to forgive as Jesus forgave, and to love as Jesus loved. And this would actually be an impossible To Do list, and actually bad news, except we are not to work hard for Jesus, so much as we are to let God work through us, which is actually a gift to us.
But first, we have to see the world as God sees it, and to see the church as God sees it as well. God sees the world through the eyes of love. Scripture teaches us that we were created out of love for love and this would just be stained glass words with no connection to the actual world in which we live if it wasn’t for the fact that God being a Trinity of persons explains so much about life. While it is a wonderful and sacred mystery that I can’t quite define, God told us that before anything was created, that God existed as three who are one. We use the words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we know God is not two dudes and a bird. Our words are helpful, but they fall short of the ability to describe God.
God tells us that there were relationships before anything was made. Everything that God made is interconnected. Jesus distilled all his teaching to the two commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Everything hangs on this. That is the pattern for all creation, an inter-dependent web of relationships connected by love of God and one another. And within that broader creation, the church is interdependent as the Body of Christ is made up of many members yet is one body.
It can be difficult to see the connections among all creation or even to see the church is the one Body of Christ as the world and church are so disconnected. You don’t need to go on social media to know how at odds with one another people can be, but you can’t go on Facebook without seeing it, or read the newspaper, or spend a day in middle school. And even the church is divided—the Body of Christ has many members, but we can’t even always agree that we are part of the same group with other followers of Jesus.
Yet, Christianity was never meant to be a social club, a community, yes, but never an exclusive club with insiders and outsiders. Faith in Jesus in its earliest days in Israel was something more like an infectious disease. Disease, because those who came to see the world as Jesus saw it were put at dis-ease with the world as it is. Infectious because the sense that the world was upside down and needed to be turned aright spread effortlessly from person to person, rapidly taking over families, communities, and in time the whole Roman Empire with a subversive message of all being worthy of God’s love, the last being first, and the least in society—the widows and orphans—should be the concern of all. But where this dis-ease with the world once spread infectiously from one person to another with no effort, we now have a Church which is more at ease with a world turned away from God and far less infectious in spreading love.
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The closer we get to God, the more we are given eyes to see and ears to hear how the world falls short of the Kingdom of God. We are far too far from all on earth being even close to it is in heaven. That should make us ill at ease with accepting that this is how life is meant to be.
And how does one catch this dis-ease? Well, for that, you have come to the right place. For in reading scripture, praying, and worshiping our triune God, we see how much God loves us as we are and how by grace we can come to live more and more as God would have us to live.
It is easy to get inoculated with a weak case of the dis-ease with the way the world is. One can get a mild dose of Christianity and so end up immune to a more virulent strain as if by a vaccine. We can get the weakest case of “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” and end up feeling that I am okay and you are okay and the way the world is, is probably more or less fine. But I am not okay. I hurt people I love. I do things selfishly. I hold on to unforgiveness while wanting to be forgiven myself. I do the wrong things hoping that doing them for the right reason makes it okay and I do the right things for all the wrong reasons. And while you might be okay for all I know, our society is not. We don’t have an opioid crisis by accident.
Everywhere you and I go, we are surrounded by people are masking deep pain with prescription drugs, alcohol, gambling, and a host of self-defeating behaviors. Most people sometime between the age of 5 and 25 pick up emotional wounds that will remain festering and seeping poison into their psyches unless they can find healing. They don’t see themselves as God sees them. For hurting people, the good news of Jesus is not about getting into heaven as much as getting out of the hell they are in now.
The pain can come from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, sometimes suffered even in the church itself. The deep hurt can also come from feeling like they never measured up, having disappointed themselves, or acting in ways they know to be wrong. While there are many sources of the shame and emotional pain that plague us, there is only one Balm in Gilead, one source of healing. Jesus offers the antidote to a destructive way of life as he calls us to repent, turn toward God, and ammend our lives. And once we find the healing and wholeness that come from God alone, we discover this dis-Ease with a world turn away from its creator, denying the love that is to be at the heart of our lives.
Now, I share something about the infectious dis-ease with the world not just because that’s what Jesus talked about that day in his home synagogue that we read about in the Gospel this morning. But also because you here at St. Anne’s are setting out on a way to not discover how you are doing in this part of the Body of Christ, but you are also working on diagnosing a way to improve the situation.
Today, you are launching the Spiritual Life Inventory. This tool is designed to provide an accurate scan of how far the dis-ease with the world as it is has spread through this congregation. The snapshot will report on a moment in time and then provide a diagnosis and a treatment plan moving forward. But here is the most important part of the inventory: be honest, thoroughly, completely honest. No one will see your individual results. Not a single soul but you will know how you respond. No one, especially not our Lord, will judge you for what you put down in the inventory.
What your leadership want and need to discover is where St. Anne’s is now—what you the people of St. Anne’s hunger for, and how to pursue it. This requires a candid assessment. You will have a reminder right here in the midst of worship each as every person who takes the inventory will add a ball to the vase. You can already see that your workshop team and vestry have taken the inventory. Take the inventory soon and you can add yourself to this visible tally of members of St. Anne’s who have taken the inventory.
Most Episcopal Churches who have done this inventory are shown to be complacent characterized by a superficial relationship with their church rather than a deepening relationship with Jesus. These congregations, unlike you at St. Anne’s, are not getting much out of their church because those who attend are pretty sure there is nothing to gain.[1] Better are the churches described as Troubled as the members of the congregation long for more and are not sure how to satisfy that hunger. Then there are extroverted churches that are busy with outreach while missing growing as individuals and as a body other than in service. Its opposite is an introverted church where everyone is about their own spiritual journey, with no service beyond themselves other than perhaps making donations. These are among the possible results, but whatever you discover in this snapshot, it will comes with some clear next steps designed to feed the hunger specific to St. Anne’s.
All of us are surrounded by people captive to addictions, oppressed by unhealthy relationships, blind to how their behaviors hurt themselves and others. Yet Jesus wants release for those captives, freedom for the oppressed, and recovery of sight for the blind. Jesus wants health and healing and wholeness that comes when his followers get infected enough by a dis-ease, a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, that they long for the coming Kingdom.
And I am here to offer you two concrete steps to take now on your spiritual journey: First, we continue the Eucharist and Jesus will feed you spiritually with his body and blood in your body and blood, his presence in your life. Then nourished by this sacrament, I ask second that you take the time to complete the inventory accurately describing your spiritual life and practices now, not as you wish they are but as is true today. And if you take these two steps now faithfully, I promise that God will richly bless you with the ways to satisfy the hunger God is giving you for the Kingdom to come. For our loving God already knows how you hunger and longs for you to be fed.
Amen.
[1] Rise: Bold Strategies to Transform Your Church by Cally Parkinson with Nancy Scanmacca Lewis, page 29.
For more information on the Spiritual Life Inventory St. Anne’s launched that Sunday, see the RenewalWorks website: http://renewalworks.org/
