The sermon for the Third Sunday in Epiphany, from a Sermon for Every Sunday, is by Rev. Dr. Timothy Peoples
We had church, we danced and shouted and prayed for a good hour and a half, and not once was there an act of invocation inviting the spirit into worship because there was never any doubt she wasn’t going to join us. Then after that hour and a half Dr. Otis Moss III gave a word that we all needed to hear, a word that caused us to stand, a word that caused us to weep, a word that caused us to shout, AMEN, and let’em use you, a word that made us high five and even nudge our neighbors. When it got really, really good, a word that strengthened the community and sent us out to do more, a word from God. Theologians understand this to be the difference between hot and cold worship. It’s hot not because it causes you to break into a sweat, but because it’s flowing. There is not a set structure or expectations, but wherever the Holy Spiri moves, we as worshippers move with them.
Now don’t get me wrong, hot worship had nothing to do with the type of church or denomination, but it’s even seen in the steel quietness of Quakers allowing the word of God and the spirit of God not just to be heard but allow it to challenge and move the heart and soul to engagement. How often have we been cold in our worship? The Israelites have been cold for far too long. Everything has been dictated and everything had to be set in a certain place. Even walk into the temple in a certain way. The Levites would have to wear certain clothing. Everything had set particulars and then exile happened. And how do you worship when you aren’t in the temple? How do you worship when idols aren’t around and when tambourines aren’t being played and there aren’t prayer books and hands? We gather that somehow, they manage, but our text today focuses on a group of people figuring out worship once more. Ezra and Nehemiah preside over a community in severe conflict dispute and fragmentation. The book focuses on the returnees from exile in Babylon. Together they are an attempt to rebuild Jerusalem and restore Judah as a worshipping community. Yet the future of these people is in serious doubt. They’re constantly being attacked from the outside, constant disagreements on the inside which threatens the nation’s future, constantly arguing about who’s in and who is out. So the question quickly comes to the service, can the Israelites live life together? Can they manage to rebuild and reimagine their life because their history has undermined their faith? Somehow, they came together for a civil moment to realize what connected them all was the word of God. So, they gathered together, not at the temple though, not at a house for an exclusive meeting, but at the Watergate. But, realize the Watergate is one of the main pieces of this passage. This place is significant. This square in front of the Watergate was a place where everyone could be present. Even those who were ritually unclean. It did not matter what sins you racked up. It did not matter if you were an Israelite or an Edomite. Your race and ethnicity did not matter at the square. But what mattered now is that they gathered together, away from the brutal powers that once was over them, gathered together to create unity. Just imagine these people have been so long away from their homeland. They have heard the law of Moses read in the shadow of Babylonian temples. But here, it’s a native place here. The word looms large. Here I suspect some hot worship took place. All the particulars didn’t matter because they just needed the word which yielded faith to reimagine life again. Some amens began, some tears began to flow, and I suspect some prayers began to take place. Worship happened and the spirit of the living God didn’t keep them right there but moved them back out into the land to share the holiness of God, of God’s transcendence, the energy and urgency of God, and even the mystery of God. They were pushed out to take the same stance and principles they had around the Watergate out into all the land. They’re moved to go to those who have nothing, which is funny because they all just got out of exile and have nothing. They go be with those who may not be in your same class or even to have your same beliefs. Go, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Where is the spirit leading you? To whom is the Lord sending you out to? But might I say, don’t do it alone. In our individualistic Americanized way of being, we focus on doing it by ourselves so we can alone get the pat on the back or the credit. But if we gather anything from our passage, it is that there is no substitute for the work of God and the worship of God when gathered together in unity. Together we are the body of Christ. In our life together we should seek to share and be inclusive so that all parts of the body feel welcomed and valued. Because our worship is not just in a set place, but our worship even includes the work of our hands, not just the reading of the gospel, but living it out, realizing it’s not living the word unless it’s lived out though us , not individually, but communally. See, the Israelites might have messed up repeatedly, but they got something right a few times and that was realizing individual ethics are community shaped. As ethicist Chris wright proposed, we westerners tend to begin at the individual level and work outwards. Our emphasis is to persuade people individually to live a certain kind of life according to this or that moral standard. If only enough individuals would live up to the standard, then as a byproduct, society itself would be improved or at least be a happy environment for individuals to pursue their own personal goodness. Our emphasis is to say, this is the kind of person you must be and that is the kind of society that lies as a bonus in the background. Yet we have it all wrong. It’s actually the other way around. God desires a community that will reflect God’s own character and priorities of justice and compassion. A society that can display a prototype of a new humanity whom God intends to create. Now that is the society God wants. This is the kind of person you must be if you belong to it. Covenant was established with God and Israel as people, yet the moral implications affected every person within the community and their struggle to piece together their society. Again, they remember through hearing the word of God. They must live it out. We too, let’s understand the same. If God wants a society by economic equity and compassion it requires individuals to forego selfishness and unruly acts toward one’s neighbor. We can come up with a multitude of aspects God wants for a Christian society, which constantly means we’re going self. In our struggles to piece together our own society we must remember community rather than self. Worship is not just in the raising of hands and the amens, but in the sharing and the gathering, Worship is also in the work, the sending out, the gathering and the sharing within the community. Ella Baker was a civil rights pioneer who influenced scores of celebrated figures of the movement, including Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and John Lewis at a time when women could hardly take the lead in anything and black women in particular. Ella has a phrase she lived by “Give light and the people will find a way”. She was an inspiration to many but her father was her inspiration. Ella grew up just outside of Ebony, Virginia across the river from North Carolina and she remembers the routine of her household night after night. When she was a little girl, her daddy would come home from working the fields and the family of 12 would all sit down for dinner. Then they would adjourn to the big room where the kids would do their homework and our father would read the newspaper and after finished he would say, time to go to Ebony. The kids always wondered why he would leave the house night after night, climb onto the buckboard hitched to the horse and make a journey into town. He would just tell them he was going to get a Pepsi. That didn’t really figure to the kids because by that time people could by a six pack of Pepsi and wouldn’t have to go to town for one. And one night, Ella was about seven or so, and she asked if she could go with him and she was excited when he said yes that she jumped out the door and onto that hard seat next to him. And as they made their way into town she saw a gathering of men start to foreign behind the building and she wondered what that was about. Her daddy went into the store and bought Ella a Pepsi and a candy bar, then told her to sit there and not talk to anyone while he ran an errand. She watched him as he made his way toward the group of men and they parted like the Red Sea. And once he was inside the group, they closed it in the circle and she could barely make out what was being said so she got out the wagon and moved a little closer and closer and she could hear her daddy do all the talking and she finally figured out what was happening. He was going through the newspaper with those men, telling from memory the stories he had just read, the messages he had gained about what was happening in the world. And she realized her daddy was one of the few literate black men in the area and these men were hungry to know the news and he took the job upon himself to bring the news to Ebony so that his community could be impacted by each and everyone and not just those that could read. Y’all, we have been shaped so that we can carry out a message that can play a role in shaping. God continues to do amazing things with each of us and I don’t know about you, but it seems like it is time to go to Ebony.
Amen