Homily for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany C

My brothers and sisters, we must follow God’s call, one simple step at a time.

In or first reading we heard the call of the prophet Jeremiah. As a youth, too young to command the attention of leadership, he is called and appointed by God. Note the intimacy, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you… and consecrated you.” In the late 600s BC, King Josiah guided the people back to godliness by removing all traces of foreign worship and by making Jerusalem the one place of worship. Jeremiah had a key role in these reforms; his mission was to do away with corruption and ungodliness, and to promote ethical conduct and virtue.

In this passage, the word translated as “formed” is the Hebrew word yashar. It is a technical term for created; in the way a potter creates (or forms) pottery from clay. The idea that God himself forms a child in its mother’s “womb” was widely accepted in this day. God has known Jeremiah since his first moment of existence – both intellectually and in his capacity for action.

In our second reading Paul continues describing for the Corinthians the gifts of God and there prober uses. In particular, he wants them (and us) to understand that the flashier gifts are not the most important. Love (perhaps the simplest and easiest to take for granted) is the greatest of all God’s gifts. It gives meaning to all the rest of our Christian lives! Without it our actions, no matter how noble or powerful, are really empty! Love, never comes to an end of its usefulness. It is transcendent, continuing beyond this era, into the time when we will be fully one with Christ.

Our Gospel today picks up were last week’s story left off. Last week we heard of Jesus reading from Isaiah in the Synagogue at Nazareth. Now we see the people’s reactions. Jesus is first held in awe by the people of his home town and then rejected violently.

For some time now we have been seeking and discerning the way God is calling us to live our Christian love. We have used Mission Statements, visioning days and goal setting for each and every ministry. And of course our individual call and discernment is part of that picture. It can all get quite over whelming and even tedious. For some of us all the talking gets frustrating because we want to be doing. For some off us the dreaming is easy but finding a place to start doing is a mystery. We have come through our initial phase of listening to God’s voice coming through the voices of each other. It is now time to take those first simple practical steps forward.

One is very obvious, the people of St. Stephen’s have dreamed of a second building for many years before my family and I arrived. We must not let delays in getting our building permit frustrate us. We are much closer to putting shovels in the dirt than ever before and we can get this done despite the economy. In fact the economy has brought down some of the costs.

The other thing that we need to do is take our first new step forward into the hand on mission of caring for those beyond our membership. We have often expressed our concern for our nation’s solders and veterans a first step in responding to this call can be affiliating St. Stephen’s with the organization “Soldier’s Angeles.” They are an international non-profit group serving US troops, vets and families in many simple and practical ways. They need a home base to start from in Sierra Vista. This might just be a genuine match made in heaven. This ministry will not cost us any big financial investment. It will cost us the time, energy and compassion, to get involved. Those are gifts we all have to share.

My brothers and sisters let us follow God’s call, one small step at a time.