The Fifth Sunday of Easter

In the name of the + Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When I was chatting with a high school youth at St. Philip’s about the significance of the installation which happened this past Wednesday, they asked me, “You’re being installed? What are you, a SINK!?”

Which I found incredibly funny!

But functionally, during the service, our Bishop came as our leader and she represents, as Bishop, our relationship to the entire Church, the body of Christ.

 The diverse crowd, venturing forth from various congregations, were gathered right here at St. Andrew’s. This act of gathering was an embodied act, sign and symbol made manifest of our being a people gathered together from many different places and with many different callings.

A people gathered in response to the call of Christ on our lives.

We find ourselves, as St. Peter writes today, a people who have been called by God “out of darkness into marvelous light.”

The week before last, I was in Richmond for a dear friend’s ordination. Our former liturgics Professor, The Rev. Dr. James Farwell, preached about being called by God, and he noted that the Holy Scriptures make clear that a prophet’s call is always for the sake of a people.

He noted how:

Abraham is called that through him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).

Moses is called in order to free a people from slavery (Exodus 3:7-12). 

Samuel, David, Esther, Ruth, Isaiah - the list goes on and each of their calls is for the sake of a people.

And God is calling each one of us, too.

This divine call which presses and pulls our hearts is for the sake of a community of persons. 

This divine call runs notably counter to the hyperfixation of the self found in much of American culture. It smashes the idolatry of rampant individualism, because we are never being called solely for the sake of the self, but rather for a people - as a people.

To respond to the call of Christ is to have a new identity forged for the sake of the world. 

This happens first and foremost in Baptism, when we are grafted into the Body of Christ, the Church, and become children of God through Christ’s saving work.

In baptism, God does something to us, and changes us.

To be a Christian, is fundamentally, to be a person to whom God has done something to. First, through Baptism where God grafts us into the Body of Christ.

And in so doing we are made something new. 

St. Peter expands on this in the Epistle:

Once you were not a people.

Now you are God’s people.

Once you had not received mercy.

Now you have received mercy.

A hallmark of being God’s people is to receive mercy from God.

Because to be a Christian is to be a person to whom God has done something to - critically, in this case, to be a person who has received mercy from God. 

Note that the identity marker for being a part of this new people is not: our socioeconomic status, our body size, our gender or sexual orientation. It is not our career, or where we live, or what kind of car we drive. It is not our ethnicity or place of origin or how we look.

The identity marker of being a new people in God is having received Divine mercy.

The practical realities of this are far reaching.

If we are a people who have received mercy from God, then we are a people asked to pour mercy back into the world. We see this play out in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:21-35. And to quote the First Epistle of St. John, “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

What we receive freely from God, made new as a people, we are asked to pour back out into the world. 

An example of this mercy in action comes to us in today’s reading from Acts, where St. Stephen is cruelly and painfully stoned to death before Saul - who later becomes St. Paul.

St. Stephen does not utter curses at his attackers and murderers. 

Rather, he seeks mercy as one who has received mercy. He cries out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” as he dies under the thud of rocks pulverizing his body.

The mercy given and received is the mercy meant to be poured into an unmerciful and cruel world which seeks to divide, and conquer, and increase hate, and gain power and control.

Today St. Peter reminds us that we are a people who have had our boundaries and borders shattered by Christ who calls all people unto Himself.

We are a people who are caught up in the profound Unity of Christ where “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!” (Colossians 3:11)

We are a people who receive divine mercy and are asked to pour mercy into the world.

We are a people, even with all our differences, are a unity in Christ so that we may, as St. Peter writes, ”proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into marvelous light.”

We are a people who follow a crucified Lord tasked to proclaim mercy to an unmerciful world, peace to a warring world, and compassion to an indifferent world; to give food to a hungry world, attention to a neglected world, and love to a hateful world.

Once we were not a people.

Now we are God’s people.

Once we had not received mercy.

Now we have received mercy.

May we then go forth in the name of Christ, united in Him, and proclaim to the world the mighty and merciful acts of our God in word and deed.

Amen.