Sermon given at St. Augustine’s Episcopal, Washington, D.C., January 24, 2021. Lectionary readings: Jonah 3.1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7.29-31; Mark 1.14-20.

This has been a year turned inside out, a world turned upside-down. An Easter that felt like Lent, following a Lent that felt like forever; months of Ordinary Time that were anything but ordinary; an Advent spent wondering, in the words of C.S. Lewis, if it would be always winter and never Christmas, an Epiphany that revealed not how loved the world is but how angry.

We have lost and grieved and feared and huddled in our safe spaces, if we have safe spaces. We have lost singing and shared meals, family and friendships, time and homes and jobs and health to pandemics of virus and racism and politics – now we know what plague is like, what an uncivil war is like. 

Not long ago I read a tweet – I can’t remember who wrote it, but they said they’d always wondered what it would be like to live through historic events – and now that we are living through historic events, realizing that what it is is exhausting. We are tired, emotionally, spiritually, physically. It has been hard to see an end to that exhaustion, to see a glimmer of brightness ahead of us. This past year, we as individuals and as a country have been pushed out of our comfortable ways of living, been forced to think about life and death on a daily basis, every time we turn on the news or put on a mask or walk out of the house or wonder if our cough is allergies or the coronavirus. Our familiar spaces are no longer safe. And, we’ve been reminded, many of us weren’t safe to begin with. Most of us here have safety nets, protection, resources, health care – so many do not.

This past year has been surreal, and we’ve been asking so many questions. Who will get sick next? Will the schools reopen? When can we get a vaccine? When will the stimulus checks arrive? Will I still have a job next month? Will there be violence in my city, in my neighborhood? What will the world look like after the vaccine, after the protests, after the election, after the inauguration? And where will we be as a people? We keep asking questions, and we don’t have clear answers.

A few nights ago, I attended the first Zoom meeting of our incoming student body government – and this time around all of the study body officers are women and we’re pretty excited about that, especially after witnessing the election of the first woman vice president of the United States. Yes, our work is a little different – seminary government doesn’t usually have to deal with national security issues or impeachment hearings – but we’re certainly feeling a bit of solidarity with Vice President Kamala Harris.

And so of course we talked about Wednesday’s events during our meeting, and one of our officers said that to her, the inauguration felt like church. “I heard God,” she said. And I thought about that a bit and realized, yes, it was very much like church. There was a priest and a pastor, there was prayer, there was music, there were references to the Psalms, the Pope, St. Augustine and Hamilton. When Garth Brooks insisted on hugging every single president on the platform, Republican or Democrat, after singing “Amazing Grace,” it felt like one of those Sundays when folks are particularly and wonderfully enthusiastic about the passing of the peace – I remember those Sundays when I was a music director in Roanoke and my priest would motion me to play a few chords on the piano to settle people down. 

Wednesday did feel like church. There was music, there was prayer. People from opposite “sides” reached across the aisle to greet one another. 
There was poetry – there was hope. And perhaps the Epiphany that had been so desecrated by the attack on the Capitol two weeks earlier, on January 6 – an Epiphany that revealed the darker side of our present world, instead of the brightness of it – perhaps that Epiphany began to be turned right-side-up again.

Epiphany, this season of light in our liturgical year, marks a monumental shift in the history of humanity, the time when a child born to refugee parents was welcomed as the savior of everyone, when the fulfillment of prophecy shone into the world, when Jesus was revealed in all his divine purpose and human presence, from birth to baptism to transfiguration, this space of time between Christmas celebration and Lenten wilderness. Despite all of our questions and fears during this surreal time in our human history, the truth of the Epiphany remains the truth of faith.

This morning’s scripture readings speak to the state of the world at three very different times in our Biblical history. They each ask, in some way, the question, what’s next? They each stand at an edge, looking forward and yet unable to see what is coming – they each are the story of the children of God at a point where the world is changing, when it’s hard to know if catastrophe or redemption will follow.

In the Old Testament reading, Jonah, the reluctant prophet who spent a few days in the belly of the whale, finally goes to the city of Nineveh and tells its people they will be overthrown because of their sins, that the end of their world is coming. They fast, they put on sackcloth, they grieve and turn away from the evil they have done and wait for destruction – and in the end, God forgives them. Their city survives, and they have the chance to live differently.

In the New Testament reading, Paul writes to the Corinthians: be ready, the end of the world is coming – Christ is returning soon, and they should live as if they are no longer of this world – mourn as though they were not mourning, deal with this world as though they had no dealings with it, for the present form of this world is passing away. Two thousand years later, we know that the end of the world did not happen in Paul’s lifetime. The world kept going, kept changing.

Two thousand years later, we are no closer to knowing what comes next, what God’s timeline is for human history. We are at times like the people of Nineveh, our sins of selfishness and prejudice and divisiveness hurting our cities, our fellow human beings, eroding our sense of community. We are at times like the people of Corinth, holding our breath for the world to come, ready to be done with the frustrations and griefs of this one.

I believe we are somewhere in the midst of all that right now, not quite in Nineveh, not yet in Corinth, but rather on the sea of Galilee, along with Simon and Andrew and James and John, and there’s a man walking along the shore, calling out to us. He looks familiar – we’ve heard about this person Jesus, roaming the countryside, preaching love instead of vengeance, touching the untouchables, sharing meals with the marginalized, upsetting the powers that be. He’s shouting at us, follow me. He’s saying this kind of crazy thing: you will fish for people. I think maybe he’s saying to Simon and Peter and James and John and to us that the work we’ve been doing for ourselves we are now going to be doing for the good of everyone. He’s saying this world is passing away in the sense that this world is changing, and they, and we, are to be agents of that change, building, rebuilding together the city of God while we wait for the coming of the kingdom.

On Wednesday, we heard poetry – a young woman, at the edge of a changing world, speaking for all of us who aren’t sure what comes next, asking a question, looking for Epiphany. She wrote:

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light?

We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace 

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished

Amanda Gorman’s words echo what Jesus was telling his followers by the sea of Galilee, what God was saying when he had mercy on Nineveh: 

This world is unfinished. We are a continuation of our Biblical history, our human history, full of questions, seeking answers, looking for the light of Epiphany, messing up, hurting each other, hurting ourselves, and then finding ways to mend and to heal and do better. Jesus finds us where we are, wrapped up in the tasks of our everyday survival – catching fish, mending nets, parenting children, nursing, writing, bookkeeping, lobbying, barkeeping, buying, selling, Ubering, cooking, studying, teaching – and tells us, don’t just catch fish. Catch people. Don’t just mend nets. Mend cities. He transformed the work of Simon and Andrew, James and John – and today asks us, how can our work be transformed? How can we, in the activities of our daily lives, the tasks that keep us and our families fed and protected and loved, transform and be transformed, so that we feed and protect and love beyond ourselves? 

We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms

Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one

Image at top: Sunrise near Massanetta Springs, Va.; photo by Wayne Modisett.