In the name of God who is our source, our light, and our sustenance. Amen.
The Annual Parish Meeting, which we will have following this service, is an opportunity for us to gather as a parish family, strengthen the bonds of our unity, and dream our path forward together for the next year. As God usually does, God has provided us guidance on this path through our Scripture.
It’s the year, 538 BC, in the reading from Nehemiah, and the King of Persia, Cyrus, has issued a decree that allows the people of Israel to return from their exile in Babylon and rebuild their temple which had been destroyed. More than 42,000 people returned.
The transition wasn’t easy, though. They lost their unity, breaking into factions. One local group went to the authorities saying that some of those Jewish people were planning a rebellion against King Cyrus. The king immediately halted the temple rebuilding.
Enter the prophet and priest, Ezra, bringing with him the law of God as given to Moses. Ezra went against Jewish tradition, however, reading from the Torah to a crowd of people assembled at the Water Gate, outside the temple precincts - a crowd that included women, children, and others who would have been excluded from temple worship; people who had never been allowed to hear the story of God’s love for them.
After reading the Torah, Ezra said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."
In our New Testament reading, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, is addressing the people in the cosmopolitan city of Corinth. The Corinthians were of so many diverse descriptions that they struggled to find their unity as followers of Christ. Paul, a Pharisee, shared with the Corinthians the strength of the law of Moses coupled with the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ, using a brilliant metaphor everyone could understand. “Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized.”
Paul taught that each member of the body, though different, is important, and the body is incomplete and can’t function properly without all of its parts present, respected, and honored, saying “...God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another… Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”
Both of these stories present unity in diversity as the will of God. In the world, the transition to the fullness of this kind of unity isn’t easy for us to accomplish. We tend to devolve into factions of “us” and “them.” We judge the factions: we are good, they are bad. Then we feel justified when we alienate, oppress, or imprison “them,” withhold lifesaving food, medicine, or community from “them,” and even outright kill “them.”
Thankfully, God has always provided us with presence and guidance enabling us to find our path to harmony. First, the Mosaic law was given to our forebears, the people of Israel. Then God themself became incarnate in Jesus Christ and lived among us showing us how to live in unity and love in all our diversity - breaking bread with women, sinners, and outcasts, healing those culture claimed were obviously cursed by God with illness or poverty, forgiving sin, and calling us to treat everyone with respect and dignity. As Jesus said: We are to love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul, and love our neighbor as ourselves.
In the gospel story, Jesus reads from the scroll of Isaiah, claiming his identity and mission as the Messiah, which means, The Anointed One. To be anointed is to have a divine or holy purpose conferred upon you, to be chosen for a special work and filled with the Spirit of God to accomplish that work.
Jesus claims to be anointed “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." In his identity as Messiah, Jesus’ focus is on being in loving unity with and caring for everyone, including the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed.
What are we, at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, anointed to do in the name of God in Christ? Where is our focus?
It’s important to acknowledge that we are richly blessed. Our parish family continues to grow in numbers, gifts, diversity, and joy - the joy of the Lord truly is our strength. As we prepare to gather in our Annual Parish Meeting, we re-affirm our identity as members of the body of Christ in the world, and our anointing to serve faithfully in the name of God.
Let us pray: God of all, we love you. We thank you. We trust you. We humbly and intentionally open ourselves to you, God, letting go of our plans and ideas, and making space for you to fill us anew, so that we, the part of the body of Christ chosen for this moment and time, may live as one body and walk together in the will of God. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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