New Beginnings

 

Epiphany: Matthew 2:1-12, Journeying through the Bible: Numbers 27, Joshua 1:1-9, 3-4

So here we sit at the beginning of a new year. New years are funny, because things are no different on January 1 than they were on December 31. But it’s a new beginning nevertheless, because from where we started counting, the world is now 2025 years after the birth of Jesus Christ, instead of 2024. 

Actual new beginnings happen in our lives all the time, tangible shifts that redefine and redirect us, like starting college or a new job, retiring or moving to a new state, being given a new diagnosis or a new grandchild.  And then there are the new beginnings that become a new beginning because everyone treats it as one, like new years. So, happy new year!

Our culture would have us seize hold of this declared beginning; new year new you! It’s a new chance to take control of our lives, to start over where we’ve slipped in our self-improvement projects. To set new goals, buy new stuff and subscribe to new apps. There is nothing wrong with setting goals or using tools to help us meet them. But the story we are sold about what a good life is tells us it’s all about us, and all in our hands, and even newness must be managed and controlled. 

Who wants to hear about what we can’t control? We got the genetics we got, were born to the place and people where we started, affected by whatever is currently polluting the air or water or zeitgeist, and our lives are tangled up in larger systems and structures mostly beyond our say so. And we are each limited, singular humans, with only so much time, only so much capacity, only so much ability. But good grief, what kind of new year message is that? Being honest about limitations is zero fun. Being vulnerable, or needy? blech. So, let’s keep reaching for control instead. And starting over at it every year! Maybe one year we’ll master it all. 

All our scriptures today are new beginnings. And, surprise! They tell a different story about what a good life is, and who shapes our lives and the world. 

It’s Epiphany, so we meet again our regular new year’s visitors: Magi, traveling from afar, bringing gifts to worship God coming into the world. This was never in their life plans or new year’s resolutions. But they lived open to the direction of something outside themselves and responded when the call came. They ventured into the unknown, deferential to the uncontrollable, obedient to the call, and in the home of a peasant woman and her carpenter husband in a nowhere town 500 miles from home, they met God incarnate face to face.  

The magi departed from that place changed. They were set on a new path, with a new perception of the universe and everyone in it, and belonging to a new, small and very diverse community of those who had been in Christ’s presence, and who would now be watching together what God was doing in the world as ready and willing participants in God’s unfolding story. 

Next, we jump backwards 1400 years before the birth of Christ. Where we left off our journey through the bible, the people of God, called to be a blessing to the world, were living in the wilderness, learning to trust God to take care of them, and allowing their identity to be reshaped from slaves who existed to prop up the empire to the people of God called to be a blessing to the world.

We meet up with them today in a new beginning moment. They’re ready to enter the promised land and settle in the new home God has for them. We didn’t read the first story assigned to today, but it is depicted in our picture for the day, so it feels only fair to summarize it. As the leaders began planning for how land would be divvied up once they got to their new home, following the male family lines, 5 sisters with no brothers whose father had died came to them and said, why should our family line die out in the land because our father had no sons? We should be given land too. So, Moses brought their case to God, and God said, They are right. Change the law. When the people entered the promised land, they did so with a law that was more just, because these sisters spoke up, God heard them, and the leaders listened.

So now we come to the threshold moment, the old is ending and the new is about to begin. The people of God called to be a blessing to the world have been living in liminal space, neither here nor there, biding time, learning trust and being shaped by God. And now they will be going home. 

But to go from wandering to settled, they will need to cross the swollen, raging river. They will pass through waters of rebirth, waters of deliverance, waters that remake identity. For us, these waters are baptism. For them, the waters that had released them from the death of slavery and ushered them into new life 40 years before was the red sea, which had parted miraculously so they could cross over into safety in the care of God. This is the story that has shaped them, the experience of God’s saving hand of grace to the generation before them. Their own understanding of God and trust in God has been shaped by their parents’ stories of God’s faithfulness. 

Now it’s their turn. In front of their eyes, the water separates, and God makes a way where there was no way. 
And the presence of God and care of God is known not just in stories now but felt in their own bodies– their feet pressing into wet sand and slimy stones, the smell of the damp river bottom, the hot sun and wind on their faces, the astonishing sight of the water itself participating with God in their new beginning. 
God who has been faithful before is faithful now, and will be faithful again. When they came out of the waters they were changed, set on a new path, with a new perception of creation and their place in God’s order.  They were God’s people, called and led, who would now be watching together what God was doing in the world as ready and willing participants in God’s unfolding story. 

They mark the experience with a symbol, stones from the riverbed stacked up as a signpost, and Joshua tells them, “Your children will ask about these stones, and you are to tell them about God parting the waters here as God did at the red sea. Worship God always.”

Inside an ancient story, the same faithful God is always bringing new beginnings. They don’t come from our efforts or control. They come in our endings, our impossibilities, our stuckness, arriving in our places of death and loss that feel like they might define us forever. Sky and water, stars and rivers, strangers, babies, sisters, leaders, long, arduous journeys and staying still for long, long stretches all are part of God’s work. God’s beginnings surprise us, leading us into the lives of new people, like the watching, ready Magi. God’s beginnings use our vulnerability and voices to change the way forward for others, like the brave sisters. God’s beginnings bring us home with continuity and hope, like the children of God coming out of the wilderness into the promised land. However it happens and whomever it involves, God is always bringing salvation and healing, new life, hope and renewed belonging. Always. 

As we begin this new year, lots will be changing in our country and our government, in the global landscape and in our neighborhoods, in our work places and relationships, and in our lives and even our own bodies in ways we don’t yet know and can’t yet see.  

But hear the words of God to the people of God standing on the brink of a new beginning: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’

Maybe instead of naming all the ways we intend to be strong and courageous because we’re so self-guided and goal-driven and in control, we might admit we’re not really in control, and enter this new beginning honest with ourselves about our vulnerabilities and fears, truthful with each other about needing one another, and open to God incarnate who is with us wherever we go, who leads us where we might otherwise not go, and who will meet us face to face where we could never imagine. 

Maybe we enter this new beginning listening, open, watching and ready, helping each other remember and trust that God who has been faithful before is faithful now, and will be faithful again. 

God’s new beginnings are personal, but never individual. When redemption, hope and new life happen to one of us, other people are always involved, and even sometimes creation, and the newness impacts not only us but blesses the world. The Holy Spirit changes us, sets on a new path, gives us a new perception of the universe and everyone in it, and we are rooted more deeply in our belonging to an old, vast, and very diverse community of those who have been in Christ’s presence, who are watching together what God is doing in the world, ready and willing participants in God’s unfolding story. 

2025 years after joining us in person, how will this faithful God show up this year? 

I can’t wait to find out.

Walking Humbly

Matthew 2:1-12

On Christmas Eve, an eight year old church member and I discussed the scandalous fact that even though all our nativity scenes place those wise men right up there in the hay near the manger, they likely did not arrive until Jesus was around two years old. His mind was blown. I didn’t even get to the part about there most likely women being in their group of undoubtedly more than three, because unlike a kids’ birthday party, three gifts doesn’t mean three people showed up.  

And when the Magi did find Jesus, it was in a house, on a street in the small, unremarkable town of Bethlehem, where Mary and Joseph had temporarily settled.  Maybe little Jesus was playing with blocks on the floor of his dad’s shop, or sitting in the kitchen in his diaper, gnawing on a hunk of bread while his mom made lunch.  Maybe Jesus was toddling around the yard with the kids of the shepherd’s families, who had become good friends, being the only other people besides Uncle Zechariah and Aunt Elizabeth to know who Jesus really was. In any case, however ordinarily the day in Bethlehem had begun –sometime after morning chores and greeting neighbors, tending to animals, and work in the carpenter shop—suddenly the quiet neighborhood streets were flooded with the spectacular sounds, smells and sights, of a camel-filled caravan winding toward and piling up in front of Joseph’s house, an entourage of exotically-dressed travelers, excitedly conversing in a foreign language as they approach the front door.  
And even though our nativity scenes don’t give us this glimpse, the Christmas story is not complete until we celebrate Epiphany, the visit of the Magi.
 
A friend recently gave me a book about walking. The book begins in frustration, that while so many other religions have maintained physical disciplines, like Hinduism’s yoga, Taoism’s tai chi, Buddhism’s kung fu, and so on, Christianity seems to be largely cerebral, without a physical component.  And yet, we have an incarnational faith, that is, we believe that God came embodied, into this life in a physical human form to share life with us, so to disconnect prayer from a bodily expression of it seems strange.  

Turns out that it seems perhaps we do, but it’s overlooked because it is the most basic, simple, ordinary human thing: walking.  Our faith story begins with God walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and after they hide themselves from God in mistrust and shame, “walking with God” becomes synonymous throughout scripture with "holiness." Jesus' ministry began when he walked into the wilderness, and continued through walking, criss-crossing territory, meeting people on foot and face to face, and, when he wasn’t in a boat, Paul’s journeys walked him across the Mediterranean region. Historically, walking pilgrimages - first to Jerusalem and then to other holy sites - have been an integral part of the Christian faith. To walk in this way is to acknowledge that even more than the destination, it’s the walking towards that changes you. Finally, the early Church simply called Christianity “The Way.” Jesus says he is the way – he is the route and the journey.
 
So, meeting up with the Magi again this year, I had walking on my mind.  When the star appeared, these scholars of the sky, these practitioners of religion very unlike that of the Hebrew people, consulted their charts and spread the word, assembled their group, packed up their supplies and set out walking, for who knew how long, to go who knew where, and find who knew what. They walk for months on end, day after day, night after night, week after week, through all manner of weather and dangers, navigating through storms and hunger, wild animals and rugged terrain, the court of a despot and the skepticism of scholars, to seek the One promised for centuries to a people not their own. On they walk, trusting that what they are walking toward has somehow changed the trajectory of all humankind. And day after day, they are being changed by the walking itself, their lives being shaped for, and by, this impending encounter with the light of the world, the word made flesh, one slow step at a time.
 
When the visitors first and finally arrive at their perceived destination, it’s not like they think it will be. In the capital city at the seat of power, they are ready to publicly honor the majesty of this holy one. But they can’t find him. Of course, they assume, this great child who has come to change the world is already being honored by all the important people.  Of course, the leader of this land would even, perhaps, have him in the palace.  Instead, they found that nobody in Jerusalem had heard of him. And not only that, but the scholars and priests had to be summoned to look back at the prophesies and figure out what in the world these strangers were even talking about. 
And Herod, the insecure and unpredictable demagogue, is caught unaware, suddenly alerted that his authority may be usurped by some grand scheme that somehow caught the attention of people a world away but slipped by right under his nose. 
 
So, on they walk.  And when the Magi arrive in little Bethlehem, at the home of Joseph the carpenter, these impressive people from an extraordinary place kneel before the seemingly ordinary toddler on the lap of a peasant woman. And their shocking arrival and sincere worship must shake Mary and Joseph to the core, jostling them out of the daily routine and reminding them that this whole thing is so beyond them, and that they are controlling exactly none of it. 
 
And then, because of a dream, the Magi walk home by another road to bypass the raging Herod. And, because of a dream, Joseph will take Mary and Jesus and walk to Egypt, to live as refugees in a foreign land to protect this child from being killed, like so many others subsequently are, by Herod’s violent insecurity.
 
Life is hard. But we complicate it even more. We think we should know things and don’t, we think things that should be easy and aren’t. For better and worse, nobody really gets what they deserve, and so much of it is arbitrary and out of our control. Living is filled with guesswork, and we make terrible mistakes. Evil people often get power, and good people often suffer, and figuring out which way to go is frequently fraught, and our actions have unintended consequences, and we lose people, and we hurt people, and we try to do the right thing but struggle often to know what that is, and why, why can’t God be more obvious? So we think we have to crack the code, figure out how to do it right, learn the moves, like those who went before us did, right?
 
Turns out the central characters throughout our whole faith story were also just feeling their way along, responding to the circumstances, doing the best they could, adapting as they went, just like we are, every day.  They didn’t have anything figured out.  They were trying to live attuned to the deeper story, learning to pay attention, filled with longing and sorrow, and wonder, just like we are. And God directed them, sometimes in extraordinary ways, but mostly in the most basic, ordinary, everyday way, one regular, basic step at a time. None of them ever knew much further ahead than the next step because few of us ever do. Human beings live in time. We move one step at a time, trapped inside of time. But eternity has entered into time, so nevertheless, here on this journey, we are never alone.  And “the road is made by walking,” as they say.  
 
God came into this life, to walk with us, like we walk. In the confusion and the frustration, in the danger and the worry, in the unknown and the figuring it out as you go. This whole thing is beyond us; we are controlling exactly none of it. But every part of all of it is claimed for love, and filled with the presence of God-with-us. Jesus is the way, the route and the journey.   So to practice this faith and follow this Christ, we are to slow our pace to the speed of our soul, our basic humanity, to walk along, like the Magi did, one foot in front of the other, day after day, sometimes excited and feeling it – other times so not, but still, led onward and practicing trust. We learn from them to keep our feet on the ground, and our eyes on the sky. And little by little, we are changed by the walking. Made brave to face adversity, made humble to bow before majesty, made quick to reach across human barriers to see us all in the story of God, made open to dreams and wise to know when to switch routes.  

Whatever we navigate, however it comes, the work of God happens in and through us, one step at a time. This is holy work, walking humbly with God. And in inhabiting our lives, and bodies, and neighborhoods, and communities, we join our forbears in seeking the light of the world that the darkness cannot put out. And we become people ready to pay homage every time we find Christ where he is unexpectedly residing.

Amen.

Ordinary Miracles and Ongoing Epiphany

 

Adoration of the Magi, Andrea Mantegna, c. 1495-1505.

When Epiphany dawns, the swaddling clothes have long been packed away in the attic of the peaceful little home, with room for a workshop that Joseph had rented them in Bethlehem, not too far from THE stable, actually, but near enough to town that he got a little business, enough to keep food on the table. 

And to be honest, since the night when the shepherds and angels and everyone showed up in a wild blur of glory and honor, life has been kind of quiet. Mary and Joseph are far from the people and place they’d call home, no grandparents pitching in or aunties around offering advice through Jesus’ first fever, first tooth, first words, first steps. Leaning on their new community for connection and support.  This was not how they imagined their family life would start- not even once they rearranged their imaginings to include God-incarnate crawling across the living room floor.  Other than that one time Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah came to visit, commiserating over sleepless nights and nursing woes while the babies gurgled together on a blanket on the floor, it has mostly been just the three of them, mama, dada and Jesus, getting to know each other, gently becoming a family.  Week to week, season to season, it’s an ordinary life. 

 

Until the pagans show up and call their kid the king of the Jews.  

 

Just when the story begins to lose its hard edges, when the nostalgia starts to descend and the lens begins to soften, when this baby has begun to feel like he is theirs, a reminder that he is not arrives in the form of sages from a far-off land, astrologers, scientist mystic-scholars who had been watching the skies for signs of God.  

Surprising, perhaps, that those with no personal stake in the story generational anticipation of a Messiah, or claim to Yahweh’s promises to the people claimed by Yahweh, are the ones Yahweh involves next. Their arrival bursts the domestic bubble and exposes the light to all the world.  

 

Epiphany, we call this day. Enlightenment. Aha!  When the scene is illuminated what was familiar and known one second look completely other and utterly amazing the next, often because you suddenly see things with a broader perspective, or through the eyes of another. 

The Christmas moment speaks God WITH US, Epiphany says GOD with us.  

Attention! Sweet and cuddly though he is, folks, this isn’t your own private Messiah.  He belongs to the whole earth! And all who live upon it belong to this little one who has settled himself contentedly here in your lap.  You are recipients of this miracle as much as the next person, of course, but with just as little sense of what it all means as the rest of us, maybe even less, actually, than these astonishing strangers who have arrived on your doorstep seem to grasp.

 

After this great entourage of exotic travelers that have flooded this quiet, provincial town exchange greetings with his parents and bestow their gifts on the child (and there were certainly many of them, of course; what a silly modern assumption that there were just three, because one gift a piece), after the camels have been tended to and bedded down, the tents erected and the strangers washed up and unpacked, I love the crazy, cozy image of lamps lit, table set, Mary and Joseph and their surprise visitors all crowded around an unexpected potluck of fragrant dishes. Wall to wall humans, who look different and smell different and wear different clothing and speak different languages, and whose paths never, ever should have crossed on this planet in any conceivable way, breaking bread together, drinking wine together, sharing together what used to be mostly their own private secret that nobody else could relate to. Perhaps tomorrow they’ll invite the shepherds back over for breakfast.

 

These travelers, who have journeyed over desert and mountains, through seasons and struggles, countless freezing nights and endless scortching day, driven by a quest through unknown to arrive at the very source. And then, from the moment they lay eyes on the child, and Mary and Joseph lay eyes on them, the cosmic cat is out of the bag, so to speak.

 

The ego-maniacal King Herod is now chomping at the bit to stamp out this newly discovered threat to his power, and the news is out, things are not business as usual; God has really come, the world is topsy-turvy and strangers from a strange land are visiting that nice couple down the street, normal as you please.  And it’s as though that one lone star now shatters into a trillion pieces, filling the sky with bright mess, scattering shards of radiance from one end of the globe to the other.

 

Of course they stayed a while, these unexpected guests.  After all, it took many months, maybe years, to get there, they’re not just spending one night and leaving.  So what was it like, adjusting to being next to the miracle for a while?  Was it all the more miraculous for its ordinariness? 

How did it feel to go from a distant star and a lifelong, theoretical quest for truth to a flesh and blood child who threw bawling toddler tantrums when he needed a nap, smeared hummus on the dog, and belly-laughed when daddy tickled him with his beard?  

Because here’s a truth, miracles are almost never as sexy in person as they’re built up to be.  

 

What was it like for Mary and the strangers from the East to fall into some daily patterns together, to have almost nothing humanly in common and yet get one another at a cellular level, sharing in a reality nobody else on earth yet sees, representing to each other by their presence that this really is real. God has really come; the world is being redeemed.  This wonky little collection of folk are now church, if church means, and I think it does, the people gathered around Jesus wondering together who God is, and watching together what ,God is up to. But also, maybe, getting annoyed because they load the dishwasher wrong and forget to take their shoes off in the house?

 

And then after the long visit, and the dreamt warning not to go back to Herod, and the Magi bypassing Jerusalem to return home by another road - (Oh, wasn’t Herod steaming mad when then never swung back by the palace! Didn’t he pace on his balcony with his eyes on the horizon day after day, the realization slowing dawning after one week, two, three, that they were NOT coming back, and there wasn’t a darn thing he could do about it!) - Just after the hugs and blessings and goodbyes, the little family turns back inside, sighing, and expecting, perhaps, that life might return to normal: normal is redefined again. 

Epiphany keeps going, you see.  It doesn’t actually let you turn back. 

By its very nature Epiphany’s path is almost always that of another road.

 

The new road is revealed when, three years after the one who told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, an angel messenger invades Joseph’s dreams, saying, Take the child and his mother and flea, right now, go to Egypt. Get up! NOW.  And it’s your turn, Joseph, to be the strangers from a foreign land.

God-with-us, who was born in a stable is now transient and homeless, and you along with him, foreigners in a foreign land.  

 

Some traditions hold that the little family settled in Egypt with the Ishmaelites, that they were received warmly by the way other side of the family tree, way back before Egypt became the land of captivity, the place from which Yahweh delivered the Israelites from slavery, back from the time when it was all the same trunk, the roots, the beginning. Father Abraham - father of us all, descendants as numerous as the stars.

 

It’s like baby God is on a sightseeing tour of the greatest hits. 

I have been at this project for quite some time, you see…

 

So to the land of Egypt they went, (part of the Roman Empire at the time), seeking safety and welcome in the hospitality, hearts and homes of strangers, who are all part of the whole great story anyway, while back home among the children of Israel, the so-called “King of the Jews” Herod’s terrible wrath and fear ordered the deaths of all male children under two in an effort to stamp out the light of the world before the flame caught and spread.

 

Then it was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

 

And I hate that part of the story and will never understand it, and don’t have a whole lot to say about it, except to notice both that God’s love doesn’t keep madness from happening but suffers it with us, coming as a homeless, transient peasant child, whose identity is revealed to nameless sheep-herders and pagan foreigners and NOT to the powers that be, no matter how loudly they rattle their sabers and fiercely they demand to be in on the secret, and also that as sweeping and awful as Herod’s act of terrible evil was, it seemed not to make a dent whatsoever in the God-with-us project. And while Herod himself is long dead and gone, love endures forever, profoundly and mightily, and every single day God-with-us is with us, transforming our shared life, bringing belonging and hope, redemptive kindness and healing care, and continuing to break through the darkness with light, every moment of every day.

After Herod’s death the little family finally journeys to Galilee, where they settle down at home amid grandparents and lifelong neighbors, to raise their first-grader in Nazareth, where he will run through the same streets, swim in the same streams, sit in the same school and participate in the same synagogue they did, in the tiny familiar world that had cradled and shaped them before their lives were ripped open by the light of the world.  

 

How was little Jesus shaped by those early wanderings, I wonder? 

What did he absorb from the Magi and the Egyptians, from the journeys and the dreams, and then from those who shaped his sense of home?  How did Epiphany bend his path?

 

And what about those Magi? The journeyers, soul friends and miracle sharers who brought epiphany onto the scene as much as they received it themselves?  What became of their lives after their encounter with the light of the world? How were they drawn into a lifetime of attunement to epiphany?

 

Epiphany keeps going, friends. The light of the world shimmers in our very own lives. And nobody gets to own this story – this story holds us all. It can’t be domesticated. What God is doing is always bigger, always more, always beyond us, and also right here next to us, in the minutia of our very ordinary lives. It pierces the darkness, the horrors, the loneliness, the wandering. It shares the awkward and unknown, the familiar and the comforting, the strange and the new, the death and the life, drawing us out into worlds we can’t imagine, bringing us home by roads we can’t foresee. 

 

Today we get star words. They are not magic. But they are a chance to lift our heads and look beyond ourselves with hearts open to however Christ might encounter us, attentive to wherever God might lead us this year. God is with us, transforming the world. 

So, arise, shine, beloved, your light has come. 

Happy Epiphany.

 

 

Remembering What's True

saiah 43:1-2,10-13 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I have had many conversations with folks this week.  And while some of us may be feeling fine and dandy, many of us are discouraged and disheartened, and frankly, exhausted.  Here we are again, with mask mandates and distance learning, fighting the urge to horde things, and our pandemic vocabulary keeps growing: now we know phrases like “supply chain issues” and “rapid lateral flow tests” and the fine point differences between “isolation” and “quarantine.” 

So let me first say again, that “it’s normal to feel sad in sad times.”  And if you’re feeling more tired than usual, that’s no surprise. We have been buffering for nearly two years and our operating systems are slow.  It’s ok to be slow. It’s ok to do less.  This all is a lot to process, and the constant recalibrating is exhausting.
 
For us in the northern hemisphere, Epiphany comes in the darkest time of the year. In the cold and barren landscape of winter, we spend a couple of months turning our faces toward the light of the world that the darkness cannot overcome.  And right we could use some reminders of things we know and trust but sometimes forget.  So this is a good time for some perspective.  A good time to orient ourselves again toward the light.
 
There are two reminders our scriptures give us today that I want us to hear, that I think will help us in this time that feels a bit dark.  I want us to remember who we are. And I want us to remember who God is.
 
Who we are is not up for grabs, it’s already decided. You are mine. God says. I have chosen you and redeemed you and called you by name.  And this fact is sealed on us by our baptism.
We are baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection – we die his death and are raised into his newness of life.  So that belonging that Jesus has with God, that belonging he has with the world, that is our belonging. And that life that was there at creation and prevails through eternity is our life. 
 
Some of us were baptized as kids, teenagers or adults and some of us were baptized as infants. When we see a little squirming baby baptized, who didn’t choose to be there and sometimes isn’t very happy about it, we are reminded of some things about God’s promises and our own identity.  First, that it is not about what we choose or decide.  Who we are begins with who God says we are.  And God chooses us, and claims us and calls us God’s beloved child who God is delighted in.  God says YES to us –and we will spend a lifetime learning to receive God’s YES. 
 
And when we see an adult come to the font to be baptized, what we are remined of is in this relationship with God who chooses us, we get to say YES back to God’s YES. We get to embrace our own “one wild precious life” and submit to the journey whatever may come. And Jesus’ life of total belonging to God and other people will be what defines our life. 
 
Like Mary before him, and Joseph, and the Shepherds heeding the angels' call, and the Magi setting out on their journey, and every scared and wondering king and nomad and giant-slayer and sea-parter and child-bearer and prophet and journeyer before them, Jesus says Yes to God, and by the divebombing Holy Spirit like a dove and the voice from heaven, God says Yes to Jesus. 
God says YES to us and we say YES to God.

What does it mean to say YES to God? 
It means we say yes to not being in it alone. We say yes to life and light and hope. We say yes to suffering and struggling and living fully. We say Yes to forgiveness and grace and mercy.  We say Yes to being defined by our belonging to God and each other, and not by what we accomplish or contribute or earn or prove. We say yes to what God is doing to love and save the world, and Yes the astonishing truth that God wants to involve us in it.  

No matter what life brings, or where it brings us, the first and final word over you and me is this: You are my beloved child and I am utterly delighted in you!
That is who we are. And I want us to remember that today.
 
The second thing I want us to remember today is who God is.
Listen to who is saying YES to us:
Before me there was no God and there will be no God after me.
I spoke and saved and promised,
There is no one who can undo what I do.
I act and who can reverse it? 

This is the God who made us, and claims us, and redeems us, and calls us. This is who says YES to us. Our NO can never be bigger than God’s YES. No matter how much we flee or forget or fight God, God’s love will never depart from us. 
We will never stop belonging to God.  
 
And this world will never stop belonging to God. 
God’s love is not hindered by supply chains and shortages, God’s redemption is not slowed down by global pandemics or festering conflicts. Natural disasters, human brokenness and societal failures do not stop God’s salvation in any way. No matter how much pain or loss or suffering, no matter how much fighting or forgetting we do as individuals, or whole people’s and nations, the world’s NO can never be bigger than God’s YES. 
All that God does remains. Every act of healing and love, every moment of connection and hope, every transformation and redemption, every righting of wrongs and building up of humanity, each act of justice, each time peace reigns, every moment of joy and triumph of life can’t be broken or lost, destroyed or ended. 
It is into death that Jesus comes to bring life. It is in the darkness that the light shines.
So, we often find that in the midst of suffering and weakness we may even become more aware of our belonging to each other, more attentive of our identity as beloved, more attuned to God’s relentless YES.  
 
“You are my witnesses” God says, “I chose you to know me, and trust me, and watch for me and join me. I chose you to share my YES with the world. 
 
So whatever these next weeks bring us, bring the world, we will keep remembering together who we are and who God is, and reminding each other.  In our tiredness or sadness, we will still keep being witnesses of our own and each other’s belovedness.  And in the unrelenting unknown and the persistent upheaval, we will still keep practicing saying YES to our belonging to God and each other. Like a song always being playing, we will let the Holy Spirit attune us to God’s unwavering YES in the world, in whatever ways it is beckoning us to join in. 
 
REMEMBRANCE OF BAPTISM
(With water trace the invisible sign of the cross permanently on your forehead)

Hear and speak these words of truth over yourself:
I am a Beloved child of God, in whom God delights. 
I am loved and claimed just as I am, for who I am, not for what I do. 
This cannot be earned and it cannot be lost. 
God has spoken this over me and it cannot be undone.
May I begin here, and let whatever work and rest, whatever sadness and joy, whatever flows out from me and back into me, be a response to this love. And may it give me hope. Amen.

Perspective

Matthew 2:1-12

Isaiah 60:1-3

 

The story of Epiphany unfolds in a simple home on a simple street, where an ordinary-seeming family opens their door to astonishing strangers from afar, who unexpectedly kneel before a mother with a child on her lap, and then give strange gifts and tell strange stories in a strange language, with charades and hand gestures, of a long journey led by a mysterious star, the very heavens pointing them to this precise place, revealing to them that the God of the cosmos has come into this life with us, for us all, and is indeed embodied in this drooling toddler sitting before them.  And the mother and father, who - along with her formerly childless aunt and uncle, and a few local sheepherders – have carried this secret knowledge for a couple of years by themselves, are suddenly reminded of the scope of things by those from afar whose presence in their living room declares in no uncertain terms that the whole universe is in on this thing, that in their beloved child God is actually here, and his very existence in her arms has changed life for every person who has ever or will ever live. 

 

That’s Epiphany, celebrated by millions of people for two thousand years. But we tend to miss that at the time, the real story was just an odd little scene on the margins of another story that was far more visible, and it’s impact seemed far more real and pressing to far more people. 

 

The other story is of a so-called king, notably insecure and obsessed with his reputation, name locked away in his fortress, raging in fear, causing all in the land to be terrified and worried about what he might do, because he’s fixated on this perceived threat to his power and authority – a baby, he’s told by these foreigners, who has been born specifically to claim what has been his title, “The King of the Jews.”  So he uses manipulation and flattery to try to coerce these scholars from another land to do his bidding - as though they are under his jurisdiction or influence – so that he can stamp out a potential usurper by any means necessary.

 

Oh, Herod.  Poor, frightened, tormented Herod.  This story is so much bigger than you. It’s so much longer, deeper, stronger and more significant.  God is doing this thing.  God has come, God is here among us. And there is nothing you or anybody else can do about it.

 

No matter how it looks on the surface at any given moment, the heartbeat underneath is love.  And this project – of a whole world indivisibly connected to God and each other, of all nature in harmony, and all people in family, with God as the true sovereign, who rules in disconcerting vulnerability and incontestable strength – like it or not, that is happening.  

 

And it can never be thwarted. Not by ego-maniacal leaders, or their misguided and vengeful followers, not by the wisdom of the sages, or the coercion of earthly power, not by the tragic dysfunction of broken systems or the excellent functioning of perfect ones, not by widespread illness or concentrated madness, or brutal violence or tragic suffering, not by anything human beings can forget or demand, or screw up or succeed at.  Nothing we can do, or not do, can stop what God is already doing. It is unstoppable. 

 

And yes, we do a whole lot to muck it up –accidentally or on purpose.  We can act like we are divided, we can kill, and blame, and shut down, and overlook each other. We can contaminate the earth and wipe out whole species; we can ravage our own hearts and minds and go numb or afraid – and fear can make us do terrible, heartless things. But no matter what, God is doing this. It can happen through us or it can happen in spite of us, but God’s project of redemption and wholeness is under way, and it will not stop until all that remains is love. 

This is the message of Epiphany.

 

Today’s scripture tells us about some, one especially, who missed God. Who lived in the way of fear, obsessed with their own security and power – and ultimately lost it anyway because death is real, triumph is short-lived, and permanent success is an illusion.  

 

And it tells us about those who welcomed God in. Who set down everything and went on a long journey to lay themselves down at the feet of the divine with ecstatic joy.  They let epiphany shape them, each moment, taking it in, noticing, listening, sharing, and then getting up and going home by another way, because ultimately our security comes from trusting our lives to the Great I Am, who directs the whole universe in true wisdom.  

 

And even when this King over all - who starts out his time here submitting himself completely into the arms and care of those made in his image - grows up to be killed by these he has come in to love and save, even that does not stop the project, it only cements it deeper and opens it wider.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Not ever.

 

Epiphany illuminates our choice: We can look at what is right in front of us at any given moment, and we can live in fear. We can believe that the powers that rattle their sabers are the real powers, and that the terrible damage they can do – and they can do terrible damage – can break us, or make the world go off course. 

 

But like those who followed the star we are called to lift our eyes to a further horizon.  The whole world is in on this conspiracy. It’s unfolding in the margins, in ordinary homes and ordinary lives on every continent at every moment, God is coming in. And the earth itself bears witness - every blade of grass, and creeping insect; every daily sunrise and blazing planet, light years away testifies. 

We are people of this infinite vista, this vast, cosmic perspective, not bound to look only to the situations in front of us like Herods, captive in fear to events and circumstances by which we stand or fall, driven to go after our enemies or hide in fortresses of false security. 

 

We belong to the bigger story; we are subjects of the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, eternal and omnipotent.  And this King has come; and now there is nothing, not anything, that can separate us from the love of God.  God’s redemption is under way already and forever.  

 

So we are called to hang onto the ancient and cosmic promise and not to cower at bullies or venerate false power, to be guided by the deeper, eternal force of love, instead of the shallow whims of panic, the rise and fall of drama and dread, addicted to the non-stop fluctuations of worry, frenzy and regret. 

 

This means we live our lives paying attention to dreams, and finding solidarity with people we think of as other, and bearing gifts for the unsuspecting, and gladly laying down our lives as a gift of gratitude to the God who comes in, and by the Spirit we are made willing to be redirected and sent home another way.

 

In the tides of history, there is, as Ecclesiastes says, nothing new under the sun.  Nations rise and fall. Great leaders come and go, fools rise up and disappear, fear dominates and wars rage, babies are born and gardens are tended and beloveds die and are buried, their graves are covered with new fallen snow, and the sun melts the snow and spring comes again, and love, love, love, happens, in between, in all the nooks and crannies, weaving us together and weaving us into the story that cannot be derailed.  God’s story.  There is never anything so bad that it can alter the origin or the outcome – it all comes from God and to God it all returns.

 

And in the in between time, God comes to share it.  The hidden, humble king, a baby savior, who saves us from all the darkness within and without. The One who brings together strangers to surrender in joy to the love and hope embodied in their midst. 

 

Nothing can stop love and forgiveness, nothing can hinder hope and healing – not the most terrible thing we can imagine or face can stop God from acting.  The world belongs to God.

 

So, Arise, shine; for your light has come. 

Amen. 

 

 

 

 

 

The truth about Christmas

Luke 2:22-40
Anna & Simeon

A few days after Christmas I looked at my tree and was filled with disgust.  It no longer represented all the joy of the season; it just looked like clutter in my living room, a big depressing task waiting for me.  And while I had room for one more glass of egg nog, I couldn’t even muster another round of Bing Crosby tunes to accompany me in the chore.  

Add to that the fact that I had to take it down alone. Nobody wanted to help me, and I didn’t want to force or coerce them into it. For some reason, the absurdity of it all made me very emotional, and I ended up crying through the whole process. Resentfully wrapping the ornaments, wiping bitter tears off my face while I unwound the lights, I felt unhinged. 

I kept saying to Maisy, who was nearby and watching me with a worried look, “I am not trying to get you to help me with this! You get to have a real choice! This is not manipulation! I don’t know why I am crying! I’m just having some big feelings!”

Christmas is weird. 

Every year my mother-in-law’s husband gives us a big gift box from General Mills, where he used to work, filled with fruit roll-ups and pudding mix and cereal, and it’s a bunch of crap I don’t buy, and wont eat, in lots of packaging I will throw away. But I know it means a lot to him to give it, so in the moment, I actually genuinely enjoy receiving it. And then, after my kids rifle through and take what they want, I try to incorporate things like cheese-flavored soft taco bowls into our lives.

And my dad wouldn’t take his shoes off when he came over, because he has diabetes and his feet get cold, so the rest of us spent the evening walking through his melted shoe water in our socks on my freshly washed floors, and I stuffed down my frustration didn’t say more than one teeny little side comment right at the beginning, because I wanted things go well and for everyone to get along.

And I lost the gift I bought my mom, and at the last minute I ordered another one to be delivered, which got there after Christmas, and then I found her gift on Christmas eve, and now I am stuck with a beautifully wrapped gift card to a movie theater chain that doesn’t exist in the Midwest, and a CD of Christmas music I’d already bought myself for Advent. And I don’t know what to do with either of them.

And after mailing it out I discovered that our Christmas card had 5 typos.

And my grandma, who this year lost her house and her dog, spent Christmas helplessly watching her son die of cancer, and he spent it unwillingly dying.  My cousin’s baby is due in April, and my uncle most likely wont get to see his grandchild’s life begin.  And there is absolutely nothing I could do sitting across from him except cry along with him.

Some of us have kids that we can't talk to, not really, no matter how much we try. Or we spent Christmas day overwhelmed with the grief of missing someone who wasn't with us anymore. Plans changed, people got sick, and the dinner had fewer place-settings than it was supposed to have. Some of us said the wrong thing, or regret not speaking up. 

And some of us spent the season trying to ignore the gnawing loneliness, or the nagging worry, and just stay happy like we’re supposed to.

So I cried while I took down the tree. 

Because I love Christmas. But also, if I’m honest, what a great big let-down it always is. Along with all the shimmer and warmth, Christmas is awkward and exhausting, and it is never how we remember it was or hope it will be.  It’s just not big enough or deep enough to hold all the expectations and longings we pile onto it.  

So we put Christmas away. It’s all done. Forget the whole 12 days of Christmas thing – in an era of sound bites and viral tweets we have moved on.  You’ve had your little holiday break. Time to turn your attention back to the distractions of your busy lives, and the urgent struggles of the world. Life moves fast. The Valentine candy is on the shelves, people. 

But that’s not how Church time works.  Church time is slower, and deeper, and is not in a hurry, and doesn’t stop either. So it’s Epiphany now, the festival of Christmas spreading out and sinking in. It’s when we celebrate the light coming to all the world, for all the people. 

We don’t put away the story with the ornaments and stockings, or keep Christmas in its precious, nostalgia box that comes out once a year and otherwise doesn’t intersect with life. The story of Christmas continues.

And for Luke, it continues just after the Shepherds depart, with the scene we just read, that happens when Jesus is just a few days old. 

This is way before the Magi, who don’t actually arrive until Jesus is a toddler. On Epiphany, the Magi are usually the stars of the show. Because of them we remember that we Gentiles are in this story too. The Wise Men are a big deal; they get way more airtime in Matthew than the birth of Jesus does.  And that story has such exciting drama with its spices, and gold, and camels, and the star guiding them to Christ child, the crazy murder-hungry King and dream warnings and such, that we turn usually eagerly from Luke’s Shepherds to Matthew’s Magi and often overlook this little story.  But this is a pretty incredible Epiphany story too.

Joseph and Mary bring their firstborn baby boy to the temple, like every good Jewish couple, for the ritual of “the redemption of the firstborn son.” It’s a ritual of expectation and nostalgia, really.  It is a symbol of the deliverance of firstborn sons from the Angel of Death in Egypt when the Jews were freed from slavery; it is a symbol that this one, and everything that comes after this one, is a gift from God. And so the first fruits of labor, the first money made, the first grains and livestock are given to God, to whom they rightly belong, because God gives us all. The firstborn son, then, belongs to God; he is considered holy. 

But this ritual is, in effect, to buy the child back from God. Rather than the child being set aside to be holy, to live in the temple like Samuel did, or perhaps to become a priest when he grows up, the parents would pay God for the right to raise the child as their own, and let the child to grow up participating in ordinary life, rather than only holy things. This makes it sound heavy, but it wasn’t.  It was a celebration of God’s provision, a reminder of God’s care, and an act of joyful gratitude. You brought your baby to the temple, where a sacrifice was offered and a blessing was made, and you brought your child home, and he belonged to you.

Now, there is this man in Jerusalem, Simeon, a prophet, who spends his days searching the streets, wandering and watching the ordinary world, waiting to see a sign of the salvation of Israel. Simeon is a seeker of the light.  Every year, year after year, Simeon watches for a sign. He lives in expectation that God is going to do something to save the people. Year after year goes by, Simeon gets older and older, hanging onto the promise that he would not die before he saw the God’s salvation. And he waits, and he watches. Year after year, his expectations hang there, unfulfilled, and still Simeon waits.

But on this day, in the middle of the regular holy activity of the temple, Simeon suddenly sees this poor, plain family approach the priest, just getting ready to carry out the ritual.  He rushes past the rest of the world in its routine, and makes a beeline for the family.  Reaching out his hands he gently lifts the baby from his startled mother’s arms.  Holding up this unremarkable couple’s small, red-faced infant in the air, Simeon’s face breaks out in joy.  He raises his voice above the din of the temple, and astonishing Mom & Dad and everyone else, he shouts out his Epiphany, “You can let me die in peace now, God! I’ve seen your salvation with my own eyes! The light has come to the whole world and glory to your people Israel!” 

Then he lowers the child softly into his mother’s arms. And with tears running down his wrinkled face and into his beard, he embraces and blesses the little family.  And when he has finishes his blessing, he leans close to Mary; his hands grip her shoulders and he looks directly into her eyes.  His voice dropping and striking a chillingly serious note that causes her to shudder, he speaks, “This child will be the rise and fall of many in Israel. He’ll be misunderstood and opposed, and his being here will expose the hidden truth of people’s hearts. And it will wound you terribly.”

What did Mary think this was going to be like? Raising the God-child? Did she expect this? The recognition, the outburst, the prediction, the warning? The last people to tell Mary that this child was God-with-us were the shepherds. And Mary has been pondering their words in her heart ever since.  Now someone else has recognized who Jesus is. And he has seen her too, and what it will mean for her life to have Jesus in it.

Then comes Anna, another temple regular.  Once a young, sad widow, she has been in the temple over sixty years devoting her whole life to fasting, praying, and serving.  She gave up her common, ordinary life and took on the life set aside to service of God.  She too is a seeker of the light.

  

When the commotion begins, Anna feels a surge of awareness, a powerful déjà vu.  As though in a dream, she rises from her prayers and slowly walks over, staring at the baby, now awake and starting to fuss. When she reaches the small group, she looks up and locks eyes with Simeon. In deep recognition without words, her soul fills with joy that spills from her eyes.  She raises her head and begins to laugh, and cry, and shout to God, right then and there, Thank you! Thank you, Lord!

Then after placing one small leathery hand tenderly on the baby’s downy head, she whirls around and began telling people, spreading her Epiphany throughout the crowd, grabbing this one walking past, bending to that one kneeling there, her voice filled with wonder and delight, “See that child! Redemption has come!"

Then these two stand as witnesses and watch as the priest completes the ritual. And as light-seekers, Epiphany-bearers, they understand what nobody else sees: In this moment God-incarnate is being claimed by human beings to belong to the human family. The Holy One is called out of the holy to live as an ordinary and common human child. 

And then, his story becomes so ordinary, so commonplace, so representative, that the next dozen or so years of Jesus’ life are summarized in one line: “And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.”

Those years were full of absolutely ordinary things –cuts and bruises, and stomach flu, and temper tantrums, and baby sisters, and making friends, and being teased, and doing chores, and laughter, anger, gladness and tears. And like every human life those years were also full of tragedy and loss and fear and surprise. Politics and violence shaped the world Jesus lived in too. In his teen years many Galileans were killed in political uprisings; throughout his childhood Roman atrocities were still happening in the villages around his. 

And before Jesus turns 30 Mary buries Joseph. His dad doesn’t get to see his son’s ministry begin. And then she will have to helplessly watch her son die.  Because he lived an ordinary human life.

The light has come into the world. INTO the world – the very fabric of it. Inseparable from it. Tangled and tied and mixed up and stirred in, so that it cannot be extracted.  It’s not set apart for holy places or special people. The ordinary is infused with the holy, the holy has been claimed by the ordinary; God is irreversibly here. 

Christmas is not a brief episode, a happy but empty event; Christmas is a reorientation to the future. Christmas is the beginning of God’s joining us in this life. In every single ordinary, and unholy, and joy-filled, and disappointing part of it.

  

Simeon and Anna glimpsed the future right now. They recognized in a tiny baby given over to an ordinary life, the mighty movement of reconciliation and redemption coming into the world. It wasn’t a future either of them would get to see unfold in its fullness, all they would get is this one glimpse. But they proclaimed its coming nevertheless.  They recognized, and knew that the world would never be the same. 

Our traditions and rituals are not big enough or deep enough to hold all the expectations and longings we pile onto them. But Christ is in the world.  And we are asked to put our expectations and longings on him.  All the strained relationships and lost opportunities, all the people we hurt and those whose hurt we can’t release. All the love we have and don’t know how to show, and the places where we are just perpetually disappointed—confess them, in pain and sorrow, to this child, this God in here with us, who has lived it all alongside us.  

This One can bear the weight of all our expectations. This One can hold all our disappointment, and unfulfilled longing and grief, and work new life in us. Christ can set us free from resentment, free from being defined by anger, or loss, or worry, free from fear, and free from the power we give to the stories we tell ourselves. We are not trapped or stuck. That is the gift of Christmas.

Anna and Simeon recognized it, and so can we. We are the light-seekers and we are the Epiphany-bearers.  We are the ones who glimpse in the ordinary the future that is coming. We can live in the promise that these hard places within us and between us one day will be healed. We can trust that this brokenness in the world is being healed.  We can watch for it, and tell about it when we see it in front of us in subtle and wonderful ways. 

So maybe we sit by a candle, or by the window when the first light of dawn is breaking, and let the tears come. Or maybe it happens as we are taking down the tree, or by the light of the wildfires raging on the news, or in the car on the way home from the hard visit, or sitting across from the dying one’s own tears. 

To feel the brokenness, the incompleteness of it all, and pour it out to God is not some kind of failing; it’s brave faith.  Telling God the truth of our disappointment, anger, and unfulfilled longings and expectations is an act of trust. Trust in the one who knows the longing, who is bringing the healing, who can handle our sorrow, and who will make us whole.

The Kingdom of God is slower, and deeper, and is not in a hurry, and doesn’t stop either. God’s salvation comes. Darkness is all shot through with light. Christ is in the world.  Sometimes the wait is long, like Simeon’s. But the promise is real. Christmas is still spreading out and sinking in.  And one day, the love, freedom and joy of it will be all that remains. 

Amen.

This is part of a series, journeying with some of our Biblical ancestors: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John, Samuel, David*, The Samaritan Woman, 


(*This is an older message about David, in this series, we had a wonderful performance of 'David" by Theater for the Thirsty)