Sermon - Epiphany (1/5/2020)
Is. 60:1-6; Ps. 72:1-7,10-14; Eph. 3:1-12; Mt. 2:1-12
“The grace of God was given to me,” Paul wrote, “to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.” There is, Paul says, a mystery that has been hidden for ages in the God who created all things. Paul talks about the “plan” of this mystery – the Greek word we translate “plan” is oikonomia, from which we get the English word “economy,” it means something like “the nuts and bolts of how something works in pratice.” How God’s creation really works, Paul says, is a mystery that has been hidden in God but now has become clear in Jesus Christ, and Paul wants everybody to know what it is.
So what is this hidden mystery, how in fact does God’s creation work? According to Paul, the key to understanding how the mystery of God’s creation works is that God’s creation of human beings in God’s own image and likeness, God’s love for the human beings God has made and God’s call to those human beings to care for and bring to completion all of God’s creation – this love and call of God is for everyone. Without exception. Paul says that former generations, before Jesus, did not really understand this, but now we do, and this understanding changes everything.
That God was active and present in the world, at least in some human beings, this people knew before Jesus. The psalm today is a song for the birth or the coronation of a new king, praying that God will give this king God’s own justice and righteousness, so that this king will defend the needy, resuce the poor, crush the oppressor. So that this king will have compassion on the lowly and the poor and consider their blood to be precious, as God does. The psalm prays that this king will truly embody God’s rule over the world, such that all the nations will recognize it, and come bringing gifts to pay him homage.
The psalmist prays that there will be one person, a king in Jerusalem, who will embody God’s reign and God’s compassion. And indeed there was a descendant of Israel’s kings in whom God’s reign fully took flesh, and at his birth kings came with gifts to pay him homage. But Paul says that the psalmist did not yet understand that God’s reign was never intended only to take flesh in one human being, who would be so special and unique that other people – even kings – would have to pay him respect. No, Paul says, in Jesus we come to see that the reign of God has always been meant to take flesh in everyone. Without exception. Even in me, and even in you.
When the Jewish people who had been taken into exile in Babylon were told they could return, many were joyful at the opportunity. They had grown up in Babylon, hearing stories from their parents and grandparents about this wondrous place called Jerusalem, where God was worshipped in a magnificent temple, where kings (at least theoretically) embodied God’s own justice, where God’s people lived in a land flowing with milk and honey. It must have sounded like a fairy tale. But when they finally arrived, they found not Disney World, but the ruins of a city that had burned to the ground more than fifty years before, now overgrown with weeds and barely recognizable, and a life of hardships they could not have imagined.
In this unexpected darkness, the prophet speaks the words from today’s first reading: Rise up, and let your light shine! Because in this place you will live in the presence of God whose light will come upon you. And the darkness that is coming over the whole world will be so deep, and your light, God’s light, will shine in that darkness so radiantly, that the nations will come to you to find what God has given you. They will come bearing precious gifts, like gold and frankincense, to give you in return for just a share in your light.
The prophet knew that God is faithful to God’s promises, that Jerusalem and the temple would be rebuilt, that God’s people would once again become a beacon of light for the nations. The prophet may have even sensed that, one day, as the first chapter of the gospel of John says, the true light that gives light to everyone would come into the world, and that the light would shine in the darkness, and the darkness would not overcome it. That the nations would come to him, even as a child, bringing royal gifts of gold and frankincense. All of this the prophet understood. But, Paul says, what becomes clear in Jesus is that Jesus is not the only the light shining in the darkness. No, Paul says, everyone is graced and called to be light in a dark world. Everyone, without exception. Even me, and even you.
For Paul, the coming of Jesus was an epiphany – a revelation, a flash of insight, a moment of understanding of how the mystery of God’s creation actually works and has always been meant to work. Jesus is the king who embodies God’s reign before whom the kings of the world bow down in homage, but he is more than that. Jesus is the light shining in the darkness to whom the nations bring gold and frankincense and precious gifts in order to get closer to the light, but he is more than that. Paul says, in Jesus we discover – as if in an epiphany – that everyone was made to embody God’s rule of compassion and justice for the poor and needy, that everyone was created to be a light shining in darkness. Everyone, without exception. Including me, and including you.
We come together this morning on this first Sunday of 2020. I’m not a prophet, and I don’t know about you, but my sense is that this is going to be a very difficult year for a lot of people. It’s certainly not off to a very hopeful start. And for us here at Epiphany (the church, not the day), we might look around like the exiles returning to Jerusalem and say, we don’t have very much to offer. We’re just a small congregation, a lot of us aren’t as active or energetic as we were when we were younger, we don’t have the ability to stop the fear or the hate or the indifference that seems so widespread in the world today.
To us, as to them, the prophet has a message: Rise up, let your light shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Are there people living in a dark place looking for light, looking for hope, looking for a way out? In your baptism that light has been given to you as a free and unmerited gift of God. Let your light shine. Are there people looking for compassion and justice, are there people in need to be defended and rescued? Christ the king who embodies the reign of God has come, and in your baptism you have been given a share in his kingship as a gift of God. So embody God’s rule and share God’s compassion and justice.
But there is even more. Paul’s epiphany is that the light of God isn’t just given to one community, the reign of God isn’t embodied in just one community. In Christ we see that God has always intended these gifts for all people. So as we come to worship today, as we join the Magi in bringing our gifts and paying homage to Jesus our light and our king, we worship at a table where all who seek Jesus are welcome, where all who seek the light have a place, where all who practice the compassion of God share the gifts of God with one another. My prayer for Epiphany in 2020 is that this table will shape us to embody the light and the compassion of God in everything we do, as we share one another’s joys and sorrows, and those of our community and of our world. May our guiding star be the light and the compassion of God that was revealed in Jesus to be the functioning core of all creation, the light and the justice of God that is God’s gift to everyone.