Sermon | The Rev. Peter Sipple | January 18, 2026
SERMON – Trinity-on-the-Green, Epiphany IIA (1/18/26)
O Lord, you are calling us to Jesus; open our ears to this holy invitation, our minds to accept it, and our hearts to the possibilities that it holds for the world. AMEN
Today’s lessons focus on the call to faith. Most calls you and I receive are incidental and trivial, relatively small in the scope of things. But some are life-changing: the call to attend this school or that one; the call from a suitor to be his wife or her husband; a call from a boss offering a promotion; the call to accept a special assignment, perhaps with risk; a call from a family member or neighbor who suffers from an addition; the call to the bedside of a dying friend, or the call to take care of someone you don’t happen to like. In each example, we are summoned out of our usual everyday selves to something more challenging and door-opening. Some calls we may not at first recognize for the important role they will play. In my experience, life-changing calls often arrive “out of the blue.”
In today’s OT reading, Isaiah speaks for all of Israel, invited to be God's own, holy, set apart—and called “from the womb,” from its very inception as a people. Israel saw itself commissioned by God to nurture and invest itself in a unique relationship. But Israel’s call comes with a condition in the form of a charge: this new nation is not to spend its resources looking only within, tending to its own holiness. God charges this people to look outward, to be a “light to the nations,” a model for others. However much Israel may ignite the scorn and envy of other nations, the leaders of those nations will eventually come to recognize its distinctive character; it will be clear that Israel was chosen by the one true God and is faithful to God in its behavior.
Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians reminding them of his call to be an Apostle, and extending the invitation to them along with other new churches around the ancient world. With language reminiscent of Isaiah, Paul calls the Corinthians into this new fellowship of the faithful in Jesus Christ. And as with Israel, others will recognize these new Christians for their enrichment in Christ, in speech and knowledge of every kind, “not lacking in any spiritual gift.”
“Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love; yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” That song has it right, doesn’t it?
In John’s Gospel, Jesus summons the first of his Disciples, but not through an active invitation. Instead, Jesus is discovered by those who will follow him. First, John Baptist witnesses the presence of the Holy Spirit as Jesus is baptized. Then Andrew recognizes Jesus as the Messiah, and in turn shares his discovery with his brother Simon. St. John shows the effect that Jesus had on others as they encounter him. Jesus uses a pun to hint at the future, renaming Simon Cephas, or Peter, called to be a foundation rock of what will become the Church. Andrew and Simon find Jesus as the entire Church will later, for that’s the way the Church came to be and still works, through such corporate encounters by people searching for meaning.
We Americans are taught that as a people we, too, have been called to be a great nation. History books romanticize about our serving as a beacon, a light in the dark world, the city on a hill. And indeed, many events in our brief history have found us living up to that vision. But we have also taken disappointing steps away from the romantic ideal; those, too, are documented in Ken Burns’ new series on the Revolutionary War—reminders of tragic mis-steps and opportunities foregone. They lead us to consider how we can do better, how we might come closer to what we aspire to as a people. For example, we can avoid treating as enemies those who see the world differently, a perspective we can extend to others around the world. We want to regard ourselves as leaders, yet senseless deaths on our streets tarnish our image as a nation set apart. We will shine forth in a dark world only if we truly trust in the God we say we follow and uphold that God’s conditions of peace and justice.
The theologian Richard Rohr writes that “history is continually graced with people who somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest and for the good of the world, people who clearly operated by a power larger than their own. Consider Gandhi, Oskar Schindler, Martin Luther King Jr. Add to them Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Óscar Romero, César Chávez, and many unsung leaders. Their inspiring witness offers us strong evidence that the mind of Christ still inhabits the world. Most of us are fortunate to have crossed paths with many lesser-known persons who exhibit the same presence. I can’t say how one becomes such a person. I can only presume that they were called… Those who respond to the call…are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God uses to transform the world.”
Such individuals respond to their call by holding themselves and others to the highest standards of decency. The Prayer Book’s baptismal covenant ends with this question: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” The given answer is “We will, with God’s help.” That answer commits every Christian, along with the newly baptized, to listen for the call: first to love God; then to care for others as we care for ourselves; and ultimately to witness to those commandments. Witnessing means standing up for and demonstrating Christlike behavior. We witness by means of our presence, through our gift dollars, through what we say and write to others, and through our daily behavior as we actively follow the way of Jesus.
Witnessing also means that we Christians stand strong in the face of injustice and stay wise in the face of folly. Our call isn’t to roll over and play dead, or pretend that bad stuff happening around us doesn’t matter or will go away, given time. David Brooks’ recent op-ed piece in the NY Times headed “The Sins of the Moderates” cites Reinhold Niebuhr’s characterization of the children of light and the children of darkness. “The children of darkness have advantages in their struggle against the children of light. They know what they want and don’t have to worry about nuance. It’s easier to destroy a social order than to build one.” Niebuhr is rooting for the children of light, but he wants them to be less naïve about human nature: As he puts it, ‘The preservation of a democratic civilization requires the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. The children of light must be armed with the wisdom of the children of darkness but remain free from their malice.” Brooks cites Yale’s Oona Hathaway who found that “from 1989 to 2014, battle-related deaths from cross-border conflicts averaged fewer than 15,000 a year. Beginning in 2014, the average has risen to over 100,000 a year.” And Brooks concludes that “a great wave of savagery has been released, foreign and domestic. Outrage over these trends should cause moderates to be immoderate. It should generate what Niebuhr called “a sublime madness in the soul.”
We Americans are called to be one people, and we say that we are: E Pluribus Unum, disparate and astonishingly different though we are. Let us expect in one another that we will all together strive for justice and peace, and that we will work to promote the dignity of others, including those distant from us. We can hold these goals for one another just as we demonstrate them in our own lives, for Christians are called by God to do no less. AMEN