January 4, 2009 Second Sunday after Christmas, Epiphany Sunday
Home, Mother’s Day Sunday, Blanket Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-10; Matthew 2:1-12
There are many paths that lead to epiphany. There are many stars and
dreams to guide those who long to see the manifestation of God on earth, who
long for mysteries revealed and wisdom made known, as Ephesians puts it. The
Isaiah passage we read responsively describes a light suddenly shining on a nation
that had been covered in thick darkness. The people look at the light and see and
are radiant themselves. Then they in turn become a source of epiphany to other
nations that see the light shining through them. Think of that!
The Ephesians passage shows a similar path of epiphany leading to
epiphany. It begins with Paul, who saw the light of Christ on the road to
Damascus, and was blinded by it until he accepted the transformation it was
working in him. Paul then became radiant himself, and as he boldly preached and
practiced living by the light, churches formed around him.
Opposition formed around him, too. The people who preferred darkness to
the light persecuted him and his church and put him in prison, but nothing could
stop his radiance.
Most scholars believe that the book of Ephesians was written after Paul’s
death by people who had seen the light shining through Paul, and had become
radiant themselves. Today’s passage describes a church that has formed around
the epiphany Paul gave them and now shines its own share of the light out into the
world. It is a church open to and affirming of people that the society around it had
excluded and treated as inferior—bringing Jews and Gentiles together, men and
women together, slave and free together, poor and rich together. Ephesians says
that the light of that church reveals God’s plan for the unification of all creation in
love and peace.
God is made manifest in many places and many ways, wherever the light
shines throughout all creation, and also wherever people have seen that light and
become radiant themselves and passed the light forward. The opportunity for
epiphany is around us and within us all the time—if we will only open our eyes
and ears and hearts to receive. Seeing an epiphany changes our life. It strengthens
our faith and hope. It fills us with peace and joy, at the same time as increasing
our compassion and passion for justice. It gives life meaning and direction. So
perhaps the most important thing we can do in life is emulate the Magi and
discipline ourselves to watch the stars and dreams that can direct us to epiphany.
We can train ourselves to look for signs of God in nature, and in our interactions
with other people, and in word and music and in the silence of our hearts.
Epiphany reveals the mysteries and wisdom of God to us, and so it leads us
to our true self and our true calling in this life. Our truest self is the self we see in
the light of God and in relation to God. We each have within us a share of God’s
light to shine, an inner fire that is our particular manifestation of God’s presence.
As Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, if we bring forth what we have within us it
will save us. If we do not, it will kill us. The first responsibility we have is to find
that light within us and to do all we can to bring it out into the world. As Isaiah
puts it, our job is to “see and be radiant.”
This is true of us as individuals, and also true of us as a church. When we
go through a planning process like the one that arrived at the Mission Statement
printed in your bulletin today, we are really on a journey to epiphany. We are
looking for the light within and among us, for the manifestation of God’s presence
and our relationship to it. When we see that light, and name it and claim it to the
world, we become radiant. We become the potential source for others to have
epiphanies as they see the light of Christ shining through what this church is and
does.
This is true of us also as a nation. It is one of the purposes of the prophets
that Dick Devor will be teaching about in his class tomorrow evening. Prophets
like Isaiah were calling to the nation, “Arise, shine, for your light has come!”
They were trying to get the people to be true to the light of God within and around
them, so that they would be a sign to the nations and lead the whole world to
God’s light of justice and peace on earth.
America today seems to be on a journey toward epiphany—at least the
stage certainly is set, if we are willing to make the journey. A star has risen
through the thick darkness that has covered our land, dreams have awakened in us,
and it is up to us to follow. It is up to us as a nation, but what that really means is
it is up to each one of us as citizens of a nation.
I had an insight recently, an epiphany of sorts. The stable in Bethlehem for
me was the home of Nancy and Jim Hughes who hosted a house meeting on health
care reform on behalf of the incoming Obama Administration (as did Sherry
Merrick at the Peabody Library). My epiphany was to see a President who would
be not only a commander in chief, but a community organizer in chief. It was to
glimpse a future where instead of trying to paralyze us with fear, the President
would seek to mobilize us with hope. Instead of making us feel powerless to stop
greed and war from consuming the earth, we would have a President who would
empower us to launch programs for the benefit of the entire nation and world—
especially those in greatest need.
You could say this was a secular or political epiphany, but I would argue
that it is a spiritual and moral epiphany because hope is right up there with faith
and love as the top theological virtues, and because as we just heard on Mary
Sunday in the Magnificat, with the birth of Jesus God “has brought down the
powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with
good things and sent the rich away empty.”
It is also a spiritual epiphany because we appear to be at a moment of the
same possibility that the writer of Ephesians saw, a moment when the grace has
been given to us “to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for
ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the wisdom of God
in its rich variety might now be made known to rulers and authorities.”
One of the ways scholars know that Paul did not write Ephesians is that the
language is even denser and more rambling than Paul’s usual style, so let me sort
through that sentence and connect it to where we are now.
Grace has come to this church through events that have created a new
opportunity for us to share our light with the world. These events include the
election of a President who wants to hear what people have to say, and whose
principles and values closely match our own—a President who until recently was
the member of a church similar in some ways to ours—a progressive, United
Church of Christ congregation active in the cause of peace and justice.
Other events have also created an opportunity, including all the darkness
that threatens the world right now—economic and environmental collapse, poverty
and war. The nation and world are looking for epiphany, for a new plan.
Ephesians talks about the plan of God that has been a hidden mystery, now
revealed in the church. It talks about the rich variety of God’s wisdom that is now
made known to the powers of the world through the church. Remember that the
church back then was a small and weak thing. And yet it was convinced that it
had seen the light of God’s plan, and that by shining the little flame that was
theirs, they could change the world.
This congregation is small, but it has had a vision of God’s plan—at least
God’s plan for how we can shine our share of light. Here is how our Mission
statement puts it:
We feel called to promote Christ’s way of nonviolence, creating a loving,
just society for all. We care especially for our youth, for the struggling
people of our world and community, and for the health of God’s creation.
We expect there to be a cost to our faithful discipleship, a cost of our time,
talent and substance, and of our selfless love, humble service and personal
risk. This is a church of courage and of comfort. This is a church of
passion and of humor. This is a church of Christ and of solidarity with
people of all faiths who are striving to create a world of peace and justice,
mercy and love.
We have the opportunity now as never before to let the world see the light
God has given us to shine. This is an exciting time. We each have the opportunity
to be a part of a great redesigning of our nation, and of the way the world works.
The new picture will be made up of billions of tiny pixels, and we as a
church and we as individuals have our little dots of color to contribute. Jim and
Nancy Hughes contributed a pixel with their house meeting on health care reform.
Dick Devor is contributing a pixel with his course on the prophets. The Mission
Committee contributed two pixels in December: the event celebrating the light we
saw in Grace Paley; and the event challenging the consumerism and
commercialization of Christmas. Every person who contributed to the Floyd
Dexter Memorial Community Service Fund at the Christmas Eve service
contributed a pixel. We contribute pixels as we recycle, as we reduce our carbon
footprint, as we smile at a stranger, as we create a new work of art. We contribute
pixels when we come to church and support its mission just by showing up. We
contribute best when we do so in ways truest to our inner fire, with the kind of
passion that led the Magi through the night and led Paul through prison after
prison, never giving up.
Imagine how the Magi longed to see signs in the stars that foretold of a new
era of justice and peace. Imagine how the people of Isaiah’s day rejoiced to hear
“Arise, shine, for your light has come.” The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the
church in Rome, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the
children of God…We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor
pains until now.”
The world is full of longing hearts today, waiting eagerly for those who
have seen the light and have dedicated their lives to following it through whatever
darkness they must endure and whatever desert they must cross. The world has
lost its way in the dark and is waiting for those who see the light to rise up and
turn the way back right. Let us rise up and fulfill our calling to bring forth all the
mysteries now revealed, all the wisdom now known, all the light now seen, all the
gifts that we each have and that we have together as a church.
Let us pray in silence, asking that God give us the courage to follow the star
and the dream that are calling to us to act now…
Sermon 01/04/2007