The Rev. Rob Fisher
Epiphany III
St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Anyone who was living in the Northeast in September, 2001, will remember that Tuesday morning of the 11th was an inspiringly beautiful, blue-skied day.  The air was crisp and still, and the grass and trees were lush and green.  It was as perfect as weather gets, in that transitional time between summer and autumn in the Northeast.

I was then a newly arrived seminarian, beginning only the second week of classes.

The seminary was on the coast of Connecticut, facing Long Island Sound.  From the highest towers, smoke could just barely be seen coming up from Manhattan on that unforgettable day.

At my seminary, every Wednesday evening the Episcopalians gathered for community Eucharist.

We held the service in the little chapel within a stately old house that had been turned into the Episcopal school within the seminary.  The chapel itself was in the room that used to be the dining room.  It was cozy.  Instead of pews we sat in wooden chairs, facing each other across an aisle, with an altar at the head of the aisle.  When we worshiped, we saw each other’s faces.

The altar table itself had been Bishop Samuel Seabury’s desk, a relic from the turbulent post-colonial days when the Episcopal Church in America was still determining its identity after the Revolutionary War.

Our associate dean, a priest named Sandy Stayner, had been in New York on that Tuesday with her husband, participating in an event with the Archbishop of Canterbury.  They were at Trinity, Wall Street, only a couple of blocks away from the World Trade Center when it came down.It was a terrifying experience.

For most of that day, Sandy and her husband had no way of contacting their little son, who I was only five or six years old.

By Wednesday—the next day—they had made their way home and were with us for the evening service.  Sandy presided at the Eucharist, and together we all sang a musical setting of Psalm 27, the very psalm that we just read here this morning.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

Whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life;

Of whom then shall I be afraid?

For Sandy Stayner and the others huddled in downtown Manhattan, these words took on the full weight of meaning that Tuesday morning nearly ten years ago.

The Lord is my light and my salvation;

Whom then shall I fear?

***

Isn’t it interesting?—in the Gospel when Jesus calls his disciples from their fishing boats, he does not say: “Believe this thing that is hard to believe” or “Do this heroic act of piety.”  Nor does he explain to them what he is doing or where he is going.

No, the call is much more simple.

He says only: “Follow me.”

Faith does not make a very good noun.  It makes a much better verb.

You may not understand—but you can follow.

Sometimes when we put our emphasis on understanding, we lose our ability to take that next step.

But the step is what we are called to do—above everything else.

And while it is hard, it is also easy, because we have one to follow who shows us the way of perfect love.  To live like him we have to take his yoke upon us, but this is not a yoke that will weigh us down.  Instead, it will lift us up.

***

Tragedies like September 11th, or the earthquake last year in Haiti, challenge our sense of security.

For many these events challenge our ability to trust in God.But these shocks to our sense of comfort also have the power to open our eyes to see Christ more fully.

They tear down the walls that we build up around ourselves for our own protection—the walls that allow us to think that this world is all there is, forgetting that our true citizenship is in heaven.

When the walls come down—and when we finally accept that our truest strength is in love and not power—whom can we possibly fear?

William Sloane Coffin once said:

We want God to be strong so that we can be weak.

But God wants to be weak so that we can be strong.

***

The psalmist goes on to say:

One thing have I asked of the Lord

One thing I seek

That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life

To behold the fair beauty of the Lord

And to seek his temple

We worship God in this beautiful sanctuary every Sunday, but we cannot contain God.  Rather, we set a table and prepare a place for the Lord to dwell, for us to meet God in our worship, and in the love that we share with our brothers and sisters in Christian community.The beauty of the Lord is not really found in the wood and the glass of churches.  It is found in the faces of God’s children, those faces we are blessed to see every week—including in these pews, and gathered at this altar.

***

The psalmist says

You speak in my heart and say, ‘Seek my face.’

Your face, Lord, will I seek.”

What is it to be a Christian?

It is to seek the Lord’s face.

When Sandy Stayner and her husband were trapped in Trinity, Wall Street with all of those people including the Archbishop of Canterbury on September 11th, they had to escape through underground passageways in Lower Manhattan.

Trinity has a nursery school, and all of the adults were paired with little children to walk with them or carry them as they made their way through the maze of tunnels.

Before they set out, Archbishop Rowan Williams gathered them in prayer.

One would expect him to pray for their protection, but instead he prayed that they would see Christ in, and be Christ to, all the people they would encounter in the next hours.

The tragedy of that day gave them great clarity.

We are called to seek the Lord’s face.  We are called to be his face.

The Lord is our light and our salvation.

Whom then shall we fear?

– Amen.