Manifestation. Showing forth or revealing. We are here today in observance of the
manifestation/showing forth/revealing of Christ to the Gentile world. Nearly all of us present here today at Advent
are glad for this event, as it was the event which ultimately led to our
grafting into the people of God, the new Israel, the Church. But what does it really mean? And like so many of our other stories, there
is so much added by tradition that we can barely recognize the Biblical
story. We just sang “We three
kings.” It is a well-known song. Heck, it is well known enough that there are
parodies of the song in the secular world.
Ask any child about rubber cigars or any World of Warcraft player about
“Beer of wonder, beer delight,” and you are likely to get a knowing
chuckle. Yet, were they kings? No.
They were just wise men who recognized the sign in the heavens and followed
it.
Earlier this week and along those lines, I
was settled on preaching about the gifts.
I know. Our tradition is that the
Holy family was given gold, frankincense, and myrrh because Jesus is the King
and the Priest and will die. I was going
to disabuse us of the notion that that such was the meaning behind these
gifts. I do not think it accurate to say
that these wise men recognized Jesus as the Incarnation of God, so I think the
meanings we impute are not what they intended.
But God, being sovereign, can take our gifts and use them in ways we do
not intend, right? We call that providence. As I said, I was well pleased with that
sermon. Then Friday happened.
Those of you on Facebook already know I
lost another off day. Karen and I awoke
to some earthy language in our front yard.
We looked out, as many did in central Tennessee this past Friday, to
discover it had snowed a fair amount.
Snow, of course, is the bane of all who live on the hill accessed via
Lakemont. Four cars were already in the
ditches in front of the rectory. Karen
decided they needed help. Since I am
old, she tossed Nathan and David out into the snow to help those stuck. Nathan put his rugby muscles to work pushing
cars, and David got a shovel to help with traction for the cars.
While the boys were able to get some cars
out, there was a steady stream of those cars that could not be pushed out by
human effort. Nathan, of course,
realized that some of those trapped needed warmth or a bathroom or coffee/hot
chocolate. So we opened up the church
and parish hall to those who were stranded.
I had planned to write thank you notes, so I was not as aggravated by
the turn of events as some might think.
It was not as if I would not be able to write my notes in the office as
well as on my couch at home. My thought
was that we would be a good neighbor.
Heck, if I got lucky, maybe the angry person who is vandalizing our
church would be one that we served or would love one of those whom we
served. Maybe he or she would stop as a
result. Boy, did I miss God’s plan in
the beginning. In many ways, I was like the
priests and scribes in today’s narrative.
To explain what was going on, I need to
take a step back into Matthew’s narrative.
Why do we honor the magi? What is
it about them that cause the Church to recognize their pilgrimage, their gifts,
and their wisdom? I have probably told
you enough that you are tired of hearing it, but the cosmology of the Ancient
Near East was anything but comforting.
What happened on earth reflected the happenings in the celestial
spheres. What happened on earth caused
similar acts in the celestial spheres.
Another axiom that governed many in the ANE was the belief that matter
was yucky. This stuff here was
corruptible. Gods and goddesses would
not want to spend much time with us because spending time with us forced them
to experience that yucky feeling or corruption.
Oh, to be sure, the gods or goddesses sometimes came down to dally with
a maiden or hunk or to visit their wrath on some uppity mortal. But those gods and goddesses never stayed too
long because they did not want to have to deal with what you and I might call
the human milieu.
It is against that understanding of the
gods that the Incarnation speaks. The
Incarnation is a polemic against the idea that the gods want nothing to do with
us, that the gods cannot stand our yuckiness, and that the chasm which exists
between us and them (really, Him) was whet He intended. God has pitched His tent here among us. He has enfleshed Himself even as we are
enfleshed. Those who study the
Scriptures ought not be too surprised by the idea. When God created everything, He called it
good. It took our sin, our disobedience,
to begin to mar the work of His magnificent hand. It also took our sin to separate us from Him
and to require this rescue, this re-establishment of the intimacy that was
offered us in the beginning.
And lest we think this separateness is
something from the distant past, we Americans need only to look to
ourselves. Our friends may fight on FB
about whether we are God’s chosen nation, but we know many of our founders had
no such illusions. Deists were not
unlike our ANE counterparts. Famous
founders such as Jefferson espoused the view that God cannot act in the world
because He is outside the world. Were He
to reach in and affect the world, He would destroy the wonderful system, the
wonder cosmos, He created. The
Incarnation testifies that God is not out there watching, observing, powerless
to do anything as the cosmos runs amok.
He is in the midst of us! The
Epiphany simply revealed to the Gentiles what the Jews understood about
Yahweh. He was not a far off god. He was a God who was near! Present!
Acting for our good!
For those of us who think 240 years is a
long time, we have our neighbors from Friday.
Now, before I go any further, I get that I have a unique role and unique
gifts. I get it. People are disarmed around me and eventually
ask the hard questions. I experience
that in nearly every tragedy into which I am called to minister. It may be hard to think of these wrecks as
tragedies, but they were incredibly painful to a few of our neighbors. Not all of them had the $500 deductible right
now needed for repairs. They spent too
much on Christmas. A couple were
seriously worried about getting to work this coming week. “And if I can’t work, Father, I can’t
eat! I can’t pay my bills!” They wanted to know where God was in the
midst of their suffering, their tragedy.
Ironically, they were in a church, talking to a pastor, groping in the
darkness, on the day we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany! You all know where this is going, right?
Like the Jews to whom He came, those on
Friday had preconceived notions of how God should work. None of them told me they deserved to
crash. None of them thought that the
inconvenience of sliding into a ditch, another car, or a stone wall was their
fault. It was the world conspiring against
them. If God was good and loving, He
should have stopped their slide or kept the snow from falling in the first
place. So we chatted a bit about free
will. God is the ultimate natural
consequences parent, to a point.
Not to be harsh, but every single one of
them decided to drive their cars on that hill on Friday. We had an inch of snow fall on a steep slope
on untreated roads. What was the wiser
course Friday? Stay in! Right.
A few had to work to get paid.
They may look like upper middle or lower upper class to our eyes, but
their bank accounts know better. No
work? No pay. So some headed in to work because they had
to. But most were just following their
normal routine, even though they have lived on that hill in winters past. They knew the hill had no salt. They knew cars would end up in off the
road. They knew. And still they drove. So I asked what they expected should have
happened. Most laughed at me
ruefully. My questions reminded them of
times when they questioned their kids about their own thought processes. And they should have. Who loves us more than our Father in
heaven? Who is pained more by our
stupid, selfish desires than He is?
I shared with our neighbors that I have
seven kids. After the initial shock wore
off and the worries about my poor wife, I reminded them how many of us
parent. I used the electric socket
example. My kids were all fascinated by
the socket as toddlers. Eventually, in
their quest for knowledge of their surroundings, the kids would stick a finger
or something in the socket, or get another to do it for them, and get
zapped. What did they all learn, except
of course, Robbie? It hurts to stick
your finger in there, right? Like you,
many laughed. Some had their own
Robbie’s. Some were Robbie’s. We are all bad parents, right? We all worry about the hours of therapy that
we have visited on our children, and we are trying to do a good job. How do we teach them so that they internalize
the wisdom we are sharing? It’s
tough. Had God stopped their slide, the
snow, or intervened in a way that they thought they wanted, what would be the
chances of these conversations? Would
they recognize His gracious hand if they simply stopped moving? Or would they think their driving skills were
mad? They wanted to be rescued from
their stupid decisions, and God realized they needed to learn more about
Him. This was a gentle way for God to
parent each one of them. He had their
undivided attention for a few hours, and they had a clergy who was willing to
entertain their questions, their rage, their hurt, and their longing without
the judgment they feared or had experienced in their past.
You see, a kind of bonding was forced onto
us. I offered warmth, coffee, a snack
for a diabetic, bathrooms, and other physical comforts. What they needed was to wrestle a bit with
God. For a while, they sat in the
pews. Eventually they snooped. As we chatted, they shared things their
“friends” had experienced or needed help with.
We spoke of what their friends thought about God, about how He related
to us, about how they were disappointed at Christmas, and tons of other
questions. Everyone strained to hear
everyone’s questions, no matter where they were standing or sitting. As people listened to the answers and
internalized them, the questions got more personal. The wreck on the hill was, as you might
expect, the breaking point. This idiot
clergy was showing them that God loved them dearly, that God’s ways were not
our ways. Each of them, or in some cases
the friends of each of them, had a deep hurt, a deep distrust, a deep
misunderstanding about God. Some of
those wounds were self-inflicted; some were inflicted by us, The Church. Thankfully, none were inflicted by
Advent. Of course, neither had Adventers
really gone out of way to be inviting. Those
who trudged over here for warmth or coffee or a bathroom came grumbling and
worried. And on Epiphany of all days, God
had used their bad decisions to speak a redemptive word in their lives. It was glorious! I had physical, intellectual, and emotional
discussions about God with people who had forgotten His love of them! I had people afraid to step inside the altar
rail because, well, that’s for holy people who did. Guess what?
No lightning bolt fell from the sky when they did. I had people raise the specters of their
failures before God, who assumed He hated them because they sinned again, who
got to be reminded of the stories of Abraham & Sarah, David, Samson (I
stole that from Bishop John before Christmas), Jacob, and Paul. I had people who hate sermons, who told me
over and over how they hated sermons because we only ask for money, who sat for
a couple hours listening to me answer their questions about their friends and
the questions of others!
Whatever else they heard, I am confident
of two things. Each of those in our
neighborhood who walked through our doors heard that God loves them dearly,
dearly enough to die for them, and that God’s perspective and God’s ways are
not our own. Nor am I illusioned by my
work. I scattered seeds; I watered the
soil; I worked in some manure. There was
no harvest as evidenced by their lack of attendance today. Nobody had a Damascus Road experience and
needed me to pray the scales out of their eyes, though in truth that was a bit
of what I was doing Friday. But it is a
start, and it is a great message for God’s Church on this day when we celebrate
the manifestation of our Lord to the world.
More excitingly to me, this was a parish
effort. Wow, you should see some of your
faces. I did not misspeak. This was a parish effort. Heck, to the extent that I borrowed from
Bishop John’s sermon on Sampson, it was a diocesan ministry. I may have been the vocal leader on Friday,
but each of you who attends here had a hand or more in that effort, that
ministry. It is your faithful giving and
the stewardship of the Vestry that makes it possible for me to be paid to be
here. It is your faithful giving and the
stewardship of the Vestry that makes is possible for this building, this
sanctuary, to be here. It is your gifts,
your tithes, and your offerings that keep the heat on, that keep the water
flowing to the bathrooms, and that keep the coffee supplied. How many of you pray for me, for Advent, each
day? Your hand, your voice, and your
heart was in that work on Friday. How
many of you come to me with the tough questions of your life, seeking God in
the midst of the vicissitudes of your life?
Your work with me has kept me sharp and kept me cognizant of the need
for me to help you and others see Him at work in your lives. How many of us have longed for, dreamed of
Advent being that light on the hill, of being that beacon in the darkness? Many of those who had that vision have gone
to their reward, but even they share in the events that happened Friday. It was a parish effort that transcended time.
Brothers and sisters, you and I gather
here for worship, for study, and for prayer during the week. We, both of us, are fortified and equipped
for the work that God has given us to do.
We end our celebration asking God to send us out and to equip us for the
work He has given us to do. That work,
brothers and sisters, is largely Epiphanic.
You and I are given the privilege, the honor of being the light in the
dark place that draws other to THE Light of Christ. Sitting here today you may be arguing with me
or with God in your head. You may think
there is no darkness in the lives of those with whom you come into contact each
day. Trust me. There is more than enough darkness in their
lives. Ask them. You may think that you are the wrong person
to be the one to light the way to God through Christ, that you lack some kind
of training or some kind of ability to shape words. Even if you are the barest spark on a wick,
your feeble light, rooted in His, can light the darkness around you! Be the one who allows those in your life to
speak to their hurts, their fears, their disappointments, and their pains. Be the one who lives his or her life as if
those hurts, fears, disappointments, and pains are real. Let them know and see that you have
experienced those same worries about provision, those same fears about dreaded
diseases, the same hurt over broken relationships, the same loss over death, the
same critical evaluation of your own self-worth. More importantly, be the one who lives a life
certain in the knowledge that Christ has taken all those negatives upon Himself
and offered every single one of us and them love, and hope, and, yes, even
power to represent Him to the world. Be
the one who speaks to His power over death, His ability and willingness to
redeem all things, and to draw all of us into His loving, saving embrace. Be the one who manifests His love to the
world around you.
If God can manifest Himself to our
neighbors using a bit of snow, a bathroom, and a cup of coffee, just imagine
what He can do with a willing servant, a willing servant such as you!
In
His Peace,
Brian†
Brian†
