Savior

Epiphany: It’s Not Over

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15-01-04-6-wisemen-2OLD TESTAMENT:  Isaiah 60: 1-6

Read the passage from Isaiah

Having just previously declared that God is coming as Redeemer, the writer of this part of Isaiah calls Israel to “Arise, Shine”.  Essentially, it is a proclamation that God, the Eternal Light, has come.  God’s Presence is already here and the transformation of the world has begun.

Now keep in mind that this was probably written at the end of the Babylonian exile.  The once-thriving Jerusalem now sits empty, ravaged and desolate.  The people lived in darkness and exile.  The temple is gone, destroyed in the attack.  And the dynasty of David, the veritable hope for the future, seemed to be at its floundering end.  It would have been easy to miss seeing any good that might come of the situation, easy to miss any hint of things getting better.  So this is the crescendo of the preparation for God’s arrival.  Come on people, the prophet screams, Wake up!  Don’t you see it?  Things are happening!  The days of waiting are over.  Your children are being gathered even as we speak to return home.  It is time now, time for Israel to become who God intended—a light to the nations.

Now, of course, it’s easy for us to sort of tack this passage on to our story of the Wise Men from the Gospel of Luke, but this really did not have anything to do with the exile.  The Presence of God was palpable, moving into the desolation and beginning to re-create Jerusalem.  It was time now to shape their life together as a people and as a community.

But for us, there is also that undercurrent of eschatological reflection.  Our hereafter, our “heaven” as we know it, is not something out there or up there or just up ahead.  It is not some “other” of “future” place to which we aspire to go.  It is here.  We just have to look around and see it.  There are streams of souls in procession.  We just have to find our place.  And yet, even Israel didn’t understand the message any more than we do.  God is not promising to make our lives easier, or to fill us with wealth and power, or to put us on top.  God is promising to remake us, transform us into something completely different.  God is promising not a return to normalcy but a new normal.  In fact, if you read it, it’s a new normal for everyone—for all those camel drivers regardless of where they come from—Midian, Ephah, Sheba.  In today’s terms, it’s all the camel drivers from somewhere in the Sudan, possibly modern-day Iraq, and probably Ethiopia, descending into the Holy Places not to go to war or to take people into exile but to come together, bringing their resources, and praising God as one.

This week we read three Scriptures that make up our Epiphany text.  They are the same ones that we read every Epiphany.  Perhaps we miss Epiphany.  It sort of gets overshadowed by all the chaotic over-seasoning that came in the weeks before and the mad sprint toward Lent that is only weeks away.  So we put on the green “ordinary” stoles and try to get our heads back above the ensuing waves.  And yet, this is the place where it all comes together—the past promises that were made even as far back as the exile, that birth of the holy child that we just celebrated, and the rest—all of us that came after.  The past now makes sense and the future becomes real.  God’s Presence is always and forever in-breaking into this world.  So, “Arise, Shine! For your light has come!”  God is transforming all of us even as we speak.

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. Why is it so hard for all of us to gain a sense of God’s Presence in the darkness?
  3. What signs of the sacred and transformation do you see now?
  4. What stands in the way of your seeing that transformation?
  5. Do we lose something of the story if we read this solely as a prophetic recount of Christ rather than in the context in which it was written?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  Ephesians 3: 1-12

Read the passage from Ephesians

Paul and his disciples never used the word “Epiphany”.  In fact, the day never really was mentioned until around the 4th century.  And yet, whoever wrote this (probably not Paul), came really close to the whole notion that we celebrate:  Something new has happened in Jesus.  This was no ordinary baby.  This was no ordinary mother.  These were not ordinary shepherds and not your average run-of-the-mill Wise Men.  They were all part of a new order, a new normal.

The writer acknowledges that this mystery of God’s Presence, the notion of the holy and the sacred actually being a part of us, was not made known to everyone.  But now is the time.  The Gentiles have been brought into the story, made characters in the ongoing story of God’s Incarnation.  The point of the writing is to further explain what the readers of the letter have already gotten.  They have already been gifted with this manifestation of Christ.  They just had to open their eyes to know it.  But this is not the “accepted” news and so the text implies that Paul’s relating of this mystery is the reason for his imprisonment (and, perhaps, you could surmise, the reason that one of Paul’s disciples may be writing this letter.)

But the writer does not seem to be discouraged.  The Spirit has now made known what in former times was concealed, namely that the Gentiles are now fellow heirs, fellow members of the same body, and fellow participants in the promises. This idea of grace extended to all, even those seemingly unexpected recipients, is not really a new thing to Paul or to this writer. The assertion is that the mystery has been hidden with God, who is the creator of all things, suggesting that this mystery has always been God’s plan. This mystery in Christ — Lord over all peoples, both Jew and Gentiles — was the eternal plan of God, but only in the last days has God made it evident and begun its fulfillment.

The greatest celebration of the Incarnation is this celebration of the diversity and wisdom of the church brought together in unity, just as those Wise Men from the East (and Gentiles to boot), experienced the Presence of God.  The greatest celebration of the Church is the coming together of all of this wisdom so that all in their own understanding might experience the Presence of God.  The mystery is that this Holy Child, this Sacred Son of God, this Christ, this Messiah, is really intended to be Savior to us All.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. How would this message be received by our society today?
  3. What does this new order mean for you?
  4. If diversity is the “new order” and the “mystery for the church, what does that mean in our modern culture?
  5. Do we really understand the concept of Jesus as “Savior to us All”?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 2: 1-12

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Matthew

Our Gospel text this week begins by setting us “in the time of King Herod”.  And in it, we find that the last question of Advent comes not at Christmas but afterward and is asked not by an individual but by a group.  They believe that the star (or, for some, an unusual conjunction of heavenly bodies that produces an especially bright light) marks the birth of a special child destined to be a king.  They ask, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?

And so Herod hears that a king had been born in Bethlehem.  Well, the formula is simple—a king is born, but a king is already here; and in Herod’s mind and the minds of all those who follow him, there is room for only one king.  The passage says that King Herod was frightened and all Jerusalem with him.  They probably were pretty fearful.  After all, there was a distinct possibility that their world was about to change.  It seemed that the birth of this humble child might have the ability to shake the very foundations of the earth and announce the fall of the mighty.  Things would never be the same again.

So Herod relies on these wisest ones in his court.  The writer of Matthew’s Gospel says that they’re from the East.  Some traditions hold that these wise men were Magi, a Priestly caste of Persian origin that followed Zoroastrianism and practiced the interpretation of dreams and portents and astrology.  Other traditions depict them with different ethnicities as the birth of this Messiah begins to move into the whole world.  But somewhere along the way, they had heard of the birth of this king and came to the obvious place where he might be—in the royal household.  So, sensing a rival, Herod sends these “wise ones” to find the new king so that he could “pay homage” to him.  We of course know that this was deceitful.  His intent was not to pay homage at all, but to destroy Jesus and stop what was about to happen to his empire.  It was the only way that he could preserve what he had.

According to the passage, the wise men know that Christ was born; they needed God’s guidance, though, to find where Christ was.  When they get to the place where the star has stopped, the passage tells us that they were “overwhelmed with joy”.  They knelt down and paid the new king homage and offered him gifts fit for a king.  Even though later interpreters have often tried to place specific meanings on these gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, it is possible that the writer of the Gospel According to Matthew probably simply thought that these gifts, exotic and expensive as they were, were gifts that would be worthy of a great and mighty king.  They were gifts of joy, gifts of gratitude, gifts of celebration.

And then the passage tells us that, heeding a warning in a dream, these wise and learned (and probably powerful) members of the court of Herod, left Bethlehem and returned to their own country, a long and difficult journey through the Middle Eastern desert.  Rather than returning to their comfortable lives and their secure and powerful places in the court of Herod, they left and went a different way.  They knew they had to go back to life.  But it didn’t have to be the same.

So they slip away.  Herod is furious.  He has been duped.  So he issues an order that all the children two years old and younger in and around Bethlehem should be killed.  The truth is that Jesus comes into the world as it actually is, not as we wish it to be.  Evil and greed are real and the ways of the world can and do crush life.

It is not really any different for us.  After all, what has changed?  Has Christmas produced for us some sort of “new normal”?  There are too many places in the world where wars still rage.  There are children that went to bed hungry last night and people in our own city that slept outside wrapped in anything that they could find hoping to stay warm.  And, in the midst of it all, Congress is still arguing over the federal budget and Obamacare and whatever else that they can argue about and make themselves known to their constituents.  What has changed?  Well, not much.  Truth be told, everything seems to have pretty much returned to normal.

But, then, think about that first Christmas.  This passage moves the story beyond the quiet safety of the manger.  We realize that the manger is actually placed in the midst of real life, with sometimes dark and foreboding forces and those who sometimes get it wrong.   The primary characters are, of course, God and these visitors, these foreign Gentiles who did not even worship in the ways of the Jewish faith.  They were powerful, intelligent, wealthy, and were accustomed to using their intellect and their logic to understand things.  You know, they were a lot like us.  But they found that the presence of the Divine in one’s life is not understood in the way that we understand a math equation.  It is understood by becoming it.

Maybe that’s the point about Christmas that we’ve missed.  Maybe it’s not just about the nativity scene.  Maybe it’s more about what comes after.  We often profess that Jesus came to change the world.  But that really didn’t happen.  Darkness still surrounded us.  Does that mean that this whole Holy Birth was a failure, just some sort of pretty, romantic story in the midst of our sometimes chaotic life?  Maybe Jesus didn’t intend to change the world at all; maybe Jesus, Emmanuel, God with Us, came into this world to change us.  Maybe, then, there IS a new normal.  It has to do with what we do after.  It has to do with how we choose to go back to our lives.  Do we just pick up where we left off?  Or do we, like those wise men choose to go home by another way?

Many of us bemoan what seems to be a take-over of our Christmas by the culture and the society.  We hear time and time again a calling to “put Christ back in Christmas”.  Well, I don’t think that’s the problem.  God in Christ has never left.  We are not called to put Christ back in Christmas; we are called to put ourselves there.  The story tells us that.  The young Mary didn’t just come on the scene for a starlit evening.  She was there, there at the cross.  Her whole life became immersed in this child that she brought into the world.  The shepherds stopped what they were doing, leaving their sheep on a hillside outside of Bethlehem with no protection from bandits or wild animals and thereby risking everything they knew, everything that would preserve their life the way it was.  And those so-called Wisemen?  They never went back.  They chose to go home by another way.

And what about us?  We are called to place ourselves in the story.  We all have to go back.  We all have to return to our lives.  But that manger so long ago is not that far removed from us.  In fact, it’s really sort of in the middle of our lives.  God did not just visit our little earth so long ago and then return to wherever God lives.  God came as Emmanuel, God with Us, and that has never changed.  The birth of Jesus means that God was born in a specific person in a specific place.  The Christmas story affirms to us that God is here, that the Messiah for whom we had waited has come, that we are in God’s hands.  But the Epiphany story moves it beyond the manger.  And all of a sudden we are part of the story.  We are part of the Incarnation of God, the manifestation of God’s Presence here on our little earth.  The God in whose hands we rest danced into our very lives and is now all over our hands.  It is our move.  God was not just born into the child Jesus; God is born into us, into humanity.  And the world really hasn’t changed.  But we have.  And we are called to change the world.

 

  1. What meaning does this hold for you?
  2. What “other way” are we called to travel?
  3. What do you think of the notion that Jesus came to change not the world itself but us?
  4. What new light (pun intended) does Epiphany shed on the meaning of Christmas for you?

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

The desire to find God and to see God and to love God is the one thing that matters.  (Thomas Merton)

Get this first epiphany right–God perfectly hidden and perfectly revealed in the actual, and all the rest of the year will not surprise or disappoint you…If God can be manifest in a baby in a poor stable for the unwanted, then we better be ready for God just about anywhere and in anybody. The letting-go of any attempt to compartmentalize God will always feel dangerous and maybe even like dying…And it is both the ground and the goal of all mystical experience. Now God is in all things. We can no longer separate, exclude or avoid anybody or anything, especially under the guise of religion. We all, like the Magi, must now kneel and kiss the ground, throwing our own kingships to the wind…Afterwards, we are out of control, going back home by a different route, yet realigned correctly with what-is. Reality is still the best ally of God, and God always comes disguised as our life.  (Excerpts from “Epiphany:  You Can’t Go Home Again”, by Richard Rohr)

When the star in the sky is gone, When the Kings and Princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks, he Work of Christmas begins:

               To find the lost,

               To heal the broken,

               To feed the hungry,

               To release the prisoner,

               To teach the nations,

               To bring Christ to all,

                        To make music in the heart.  (Dr. Howard Thurman, ‘The Work of Christmas”)

 

 

Closing

 

It is not over, this birthing.  There are always newer skies into which God can throw stars.  When we begin to think that we can predict the Advent of God, that we can box the Christ in a stable in Bethlehem, that’s just the time that God will be born in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe.  Those who wait for God watch with their hearts and not their eyes, listening, always listening for angel words. 

(Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem (Philadelphia:  Westminster Press, 1980), 85.)

 

Easter 4C: ALL the Sheep?

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SheepFIRST LESSON:  Acts 9: 36-43

To read the passage from Acts

Rather than talking about conversion as we have the last couple of weeks, now the story shifts to Peter’s miraculous raising of Tabitha, or Dorcas.  This is not the first time that Peter has emulated Jesus in this way.  Earlier in Acts 3, we read of Peter’s healing of a lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the temple. So, this raising is not as out of the blue as it sounds to us at the onset.

Here, the congregation in Joppa (and particularly the women) has lost one of the pillars of its community. She was nothing short of a beloved saint, their own Mother Teresa, if you will.  The fact that we are given not only her Aramaic name but also her Greek name Dorcas may imply that her ministry went far beyond even her own community.  In both languages, the name means “gazelle”.  This seems to be a deep and profound loss.  In fact, Tabitha is so powerful that the community does not want to let her go.  She is literally called mathetria, or a “female disciple”.  This puts her on equal footing with the New Testament disciples that we know so well.

The emphasis is not really upon Peter, but upon the community.  They had lovingly anointed and cared for their friend’s body and then waited prayerfully outside while Peter went inside.  This is a congregation who had lost a friend, a role model, a mentor.  This is a congregation who had lost the one who would stand up for them, these helpless widows.  This was one who was bringing about change.  But it also shows that this was a congregation who believed in hope, who believed in the possibility of new life and resurrection, who believed in a God that could transcend death.  It also shows a congregation that was willing to get involved in each other’s lives, to even weep together for their friend, and to dare to hope that life would return.  This was truly a healing community.  This was a community that was open to being transformed.

Now there is no way to verify whether or not there was really a raising.  We have been told before that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit.  This may count as a legend or the writer may have just took some poetic license and put it in.  But, regardless, it is a story of transformation—death to life, brokenness to wholeness, hate to love.  It is the story of the power of death and despair once again being overcome and recreated into life.  It is that hope that binds us all.  Maybe we need more stories like that.  They invite us to look for God’s hand in today’s new beginnings.  They invite us to feel the continued echoes of Christ’s story, glimpses of the mystery of God.  Martin Marty said this about this text:

 

“Church rolls were never swelled because people sat up after having been dead. They swelled and endure because people who have faced in faith what Karl Rahner called death, ‘the abyss of mystery,’ are content to leave the details and reportings in the realm of mystery. They want something else. Through and in it all they have seen and known and experienced Jesus Christ’s rising as something that breaks the mold and ushers in a new age in history, including in our personal histories.”

 

1)      What is your response to this passage?

2)      What does that mean for you that this community believed in hope and in each other?

3)      What does that have to with transformation?

4)      What does it mean to “look for” new beginnings?

5)      The 18th century writer Voltaire said that “it is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.” What would that mean for our lives if we looked at everything as resurrection?

6)      How much could others sense echoes of Christ’s story in our lives?

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  Revelation 7: 9-17

To read the passage from Revelation

First of all, remember that the writings that we know as Revelation are full of rich imagery and metaphors, some of which make sense to us in our time, and some of us do not.  Remember that the book was written when the Christians of Asia Minor were being persecuted by Roman officials for their refusal to acknowledge and worship the emperors.  Some Christians became martyrs; others weakened and left the faith.  There were enough leaving that there appeared to be a crisis as to whether or not the fledgling new religion would survive.  So, the writer tries to sharpen and make clear the alternatives of worshiping either Caesar or God.  The passage today is one of words for those who are desperately striving to remain faithful.

John begins the chapter by talking about all the people from the twelve tribes of Israel who will be in “heaven” with us—144,000—the perfect number, the complete number of 12 tribes times 12 times 1,000.  The twelve tribes of Israel—the ones to which we as Christians have been grafted—are there.  The writer is reminding us that we may be surprised at what comes next, at who comes next, at how it’s construed.  It is a reminder that in spite of our plans, in spite of our prejudices, in spite of our boxes that we build, God is recreating everything and everyone.

But whatever it is that we call “heaven” or the “afterlife” or (not my favorite) “our great reward”, the work will not be done.  Whatever you think comes next, we will indeed rest from our labors, but the worshiping and ministry and building of the Kingdom of God will continue.  We will be guided to the waters of life, true life, and God will wipe away every tear from every eye.  No more tears….just meaning and relationship and shalom.

But when we read this, it is not just an account of the future.  It is, after all, a testament to the idea of the Kingdom of God that is now as well as something to come.  We are given glimpses of what will be, a “vision”, if you will, to work toward.  The writer known as John broadens the vision beyond what we can imagine—people gathered from every nation and language on earth, all giving praise to God, to the TRUE one on the throne.  In a sermon, “Glimpsing Heaven in Thin Places”, the Rev. Dr. Nora Tubbs Tisdale says this:

I’m guessing that included in that crowd, too, are going to be a lot of people who surprise us by their presence there.

My maternal grandfather, a lifelong Presbyterian minister, died some years ago at the ripe old age of 98. There were many things I loved about my grandfather–his integrity, his intellect, his deep faith in Jesus Christ. But we regularly disagreed on a host of social, political and church issues, including the ordination of women to ministry. Sadly, my beloved grandfather never came to terms with what I did with my life and always thought that I was forsaking my true calling by going into ministry.

My husband, however, made me smile through my tears on the morning of my grandfather’s death–which just happened to take place early on World Communion Sunday. “Nora,” he said, “Who do you suppose is serving your grandfather communion in heaven this morning? Clergy women perhaps???”

If truth be told, we all have our blind spots, our prejudices. And, consequently, I have a feeling that we’re all going to be surprised by who is sitting at the Lamb’s eternal banquet table with us in heaven. Surely we will see people there we considered unforgivable, unredeemable. People against whom we have long held grudges or prejudices. People from nations we branded with the label “enemy” or people we failed to even see in this life because of their poverty, disease, or station in life. They will all be there. For no matter how inclusive we think we are in our embrace of others, heaven–according to John’s vision–will be far more so.

But inclusivity will not be the only surprise awaiting us in heaven. I think we’re also going to be surprised by what people are DOING in heaven.

When heaven is depicted in romantic art, what we often see are a group of cherubs playing their harps, while people lounge around on clouds of ease, as if on a perpetual vacation.

But when we peer through John’s veil, what we see is that heaven is actually a very active place. And what is it people are busy doing? They are worshiping and serving God and others–doing those very same things that gave them the greatest joy, the greatest meaning, in their life here on earth. (Available at http://day1.org/1117-glimpsing_heaven_in_thin_places, accessed 21 April 2010.)

But, as I said, this is not just meant to be a vision for the future; it’s a vision for now.  It’s the way to encounter holiness even here on this messed up old earth.  (And maybe the messed up old earth is what we’re supposed to be working to transform into God’s Kingdom anyway.  You think?)

 

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      What does this idea of glimpsing holiness now mean for you?

3)      What changes if we embrace this image as one for “today” instead of one for “whatever comes next”?

 

GOSPEL: John 10: 22-30

To read the Gospel passage

This Gospel passage may be a little bothersome for us.  We may identify a little too closely with those that were gathered around Jesus. There’s a part of us that wants so desperately to know that Jesus is the Messiah, to hear it explained and spoken to us with clear, plain, undeniable proof.  We read this and we begin to question a little bit whether or not we’re even qualified to be a sheep!

The image of the shepherd is a powerful metaphor for the Messiah in Israel’s collective memory.  They didn’t need to have it explained to them; it was part of them.  And by Jesus implying that they were not part of his sheep, he was saying that they were not part of his way.  The claim that he makes that he and God are one is not necessarily some sort of partial-Trinitarian claim.  It is rather an expression of unity.  He is saying that he and God are unified, united in the work that is being done.  And he’s implying that those who understand this are also part of this unified Spirit of God.  But only those who are part of this way, who understand what it means to be united with God, who embark on that journey toward a oneness with God—only those will actually hear the holiness that is God.

For us Christians, the story of Jesus—his teachings, his miracles, his healings, his birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection—and making that story our own is the way that God is revealed to us, the way that we find that way to God.  As (once again) anti-Semitic as this version sometimes sounds, Jesus is not claiming here that he is the only way that God is revealed; he is claiming this his way of relating to God and working with God is the WAY to God.

People who like black and white answers and who prefer plain meaning to subtlety and allusion may find this passage frustrating.  Who are we kidding?  People who like black and white answers and hard and fast rules of who and what’s in and who and what is out will find the whole Christian walk frustrating.  We usually find ourselves asking, “How long will you keep us in suspense?”  Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told us what to do?  Wouldn’t it be easier if you made it plainer to understand?

The truth is that for most of us the challenge is not in following Jesus.  We like the road.  After all, we know how it ends up.  The challenge is not following, but recognizing Jesus’ voice.  That is the hardest part of this Scripture passage.  We have not really learned what that means.

In keeping with the metaphor of the shepherd and the sheep, remember that in Jesus’ day, sheep were in constant danger—from thieves, wild animals—they could be snatched away at a moment’s notice.  But they knew the shepherd and they listened.  As long as they could hear his voice, they knew they were OK.  They knew they would not be snatched away.  They knew that they would know where to go if they just listened.  In fact, if you’ve ever been around livestock, it seems that is all they know.  They just follow the master.  Maybe they’re not as dumb as we think.  Maybe they do a better of job of shutting out the competing voices than even we do.

Now don’t get me wrong…going this way with Jesus, hearing the Shepherd’s voice, if you will, does not guarantee an easy road, regardless of what those preachers of the prosperity gospel may tell you.  You can do everything right; you can walk the same road that Jesus walked; you can open your lives to others; you can feed all the sheep in the world—and bad things will still happen not because you did anything wrong.  It’s just part of life.  But read on…”I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.”

But you have to listen.  And you have to know to what and to whom it is that you’re listening.  That is probably the hardest of all.

 

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      What does that mean to listen to the voice of God above all the other noises to which we are subjected?

3)      What does this passage say to us about transformation?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

Miracles are retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. (C.S. Lewis, 20th century)

 

The note we end on is and must be the note of inexhaustible possibility and hope. (Evelyn Underhill)

 

Blessed are the ears which hear God’s whisper and listen not to the murmurs of the world. (Thomas a’ Kempis, 15th century)

 

 

Closing

 

Truth-telling, wind-blowing, life-giving spirit—we present ourselves now for our instruction and guidance; breathe your truth among us, breathe your truth of deep Friday loss, your truth of awesome Sunday joy.

 

Breathe your story of death and life that our story may be submitted to your will for life. We pray in the name of Jesus risen to new life—and him crucified. Amen.

(“Prayer of Illumination”, from Prayers for a Privileged People, by Walter Brueggemann, p. 179)