January 13, 2024 – The Second Sunday after Epiphany

On the occasion of the Annual Meeting. The meeting was delayed until January 20, 2024, due to a driving ban, but we used the readings from 2 Epiphany.

Eli called Samuel, and Samuel said, “Here I am.” The Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something,” and Samuel related this to Eli, who responded, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus said to Phillip, “Follow me.” We don’t know WHAT Phillip said, but we know that he followed because he invited Nathanael to “Come and see.”

My friends, God is calling us to do new things. God is constantly calling. It is our job to hear. It is our job to discern that still, small voice that is often so easily lost or ignored in the din of our busy-ness.

2023 was a year of change for us… all of us. On a personal level, I left a stable job in the financial industry and jumped with both feet into the ocean of ministry full-time. On a congregational level, we jumped into an experiment in regional ministry which – on the surface – has not resulted in huge gains for us, but has resulted in a great change. No longer are we worshiping together on Sunday mornings – we have stepped out of our comfort zone and are praising God on Saturday afternoons. We had hoped that this change might attract new people to worship with us and join us, and we had a glimmer of hope as some new people came to us, but we realized after some time that those people weren’t meant to stay with us long term at this time.

People look to the pastor – the preacher – to instill hope. But today, I am not going to do that directly right away. We continue to lose members from our physical church, and we seem to be unable to find that place where we can invite new guests to stay with us and become involved. There are weekends during which – through no fault of our own – we struggle to find enough participants to hold a service. We have experienced a loss in numbers of people who can help with events like pie making and our outreach events to our community. We have begun to discern a vision of our future that exists separately from our worship space, but we need help to make that happen, and truth be told, we are all exhausted.

We are inhabitants of a large building which requires much upkeep, seemingly more with the passing of each week. Water has found its way into the church in more than one way – from nature itself to our efforts to heat the space. The building – once new – has suffered the wrath of nature and has cracked in various places. And we continue to keep the place sacred, to honor those who provided in the past and those who spent hours of their time to make the sanctuary the place it is today.

We exist in a neighborhood that continues to experience change, that continues to conform to a society that devalues the institutional church. And yet, we need the neighborhood to survive, and the neighborhood needs us here, but we haven’t yet found the magic combination of how those two needs fit together.

We have tried to find ways that others can utilize the sacred space that we have built to honor God, and even other places in the building to build their business. While we have found some success here, we are once again looking to find people who might need a place to call home – not necessarily a spiritual home, but a business home.

And through it all, we get more and more tired and resigned that we are dwindling and we are dying. But God, through Jesus, says, “Follow me.” God says, “Come and see.”

What are we to come and see? Why do we follow when it causes us stress and anxiety and makes us tired? Just as the Lord said to Samuel, “See, I am about to do something,” God tells us daily that we do not know the plans that God has in store for us. The disciples were with Jesus, even as he was led away to be crucified, even as he lay in the tomb. And they did not know understand that he would be resurrected.

In order to be resurrected, Jesus HAD TO die. He had to face the end. The old Jesus that was had to face an end in order to be born as something new. The more the disciples had held onto the fact that Jesus’ body was dead, the less that they could understand what it meant for him to be resurrected.

But once they understood that Jesus – that same Jesus – was still with them, just in a different way, they rejoiced. They understood everything that he had been teaching them throughout their lives together. They were energized in new ways – with the Holy Spirit through Jesus’ ministry to them.

We want others to see what we see because we know what was. But the truth is that they will never see what we saw, because each of us perceives differently. Each of us experiences what WAS differently. This is a good thing! Can you imagine if we all were robotic clones?

We get discouraged when we don’t see immediate changes. We get discouraged when we remember what was. We get discouraged when our members pass from this earthly life to their heavenly abode and we don’t find new people who can inhabit this place with us for worship. We get discouraged as we work tirelessly… And yet, in the din of the busy-ness, God continues to speak to all, “Come and see.”

God continues to tell all of us to “Follow me.” It is our job to share this message with others. Perhaps it doesn’t mean what the culture used to reinforce any longer. Perhaps it means following by gathering with neighbors and socializing. Perhaps it means that we feed those who can’t feed themselves. Perhaps it means working with disadvantaged children, or the elderly, or – you fill in the blank. God challenges us to allow us to let God do what it is that God will do, and then to act upon what happens as a result. How will we respond?

“Follow me. … Come and see.” The Lord is good, indeed.