January 30, 2022

Wonderfully Weird

This sermon was preached at St. Margaret of Antioch, Toxteth on the Fourth Sunday of the Epiphany

1 Corinthians 13.1-13

Luke 2.22-40

A word of warning before I begin: this sermon is largely a compliment. Something that my teachers warned me about doing, since sermons “should always be a challenge.” I hope you will feel challenged by it though, challenged to lean into the good that I’m about to praise us for. If it’s good enough for St. Paul to constantly thank God for a church, I think it’s good enough for me.

If I have learned one thing since coming to St. Margaret’s, it is how gloriously wonderful and holy it is to be weird.

I grew up in church environments where slickness, professionalism, and rehearsed choreographed yet casual looking services and indeed lives were very highly prized.

Indeed, after I left one of those churches, I heard that they had scrapped the work which they had been doing with the most vulnerable members of the community in favour of a cooler, more comissioner-friendly demographic.

So, to this church of people who I am just getting to know but who already feel at home with and comfortable with; which feels like the living-room of an old friend rather than the waiting room of a trendy tech start-up: where we start late, the microphones stop working, we stand in the wrong place, get the words to the eucharistic prayer wrong, and we start the service before the thurifer is ready. I want to say: “Thank you for being so unapologetically weird and for making a weirdo such as myself so welcome.”

I talk about this weirdness because it is one of the many ways in which St. Margaret’s is like the temple. Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus to be dedicated to God. They meet two. people in the temple. Not the high priest and a scribe, not the young families minister and the worship leader, not even the sacristan and the incumbent. Rather, their presentation of the child to God is a presentation to the weirdos who are there every day of their lives.

Two very old people who are not contributing anything “useful” to society, but just hanging around in the temple

It serves as a helpful reminder of what God considers usefulness and holiness, and what God thinks about action.

St. Paul, an eminent weirdo of his time, writes that God isn’t too keen on us having and using gifts of tongues, knowledge, prophecy, generosity, even faith. These are secondary to, and useless without, love,

He is careful to remind us that all the slickness in the world, and even goodness and spirituality mean nothing without love.

So yes, we receive great gifts from God, we are equipped by God, and yes, we can be very competent and work very hard for God, and yes we can look very professional in the process, but those aren’t the things we should be aiming for. We should be aiming for love.

The love of the God who so loved the world that she gave her only Son to Mary.

The love of Mary who so loved the God who was her son that she gave him back.

The faithful love of Anna who is in the temple all the time, and of Simeon who listen to the Spirit enough to go to meet the one for whom he has been waiting.

These two who represent God as the child is presented. They are undeniably weird, there is no slickness about it. One’s words are unrecorded, but she begins talking to everyone about the child. The other bursts into song and gives a very dark prophecy to the mother: That a sword will pierce her own soul too.

Because God knows, and Simeon knows, and Mary knows, I imagine Anna knows, and, looking back from our post-good-Friday position, we know just how painful and sacrificial that love can be.

When we surrender the control that allows slickness. When we stop worrying about how weird we look. When we stop worrying about the sort of people to whom we are giving our time, energy. money, and gifts and what they might use them for and whether they deserve them. That’s when we start loving like God.

So let’s follow Mary’s example. Let’s not seek to keep that love to ourselves, for that is not really love.

That is the thing which St. Paul warns about . That which insists on its own way; that is what is envious, boastful, arrogant. It is not love. Rather, let us love with that love which is patient, and kind and endures all things. Which embraces the weirdo, the foreigner, the queer. Which takes those most precious gifts which we have been given back to God and offers them back up to be used by the weird.

So, as we gather around this table to celebrate this eucharistic sacrifice, let us come with our own gifts, our own love, and all our idiosyncratic weirdness, ready to surrender it all to God, that it might be to God’s glory.

1 Comment

  • Wonderful! Thank you Bethany, this is a very thoughtful and thought provoking sermon. I had never expected to find myself ever return to a Parish. I was very happy at the Cathedral thank you very much. However, as you say, there is something wonderful and true about the weirdness of St Margaret’s, Toxteth. Being here has certainly changed my life, and for the better.

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