St. George's Episcopal Church Roseburg, Oregon Second Sunday After Epiphany, January 16, 2005 Go To St. George's Home Page

Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40:1-11
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74^th General Convention of the ECUSA

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The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God." The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter ). (John 1:29-42)

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Heroes and Villains and Disciples
A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop, Rector

     It was that time of morning when young boys are ready to get into the day's mischief. Sleepiness has been pushed from the corners of the eyes by a rapidly eaten, but nourishing breakfast. The morning chill is gone and the rest of the day hangs like a plump, juicy apple, waiting to be plucked from the neighbor's tree.

     The night before I hid under the covers to read comic books by flashlight. Batman was my favorite superhero, because he was fully human and vulnerable, and could be wounded or even killed by a villain. He did not have any superhuman powers relying on his wits and intelligence, and his own skill and strength as a fighter. And I thought it would be cool to be like him.

     After breakfast, I grabbed my "stuff" which included a utility belt of important things I would need that day. Things like rope, my Brownie Hawkeye™ camera, and a campers knife with at least one hundred and fifty different kinds of cutters and tools.

     When I got outside, I saw that Mrs. Young's car was gone. And that meant that her garage, which every kid knew was the headquarters for all evildoers in GothamCity, was available for investigation. Ed and Claude, the twins that lived next door, met me, and the three of us headed to downtown Gotham.

     Using pieces of wood, a couple of saw horses, and the rope from my utility belt, we scaled the walls of the evildoers lair. Reaching the top we vanquished all the villains in Gotham. Satisfied that the city was safe once again, we stopped to dine on the apples that hung next to the garage roof.

But then we saw it! A great white car rounded the bend and entered the driveway. It was the arch villain, the most feared one of all! It was Mrs. Young – the one who would call our parents and complain about us being on her property! She was returning to her lair, and we were unprepared. Ed and Claude climbed back down. I took the route of the caped crusader: I jumped, using my blanket-cape like a glider. But instead of gliding to safety, I fell like a stone. Holy gravity, Batman! I laid there winded by my fall. Ed and Claude, figuring I was dead, or soon would be when the the villain found me, ran home.

     Heroes. We all need them; people who do good things. People we can admire and imitate. Sometimes heroes are real people; other times they are imaginary characters. But in both cases, heroes elicit feelings of nobility, righteousness, and fair-play. Heroes stand up for what is good, and take exception to what is bad. And sometimes, in the case of the truly heroic, stories about the lives of heroes take on larger-than-life mythic dimensions where history and interpretation are so entwined that it is not possible to separate fact from fiction. The most important thing about heroes is that they stimulate us to reach beyond ourselves, because they point to something beyond ourselves. They move us to take action where before we might have been afraid. They calm our fears and embolden our hearts.

     To the writer of the Gospel of John and to the Johannine community, Jesus is a hero in every sense of the word. Jesus pointed the way to the very heart of God, and to God's purpose. And the writer wants us to understand this by retelling a story about John the Baptist's experience of Jesus' baptism. In this way we begin to feel the mythic impact Jesus had on the people he met – particularly his disciples.

     When John the Baptist saw Jesus the day after Jesus' baptism he declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!" John testified to those gathered there that he saw the Holy Spirit of God descend and stay upon Jesus. This is how the Gospel writer points toward something grander than can be explained in ordinary terms: Jesus is extraordinary; Jesus is the hero. Watch him. Listen to him. For in him, you will meet God.

     And for Andrew, that was enough. As the Episcopal priest and author Barbara Crafton recently wrote, "Andrew doesn't have what today would be called a high profile – he listens to a sermon and then goes and gets his brother to listen to the preacher. That's pretty much it for Andrew. But he knew, on the strength of that one encounter, that he had seen the Messiah, and he knew he had to share that knowledge. So it is all-but-anonymous Andrew, not his famous brother, Simon Peter, who is the first evangelist in the gospel of John."[1]

     One of the things about Christianity is that those who sense Truth about the presence of the divine in the person of Jesus, are compelled to spread that good news as they understand it. Not all of us are called to be outspoken or prominent spokespersons for the Gospel, but we are all called to live into the Gospel message. Again, from Barbara Crafton, "Not everyone is called to high visibility – in fact, hardly any of us are. Almost all of us work our way through life and faith considerably below the radar of public awareness. Not many people know about us. But that doesn't mean we don't matter. Everyone who acts, on however modest a stage, affects others." All of us have the potential to change the life of a person we encounter through our actions.

     Yesterday, January 15, is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. The nation will celebrate his birthday tomorrow. Martin Luther King is many things to many people. The Benedictine nun Joan Chittister writes, "Scholars accused him of plagiarism. J. Edgar Hoover tried to destroy his reputation. Politicians called him a communist. Younger members of the black community criticized his seeming passivity. Biographers have lingered over his sex life."[2]

     "King was born into the foremost black neighborhood in Atlanta. Insofar as was possible for blacks in those days, King had money and education on his side. But, despite his affluence, King was black. He had been the subject of racial slurs, and had been slapped by a white woman in a downtown store when he was twelve. That slap stayed with him forever. He grew up abiding 'For Whites Only' signs. He grew up knowing that the drinking fountains left to him and his kind were dirty; the restrooms were rank, the elevators were rickety, the restaurants second class, and the bus station waiting rooms were unclean."[3]

     Between 1954 and 1955, King heard his own call to discipleship. 'The work of Mahatma Gandhi who had written that 'There was no dishonor in being slaves,' gave King the will to turn his anger into positive energy and his hatred into love. Armed with the Ghandian idea of nonviolent resistance, King began his pastoral ministry in Montgomery, Alabama. When Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the Negro section of a bus to a white man when the white section of the bus was full, King heeded the call."[4] "He became a visionary, a prophet, an idealist, a militant Christian. King said 'Love must be our regulating ideal … We must hear the words of Jesus echoing across the centuries: 'Love your enemies.' If you will protest courageously … and with Christian love, the historians will have to say, 'There lived a great people – a black people – who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization'."[5]

     King was a hero. What he accomplished was heroic. He gave us confidence even as he challenged us with his dream. People were galvanized by what they witnessed on television in those days. "They saw the brutality of a system that purported to be divinely ordained for the sake of human order. King showed us the evil in ourselves, and in acts of great heroism, conscience-struck whites joined blacks everywhere to bring our country back from the brink of destruction."[6]

     I think human beings are almost genetically programmed to seek the heroic and to respond to its call. Perhaps that is why young children are drawn to watch cartoons and read comic books where the patterns of nobility and heroism are clearly drawn, and 'good' triumphs over 'evil.'

     As we mature and move beyond the ink and paper of the cartoon world, and begin to interact with real life, we continue the search for the heroic. And if we are lucky, someone like John the Baptist or Andrew comes to us and says, "Come and see…" And we look into the Gospels, and find there something that again touches that spot in our soul that yearns for the heroic.

     But once that happens with Gospel, something else happens too. We discover that we are called to be active participants. Not just mimickers who put blankets on our shoulders and foolishly leap off the neighbors garage roof, but true participants in the Story. I think that is what happened to Martin Luther King, Jr. He lived into the Gospel, and his actions proclaimed the Story.

     Something in the Gospel, in the life of Jesus, calls. It touches causes our genes to seek and act upon the heroic. Andrew was called. Peter was called. We are called.

     Listen, and you will hear. Come, and you will see.

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Isaiah 49:1-7

Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God." And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength-- he says, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

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Psalm 40:1-11

1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.

2 He drew me up from the desolate pit,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.

3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the LORD.

4 Happy are those who make
the LORD their trust,
who do not turn to the proud,
to those who go astray after false gods.

5 You have multiplied, O LORD my God,
your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
none can compare with you.
Were I to proclaim and tell of them,
they would be more than can be counted.

6 Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.

7 Then I said, "Here I am;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me.

8 I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart."

9 I have told the glad news of deliverance
in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips,
as you know, O LORD.

10 I have not hidden your saving help within my heart,     
I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;   
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your        
faithfulness from the great congregation.

11 Do not, O LORD, withhold
your mercy from me;
let your steadfast love and your faithfulness
keep me safe forever.      

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1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind-- just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you-- so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

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John 1:29-42

The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God." The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter ).