FAMILIARITY…COMPLACENCY…REPETITION
SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON SUNDAY JANUARY 31st 2010
Luke 4: 32 “And they were astonished at his teaching, for his word had authority”.
What a contrast between the people of Capernaum who heard Jesus with authority, and the people of Nazareth, who only heard the boy that they had known growing up in that town.
Familiarity breeds contempt, so the saying goes. That certainly seems to be the case in today’s Gospel reading.
Jesus has returned home to Nazareth, and he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath day. All his childhood friends and those who know his parents are there. He read from the prophet Isaiah chapter 61, the prophecy about the Messiah. Then, having read that, he declares that the prophecy has been fulfilled by him. That he is the Messiah.
Luke says firstly that after this they all spoke well of him. But then they turned. “Who does he think he is?” they thought. We know him – he’s the carpenter’s son.
Jesus’ response is not designed to win any friends. He reminds them that the great prophet Elijah went to a gentile woman during the great famine and not into Jerusalem the Holy City; and that Elisha didn’t cleanse any Jewish lepers, but only the Syrian Naaman.
In other words, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. Yes, familiarity breeds contempt.
Familiarity also breeds complacency – and that was the problem that faced the prophet Jeremiah in today’s first reading.
We hear about his call and his reluctance because of his youth. And the Lord says: “Do not be afraid” – wise and necessary words, because he would go on to challenge the king and the government of Israel. For both the king and the country had become complacent about their religion. Eventually conquest and exile would follow, as it seemed to do for the Jews.
Familiarity and complacency are words we need to heed as Episcopalian Christians. And with those two words another related word: repetition.
As Episcopalians we take comfort in the familiar. This familiar church is a great comfort, and a place we want to keep returning to Sunday by Sunday to worship. And in that worship our familiar liturgy is also a great comfort. But more than that, it’s a spiritual strength and usually inspiring.
Here at All Saints’ familiarity does not breed contempt – but it can breed complacency. Repetition certainly can breed complacency.
For example, today we have the Parish Annual Meeting. It’s the same every year. Certainly, like every year, that it only lasts 59 minutes! But it’s the same each year: reports, elections, a general feeling of well-being, apart from the odd question about finances. Certainly the Rector’s report is usually optimistic – but never complacent.
But we can become complacent in this familiar and repetitive part of our parish life. Our parish life goes on year after year – except this year I report a decline in Sunday attendances for the first time in my seven years as your Rector.
I’m not complacent at all about this, for it is important to put it into context. Obviously we have declined in the last twelve months – but since 2002 the Diocese of San Diego has seen a 20% decline in both Sunday attendance and membership. Some of that we are familiar with because friends in other parishes have chosen to leave this Diocese and the Episcopal Church.
Not only is this the case in San Diego, but nationally our church declined by 60,000 Sunday attendances in 2007/2008 – which is more than the number of Episcopalians in the State of California. But despite that All Saints’ has gone in the other direction, and we have grown consistently until this past year.
Hopefully 2009 is just a hiccup for us; for we are a lively parish that keeps on growing, and I am optimistic about our life here at All Saints’. The fact is that for some time, maybe since the sixties, the Church in the West – the English-speaking Church – has been losing ground significantly; whilst in Africa it has made phenomenal gains. In fact if you look at the Anglican Communion of some 70 million people, the majority live in Africa.
Maybe we Western, English-speaking Christians have become complacent? Maybe our spiritual life as a church has been reduced to repetition?
Repetition is not necessarily bad. Many of you go to familiar places on your holidays and vacation. For the holidays you join other family members in the home of a family member where you’ve been before.
I go to Walsingham in England every year on pilgrimage – and I never take a camera! For that place is no longer an object to be souvenired, or to be captured as a memory. Rather Walsingham has become part of me – and I of it. Perhaps I have become its object rather than the other way round.
You may feel the same way about those places you like to visit: that they are part of you and you a part of them, and are not an object to be souvenired. This sort of repetition when we travel stimulates us, and also our family relationships. And sometimes we realise God has spoken to us through the familiar, through repetition.
Repetition is central to our spiritual life. For example, we never tire of saying the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer that Jesus gave us. We’ve been saying the same prayer all our lives as a Christian. Sometimes in church we may hurriedly make the sign of the cross, or casually bow or genuflect – but not to do so would make us feel empty.
Of course our Anglican/Episcopal liturgy is endless repetition – the same responses, the same music. But it still speaks to us. It always speaks to us, and helps us to grow more Christ-like.
When you think about it, growth is repetition. When we are children we eat the same foods – night after night sometimes – because our parents tell us it will help us to grow. Such repetition does help us to grow, even though at the time we may dislike the flavour!
Repetition helps us to grow spiritually. Repetition, of course, is at the heart of the season of Lent. In two weeks time we will be preparing for this challenging season. We will try to make more time for our Lord, and to do things extra to help us be more spiritual – to help us to grow spiritually.
It is repetition. We fasted last year, we found time for more services and prayers – and we will do it again. The same old thing…….some of us have been doing it all our lives. The same sacrifices and devotions everyday for forty days may be repetition – but it is helpful repetition. For what it does is lift us out of spiritual complacency, throws a spanner in the works, gives us a spring clean.
It is unsettling being taken out of a familiar patterns, to do things that we absolutely wouldn’t do normally, except for the forty days of Lent.
Why do we do these things, which are repetition in our prayer and worship in Lent? The people of Capernaum give us the answer: because we recognize the authority of Christ, and we want to respond.