The English poet William Blake wrote: “We are put on earth a little space, that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” I am reminded of that luscious phrase when I hear today’s lessons and all their talk of light:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?”

During the season of Epiphany, images of light teach us to trust God and to seek God’s face. “One thing I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”

To the ancient Jews, the Temple was a specific geographical place. But later, the Jews had to learn to think of the temple in the abstract, as the community of Jews wherever they happened to be. This is an important lesson for Christians, too. Jesus is the light of the world, and since we are the Body of Christ, WE are the light of the world shining into the lives of everyone in our community. It happens in church and everywhere else in our lives. It happens when we work together.

Paul says as much today as the church in Corinth tries to get off the ground: “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

When Paul talks about having no disagreements, it's important to note that unity is not the same thing as uniformity. Episcopalians may understand this better than many other groups of Christians. Our history is rooted in the experience of worshipping together despite our disagreements.

Many people think Christians all believe the same things, or at least that we’re supposed to. We even fall into this trap within the Church: there’s an effort going on in the worldwide Anglican Communion to figure out exactly what we all agree on, put it on paper, and make it a qualification for being an Anglican.

The reason this project is doomed to failure is that our beliefs are not the source of our unity. We can disagree about the finer points of theology, but we don’t have to say, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Rowan Williams,” or Rick Warren, or Peter Akinola, or Jeff Lee. We all belong to Jesus Christ. And the things we know for sure are very few compared to the things we don’t know. We do know how to love each other, and Jesus taught us that love is enough.

When we act from love and not from fear, God helps us find a common purpose. It’s what we do that unites us, not what we believe. And at St. Thomas, we continue to learn that unity means practicing the hospitality of God.

We don’t always succeed, but we practice. We’re like musicians in an orchestra working together on a difficult piece of music. Christ is the composer. And while the music sounds beautiful when only two or three people play it, we can’t help but share it with other musicians. We want the orchestra to become so large that there’s nobody left in the audience!

This is why we call ourselves a congregation. Even as I stand here in the pulpit, I am not acting alone. I may be the preacher this morning, but you are NOT an audience. If you are merely listening, you’re not playing with the orchestra. During the sermon portion of the liturgy, your part is to chew on these words and think about how to put them into action in your own life and in the lives of the people you know. You keep playing the music after you leave the building.

During this interim period at St. Thomas, some may feel as if we’ve lost our conductor. But it’s not that kind of orchestra. To be sure, one of our best players is getting ready to play in an orchestra in Illinois. But if we continue to practice together in unity and joy, the interim process does not have to be a cacophony. We need to remember a few key things as musicians:

This is fancy music speak that may mean I have now taken the orchestra metaphor too far and need to ditch it. Suffice it to say that the most beautiful music contains notes that don’t sound good when played together. It’s what happens after—the way the notes resolve into something more appealing—that makes the whole of the piece beautiful. Managing dissonance—not doing away with it—is the primary challenge of a good musician. Sometimes that even means letting the dissonance take on its own kind of beauty. But faith is the belief that resolution is always possible, no matter how bad the dissonance becomes.

This is the aspect of unity that keeps Christians from forming a private club or a cult: we disagree. We mess up. Some of us hurt others and don’t even know the damage we’ve done. Some of us get hurt and have a hard time confronting the people who have hurt us. But the task of Christian unity is not to carve out a safe little niche for ourselves. Indeed, safety has very little place in Christianity, not for more than a few moments at a time. Jesus demonstrated this every day of his life. What matters is Jesus’ presence with us in danger, encouraging us to go forward in faith, even when we have no idea what to do next.

In some places in our world, the danger of being a Christian is very physical. Luckily for us, Medina is not one of those places. But we’re not safe here, either. In our rather cloistered part of the world, the biggest hazard is that we might fail to grow. We must watch diligently for opportunities to go deeper, to expand our understanding of how God works, because Christ often comes to us through the people we are afraid of … the people who have hurt us … the people who invade our safe places. Jesus comes to us in these and all people, like he came to those fishermen that day at the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus went down to the wharf and found a few people with very little to lose. He didn’t call members of his orchestra because they were good musicians. He called them because he knew they would play. Jesus called them to come, and in an instant, they realized that their predictable lives as fishermen were the real danger, and that real safety lay with this man.

This newer, wilder safety meant giving up everything they knew and going somewhere—where? They didn’t know. Into danger … into growth … into a deeper understanding of everything and everyone. But Jesus was there, and his simple but intense charisma convinced them that this new life would be far better than anything they’d lived before. In the dangerous times that followed the arrest of John the Baptist—for the rest of their lives—the fishermen needed Jesus.

An eloquent, wise priest once told me that the number one qualification of the ordained—of priests, bishops, and deacons—is not eloquence or wisdom. It is simply this: our ordained leaders should be willing to demonstrate how much they need Jesus. You may remember that Paul said this same thing in his letter to the Corinthians: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

It is a bold thing to be a Christian, to embrace this foolish notion that “all you need is love.” It means standing against the conventional wisdom that would put safety first. It means submitting to an authority we barely understand, one who comes to us in beauty and wildness and story and song and makes us fall fiercely in love with life. There is no end to the words people have written about Jesus, but words don’t do justice to the reality of Christ in our lives. If this doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because there are more epiphanies out there waiting to surprise you.

So let’s join those fishermen today. Let’s go fishing. Let’s bring people into our little orchestra at St. Thomas, not to show them how much THEY need Jesus, but to show THEM how much WE need Jesus. Invite them to practice with us. Invite them to dinner—at this table. Invite them to step out of the darkness of fear into the blinding light of love, and let us reassure them that their eyes will adjust. Together we will learn to bear the beams of love. Amen.