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Each year, when we gather for our annual meeting it is a chance to pause. To breathe. To look back with gratitude at what has happened here. And, then, to look forward with clarity about who we are, who we are becoming, and why it matters.
This moment is not simply about reports and numbers, though there will be plenty of that at the meeting after the service.
What this is, this morning, is a theological moment. A moment to ask not just what have we done, but who are we called to be, especially now. Especially now.
What I want to suggest today is simple, but not easy: Epiphany’s calling is to hold the center, a Christ-shaped center, a spiritual center of gravity, prime real estate in the kingdom of God, patrolled and protected by the Lamb, a non-coercive authority, steady, mature, loving in an unsteady, rapidly changing world.
What the center is not is the middle. The center is not a compromise or appeasement. It is not a waffle, or a weave, or a duck. It is not a political position.
It is the Jesus way. And because it is the Jesus way it is comprehensive, radically inclusive, and powered by love.
Look with me for a moment at the center of the reredos. Look at the cross. Do you see what is at the center? Since that day in 1951 when Elmer Christie and William and Nora Reed hoisted that priceless piece of primavera wood into place it is the Lamb that has sat at the center of our common life.
Gold on a rim of royal blue, radiant, resilient, unmoved, to channel power right out into the pews: giving authority without fear; victory without retribution… energizing this mystical, metaphysical playground where we are sitting… the center, and it holds because of Jesus Christ.
His power is our power; the power of the Lamb who refuses to collapse human life into a single virtue; who refuses to let one good swallow all the others; who insists on holding together truths that feel, at times, almost unbearable in their tension: justice and mercy, conviction and humility, unity and uniqueness.
This tension puts Christianity in direct conflict with the spirit of our age, what Paul calls the powers and principalities of evil. Because the world around us, as I said last Sunday, is constantly pressing us to do the very thing that Jesus will not do – Simplify. Choose a side. Demonize the other.
As G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Christianity does not fail because it holds extreme positions. It succeeds because it can hold them all, in tension.”
The lie lives in the binary. The truth at the center, where love resides. And it is love, only love, that will save the world.
One of the enduring temptations of the Church is accommodation. Not rejecting Jesus, but quietly relocating him. Not denying the Gospel, but allowing something else to sit closer to the center.
Most of the time this shift happens gradually, slowly, under mounting, yet subtle, pressure. Cultural pressure. Economic pressure. Political pressure. Pressure to be relevant, current, aligned, influential.
The Church is told, implicitly and explicitly: You can keep your stuff and do your thing, just don’t interfere, stay in your lane. Don’t resist the momentum of the moment… whatever that momentum might be: pick a flag.
History gives us many sobering examples of what happens when that pressure is not resisted. One was Germany 1930, as the Protestant church faced the question: Who truly stands at the center of our life together?
For many churches, the answer slowly shifted. National identity began to outweigh baptismal ontology. Loyalty to the state began to feel more relevant than loyalty to Jesus. The cross, while not removed, was repositioned, or, maybe just bent at the edges.
This is how the German National Church came into being. They did not believe they were abandoning Christianity. They believed they were adapting it. Making it workable under the circumstance. Making it fit the times. Moving it to the center of the national conversation, where it could exert influence and power… and yet, in the process, unbeknownst to them, they were being flung to the edges.
At the same time, a smaller, more costly witness emerged: the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer’s church. These Christians insisted that the Church did not exist to reinforce the nation, but to remain faithful to Jesus. They refused to simplify the Gospel to suit the moment. And in doing so discovered that holding the center came with consequences.
And because of these consequences, they had to ask themselves: Do I really believe love wins? Do I really believe the bad thing is never the last thing? Do I want to follow Jesus? Am I a resurrection person?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer answered YES. He knew his yeses, and he knew his nos; and his yeses left him hanging from the gallows. And yet, on that early morning of April 9th 1945 as he walked across the hard earth of the courtyard at Flossenburg- they came, standing silently, to witness the victory. For not only was Dietrich beloved… but more importantly, more potently, more powerfully, more beautifully every person present from the guard, to the commandant, to the prisoners… he loved them all to the end.
Love wins. The bad thing IS never the last thing. We are resurrection people.
The question is – are we living that way?
If not, how do we get there? Particularly when we’re so mad about something in this world. Name your issue. We all have one. Maybe a couple. tax reform homelessness zoning policy Minneapolis The list is as long and varied as there are people in this room.
And so, the question is: How do we get to the center when our feelings are spinning us out to the edges.
Paul addresses this in his letter to the Ephesians today. He does so by placing vocation above opinion or strategy. “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which YOU have been called,” he writes.
And notice what follows. Not brilliance, certainty, or dominance. But humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love. Paul knows all people are different. You know that all people are different. Paul assumes tension as a result. You’ve experienced tension as a result.
But Paul refuses to fracture. He says: “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
You know why?
Because unity is the natural state of being in the kingdom of God. Unity is not something we create. It is simply part of God’s design. We are set inextricably in this interconnected world by God right here right now. We are purposely designed for this moment in time. We are meant to be here together. There are no accidental people in this room.
We are made to be a body united, well-formed, grounded in love; no longer “tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine” – which was a problem in Paul’s day, and it remains a problem today.
When the center is not understood, it cannot be held. Instability follows, not just culturally, but spiritually. Communities fracture. Fear replaces trust.
Into this Paul presses us to use our gifts and talents and resources not for personal expression or political victory, but “for the building up of the body of Christ;” the body of this church.
And that is not an issue of belief, or conformity, or complacency; it is an action that is consistent, uniquely, with the context of your life: your body, your mind, your age, your money, your connections, your job.
The question we all must ask ourselves every day is: How would Jesus use my gifts and my talents if he had my life or your life? That is how to live at the center AND if we do not learn how to live at the center, the center will not hold. Not because Jesus fails, but out of our own fear, our own lack of generosity which is a lack of courage… courage is about heart, courage is about the lamb who sits at the center of this spiritual community – this spiritual gym!
Our practices provide stability in a world being pulled out of round by binary centrifugal forces. At Epiphany we offer an alternative: spiritual stability. Not rigidity, but steadiness. Not nostalgia, but rootedness.
Eighteen years ago, when I began my ministry with you, I had no idea what I was doing. Some might say: things never change. But I do now know where we are going. I do now know our common calling and our providential path forward. It is into the center where the Lamb lives.
We are not here to react anxiously to the world around us. We are here to offer an alternative way of being human, together. Lived out over time. Person to person. Generation to generation. The Lamb still hangs at the center of that cross. 77 years later. 2000 years later, actually. Sturdy. Radiant. Non-coercive.
Calling us not to fear, but to be steady, not dormant, but steady, mature, loving, present in an unstable and polarized world, together. This is our vocation, our mission, our calling, our duty, individually as community, as the people of Epiphany to show how the center holds.
And in doing so reveal the Kingdom of God.