Epiphany 3c 2025; 26 January
Neh. 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Ps 19
I Cor. 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21
Jack Hardaway
BODY OF EVIDENCE
Like many people many of my foundational memories are Walt Disney movies.
I’m always getting flash backs to episodes of the old animation stories from my childhood.
Foundational stories that for good or ill are part of how I see and interpret the world.
That and the three stooges.
Lately I’ve been remembering a scene from the Jungle Book, which came out in 1967. (before I was born…)
There are a group of vultures sitting on an old dead tree in a swamp. And one says the other “Whatcha want to do?” And he resounds back, “I dunno. Whatchu want to do?”
And it goes back and forth, each wanting the other to decide, and getting in an argument over who asked first. I laughed so hard as a child at this, and it still makes me smile.
Whatcha want to do?
That is where we are as a parish right now. Poised and ready to talk about what we want to do next.
My Rector’s report in the Annual meeting packet brings up some of the many major projects we have worked on and completed. It really is impressive, especially if you understand how long term and complex some of these projects have been.
It is an unusual place for a parish to be. We should all be thanks-filled and gratitude filled, and dare I say even proud. Well done. It says something that we as a community have been able to love each other and do all this even through the inevitable confusions that occur when doing new things.
Foundational documents.
It is that time to remember who we are.
What we are about.
Keeping the main thing the main thing.
We see this in the scripture this morning.
Ezra reading from the scroll of the law of God remembering who God’s people are.
Paul speaking of the body of the church, the diversity of the body, all needing everyone to be complete. “The eye cannot not say unto the hand I need thee not.”
Where Paul makes the audacious assertion that the Church is the evidence and proof of the resurrection of Jesus. The unity and diversity of the body is the body of Christ.
The church is the body of evidence.
The only true proof.
And in Luke we see the beginning of Jesus ministry as he reads the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming and fulfilling the year of the Lord’s favor with a vision of mercy for those who have been chewed up and spat out by a world devoid of mercy, a world that has rejected God, a world that has forgotten its foundational document, the main thing.
And all eyes were on Jesus.
Because it is more than his words that bring God back to a forgetful world, it is his flesh and blood, his presence, his manner. There is something in the way he moves.
It is good to step back every once in a while and to remember and to be reminded what the first thing is, the body of Jesus.
So here is the funny thing, I keep praying for guidance, and listening, and I keep getting that meme from the Jungle book, I keep hearing Jesus say, “So whatcha ya want to do?”
And I say, “I dunno whatchu want to do?”
And then I get the look.
And it takes my breath away.
And I laugh.