3 Epiphany

 Annual Meeting Sunday

January 26, 2025

Luke 4.14-21

 +This past week was. . . well. . .it was something else.

 This past week was the kind of week preachers dread.

 How many times did I have to re-do my sermon for this Sunday?

 But, despite the weirdness and bizarreness and downright insanity of this week, we were able to hear one clear voice.

 The clear voice of Bishop Marianne Budde.

 That voice—that simple plea of hers—cut right through the chaos and the distractions and the grandstanding.

 And it is that voice that we are listening to this morning.

 It is the words of that sermon that we are clinging to this morning.

 I posted a beautiful illustration of Bishop Budde done up in stained glass, with her words embossed on it.

 “Be merciful to the stranger, for we all were once strangers in this land.”

 That post generated over 460 likes.

 And some lively conversation.

 Not all of it nice or commending. 

 But those words resonated with almost everyone else.

 Even my atheist friends.

 It was a week in which I, for one, could say that I was very proud to be an Episcopalian.

 And I know many of you felt the same way.

 Now, for many, many people, the message of Bishop Budde was seen as radical.

 And it was.

 But for us, here at St. Stephen’s—well, it’s a message we hear almost every week.

 We preach regularly here about inclusion and mercy and standing up against injustice and inequality.

 Maybe so much so that we don’t even really hear it anymore.

 But others do.

 On one local online group, people were asking where they could find a church like Bishop Budde’s church.

 And Pastor Jessica Miller of the Neighborhood Church, who will be preaching here on February 16, wrote this to the group:

 “[I] 100% recommend St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Fargo/St. Stephen's Episcopal Church - Fargo. Not just accepting, but fully affirming. Exude love and grace. Jamie Parsley is their priest, and the whole community is just  truly lovely. You will experience what resonated from Bishop Budde.”

 Those are words we need to hear on this Sunday, our Annual Meeting Sunday.

 For those of us who worship here week in and week out, we sometimes take for granted what St. Stephen’s is and what it stands for.

 But this week, we were reminded that not many churches do what we do.

 Yes, churches many “welcome” others.

 But not many churches “affirm” others.

 Not many churches fully include others.

 Not churches stand for the things that Bishop Budde stood up for this week.

 We do.

 And I think we should remind ourselves of how rare that is, especially here in this community.

  It is this that we need to be reminding ourselves on this Annual Meeting Sunday.

 Being who we are is why we’re here and not somewhere else.

 Now, in our Gospel reading for today, we find a seed for all we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 We find this story of Jesus, standing up and reading this amazing scripture from Isaiah.

 ‘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.’

 He then, after rolling up the scroll, says,

 ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

 Those words echo in our midst, here at St. Stephen’s this morning.

 Do you hear it?

 Listen.

 ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

 Because, yes, today, that scripture from Isaiah has been fulfilled in our hearing.

 By Jesus standing and proclaiming who he is and what he has come to do, he really sets the standard for us here at St. Stephen’s on this Annual Meeting Sunday in 2025 as well.

 We too should proclaim our faith in Jesus in the same way.

 Now, as I say that I pause.

 Most Christians take that to mean something I did not intend it to mean.

 When I say “faith in Jesus,” I don’t mean we should be obnoxious and fundamentalist or bullies in our views.

 You have heard me say a million times from this pulpit that I think way too many Christians proclaim themselves as Christians with their lips, but certainly don’t live it out in their lives and by example (and I am guilty of this myself).

 And it is something at which I bristle again and again.

 But for us, this Gospel reading for today speaks loudly to us and what we do as Christians, as followers of Jesus, as members of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

 Because the Spirit of God was upon Jesus, and because he was appointed to bring good news to the poor, that truly becomes our mission as well because we follow Jesus and the Spirit of God rests upon each of us as well.

 Because Jesus breathes God’s Spirit upon us, that same mission that the Spirit worked in Jesus is working in us as well.

 And we should, like Jesus, stand up and proclaim that mission to others.

 We, like Jesus, should breathe God’s Spirit on others.

 That is our mission as followers of Jesus.

 How do we do that?

 Jesus has empowered us to do what he says in that reading from Isaiah:

 We are to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of the sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 Well, that sounds great.

 But…how do I do that in my life?

 It’s easy for priests and poets to say that, you might say.

 But how do I do that in my own life?

 What does that mean to us—to us who are here, in this place, in these mismatched pews, who are dealing with our own doubts, or uncertainties or anxieties?

 It means that we are not to go about with blinders on regarding those with whom we live and work.

 It means that we are surrounded by a whole range of captives—people who are captive to their own prisons of depression and anxiety and alcohol and drugs and conforming to society or whatever.

 People who are captive to their grief or their pain or their own cemented views of what they feel the Church—or this congregation of St., Stephen’s—SHOULD be.

 Our job in the face of that captivity it to help them in any way we can to be released.

 It means that we are not to go about blind and not to ignore those who are blinded by their own selfishness and self-centeredness.

 I am still so amazed by how many people (especially in the Church, amazingly enough) are so caught up in themselves.

 I really think being self-centered is a kind of blindness.

 One of the greatest sins in the Church today is not all the things Bishops and priests and church leaders say is dividing the Church.

 The greatest sin in the Church today:

 Hubris.

 Narcissism.

 Self-centeredness.

 Selfishness.

 Bullying.

 Hubris causes us to look so strongly at ourselves (and at a false projection of ourselves) that we see nothing else but ourselves.

 By reaching out to others, by becoming aware of what others are dealing with, by helping others, we truly open our eyes and see beyond ourselves.

 When we do these things, we are essentially letting the oppressed go free.

 Finally, we are called to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

 This is simply the icing on the cake.

 Once we have proclaimed that God favors us—all of us—not just the single me—that God loves us—not just me—we must then proclaim God’s blessings on us and the work we are called to do.

 And by doing so, we truly become liberated.

 God favors a liberated people.

 God does so because God can only effectively work through a people who have been liberated from captivity, blindness and oppression.

 This to me is where the heart of all we do here at St. Stephen’s lies.

 It is not in our blind faithfulness to the letter of scripture.

 It is not in our smugness that I—the great and wonderful singular me—somehow knows more than the priest or the Church or the Bishops or our elders. Or the President of the United States.

 It is in our humility and the love of God that dwells within each of us.

 It is the Spirit of the living God that is present with us, here, right now, in this church.

 It is in the fact that even if this church building gets blown away, or even if we gloss ourselves up and match our pews and spit-shine our processional cross and preach sermons based squarely on the correct interpretation of scripture (whatever that might be) , we would still be who we are, no matter what.

 We need to be aware that the poor and oppressed of our world—here and now—are not only those who are poor financially.

 The poor and oppressed of our world are those who are morally, spiritually and emotionally poor.

 The oppressed are still women and LGBTQ people in the Church and in the world, or simply those who don’t fit the social structures of our society.

 They are the elderly and the lonely.

 They are the immigrants and the children of immigrants.

 They are those who mourn deeply for those they love and miss who are no longer with us.

 They are the criminals trying to reform their lives.

 They are those who are just leading quietly desperate lives in our very midst.

 We, as Christians, as followers of Jesus, are to proclaim freedom to all those people who are on the margins of our lives both personally and collectively.

 And often those poor oppressed people are the ones to whom we need to be proclaiming this year of the Lord’s Favor, even if those people might be our own very selves.

 This is the year of the Lord’s favor.

 I am not talking this particular Year of Our Lord.

 I am not talking about this year until our next Annual Meeting.

 I am talking about this holy moment and all moments in which we, anointed and filled with God’s Spirit, go out to share God’s good news by word and example.

 This moment we have been given is holy.

 And it is our job is to proclaim the holiness of this moment.

 When we do so, we are making that year of the Lord’s favor a reality again and again.

 This is what we are called to do on this Annual Meeting Sunday and in every day of our lives. 

 And always.

 So, let us, like Bishop Budde, proclaim the good news.

 Let us speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

 Let us do what we have always done here at St. Stephen’s.

 Let us bring sight to the blind, mercy to those who are oppressed and hope to those who are hopeless.

 Let us bring true hope in our deeds to those who are crying out (in various ways) for hope and mercy, which only Jesus and his followers can bring.

 And when we do, we will find the message of Jesus being fulfilled in our very midst.