Sermon preached by the Rev. Paula Jefferson
Year C, Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 13, 2022
My mom is passionate about baseball. Not just any baseball…Pittsburgh Pirate baseball. When I was a kid, it was rare to see a Pirates game on TV…even though we lived in Pennsylvania. In the 1960’s TV channels didn’t run programming around the clock. There was an actual sign off time at night. And, in my hometown, there were exactly 5 TV channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and some UHF thing I did not understand. Baseball wasn’t televised during the week…unless it was the playoffs or world series.
Following the Pirates meant tuning in by radio. Transistor radio. We were 200 miles from Pittsburgh, nestled in a valley among the Allegany mountains. Our radio could pick up KDKA in Pittsburgh if we put the radio on the kitchen counter, extended the 4-foot antenna all the way, and touched the end of the antenna to the light fixture over the kitchen sink. When all the planets lined up, we could hear the voices of Bob Prince and Nellie King calling the games for us, night after night.
While the pirates played baseball, we washed, dried, and put away dinner dishes. Mom set up the ironing board in the kitchen and prepared the next day’s clothes. Sylvia and I sat at the kitchen table doing homework, playing board games, or reading.
Today’s Gospel begins in the 6th chapter of Luke, verse 17. As I read the text this week, there were 3 points that kept drawing my attention to them. And so our sermon will makes its way to each of these.
In verse 12, 5 verses before today’s text begins, Jesus went off to a mountain to pray. After praying all night, he summoned his followers and called 12 to be his apostles. He names them….Simon Peter, Andrew, John, and you know the rest.
The next thing that happens begins with verse 17: Jesus leads his disciples and apostles from the mountain to the plains. And, here is the first unusual thing in the story: A great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon have already gathered.
This story is not set in the year 2022, when everyone over the age of 12 has an iPhone. How did all of these people know when and where Jesus would be? How do they already know that he will teach, heal, and exorcise? What news have they heard that compels them to come?
Tyre and Sidon are foreign lands. Jerusalem is many days’ walk away. It’s a little buried in the text, but the author is telling us that the word about Jesus has already traveled far. His ministry has barely begun.
Luke’s headline: Jesus is big news in his time.
A second unusual thing: the text says, “All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.”
It’s hard to imagine being a Jewish citizen of Judah at this time. For them, food anxiety was a daily reality. They are 2 thousand years before Penicillin, before we understood the bacteria that causes leprosy and its cure, before electricity. They are hundreds of years before the collapse of the Roman Empire, which is taxing these people heavily. The empire is still expanding and rolling its culture into every nation it conquers.
But these people are only 40 years from a Jewish rebellion, that the Romans will crush. And in its wake, they will destroy the Temple, Jerusalem, and expel the Jews from that city.
The people who have come to experience Jesus live in political turbulence and human conditions unlike anything we have known.
They know—even by word of mouth—they know that encounters with Jesus change lives.
These people come … compelled by Hope…the desire to taste the experience of being whole….to not feel hungry….to not be thirsty…to not be sick…to not be cast out.
The third unusual thing: Jesus looks up at his disciples and begins to teach.
Here the author has done an interesting literary thing. Jesus is surrounded by disciples, apostles, and multitudes of people. Yet he lifts his eyes to his disciples—the ones who are really following him. This is the author, shifting Jesus’ gaze to us, the readers of Luke. We are asked to answer a rhetorical question: Are you a disciple of Jesus? If so, the beatitudes and warnings that follow are meant for you. Take heed.
My family were not casual observers of Pirates baseball: we were disciples. We knew the roster, we knew the batting averages of the line-up. We knew who was on a hitting streak and who was in a slump. When Willie Stargell hit a long fly ball and Bob Prince shouted, “There’ll be chicken on the hill tonight!”, we understood that Willie had homered…and that anyone in Pittsburgh could walk into one of Willie’s chicken restaurants and get a free meal.
We weren’t just interested in Pirate baseball. We were invested.
When gametime was approaching, we gathered in the kitchen without being summoned, put the transistor radio in its place, and adjusted the tuning dial until we heard the sounds of KDKA. It was a liturgy…a family coming together to participate in a shared moment.
In some ways, the Church is like that transistor radio. And the Holy Spirit, our advocate and guide, helps us to know where the radio should be located, how to aim the antenna, and how to use the tuner to hear the Word of God in our time…in our world.
When you’re fiddling with a tuner trying to find a signal, if you’re just a wee bit to the left or the right of the signal, what you hear is a whole lot of static. Noise.
We gather as a parish family on Sundays without being summoned. We know that through our liturgy, reading God’s Word, listening to sermons, and breaking bread with Christ: this is our shared moment to leave the static of our world behind and allow space in our lives for Christ to be known to us. I don’t know about you, but that sets my hair on fire.
We are welcomed into the life of the Risen Christ…just as Jesus welcomed the folks in today’s reading. They came compelled by Hope: expecting to be changed in their encounter with Jesus. I wonder if we come to the Eucharist compelled by Hope, expecting our encounter with Christ to change us?
Last month, I encouraged you to discern three adjectives that best describe the past 150 years of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Hillsboro.
This month, I encourage you to discern three adjectives that best describe who you are in this moment. What adjectives would the folks at Frankie’s use to describe this parish? The kids who receive your snack packs?
The world in which St. Mary’s lives—Hill County 2022—is filled with people who are compelled by hope to search for someone or something that will change their lives. Far too often, we settle for a cheap imitation: a pill, a bottle, an abusive relationship, and the list goes on.
How will they hear the message of Hope God is inviting St. Mary’s to bring to this community? How will they know when and where to find you?
Amen.