Annual Meeting Sunday
1 Corinthians 1.10-18; Matthew
4.12-23
+ This past week I had a strange
malady that seems to occur only at this time of the year. My stupid ulcer. Ugh!
It seems like every January I have a flare-up of that stupid thing.
Anyway, this past week I just happened
to make that observation—this ulcer always seeming to flare up in January—on Facebook.
And our own John Ranney said, It must be Annual Meeting time.
Give us grace, O Lord, to answer
readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good
News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of
his marvelous works…
That could be the prayer for all of us
at St. Stephen’s Because that is what we are doing here. We are readily
answering the call of Jesus to proclaim to all people the Good News of
salvation. We are doing so in our
actions. We are doing so by our presence. We are doing so when we stand up
against injustice or suffering or inequality, which we do very well here at St.
Stephen’s.
We are leading the way in what the
Church should be—a place in which love dwells. A place in which love of God is
proclaimed and the love of others is shared. We are living out that commandment to love.
That commandment to love is not a burden
to us. But it is, rather, a call to freedom. It is a call to service. It is a
call to be Christian.
These past few weeks, I have been preaching
about Baptism again and how important Baptism is in forming us as followers of
Jesus. Our Baptism, of course, is the
basis for all that we do here at St. Stephen’s. In those waters of baptism we
were called to carry out the ministries we now do here. In those waters, in
which we were marked as Christ’s own forever, we were washed in the love that
is now the basis of our ministries here. It was there in that font that we began
following Jesus. It here, now, that we truly recognize the wonders of following
him.
In today’s Gospel, when we find Jesus
and his first followers going through Galilee, “proclaiming the good news of
the kingdom,” we realize that the call to us to be “fishers of people” is not
necessarily a call to preach wordy homilies to people. Most of us here at St. Stephen’s do not do
that. I don’t even do that outside of
Sunday mornings. Proclaiming the good
news and being fishers of people simply involves communicating the truth of that reality
through our personality.
And let me tell you, in case you haven’t
noticed, we have personality here at St. Stephen’s. Quite a personality. And if
you don’t think we do, you aren’t listening to what others are saying about us.
People are talking about the amazing thing that are happening at St. Stephen’s.
This past week I had lunch with Canon
Zanne Ness. Mother Zanne will be here on Sunday, February 23 while I am on
vacation. At our lunch, she shared with
me some of the stories she’s heard throughout the Diocese of what people have
heard about St. Stephen’s—about our growth, about our vitality, about the
amazing ministries we are doing here, about what God is doing here. People are talking about the new way in which
we are doing things, and how we are doing these new things while still keeping
our traditional worship. (She was particularly
impressed with the title we have been given as Smoky St. Stephen’s).
Our demeanor, the choices we make as a
congregation, the commitments we make, the love we share and the very way we
live our lives in this congregation is a noticeable thing. Our whole presence as St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Church in Fargo, North Dakota, is
essentially a kind of walking sermon, even if we personally don’t say a word. And to a large extent this personality, this
charisma the Holy Spirit has granted to us, was formed long ago in those waters
of our baptism.
This morning, as we plan for another
year of ministry, we gather here together and with all the Church that has
already been and that will be long after us. We gather to ponder and pray about the ways in
which we may proclaim God’s Kingdom. We
come together, marked as Christ’s own forever, to think about the ways in which
we can use this distinctive personality we have as a congregation.
“Follow me and I will make you fishers
for people,” Jesus said to those first followers.
And, this morning, on this Annual
Meeting Sunday, he is saying it to us as
well. So, let us follow him. Together. Let us follow him from the waters in which we
were washed to whatever place he leads us in our lives in this coming year. And, as he does, let us follow him with joy
and gladness singing in our hearts.
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