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Today, with the rest of our Diocese, we celebrate the Feast Day of Absalom Jones, one of our past clergy here in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Since Jones’ Feast within the official lectionary for the wider Episcopal Church does not include an epistle reading, we have used the epistle for the 6th Sunday after the Epiphany today.
That lesson, a reading from the 1st Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, is very fitting for what I am about to share with you. It is in this passage that Paul reminds us of the very thing he told us 3 Sundays ago. Paul says that as the church, we are not divided by our leaders, for Paul and Apollos are servants of God who have worked together to prepare the church in Corinth to follow our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is in this spirit that I wish to share some of what our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said just last week at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia, a church founded by Jones himself.
Our Presiding Bishop focused his words on our Gospel today, Jesus’ commandment in John to “love one another as I have loved you.” In doing so, Bishop Curry reminds us that this love isn’t just the kind of love we see on soap operas, such as those he confessed to discovering and watching with his wife during his off-Zoom time within lock-down at the start of the Pandemic. Instead, this love, as Jesus says, is the kind that lays “down one’s life for one’s friends.”
This love, as our Presiding Bishop points out, is what Absalom Jones showed in his own life. Jones, when seeking freedom for himself and his family, didn’t start with himself. He started with his wife. Bishop Curry notes the strength of this action by saying that he could only hope he would have done the same for his own wife.
Yet this love we see in Absalom Jones, didn’t come easily. Jones had to “distill” the Word, to use our Presiding Bishop’s apt description. This mirror’s Paul’s words today, as he reminds the Corinthians that they started as “infants in Christ” and so Paul started them with spiritual “milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.” Paul goes on to tell the Corinthians that “Even now you are still not ready”. There are times when we may need to ask the question of what spiritual nourishment we are ready for ourselves.
Jones, thankfully, made himself ready for spiritual food, though it wasn’t easy. Bishop Curry told St. Thomas last week about the catechisms of old, reminding them that we have a catechism in our Prayer Book, telling the congregation he was sure they had read it lately. I know those who have been diligent in following our Christian Formation and going through all the resources and links provided, have gone through at least part of our Catechism in recent weeks even.
Our Presiding Bishop then noted the catechisms used specifically for slaves. Now the slave masters of old had to deal with many passages of Scripture where such voices as Paul, who was assisted in ministry by many including our own Patron Luke, speak to the freedom Christ Jesus has provided us from the bondage of sin. Our own Gospel today shows Jesus telling His own Disciples, “I do not call you servants any longer…; but I have called you friends.”
Yet the slave masters wanted to justify their own status, and their slave catechisms reflected this. In there, they taught lies such as that adultery, which, as our Presiding Bishop pointed out, we all know what it is, was, in fact, the refusal of a slave to listen to and obey the master.
These are the falsehoods slaves in Absalom Jones’ day had to contend with. Yet he did not let these lies keep him down. He distilled the truth, as our Presiding Bishop said. He was able to move into the freedom of Love, the very love Jesus calls us to, and be brought out of slavery into freedom, both literally and spiritually.
I share our Presiding Bishop’s words because they are good and true and helpful for us to hear. I cannot do full justice to them, so I ask that you seek them out on St. Thomas’ website in their great celebration of Absalom Jones just last week. I point you to our Presiding Bishop because his message of the Way of Love points straight to Jesus, the very one I am trying to direct you to as well.
I point to the Presiding Bishop’s words, which point to the example of The Rev. Absalom Jones, a former slave, which point all the back to Jesus. Jones had everything against him, yet he made it to freedom and to become the first African American priest in The Episcopal Church. He made it because he was able to distill the Word of God, in spite of all the lies that had been told to him.
We, then, are called to follow Jones’ example, to distill the Word of God and to follow that Word all the way back to the arms of our beloved and blessed Lord Jesus Christ.