2nd Sunday of Christmas/Epiphany
I love words. I use them practically every day. I’m fascinated by our language and how complicated it can be sometimes. Sometimes we use a word because it’s specifically more-precise than another. For example, if you have less of something that can be counted, you use the word “fewer” and not “less”; I am less intelligent than I used to be because I have fewer brain cells. But then there are other times, that a word can be specifically imprecise and you don’t know what it means unless you hear it in context.
Take for example, the word “epiphany.” It can mean a specific day: January 6; twelve days after Christmas. Or we can use it to describe the event that we celebrate on Epiphany-the-day; the visit of the Magi. Or we can use the word epiphany to describe the dawning revelation of some thought. Like when you say something like, “Something just dawned on me: the word ‘epiphany’ can mean a lot of different things.”
Our reading from Isaiah today begins, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” And we know about that dawning light, right? We know it was that child, born to be King of the Jews and everything else. We even know the deeper, dawning truth that this child will save us from our sins. But do we remember the moment that notion dawned on us to believe it? For many of us, that light came slowly.
A better question perhaps: do we remember that this is a light we are called, here at this Table, to carry with us. This is a light we are called to shine, both here in this place, and throughout our lives. By the power of our Savior’s Spirit, we are sent to be that dawning, epiphany light of God’s Salvation.
The Epiphany we commemorate tomorrow happened in Bethlehem, but my personal epiphanies usually happen in the shower. That whole thing fascinates me. People have clever thoughts in the shower so often that there’s a name for it: Shower Thoughts. A quick Google search will bring you a million of them.
Like these:
- History classes are only going to longer and harder as time goes on.
- In order to fall asleep, you need to pretend to be asleep.
- When we go jogging, we put on special clothes so people don’t think we’re running from something.
- The Swiss must have been very confident in their chances of winning the war because their army knives include a corkscrew.
- Your stomach always thinks potatoes are mashed.
- If humans could fly, they’d consider it exercise and never do it.
You get the idea: some thoughts are deeper than others.
Now, a shower may seem a strange place to have an epiphany, but so is the one we hear about from Matthew. Can you imagine? For Herod, the so-called king of the Jews, this is quite an epiphany; but his epiphany just come to him in the shower; no his come from the East.
Talk about something dawning on you where and when you least expect it! Out of the blue there are a bunch of foreigners who show up at your door because they've heard someone's having a birthday. “Oh really, you've heard a child has been born here? Well, I’m going to need to check with the wife on that.”
Now, we always remember the story of the Wise Men around Christmastime and, in fact, these guys have even become rather symbolic of the season: they make it into our manger scenes even though that’s not how the story is told. They are so iconic that I think, that we forget just how scandalous it was for them to show up. These guys were not from Jerusalem. In fact, although we aren't told exactly where they were from, we know that they were not from anywhere nearby. They were not Hebrews and they were not even followers of the same religious practices. They don't know about the promised Messiah or the prophecies like the one we read from Isaiah. These were, best guess, astrologers; they were shamen; they were New Agers before it was new and these are the guys who show up looking to pay their respects to Jesus. It would be like one of our Zen Cowboy neighbors showing up to wish you a merry Christmas, but you were the one who didn't realize that it was December 25th. The Israelites don't yet know that their king has been born, but a bunch of hippies do! Scandalous.
Of course this is not the first nor the last time God will pull this kind of prank on us. It seems like God is always asking the wrong people to proclaim Good News while right people like us are left looking silly, bewildered, and out of touch with God's plan. To site a few examples: who is Jesus born to? Famous and important people? Nope. Who does God ask to proclaim the Messiah's birth? Shepherds and then hippies. Who does God send to proclaim Christ's rising from the tomb? Women… well, it was scandalous at the time. Who does God call to be Christ's Body in the world and proclaim the very message of salvation? Oh wait, that’s us.
Why do you suppose God keeps doing this? Why does God keep asking the least obvious, the least respectable, and the least influential to speak the most important message ever given? Well, I'm not God so I can't say for sure, but I have a few ideas. Maybe, God calls the least likely people because these are the kinds of people God cares the most about. Maybe these are the people who need to hear this news the most.
Maybe it’s more about us; maybe God wants us to learn something here. Perhaps God was shown forth into this world as a poor and helpless baby to challenge our notions of importance and power, wealth and superiority; how they are not actually things that God values.
Or maybe there's some other, simpler lesson here. Maybe God calls and uses the unusual and unexpected of the world... because those are the sorts of people who go when they're called. Maybe God literally lined up the stars just so that a bunch of astrologers would notice and go to Jerusalem to sing Happy Birthday and bring gifts. Maybe God called them to go because those who should have in the first place didn't.
Once again, as we gather around this Table, we remember our calling. Unlike the wise men, we not only know that the child has been born, we know what he came to do. As we gather around this Table, we are reminded that we have a story to tell. Let us again be shaped by him, more and more into His Body as we go into this world.
Your light has come; the glory of the Lord has risen upon you, and you are now sent to let that light shine out into the world. So let us shine like the outcasts we once were. Let us shine Christ's love in all we do and say. Let us be the ones through whom God shows forth, Christ's body made flesh into this darkened world.
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