Sunday of the Epiphany
Isaiah 60:1-6 (NIV)
(1) Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.
(2) See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you.
(3) Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
(4) Lift up your eyes and look about you; all assemble and come to you; your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the arm.
(5) Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy; the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come.
(6) Herds of camels will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord.
Ephesians 3:1-12 (NIV)
(1) For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles -
(2) Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you,
(3) that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly.
(4) In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,
(5) which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.
(6) This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
(7) I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.
(8) Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
(9) and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
(10) His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
(11) according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(12) In him and through faith in him may we approach God with freedom and confidence.
Matthew 2:1-12 (NIV)
(1) After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem
(2) and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”
(3) When king Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.
(4) When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.
(5) In Bethlehem in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written:
(6) But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.”
(7) Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
(8) He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
(9) After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.
(10) When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.
(11) On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.
(12) And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Now, Now the best comes. Did you ever read a book, or watch a movie and you get emotionally involved in the story. Then, at the very end, you hear that line. What now? someone will ask. Now the best comes.
You have been emotionally invested in the story, living the experience along with the characters, and finally at the end, that line comes along and you know it is the end of the story, but there is more and it is even better than what you just experienced.
It is a nice thought, it is a good way to end a story, but it can also be extremely aggravating.
That happened to me this week. I was still struggling with this cold that keeps toying with me, like I’m one of those block puzzles that kids sometimes get for christmas. With a little bit of time and forethought, the puzzle almost gets completed. Maybe its one of those 3d eiffel towers or empire state buildings. You finally get to the last piece and then the dog gets loose and knocks it all down. That kind of cold. just feeling better and along it comes again and knocks you down again. So, I was working a lot at home, planning out services over the next couple of months and doing a little pleasure reading. I picked up a book called Cross Roads by Wm. Paul Young that I had heard good things about and got into it and couldn’t put it down.
The story, like many others, dealt with a young man who was rich and powerful, but in his quest to be rich and powerful had burnt a lot of bridges and had ostracized himself from friends and family to the point that he was alone. He was alone and paranoid and unwilling to trust or love because in this quest, he had realized that those who got close to him, were there not out of an honest sense of friendship but rather because they hoped to gain, or at least he feared that they hoped to gain advantage by being near him.The character had lost a lot in his life. He lost his parents at a very young age. He lost his brother shortly thereafter. He lost his son to an illness no one could have predicted. He lost his wife because the loss of his son had hit him so hard and he lost his daughter in that process. He lost everything and everyone that had mattered to him. And, most importantly, he lost his ability to trust. And with this, he lost his ability to see the hurt he caused, and the destruction he left in his path.
The character, at least for me, was easy to connect with. Now, the actions that made up his life may be extreme, but yet, to some extent we all can understand his anger and frustration. We all hurt people we love. We all destroy things, whether by intention or not. The destruction that we cause is real, especially for those who try to pick up the pieces.
Yet, when we get to the point when we begin to realize what we have done, the struggle becomes even harder. Destruction is one thing. It is entirely another to come to terms with it and begin to rebuild what you have destroyed. Apology and forgiveness fall into a category that many of us find unbearable at best and impossible at worst. It is so much easier, we tell ourselves, to cut our losses, to live with the shame and the regret than to try to make amends for what we have done.
I realized that myself this week. One afternoon, Eimy and I were talking and I began to realize some things that I had done that had seriously hurt her. Yet, acknowledging the wrong I had done, but I had never really apologized for it. Until that afternoon, as I stood there and tried to find the words that I needed to say and she needed to hear. Eventually, I muddled through what I was trying to say. I hoped that I had fixed it. Yet, even when we apologize, forgiveness is not a given. Even when we get the forgiveness we seek, it doesn’t come as soon as we hope it would.
It is a difficult thing to admit our faults, seek forgiveness for them, and pray that the forgiveness, the true forgiveness we seek, will come. Many times it does, and I am thankful that for me it did, at least it did this week. But there are other people I have hurt in my life whose forgiveness I still wait for. I imagine that many of you can relate to this. We all struggle with these issues and we struggle with them throughout our lifetimes.
When you think about it, it does make sense, kind of. You see, it is all interconnected. Our lives, our loves, our sins, and our fears. The tapestry that is life can not be separated from the strands of fabric that compose it. And in each of these strands, we find our realities. We find our lives, our loves, our sins, and our fears. Trying to rid our everyday from these fabrics, weakens the fabric as a whole.
The book that I read talks about this. The greatest fear of all is, of course, death itself. In the story, the character is in a conversation with Jesus. In this conversation, Jesus is trying to help the character understand what death really is. Jesus explanation goes like this:
“It’s a conversation with many layers, much of it not for today. For now, understand that a significant reason why you fear death is because of your atrophied and miniscule perception of life. The immensity and grandeur of life continually absorb and eradicate death’s power and presence. You believe death is the end, an event causing a cessation of things that truly matter; and therefore it becomes the great wall, the inevitable inhibitor of joy, love, and relationship. You see death as the last word, the final separation. The truth is death has only been a shadow of those things. What you call death is indeed a separation of sorts, but not anything like you imagine it. You have focused yourself and defined your existence with reference to the fear of that singular last-breath event rather than recognizing death’s ubiquitous presence all around you - in your words, your touch, your choices, your sorrows, your unbelief, your lies, your judgment, your unforgiveness, your prejudices, your power-seeking, your betrayals, your hiding. The ‘event’ of death is only one small expression of that presence, but you have made that expression everything, not realizing that you swim in death’s ocean every single day.” (Young, p. 67)
And then, it get’s really interesting. Jesus continues, “You were not designed for death, but neither was death intended for this universe. Inherent in the event of death is a promise, a baptism in this ocean that rescues, not drowns. Human beings uncreated life and brought that un-life into your experience, so out of respect for you, we wove it from the beginning into the larger tapestry. You now experience this underlying tension between life and death every day until you are released through the event of death, but you were designed to deal with its encroachment in community, inside relationship, not in self-centered isolation like your little place here.” (Young, p. 67)
You see, our fear is only powerful if we confront it alone, and we may very well know that. However, the other fabrics that come together in our tapestry of life work the same way. Our sin is only powerful if we confront it alone. In the case of our lives and our love, the work the same way, but in the opposite direction. Our lives only have power if we live with others. Our loves only have power when that love is shared.
Everything about us is overflowing with the underlying necessity for community. But this is the sunday of the Epiphany. So, you may be wondering where exactly I am going with this. Well, what is an epiphany? Well, in the sense that we are celebrating today, Epiphany refers to commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the magi. Yet, the meaning of the word goes deeper than that. Epiphany refers to a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
An epiphany is an “aha” moment. It is important to note that the only thing that changes in an epiphany is our own understanding of it. The event, the realization is about something that has already been, but we are just realizing it.
The fabric of our lives, the one that is woven together in community, has always been woven together in the same way. The importance of the community in the formation of the tapestry has always been there, yet we don’t see it that way. We tend to think of community coming next. Man and woman were created and then the community was formed. Yet, I ask this morning, if maybe, just maybe, the community was there from the beginning and the existence of the community was necessary for the weaving together of the fabric of our lives.
If so, then we need to start living in that realization, in that recognition, in that epiphany. God created the world and everything in it. The recognition among the gentiles that Jesus has come for all mankind is an epiphany because God always intended creation to be for everyone. The love of God existed before history itself, and certainly before the physical birth of Jesus Christ. Our epiphany is that Christ is the fulfillment of the promise God made to all of creation. Our epiphany is that we not only all share in the gift but that we were all made from the fabric of that relationship. The relationship with God and the relationship with each other.
I want to mention here, that next week we will be celebrating a service that many of you may have never done and I am certain that I never have. This service will focus on the idea of covenant, and more specifically on the covenant we share with God and with one another. Part of the idea of covenant is that we are, by nature of being human and created by God, in covenant with God. Over this next week, I ask you to reflect on what it means to be in covenant with God and what it means to be in covenant with each other as a body of Christ, as a community of faith. Next week, when we join together for worship, bring those reflections with you so that as we pray together, we pray as a community, we pray in the hopes of weaving together a tapestry that will give new life to our church, to ourselves and to the mission of Christ on earth.
As we think and reflect this week, let us also realize how important we each are for the entire covenant. While we each make our own, each individual who enters makes the whole stronger. Coming to terms with this takes a lot of trust. It is not really in our nature to trust in that way, but for that we are here, for that we are created, for that we live in this time and in this place.
A covenant isn’t a magical promise that will ensure easy going. It will not guarantee that there are no more arguments among us nor will it guarantee that forgiveness will be easy. It is a promise we make to each other and to God. A promise that is made as we have each had our epiphanies. We promise to journey on, wherever God may lead us. It is about looking back, recognizing hurt, but also recognizing the healing that comes. It comes from the only place it truly can, from Christ.
Towards the end of the book I read there is a poem. I want to close this morning with that poem, and as a starting off point in our reflections throughout this week.
I met you at the crossing
Where one road finds another
I did not even ask your name
I would not even bother
I looked at only what I saw
And did not see you fall
And even though I said I loved
I hardly loved at all.
I didn’t mean to leave you there
It wasn’t my intent
I simply looked the other way
And said nothing I meant.
I didn’t choose to cross this road
Although it’s what I wanted
Instead pretended you weren’t there
Believed you never counted
Oh, see I have this golden chain
Tied round my throat and heart
A bond more real to me than you
Is keeping us apart
I need a Voice to answer me
I need Someone who’s true
I need new eyes that let me see
That in my me is You
O, Someone please now guide me cross
This road betwixt between
And join my broken bits of soul
To real that is unseen. (Young, p.268-269)
We have each been someone’s voice, and we have each failed to be someone’s voice. Our covenant brings us together to be the Voice to answer those who seek. Let this epiphany be our epiphany, the epiphany where we realize the truth God has set before us, the truth that until today, we could not see. And let this epiphany be the epiphany where our broken bits of soul are joined together to make real what we now can see together. Amen.
Young, Wm. Paul. Cross Roads. 1st ed. New York: Faith Words, 2012. Print.
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