Year A Epiphany 3: walking in the light

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

There was a fascinating piece on yesterday’s NPR program, Weekend Edition, about a man named Pedro Reyes who is working on a huge collection of guns.[1] In fact, he has access to thousands in the city of Culiacan, Mexico, where he lives. But this is not the man you might imagine. He is an artist, using weapons collected by the city in an effort to reduce gun violence to sculpt musical instruments. Imagine playing a flute made from the barrel of a long gun, or a steel guitar collaged together out of handguns. Imagine, if you can, repurposing metal made for killing, putting your lips, your hands, your heart into it and instead producing music.

“There will be no gloom for those who were in anguish…those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined; and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

The story about transforming weapons of destruction into instruments of art and music came at the end of yet one more week in which we heard about students shooting other students, schools which should be havens of hopeful learning teaching instead the ominous lessons of mortality.

Just a few hours after the segment about Mr Reyes aired, the news reporters were telling us about another shooting in a shopping mall in Baltimore.[2] Three more people died.

“There will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. For those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

“Reyes believes art should address social issues like gun violence, even when they’re difficult and controversial,” said the NPR presenter.[3] I think that our theology should do no less.

It is our job, together as Christian disciples, called by Jesus to leave our tangled nets and consider how to catch our neighbours up into his kingdom; it is our job to consider how we might shine a light on those who are in anguish, who sit in the region and shadow of death. It is our job to consider which ways of working things out we are called to leave behind, and what is the nature of the work into which we are being called by Jesus instead.

I don’t know Mr Reyes’ religious beliefs or affiliations; they were not discussed in the interview. But I do believe that he is on the side of creation, life, light, over the gloom and shadow of death.

Last spring, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church had this to say on the subject:

 As bishops of The Episcopal Church we embody a wide variety of experiences and perspectives with respect to firearms.  Many among us are hunters and sport-shooters, former members of the military and law-enforcement officers.  We respect and honor that we are not of one mind regarding matters related to gun legislation.  Yet we are convinced that there needs to be a new conversation in the United States that challenges gun violence.  Because of the wide variety of contexts in which we live and our commitment to reasoned and respectful discourse that holds together significant differences in creative tension, we believe that The Episcopal Church can and must lead in this effort.  … We call all Episcopalians to pray and work for the end of gun violence.[4]

Just in the past ten days in this country, there were two school campus shootings, one shopping mall with multiple casualties, a man shot to death by a retired police officer for texting in a movie theatre, and those are just the incidents I remember reading about off the top of my head. Closer to home, since last Sunday night a five year old died and her mother was shot in the head because their car looked like that of someone the gunman’s girlfriend had argued with. A couple died at MetroHealthHospital after a double shooting in the parking lot. A man was shot to death in the early hours of yesterday morning breaking up a fight outside a Cleveland bar.[5]

We are the people living in anguish and gloom. Of the children I knew in Sunday School over the past ten years, four have been in schools when one of their fellow students wielded a gun with the intent to end a life. Two of them were there when lives were lost. Most of them have heard threats of gun violence in their schools. All of them, all of our children have received instruction in what to do if an active shooter comes into their school to hurt or kill them; it’s become like running a fire drill or a tornado practice. We are the ones living in the region and shadow of death.

Whatever your views on gun ownership, licensing or control, it is not hard to see that we have a real and abiding problem with gun violence. It is all around us, and it is time we shone a light on the subject.

Because we are the ones called to pray and work for the lifting of the gloom that envelops too many; the relief of the anguish of bereaved mothers, sons, and lovers; we are called to shine a light into the dark corners of our own souls and sweep out the webs, the networks of vengeance and violence that we harbour there. We are called to bring our creativity, our liveliness, our hope to transform our region from one under the shadow of death to one that shines with new light; the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. We may not always see it shining so brightly, but the light itself will not fail; the shadows of death cannot overcome it. It is, as Teresa of Avila explained, “as if a person were to enter a place where the sun is shining but be hardly able to open his eyes because of the mud in them.”[6]

It is time for us to wash the mud from our eyes and see the light. It is time for us to leave our tangled and tainted nets, the violence that ensnares us, and follow Jesus, for the good of all the people we know and those that we only read about in the papers; for the good of our children, who grow up learning to expect an outbreak of violence at any moment in time.

Only when we have washed that mud from our eyes, only when we have seen the light and answered the call to leave our nets and follow Jesus will we be able to proclaim with a clear conscience,

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

Amen. Let there be light.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2014/01/25/265794611/artist-transforms-guns-to-make-music-literally

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Failing Grace

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

The dark wood, its grain barely illuminated by
the stained-glass shafts, invites introspection,
the fear of failing, flailing: “Wait!
I am not ready,” but
it consumed me anyway,
half-baked.

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A reflection for a community celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Delivered at Lakeshore Christian Church, Sunday 19 January 2014

Last spring, when word got out about the women who had escaped from a cruel kidnapping, about the decade that they had spent imprisoned in an ordinary little house in an ordinary little neighbourhood, I remembered the week I’d spent just around the corner, helping to rehab another ordinary little house for a group of interns to inhabit, chatting with the neighbour on the front porch, cleaning up the yard … it was hard, it was gut-wrenchingly hard to realize what had been happening just out of sight.

Later, I was travelling when the news came in of the bodies found in East Cleveland, close to the homes of too many of my own parishioners. Once again, I encountered that shock of realizing that I had – unwittingly; still, I had been the priest who passed by on the other side whilst the one set upon by bandits lay dying in the ditch.

I was convicted, and I was convinced that my call as a Christian was to repent, to turn around, go a different direction than the one that left me looking the other way when help was needed, looking the other way when hope was hard to find, looking the other way when the kingdom of God lay in ruins, waiting for the demolition crew to come and haul it away.

I needed to repent.

I prayed. I prayed in the streets, going around in circles, while all overhead the raptors wheeled and banked as well, seeing the whole city spread out beneath them, the tiniest creatures running between the buildings.

We do not get a God’s eye view of the city from where we stand. We have to do things a little differently, if we are to see our neighbours clearly, truly, to spread hope where there is fear, light where the shadows gather, if we are to rebuild the kingdom of God in our community, we have to do it up close and personal, at street level, one step at a time.

We have seen, too many times and in too many ways, what happens when we put up walls between ourselves and our neighbours, when we refuse to rub shoulders with the ones around us. But we have seen, too, what marching, what simply walking together can do; in the marches of the recent past that we remember today we saw how walking together can rouse the dispirited and inspire the faithful to new hope and new fellowship with those very neighbours that we once never saw, never noticed, never acknowledged as God’s light to us, made in the divine image and carrying the face of Christ among us.

Last fall, some of us started walking together in Euclid, praying for our neighbours and our neighbourhoods – and our steps are going somewhere. People are noticing that we are praying for them, for us, for all the people of our city, our community. Side by side on the sidewalk, we learn about one another, we tell our stories, we share our faith and our hope. Step by step we break down the walls between us and learn to rub shoulders with one another.

We won’t solve all of the world’s problems in a single journey; we never did; but walling ourselves away from our neighbours does no good at all. Instead, one step at a time, at street level, up close and personal, we have seen that we stand a chance of bringing light to our lives, one small corner of the kingdom of God, and who knows where we will go from there?

So here is my prayer:

Merciful God, I am sorry for the times that I have passed by on the other side when a child of yours has needed my help. I am sorry for the times that I have averted my eyes, built up walls of distrust, fear, distaste, when the face of Christ was looking back at me. I repent, and with your help I want to do better. I want to walk a different way. I want to see around me the light of your salvation, not the sin of the world that separates us but the better kingdom we can be, together. Walk with me; hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me, upon us, so that walking with you we cannot fail to bear your grace to your children, your lambs, your beloved ones. Through the one born a stranger in the manger, crucified as a criminal, and all the while your beloved and exalted son, our saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Year A Epiphany 2: the Lamb

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

It seems oddly fitting that we are dedicating altar bells to the accompaniment of the Gospel reading of John announcing the arrival of the Lamb of God. Actually, there have been a couple of coincidences with the choosing and dedicating of these bells which have indicated a certain movement of the Holy Spirit; I love it when that happens, and you just know that God is smiling.

But to return to the Gospel: John announces, twice, upon seeing Jesus that here is the Lamb of God. He draws attention to the one that he has been talking about all along, the one who is greater than he, who will come to draw all people to God. But only now, seeing Jesus, does he offer this title, this caption or description: the Lamb of God.

The title might refer to the lamb of the Passover: at our Eucharist we say, after the breaking of the bread, “Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” The lamb of the Passover was a common meal shared amongst all of the Israelites, hurriedly and ready to go out at a moment’s notice to do God’s will. It was a sacrifice whose blood was daubed on the lintels of the Hebrew houses, so that the final plague of their captivity in Egypt would pass them by. It was a meal shared between neighbours; if a lamb was too much for one family, they were to combine with another. If one couldn’t afford a whole lamb, their neighbour would invite them to supper. It represented community, faithfulness, and freedom; readiness to move on God’s command, protection; God’s watching over God’s people.

We talk, too, about the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Later, long after the first Passover, the lamb of a goat, a kid, would be laden on the Day of Atonement with the sins of the whole community which they would confess and lay on its head; then the goat, the lamb would be driven into the wilderness, taking away the sins of the people: the original scapegoat.

Isaiah (our favourite prophet here at Epiphany) described the suffering servant of God as a lamb: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

Back in Genesis, when Abraham and Isaac have travelled to the summit of Mount Moriah to make sacrifice, Isaac asks his father,

“Father?”
“Yes, my son,” Abraham replied.
“The fire and the wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” and it is sufficient for two of John’s own disciples to leave his side and run after Jesus. One of them, Andrew, will not rest until he has also found his brother and given him the news: “We have found him. The Messiah.” The Lamb of God, the one whom God will provide.

So what does this have to do with bells? The bells are designed, are used to draw our attention to what we are saying, what we are doing, what we are confessing and proclaiming at the altar: that here is the Lamb of God, the one whom God has provided to us for our salvation, our freedom protection, for us to share readily but ready, too, to go out at a moment’s notice to do God’s will in the world. On a weekend when we remember the sacrifice that many made, and especially Martin Luther King, Jr, for freedom and community, the bells remind us that as often as the body of Christ is broken, still there is resurrection, return, restoration.

The bells speak to us of the holiness of the offering, of the grace of God, of the mercy and magnificence of the sacrifice that God has made on our behalf.

Today we have our Annual Meeting. In part, it is a business meeting designed to elect faithful stewards of the church and report on certain designated activities. It is also a chance to reflect on the way in which we, like John’s two disciples, have responded to the news that here is the Lamb of God. Andrew ran and told his brother. They left what they were doing and followed Jesus home, eager to hear from him the word of God. Do we get so excited about the offering which God has made on our behalf that we would drop everything to do God’s will? Do we come to the altar like those prepared for a Passover meal, with our belts tightened and our staff in our hand, ready to run out at a moment’s notice to follow God’s command?

I don’t know about you, but I move a little more slowly than I used to. Still, I wonder, where is that excitement, that irrepressible joy and wonder that drove Andrew home to pick up his brother on the way? Do we have that? Can we find that? Will we share that?

If you ever listen to the nine lessons and carols from King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve, the chances are that you’ve heard the strange and wonderful setting of William Blake’s poem, “The Lamb,” by John Tavener. In part, the poem reads,

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
…
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is callèd by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and he is mild,
He became a little child…

It is extraordinary that John’s disciples would up and leave him at a moment’s notice, just as though they were prepared for a hurried Passover journey, just because he saw Jesus wandering by and said, “Look, there goes the Lamb of God.”

But it is more extraordinary that Jesus would become the Lamb of God, the one whom God provided to be the perfect, sufficient sacrifice; to take away the sins of the world; to protect us from calamity and mark us as the chosen people of God. It is extraordinary that he returns, every day, in every city of the world, to meet us at the altar in the bread and the wine, a meal eaten with our shoes on and our belts fastened, ready to go out into the world and act on the word and the will of God.

That is why the bells ring out. Because it is, truly, extraordinary.

Amen.

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A Gethsemane prayer

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

For once, just for once you tried
to lay your burdens, those acquired
from crowds and children,
a collection of tax collectors,
sinners and scribes along the way –
for once, just for once you tried
to lay them on the shoulders of
the strongest men, sons of thunder,
who sank like stones into slumber.
Your light and easy yoke overcame
their heavy lids, their heavy hearts.
Just once you tried, and we let you down.

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The Baptism of Our Lord

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Today’s sermon began with yesterday’s story about Noah’s dove…

Is this what Jesus meant, when he told his cousin John that he must be baptized to fulfill all righteousness: that he would have to go back to the beginning, when the Spirit of God brooded like a bird over the waters of creation; through the Flood, when the watery chaos was release and began again with the flight of the dove; through the wilderness, where living water was struck from the rock to slake the thirst of the people of God and save them; that he would fulfill all righteousness by redeeming all of history through the cycle of water which runs from the beginning to the present moment, the waters that run deep and fall from the sky, in a living representation of the relationship of heaven and earth? *

I once attended a baptism where most of the congregation were strangers to the church, yet they gathered around the font ready to celebrate the anointing of their child, their beloved, his adoption into the family of the church and the setting of Christ’s seal upon his head as the beloved child of God. Despite their own day-to-day ambivalence about the stories of faith and their brooding feelings of uncertainty about God, the symbols of water, of oil, of the cross and the dove were strong enough to pull them in with their gravitational forces and bring this family to the font. Sacraments are powerful things; stories have a strong grip.

Anyway, at the end of the service, the announcement was made that there would be a retiring collection. A receptacle had been placed at the back of the church, in the porch, or the narthex if you like, to receive the people’s monetary offerings. I was there to serve as acolyte, altar guild and general factotum, so I got everything squared away and then I went next door to the vicarage for a cup of tea. The priest who had performed the baptism was quite frustrated with his unchurched congregation, it turned out, because on their way out of the church, looking for the receptacle to receive their retiring collection, they had lit upon the holy water stoop and decided that this must be it. Whether they confused it with a wishing well or why they thought they would be expected to place their donations in water, who knows? At any rate, they had generously filled up the thing with their filthy lucre, and my friend was now fulminating about the need to empty it and refill, restore and reconsecrate the whole kit and caboodle.

His wife, herself a priest, and I looked at one another and wondered together why it should be that the money should profane the holy water, rather than the water consecrating the money?

It is true that the energy of sin will try to push back the power of the water to cleanse and to refresh. It wasn’t long after the waters of creation were separated from the earth that sin stalked the land; it didn’t take long after the flood for Noah’s family to find new ways to fall short of the ideal; it didn’t take long for the Israelites sustained by living waters in the desert to forget the Lord their God and dance before golden idols. We introduce our own baptism by rejecting sin and Satan and turning away from wickedness, only to remember right away in our baptismal covenant that there will be occasions when we will indeed fall into sin, and will need God’s help to repent and return to the Lord. We know it. We know ourselves Sunday by Sunday to be washed clean by our worship, only to head back out into a world fraught with opportunities to spill sin on ourselves.

But sin will not win. Jesus submitted to the baptism of John and to the history of the living waters of God so that we know, wherever and whenever we are, that we who are born of water and of the Holy Spirit are consecrated, cleansed, redeemed, and sealed as Christ’s own forever. No matter what happens, no matter our doubts, our shame, our mistakes, nothing can pollute the Sacrament that has sealed us as beloved children of God. Instead of seeing ourselves profaned by the world in which we live and move and have our being it is our call, as those consecrated to God, to spread that holiness into the world, to use our sanctification to share the Spirit of God with those who need it.

In the story, God said that there would never be another flood to cover the whole earth with the waters of creation and begin again. Instead, there has been a lot of hard work, on both sides of heaven, day by day to restore and refresh and repent and return, and the work continues. We are called day by day to live into our own baptismal covenant, our own post-flood promises to continue in prayer, in proclamation, in protecting and upholding the dignity of the poor and those in need, in repentance. We are called to the work of sanctification, to spread the holiness that we have received, the love of God, to the corners of our world where it is tainted by discrimination, injustice, suffering and sin.

And Jesus, descending into the water and rising again, seeing the heavens opened, tells us that in every drop of water that we drink, in every lakescape that we see, in every sweat that we wipe from our brows, he is with us, reminding us that we are beloved children of God, made for holiness, washed clean and set free to proclaim the glory of God.

There may be, if you will allow one more flight of imagination, a postscript to the dove’s story. It is three years later, and she has found herself once more cooped up as she was in the ark, amongst the bustle and crush of other birds and animals, supervised by a gaggle of anxious humanity, in an enclosed space. She hears a voice, strangely familiar, and there is and a ripple, a wave, a rush of sound rising towards her. The people scatter, the cages crash and splinter; freed from her captivity, she flutters up to find her olive-skinned saviour breathing heavily among the remains of the money-changers tables and chairs. The temple courtyard is open to the sky, and she flies out once more, forever seeking new beginnings, new life, in a world washed clean.

*Tertullian, On Baptism, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm

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The dove

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

Back in the days of Noah, the heavens were opened and it rained for forty days and nights, and there was a flood. As you may remember, Noah and his family survived the deluge aboard an ark, onto which they packed all of the animals of the earth so that they might also survive and continue once the earth had been washed clean. On this ark, amongst the other animals and living things, was a dove. After the rain had stopped, after the wind had whipped up a foam on the flood and started to evaporate some of the excess water back into the sky, back behind the sluice gates of heaven, Noah decided it was time to find out whether there was, in fact, any chance of a new life on a washed-clean earth. He sent out birds to survey the scene; first a raven, which came up empty, then the dove, who first of all came up as empty as the raven, but who on her second flight of fancy found an olive twig, signs of food and fertile land beyond the floodwaters. I don’t know why Noah sent her out again, but he did, and the third time she did not return.

I don’t know why she didn’t come back; Noah guessed that she had found herself an island on which to build a nest and begin again, as he was getting ready to do – but why would she try that all alone? It makes little sense.
I wonder, instead, if the dove, exploring the clean, fresh air, so excited to be out of the ark and its staleness, spread her wings so far that she glimpsed the doors of heaven receding, closing on the deluge, swinging back into place in the dome of the sky, and at the last possible moment, when it was too late to turn back or change her mind, she slipped through the gap and found herself caught up into the heavens, the forerunner of folks like Elijah, a prophet of olive trees and new growth, new life, rewarded by her own assumption into heaven on chariots of condensed water instead of fire.

Imagine her delighted recognition when the heavens eventually opened up once more and she saw below her water, water washing clean and restoring the balance of creation; water cleansing the people and the covenant; water contained and used judiciously by God, not this time a deluge, but a baptism of living water and new life. She saw Jesus stand up out of the water like an olive tree stretching its branches towards the sky. She remembered the catch in her breath – she had almost fallen when she saw the olive tree after the flood, and knew that God had not forgotten them, and that life could, would after all begin again – and in her excitement, remembering, she once again stumbled and fell, and caught herself by the wings, and swooped and dove on the currents of the breath of God, falling like thunder from the open gates, arriving on a sprinkling of words, “This is my Son, my beloved.”

“The appearance of the symbolic dove has occasioned much speculation. Since Tertullian it has often been connected with Noah’s dove: the former dove announced deliverance from the flood, the latter dove deliverance from sins.” Oxford Bible Commentary, John Barton & John Muddiman (eds) (Oxford University Press, 2001), p.851

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In the bleak midwinter

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

I would like, if it will, for time to freeze,
stand still so that breath becomes redundant,
superfluous steam in the empty air.
The beauty of the snow falls on a bleak,
not a meek heart, burning with cold fire
against the siren winter sunlight
with her false promise and steel claws
dangling shimmering hope, icicles suspended over
unwary patrons with a spring in their step.
I should like for time to freeze until the seasons fade, flame out,
until my cold soul melts, relaxing iron bonds and
puddles, cool and reflective under the blue-gray sky.

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Day 36: remaining

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

A crossover from the church bible challenge blog, just because I kind of liked it.

epiphanyeuclid's avatarEpiphany's Bible Challenge

Exodus 40; Psalm 30; Mark 3

“Whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on each stage of their journey; but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day that it was taken up.”

A lesson in not getting ahead of God.

A parable of patience.

Oblivion to the signs of the timeless leads only to oblivion itself;

haste makes waste.

Forty years is but forty winks in the eyes of The Lord.

How long, O Lord, how long?

Silence, say the smoke signals; patience.

Follow me. You will not lead me on;

I will not steer you wrong.

A parable of patience;

a lesson in listening,

in not getting ahead of God.

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The Feast of the Epiphany at the Church of the Epiphany

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Rosalind C Hughes

The Feast of the Epiphany at the Church of the Epiphany.

The first feast of the Epiphany was the revelation of God’s love to the world through the birth of Jesus Christ, and the proclamation of that birth and its promise throughout the nations, not only through the usual channels – the prophets of Israel, the preaching of the Temple, the covenant of the chosen people – but in a direct and unmistakable message to the wise men of the east that God had chosen to be born in Bethlehem, a small city to the south of Jerusalem; chosen to be born as prince and pauper all rolled into one, as king of the Jews and ruler of the whole world, wrapped in cloth and lying in a feeding trough. Incongruous is not the word. Ironic barely hints at it. Unmistakable might. With all of those angels and stars and shepherds and wise men, there was no mistaking that something truly divine had happened – an Epiphany.

Some heard it through the music of the spheres. Some discerned it through studying star charts – science and mathematics applied divinely. Some dreamt of it. Some found it after years of waiting in faithful temple worship, and found their lives to be completed by it.

Some were disturbed by it, frightened, and all Jerusalem with him, because as often as they worshipped in the temple and invoked God’s name, they never really expected that God would answer, and it was disconcerting to think that God might, in fact, still be involved, still be interested in their lives. How many times had Herod prayed along with his people for a Messiah, only to be dumbfounded, terrified and driven genocidally mad when his prayers were answered?

A side note: it is not unimportant that the wise men came from the East. Why not from the west, from Rome or Greece or Gaul? Maybe in part to undermine the wisdom of the empire, but also in the scriptures of Genesis and the early stories of the Bible, east was the direction that took the people away from God. East was as far as you could get from God. Adam and Eve left Eden by the eastern gate; Cain, the murderous son of Adam and Eve who killed his brother, “went away from the presence of the Lord” by settling in the land of Nod, “east of Eden.” To summon the men from the East, in the terms of the story, God reached as far as God could, to the people as far from Eden, as far from the promise of paradise as God could, in order to cover the whole world, those found, those lost, and everyone in between.

Saul was truly lost. He was so lost that even after they crucified Jesus, he carried on persecuting his disciples for daring to preach the gospel, to suggest that God had done something new, had carried out a resurrection and a salvation and laid a new foundation for the kingdom of God. He was so lost that on the road to Damascus, out to do more persecuting, he found himself unable to see which way to turn, until finally he asked the way, and heard the voice of Jesus calling him back to the way of life, the way of peace, the way of salvation. His was a less gentle epiphany than that of the wise men; a brighter light and a ruder awakening. It was frightening, to be so directly confronted by the truth of the gospel. It was certainly unmistakable.

Having found his way, Saul, who was renamed Paul, became, as he said, “a servant of the gospel… 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.”

Through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known.

We are called as the church, in this church, to be an epiphany for the world, the means by which God demonstrates the reach of God’s mercy, the sureness of God’s embrace, the reality of God’s salvation embodied in Jesus, available to all.

That sounds daunting, maybe even frightening. But it starts simply, with recognizing, and remembering, and realizing where our own epiphanies are to be found. Is it in the music? Is it in the stars, or the sun, or the snow? Is it in the sleeping beauty of a child or a lover, or in the storm over the lake? Is it in the scientific precision of a world of intricate detail and wild wonder? Is it in the Sacrament, the holy 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?

For me, it started with a few school teachers who were faithful in passing on the prayers, and it grew in the wonder of the mystery of the Eucharist, the strange but unmistakable presence of Christ in the bread and the wine, the Body and the Blood. Sometimes, it is a sunset that reminds me, often it’s a friend – not always the same one, sometimes a poem or a single phrase of music; sometimes the strangeness, the mystery of life itself draws me back into conversation with God, and finding a willing partner, I am once again struck by the revelation of God’s far-reaching embrace and dazzling light.

It is a revelation and a relationship that I would not want to live without. That is my epiphany, and when I share what I have found, what I have seen, then I am doing the work of the church, letting the variety of God’s riches be known.

It is the work of us all. Years ago, before I stood on this side of the pulpit, I met a woman who had been badly hurt by the church. I told her I was sorry, that she was right, and that I wished she would give the church a second chance, because it helped me so much despite that wrong, and it was precisely because I was not the priest of that church that I was able to tell her that I would be happy to stand by her side if she ever did want to give it a go. She never did come to church with me, but years later I spoke with the next priest that served that church, and she had gone to him, and told him her story, and asked him about arranging for the baptism of her children at a different church down the road.

I, too, am from a faraway land to the east, and unlike the shepherds, the townspeople, the midwives and innkeepers of Bethlehem, it may take me longer to get to into the light and to bring my neighbours to see the sleeping baby than for those who have always lived next door.

In plain terms, it is easier for you to sit by the side of someone you invite to church than it is for me.

The Epiphany was the revelation of God’s love to the world through the birth of Jesus Christ, God’s endless reach to the farthest wanderers in time and space to bring them back into the promise, the relationship that is our salvation, the knowledge of the love of God. Our own epiphanies continue, the little reminders reassuring us day by day that God is still involved, still interested in our lives. Often, you are that sign for one another. Our call as the Church of the Epiphany is to be the sign, the star, the Sacrament for our world, our community in this time, reminding and reassuring our neighbours that God is still with us, all of us.

We do it by donating dimes and helping those in need of a hand. We do it through sharing our worship, the hidden mysteries of music and word and Sacrament and sight. We do it when we are willing to share our own stories of how God has reached far, far to the east of our lives to call us home to Christ, when we say to a friend, a colleague, one searching for a sign in the stars, “Come, see what I have found, here in the city, so unexpected, so incongruous, yet so real.”

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you. For behold, darkness covers the land; deep gloom enshrouds the peoples. But over you the Lord will rise, and God’s glory will appear upon you. Neighbours will stream to your light, and people to the brightness of your dawning. The Lord will be your everlasting light, and you will shine with God’s glory.” (Isaiah 60:1-3,19b/Canticle 11 paraphrase)

It is God’s promise. It is our charge. It is Epiphany.

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