The 5th Sunday after the Epiphany 2025
Texts: Isaiah 6:1-13; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11
When we were children there was a Baptist church in the area that used to send people door to door to try to convert people. We knew some of the Baptist children because we rode the same school bus. One day one of them asked my brother, sister, and me if we were Christians, and we said no, we were Methodists.
We expected the Baptists to come knocking one day, so we had a plan to surprise them. They knocked on the door and I opened the door and asked, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” It confused them, that was supposed to be their line.
We Episcopalians are not known for being very evangelical. By ‘evangelical’ I mean being mission-oriented, intentionally going out and seeking people who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
As the historic, established church before the American Revolution, many if not most families who came to live in places like Virginia, South Carolina, Massachusetts, and New Jersey were Anglican. After the Revolution, the very next day after signing the U.S. Constitution, the Episcopal Church was born by passing its own version of the Constitution, establishing the General Convention. Many of the Founding Fathers were Episcopalian, including Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington.
Historically, in the Episcopal Church the faith was transmitted from generation to generation. Most likely our parents or grandparents brought us to church.
The lessons today remind us that even now, especially in our challenging times, we need to continue to reach out to young people to share with them the joy of being loved by Jesus. Each succeeding generation in our lifetimes has become less engaged in their Christian faith, and this is having an impact on the culture. We see so many lost young people.
These are Jesus’ last words to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, “Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” This is the Great Commission, the mission of the Church Catholic, the reason for its existence, the call of every single Christian, not just those who are ordained.
So, what does evangelism look like?
In the early days of the Church it sounded like this, “I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which you stand, through which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.”
This is Paul encouraging the baptized to continue in the faith. We could consider it to be evangelism to the baptized, because all too often, for a variety of reasons, even some of the baptized fall away from the Christian faith. We get busy and stop making church a priority.
Paul continued, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve…Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder that any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.”
Paul was transformed by his encounter with Jesus Christ, and it drove him to share the joy he experienced. It never left him—the reality of God’s salvation, and he served with all his energy for at least 15 years before he was executed in Rome for his belief, for ‘knocking on doors’ like our Baptist friends.
What I just re-read to you from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is the essence of the Christian faith. A fancy Greek word for it is the ‘kerygma’, which means ‘proclamation’. Closely associated with this in the early church is the Greek word ‘evangelion’, which means ‘good news.’ So, evangelism is the proclamation of the good news. It is the natural, heartfelt expression of the Christian faith—unique to each individual; it is the good news of Jesus Christ; it is, further, developing an understanding of what is most vital in human life and wanting the very best of it for others; it is sharing the love that Jesus has for us with those who do not know how much He loves them; it is helping people connect with God in the depth of their soul; it is reconciling the children of God to God.
So, how do we do this?
It takes as many forms as there are individual Christians. I too have experienced the over-bearing fervor of well-intentioned Christians, and reacted negatively to it. We, when were growing up, all we knew was that we didn’t want to be like those Baptists down the road.
Where is the balance between fervor and being timid in proclaiming this faith we have within us? How do we connect with people who are unaware of their spiritual need, but they are reluctant to be ‘preached to’?
A few years ago I spent the summer in England studying Christian apologetics and learning first-hand from the English Anglicans who have been successful in reaching the unchurched in our time. It’s a form of evangelism.
‘Apologetics’ is not about Christians saying they are sorry for being Christians. It is the art of defending the Christian faith against all the classic objections to it. Such as, ‘If God is all good and all powerful, how come bad things happen?’ Or ‘Religion is just a superstitious response to things we don’t understand’.
One who has thoroughly wrestled with the content and practice of the Christian faith, and who has been led to a deeper understanding of it by that wrestling, is sometimes called to the ministry of apologetics. This ministry engages the unchurched, but also those who were formerly within the church who have drifted away.
Studying apologetics may help those of us within the church develop a deeper, more meaning understanding of the Good News as well. Those of us who were baptized when we were very young may still need to be encouraged and equipped to meet the objections of the unchurched, or the de-churched. To be clear, Christian apologetics is not simply about arguing with atheists or agnostics, but presenting an attractive case to them for the ultimate truth of the Gospel.
Whether or not we are aware of it, every day we have opportunities to present an attractive case for the ultimate truth of the Gospel. By who we are and what we say and do we can be a witness to the faith that is within us. We can do this by offering to pray for someone and doing it right then and there. We can do this by inviting someone to a bible study. We might find the opportunity to just share with someone else why going to church is important to you. This is often what we mean by ‘witnessing’. It’s another form of evangelism.
Jesus was just standing by a lake, and the crowd pressed in around him to hear him speak. He needed to position himself so more people could hear, so he got into a boat and put out onto the water. He used the surface of the calm water to carry his voice to the shore. From there he taught the crowd about the kingdom of God. Jesus used every opportunity and used whatever means were available to share the good news of his coming into the world.
And, the disciples were with him every time. They learned from him how to share the good news, and when he commissioned them, they waited for the Holy Spirit, and when it came to them, they changed the world. Prior to Jesus calling them to follow him, the disciples were just ordinary men, uneducated, untrained, mostly people like you and me. May the Holy Spirit come to awaken us to the opportunities we have to share the Good News wherever we are, and with whomever is willing to listen. Amen.
