Loading...Sermon January 31, 2021
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers,
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Epiphany/BEpi4_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/January_31_Epiphany_IV_service_audio_only
Video: https://youtu.be/UlBDnVo_Pp0
They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching– with authority! Mark 1:27
Please be seated.
On Saturday, Nic, Tiff and I met with Jesse from Assorted Studios. Jesse, with the help of Tiff and Nic, will install more permanent audio and visual equipment in our church so we hopefully have a better Zoom experience. One of the good things about the pandemic is how we have learned to use a digital platform when we cannot meet in person.
As we were walking around the church, trying to figure out where to run various cables and electrical wires, Jesse spied the backyard. He sounded so surprised. “You have a garden in your backyard?,” he asked. “Is this a project of the church?” We explained that this indeed is a project of the church and of the community. He was very impressed, noting that this kind of things was greatly needed.
In the past few months, we continually hear about the importance of food being available. At the beginning of this year, a new program was announced in a piece from ABC 27. It stated that prior to the pandemic at least 15% of all children in Perry County were food insecure. Since the pandemic, that has risen to 20% of all children. Then, with the schools needing to close occasionally, and some students learning from home, the need has grown and how to get food to the children and families has changed. The new program is called “Healthy Food for Families.”
The Executive Director of the Central PA Food Bank said this:
“Families in Perry County are hungry and have difficulty accessing fresh and healthy food near their rural homes. Through this wonderful gift from the Partnership for Better Health, as well as our partnership with the Perry County Food Bank, the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank will transform all current BackPack programs into school pantries with the capacity to carry meat, milk and produce for the entire family. This will provide Perry County residents with the food they need to be healthy.”
Our garden and produce are needed now more than ever. And with the addition of a green house or high tunnel, we may have healthy, fresh food produced for more months of the year.
My earliest memory of churches helping to feed people is of being in Junior High School in the late 60s and waking my parents up early on Friday mornings. The church I grew up in had partnered with the church down the street to make sure the children in the public housing complex in our neighborhood got breakfast each morning before they went to school. Obviously, this was before school breakfast programs.
The mothers in the housing complex knew that a good breakfast was essential to their children getting a good education. A number of the mothers attended the neighboring church and said they wanted to start this program. They needed additional help, and members of my church helped on Fridays. I remember there were plenty of wonderful stories about my parents going to help the mothers with this breakfast. Sometimes the children didn’t like the food, but the mothers made it clear they’d better eat it.
In 1972, there was a huge flood in Harrisburg. Only a small part of the center city did not get flooded, which included my church. So many people were devastated by this flood and having enough food was a major issue. Some people got together and started a food pantry in the basement of the church. Suddenly, the little stage and much of the storage space in the church was filled with cans and cans of food and brown paper bags. Lots of volunteers came to help. My church regularly collected food. If you visited the church during a weekday, you’d often find people waiting to get their bag of food. When my father retired and as long as he was able, he was a volunteer at this Food Pantry. This pantry exists to this day.
In our Gospel today, Jesus astounds and amazes the people in Galilee. He teaches with authority. He rebukes the unclean spirits and makes them come out of people. In essence, he challenges people to think differently. I hear this amazement as excitement, but I’m sure some were thinking, “who does he think he is?”
Most of us don’t like to be challenged to think differently. Yet, that’s what Jesus does throughout his entire ministry…challenges the status quo. He asks us to love our neighbors. He asks us to love ourselves. He asks us to serve our neighbors. He challenges all of the hierarchies we build between who’s rich and who’s poor, between who’s superior and who’s inferior, between genders, between people of different ages.
Love is at the heart of the message of Jesus…love for all of humanity…love for all of creation. Making sure people have the basic needs for a good life: food, clothing, shelter, meaningful work at a living wage, and a healthy environment, for no other reason than that they are beloved of God.
It’s a lot to ask and when we follow Jesus, Jesus never stops turning our world upside down and challenging us.
In the early 1980s, I was a new single mom. My children were 4 and 5. I had lots of family support and I was working really hard to be self-sufficient. I’d finally gotten into the state where I would get better benefits, although not much more money. At the time, I wouldn’t get a paycheck for four weeks – your first bi-weekly check was held.
My apartment om Wormleysburg was pretty good. It was a 2nd and 3rd floor of a row house. The railroad tracks were right behind the house, and when the trains went by, the rattling of the apartment would make the dining room light come on. But it had been hard as a single mom with two kids to even find a landlord willing to rent to us.
One Saturday, there was a knock on my door and I opened it to find my pastor. He was carrying a brown bag of food from the Food Pantry. I was overwhelmed to be the recipient of one of these bags of food and so grateful to be able to stretch my dollars for the month. After he left and as I was unpacking the food, I found a check for $25 in the bag. I was amazed.
That’s what following Jesus does…encourages us to come together and care for others in ways that may go against our inclinations. In the process Jesus teaches us new things with authority and we are amazed.
Amen
