Since we are having our congregational meeting today, my sermon will be only an outline of the good news that we have just heard in our gospel.
We’ve celebrated the birth of Jesus, and today in the gospel, we see Jesus give birth to the church! Jesus gives birth to us!
And in this story about the birth of the church, we can see four main tasks laid out for us, the body of Christ.
Like John the Baptist, who realized that Jesus was the Son of God, the first task we have as the church is to discover, over and over again, that this man that we call Jesus is truly the Son of God, God in the flesh, God here to live and die as one of us!
In our day to day lives as people in a community, we get sidetracked by various issues that are raised by life together, and we end up thinking more about ourselves than about Jesus–issues like “Who has the power?” or “How shall we care for our buildings and property?” or “Will we have enough money to get along?”
We get caught up in these issues, and we forget why we’ve gathered to start with— we gather because we have seen Jesus, and we believe that he IS God’s son, sent to be with us and to transform us into new, improved human beings!”
And who is in power? Not a one of us! The Holy Spirit is in charge. The Holy Spirit has the power in this place. When we lay down our own need to control and let the Holy Spirit run things, our lives and our church get transformed.
So having remembered that we really ARE here because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that the Holy Spirit is in charge–
The second thing we get to do as the church is to follow Jesus. Even though we know that Jesus is the Son of God, we are still seeking him—because no matter how long we live, we will never live long enough to know all that there is to know about our Lord and Savior.
So we are called to seek him, and like the two disciples who followed him that day, to see where he is staying.
Jesus is staying in the very heart of God.
Jesus calls us, as the church, to go there with him and to remain there with him, in the very center of God’s heart of love and judgment and compassion and forgiveness.
We remain with him in this transforming place when we worship together and pray together and study together, as the disciples did, not alone, but together, as the body of Christ.
Third, we are called to go out and share this good news with the world!
Like Andrew, our job is to go out from this place and to tell everyone, “We have found the Messiah!” — and not just to tell them, but to bring them to Jesus!
This Messiah, this good news, is too good to keep hidden away just for ourselves.
God’s good news is for the entire world!
We Christians are the ones that God has appointed to share the good news!
We Christians are the ones that God has appointed to bring people to Jesus.
That’s us!
Now the fourth thing and the last thing that John points out is the hardest thing for any Christian community.
Having remembered that Jesus is truly the Son of God, having followed him, having remained with him through worship and prayer and study, having told the world, and having brought people to Jesus, having brought them here to be with us, we must remember,
Jesus is the one who does the transforming!
Jesus is the one who looks deep into each of us.
Jesus is the one who sees who each of us has the potential to become,
Jesus is the one who names us and marks us as his own by transforming us.
Jesus does these things.
Our calling is to let go.
We don’t get to dictate to people who they will be as transformed human beings.
Our job as the church is to provide the space in which Jesus can meet each one of us and transform each one of us into the unique individuals that God has called each of us to be as Christians–
And we, the people of St Peter’s, get to go out into the world and share the good news with everyone else,
…and the good news is that God is calling each one of us into a new and transformed life.
God is calling us, the people of St Peter’s, to do all that we can do to support one another as Jesus transforms us into the individuals and the church that Jesus is calling us to become.
Amen