Third Sunday after the Epiphany: January 26, 2025

The Rev. Nat Johnson

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 | 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a | Luke 4:14-21 | Psalm 19

On Monday, a new President was sworn into office. Over the next 24 hours, 26 executive orders were signed that rolled back transgender rights, broadened the scope and reach of immigration enforcement, overturned environmental regulations, and upended birthright citizenship. Tens of thousands of public servants have lost their jobs or been put on leave. With the stroke of a pen, entire agencies, offices, and people dedicated to strengthening diversity, equity, and inclusion have been gutted.

On Tuesday, the Episcopal Church found itself in the spotlight as Bishop Mariann Budde preached at a prayer service as part of the presidential inaugural events. The purpose of the service was to gather and pray for unity for this nation. In her sermon, she outlined the nature of unity, insisting that it is not the same as conformity or assimilation to any one particular partisan position. Unity, she said, “fosters community across diversity and division,” “serves the common good,” and “is the threshold requirement for people to live together in a free society.” She goes on to suggest that the foundations of unity include “honoring the inherent dignity of every human being,” which means “refusing to mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ.” Unity is also founded on honesty and a commitment to truth – “even – and especially when – it costs us. And honesty demands a third foundation for unity – humility.” She reminded her listeners that the line between good and evil runs not through state lines, partisan lines, class lines, but through every human heart and this realization ought to open within us room for humility, open within us an orientation toward one another across our differences. At this point in her sermon, Bishop Budde made an appeal directly to the newly sworn in President to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared right now.” The backlash that Bishop Budde has received in the ensuing days exposes once again just how far we are from the unity she preached.

On Wednesday, a teenager in a Nashville high school opened fire in the school’s cafeteria killing one and injuring another before taking his own life. In the days since the incident, officials have commented on his social media and web engagement that leads them to believe the teenager supported neo-Nazi ideals. They have alleged that he made posts and comments about racial genocide and belonged to online communities that promote violence and extremism.

On Friday night, the first homicide of 2025 in Seattle occurred in Pioneer Square. One man died at the scene and a woman was later discovered to have been admitted for care at Swedish Hospital. And, earlier in the week, just blocks from here, in Nihonmachi Alley, a street art exhibit that documents and honors the lives of Japanese-Americans and tells the story of their incarceration during World War II was defaced and vandalized – black ink was washed across the images and names, and Christian symbols and bible verses were painted alongside the defaced murals. One of the artists whose work was vandalized was Erin Shigaki – a member of our community, whose artwork we also have displayed here in our narthex.

These, and so many more of the events of the last week, have left me wondering a great deal about what it means to be a Christian in this time and this place, especially when the title “Christian” has been coopted by White Nationalism, by ideologies intended to perpetuate fear and mistrust by peddling misinformation and fanning the flames of cultural contempt and outrage. Who and how are we called to be in this moment?

In an article she wrote in the Christian Century, Kelly Brown Douglass speaks to this question of what it means to be a Christian in this time of social, political, and religious upheaval. She insists that this time in which we live – this time in which hate crimes and bigotry are steadily on the rise; this time in which political polarization seems locked into our political discourse; this time in which millions of people in this country are trapped in poverty and suffer because of inadequate housing, healthcare, employment, food security, and education – this time, she insists, is a Kairos time. She appeals to the 1985 Kairos Document in which South African clergy and theologians define “Kairos time” as “a moment of grace and opportunity, the favorable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action… But it is also a dangerous time, because if this opportunity is missed, and allowed to pass by, the loss for the church [and the wider society] will be immeasurable.” What this means, for Kelly Brown Douglas, is that this is a time in which we must reorient ourselves to the cross, to the demand of “[joining] in God’s eternal mission to create a loving and just world.” As Michael Curry, our former presiding bishop, says: “God is always seeking to create a loving world and a society where all are loved, where justice is done, and where the God-given equality of us all is honored in our relationships, our social arrangements, and in law.”

What does it mean to be a Christian in this time, in this present moment of our common existence? If you’re like me, I suspect you might find this question easier to respond to if there was a single, programmatic answer to it. But the truth is, there is not just one. Each part of the Body of Christ must bring the fullness of its gifts to the table, to support the work of mission and ministry in our time and place. What that looks like for St Peter’s Episcopal Parish in Seattle will be different than what it looks like for St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bellingham. It will look different for the United Methodist Church than it does for the Pentecostal, or the Presbyterian, or the Lutheran Churches. And, it may even look different for you than it does for the person sitting next to you or behind you. The Body of Christ is made up of many members, each representing a diversity of gifts that contribute to the whole.

That said, while there may not be a single, programmatic answer to the question of what it means to be a Christian in this Kairos time, we are not left without a common foundation from which we receive and hone those gifts. Paul reminded the Corinthians, and reminds us also, that diversity is Spirit-sanctioned, and that it is the same Spirit who confers the particularities of our gifts upon each of the members of Christ’s body. The unity that Bishop Budde appealed to in her sermon on Tuesday is already a present reality – it is not something we must build or muster. It is, rather, a present reality into which we must live. It’s not easy, but it’s also not something we need to design or conjure out of thin air.

We are all, already, empowered by the Spirit to engage in the divine mission of creating a loving and just world. The Spirit of the Lord is already upon each of us – we simply need to receive the gift of God’s grace and open ourselves to the bold movement of the Spirit. Like Jesus emerging in his public ministry, we too are filled with the Holy Spirit and, if we can stop resisting the Spirit’s empowerment, we will discover that we too are sent to preach the good news, to bring freedom and healing and restoration to a world that is tearing itself apart. This is not partisan work. Jesus’ mission, outlined in his inaugural sermon, is about bringing a word of Good News to the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. And this word of Good News is nothing short of liberation from the very things that perpetuate poverty, inflict injustice on the oppressed, and isolate the marginalized. Jesus’ mission is one of restoration, of wholeness, of fulfillment. These are the values that we inherit as followers of Christ – these are the values that sustain the Church’s mission and that orient us in the use of the variety of gifts the Spirit has given us.

And we must not think that our being oriented toward the divine values of liberation and restoration and our being empowered by the Spirit will protect us from the varieties of evil that plague our society. Jesus’ story reminds us of that. Throughout the gospels, we’re told that Jesus encounters hostility and opposition and that ultimately, his commitment to the values of liberation and restoration landed him in the cross-hairs of the powerful who had him executed. Whatever else it means for us to be a Christian in this time and place, it also means that we will tread the path of Jesus, that we are bid to follow his journey to the cross.

Friends – we find ourselves today, at this hour, in “a moment of grace and opportunity.” And, the reality is, what it means for us to be a Christian in this moment, is the same as what it means for us to be Christian in any moment. Because, as Kelly Brown Douglass suggests, “there is no time that is not a Kairos time, no time when God is not fully present and providing a way to God’s future. Thus, there is no time when we are not called, like Jesus, to bear the cross, to be committed to making real the justice of God that is freedom from all that prevents us from being a society where the humanity of each and every human being is honored and respected. In this and in all times, to be a Christian is to act like a people with a cross at the center of our faith.”

References:

The Rt. Rev. Marriann Budde, Sermon from National Cathedral on January 21, 2025

Kelly Brown Douglass, “What Does it Mean to be a Christian in these times?” published in The Christian Century, Feb 2025 Issue.