Believe and Be Confident

 Psalm 27

            A few years ago, I was blessed to see the Mary Poppins production that is still on Broadway.   The music, of course, was totally infectious and amazing.   The cast was stellar and the stagecraft exceeded all expectation.    What I loved the most were the many truly magical moments.  We need those now and again in life, don’t we?   For me, chief among such  moments is when Bert -- the chim-chiminey-chim-chiminey-chim-chim-cheree friend of Ms. Poppins -- taps and sings his way up the side of the stage then straight across the top of it.   At one point, he was tapping and singing on center stage fully suspended upside-down!   This stunt fully supports one of the musical’s central themes – anything can happen.

            As my mind replays that scene, I am inspired by the strong confidence British actor Gavin Lee had to have had to perform Bert so perfectly.   He had to have had strong confidence in himself, in the stage crew responsible for his harness, and in the producers for spending money on quality safety equipment.    I believe a lack of confidence would have showed and dimmed the shine of the dazzling production.

            Having confidence in yourself and in others is a rather big key to lots of things we do and to living an overall contented life.     Do you consider yourself a confident person?   A person who clings to intimate trust in particular truths about yourself, a special someone, other people and social systems in your life?  Even more to the point this morning, let me ask you this – are you confident in God’s care for you?

            The magnificent Psalm we just heard, rock solid #27, is a help and reminder for all of us to be completely confident in the caring, saving grace of our God.    Its fourteen verses can be broken out to help us more fully understand what this means.

            Verses 1 – 6 make up one of the strongest, most remarkable professions of faith in all of Scripture.   It is, I’ve discovered, the only place in the entire Old Testament where God is referred to as “my light.”   There are plenty of other general references to God as a great light.   Isaiah 9:2 comes to mind – “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”  But none is so direct and intimate as we find in Psalm 27:1.    Instead of an entire nation, the spotlight falls on one single, special soul.   This soul has made the choice to live in faith rather than fear, to have complete confidence in the care of God.

            In this opening section, verse 3 has long been a personal favorite of mine.    I’ve read it to myself in many a precarious emotional moment and I’ve read it aloud on many pastoral visits.   “Though an army encamp against me,” it reads, “I shall not fear; though war rise up against me, I will be confident.”   Stated in the lighter, contemporary tone of biblical interpreter Eugene Peterson, it reads, “When I am besieged, I’m calm as a baby; when all hell breaks loose, I’m collected and cool.”   

            Like King David, the likely author of this Psalm, many folks I’ve known and cared for have been physically in a military war zone with real life enemies encamped around them.   Great is the power of recalling these holy words during such a time.    Other folks have lived in domestic war zones where emotional and physical violence encamped around them.   Great is the power of recalling these holy words during such a time.    

            As I’ve mentioned from time to time as part of my witness to the amazing grace of God, I grew up in an environment where every day and night I felt besieged by abusive words.  I lived with a good amount of fear.   Yet I have this special memory about how I used to hang sun-catchers on my bedroom windows throughout those growing years.  They were splendid, save for when the little suction cup thingy let loose, sending the catcher crashing down in the middle of the night.

             I also had this very special crystal-like tear drop a close friend gave me in high school.    In fact, I just found this while cleaning out closet space a few days ago.   I spent many hours staring at this, the way the sunlight would strike it and disperse itself into tiny fragments of hope all across my room and life.  Not having ever attended church, I didn’t have the faithful language then to say the Lord is my light … but I sure experienced divine presence.    I felt bathed in bright confidence … confidence in myself to survive and thrive and more importantly in something greater and beyond that would guide and deliver me.

            After verse 1-6 the language in the Psalm shifts subtly but significantly.   It’s a shift is from a broad profession of faith to a precise plea-filled prayer for help.   It shifts from speaking to us, as in “One thing I asked of the Lord” to speaking for us and directly to God, as in “Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud … do not hide your face from me … teach me your way … lead me on a level path.”   This is intense salvation language conveys a message of bold interior confidence that God will protect and deliver.  

            Can you recall a time when you cried out a similar sort of prayer?  Made a dramatic, faithful appeal to the Almighty?  How was it answered?  Were you lead from a valley or a rocky ridge to a level path? 

            By the time the Psalm moves into its final verses, everything shifts back to a more general profession of faith.  In a good way, it’s downright preachy.   It is personal witness and full-on exhortation rolled into one holy nugget – “I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living … wait for the Lord, be strong, let your heart take courage!”

            That the powerful prayer song that is Psalm 27 ends with a command to wait on the Lord is not something to quickly gloss over when reading and meditating on it.  This is an invitation to return to your confidence in God time and time again, if not daily.  It’s an invitation to closely examine and re-examine where you place your most intimate, faithful trust and confidence.  If you are waiting for the Lord, you are believing in the Lord as your light and salvation.   Not just as a distant reality that happens at the time of death, but shining in the land of the living.    Where do you go to receive resplendent reassurance that God totally cares for you?

            Rev. Bill Davis, our Pastor Emeritus, and I both share a fondness for Celtic spirituality.    Evidence of this is found at the Celtic cross right outside the sanctuary door.   In general, this branch of Christian spirituality focuses on our having very personal and less formalized faith.   In a word, it’s more “folksy.”  It is strongly centered in the revelations of God’s light and love that are interwoven throughout nature, while at the same time guarding sacred mysteries.   

            I mention this in the context of Psalm 27 because this tradition has a helpful expression for where we go to find and re-find God’s light and life.   It speaks of “thin places.” 

            A “thin” place is both physical and metaphysical, earthbound as well as otherworldly.   It is a place where people go because they experience God as nearer there than in other locations.   It is a place where past, present and future are perceived as being very thinly divided.   According to one Presbyterian colleague, as this tradition grew from the fifth and sixth centuries and then out beyond actual locations around the Irish Sea, the phrase “thin place” came to encompass any “moments when the holy became visible to the eyes of human spirit … where a person is somehow able to encounter more ancient and eternal reality within the present time.”[i]

            Do you have at least one “thin place” in your life?   Every inch of nearby Camp Johnsonburg’s 400 acres works this way for me, especially the outdoor prayer labyrinth located in the middle of the woods.   

            I pray this sanctuary and all the ministry spaces of FPC fall into the “thin place” category for you.    When our building spaces and the time we spend in them giving time and talent are perceived in this way, they become centers of holy light and of growing spiritual confidence that the Lord cares for us all.   This same faithful perception can be oriented to your home and workplace as well.   “Thin places” help sustain our deepest most intimate confidence in the nearness of the Lord.   As I believe the Psalmist knew well, they transform all sorts of spaces and situations from being dark dens of despair into bright beacon-lit harbors of hope and salvation.  

            I wonder if hanging upside down, center stage, while singing and tapping is a thin place for Gavin Lee.   It sure would be for me!  I’d have the utmost confidence in God to keep me safely suspended by working through the good gifts of everyone involved in the entire production.   Say, come to think of it, this is quite a good illustration of how our church life should be in the divine production of our Lord’s light and salvation in the world.   So may the Lord first and foremost be the true confidence of all our lives, and of our life together as Fairmount Presbyterian Church, as Faithful People in Christ!  Amen.  

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[i] Rev. Dr. Agnes Norfleet, www.day1.net

Which Way Are We Dragging Divine Nets?

 Mark 1:14-20

                When’s the last time you felt like a day or an experience was just dragging along?   Were you at work?  Stuck in a traffic jam or some other long line?    I sure hope it wasn’t a recent time here in worship!     

            We speak of feeling like days and experiences are dragging because we know what it means to literally drag an object.   I very recently dragged this year’s beautiful six foot Christmas tree out of our home and down into the backyard woods.    Fortunately, I remembered it needed to be undecorated first.   

            Dragging – whether feeling it or doing it -- is part of life.  Though it can seem boring and burdensome to experience, it can also benefit our lives and our being part of community.   So when time seems to be moving slowly, it can also bring about the blessing of some extra rest or extra productivity.   That needle-dropping tree sure needed to be liberated from our living room and returned to its wooded home.   And long lines just might be the result of good safety measures.   

            I mention all this because I find it quite fascinating that Jesus’ very first disciples were professionals of the dragging process.    The one primary skillset they all had in common was one that Jesus knew would be most helpful to this divine purpose.     They were all skilled at dragging fishing nets.

            According to the Gospels, Jesus’s three year ministry happened all around the great freshwater lake in Galilee.    He was from this region.  He knew the vital importance of life on the shoreline and how the community had to intricately work together to support itself.   Fish was the staple diet of the people.    Catching fish was therefore very big business, business needed to feed and employ families as well as make a profit for the Roman Empire that ruled the land.       It really isn’t at all surprising that He first found fishermen to be his followers.    There were plenty of them!

            From what I’ve come to understand, one of the nets fisherman used in that day was a kind of trawl net.   It was let out from the end of boat and was weighted in a way that it sort of stood in the water.   When the boat moved forward, the nets four corners were drawn together.   In this way, it became like a big bag moving through water and enclosing fish.[i]  This process required of the fisherman a willingness to work long, hard hours on the water.   It required skill and patience and hope that the haul would be worth all the effort.    I suspect there were times when long days of dragging felt as if they were, well, dragging. 

            As we read in this morning’s lesson from the first chapter of Mark, Jesus first approached two sets of sibling fisherman – Simon (later called Peter) and Andrew, as well as James and John.   He did so to offer them a radical invitation.   He invited them to leave their livelihood behind and start a new vocation.   He asked in a way that exhorted them to do so immediately.    No two week notice.  No checking with their families first.    Immediately.   There is more to this historical experience than Mark is telling us, but the point is they indeed dropped their nets and got immediately caught up in what Jesus asked of them.    We have to wonder what was so very compelling that they would make such a big, life-altering decision.

            Mark’s Gospel indicates they did so because they faithfully believed Jesus’ proclamation that the Kingdom of God was at hand.   To fully understand what the biblical meaning of the “Kingdom of God” is we’d honestly all have to sit and have a lengthy class of study together.    It’s really good seminary lecture stuff.    For our limited time together here this morning in worship, I find it most helpful to point out that this does not refer to a place but a way of living.    It’s not a cloudbank up above with gold-bricked streets and a gorgeous castle with a dazzling-crowned King Jesus just sitting around waiting to be served.

            Jesus’ bold invitation was to follow His radically active and different kind of reign.    Instead of dragging fishing nets, He asked his first disciples to drag a divine net.  Not to entrap people as we might immediately come to think.    Not to force people into being the oppressed subjects of a self-serving empire such as was true for so many of God’s children living under the thumb of the Roman Empire.   Jesus words and actions, His Lordship, focused instead on liberation from the sin that creates institutional injustice.   

            The divine net He asked his disciples to take up was for the purpose of catching more and more children of God up in long-promised holy plans for love, peace, hope, justice and redemption.

            Jesus asked because He was the flesh and bone fulfillment of this promised peaceable dominion.   With their hard work ethic and their faithful hopes of a better life for their families and all the kin of their historic faith, those first fisherman needed no second prompting from Jesus.  They did not drag themselves into this new way of life. 

            How are we modern day disciples doing with our dragging of the divine net?  What are we doing to stay caught up in the holy kingdom living of our Lord?   How much are we doing to catch others up in the loving, just, hope-filled, redeeming way of life?    Are we dragging with joyful immediacy in every moment, believing Christ is truly present among us and indeed reigns over all the sin and evil of our world?   Or are we dragging our feet, passively and unproductively waiting on the reign of Christ to just happen sometime in a distant future?  

            Earlier this week, I read a compelling article on discipleship and church life today by Professor David Lose of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.   Church is, as I’ve always understood it, where we gather together to be in the boat and learn how to cast the divine net of peace, hope, love and justice in Christ.   The professor lifts up the sobering reality that church participation continues its past 40 years of being in decline.   Of the many studies on this topic – and I do try hard to keep up with the reading – he points to one particular reason why the immediacy of discipleship, of casting out kingdom living in this world, is dragging.    He writes,

            “We’ve moved from an age of duty – where you do things because you know you’re supposed to – to the age of discretion – where, nearly overwhelmed with choices about how to spend your time, you exercise discretion based on how it helps you make sense of and get the most out of your life.”

            He then boils his point down further to say, “Attending church isn’t a cultural given anymore and there are a whole lot more options on how you might profitably spend your Sunday morning.” [ii] 

            Since I agree with this based on my past fourteen years of ordained ministry, let me immediately say how grateful I am that all of you have gathered here this morning!   Especially on a day when two beautiful new disciples in this family boat that is FPC have been welcomed by the waters of baptism.    As to how we all might be an even more positive, productive holy fishing crew together to help offset the decline in dragging the divine net of peace and justice, here are three things we can focus on.  These are based on a book I’m currently reading and discussing with colleagues in Newton Presbytery called From the Outside In, Connecting to the Community Around You.

            First, we need to become even more fully immersed in mission.    This means that we keep our focus foremost on what the reign of Jesus we are taught by Mark’s Gospel is all about.  Namely, “bringing healing, liberation, and renewal”[iii] to more and more people’s lives.  This involves our remaining active with and adding to our social justice ministries such as IHN, ASP and Open Cupboard, and it also means seeing our everyday ordinary actions and interactions in kingdom context.

            Second, we should take even more seriously our role as witnesses to the Way of Jesus within our culture.   This should be a holistic endeavor, not a narrow and programmatic one.  How are we salt and light for one another in this congregation?  In our neighborhoods?  In our places of work and recreation?    We should be willing to “add the flavor of the Gospel to daily dialogue … therefore enhancing the human experience of God.”[iv]

            Third and finally, for this morning anyway, we need to keep focused on ministry being the calling of every person in the church.   We are all in the boat working to cast forth Christ vision and action -- ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament, ordained Elders and Deacons, faithful laypersons, worship and prayer chain participants, folks who donate time and talent in a myriad of small ways.   All of us need to energetically and resourcefully pool together to expand the focus of ministry to “every issue within the human experience” and for the purpose of “reflecting the concern of Jesus that all person may have life in abundance.”[v]

            The dragging process of being disciples of Jesus is a necessary, beautiful, positive, productive gift to the world.   It may well feel burdensome at times, but I find is a healthy indicator of passionate, dedicated work being done.   It may well lead to feeling bored and stuck at other times, but I find this is always a spiritual summons to promptly pick-up and cast the good divine net further.    Jesus keeps urgently commanding we follow, for the Kingdom of God is in the holy of right now.    May we do so with fresh energy, faithful imagination, strong ropes of hope, and above all, abundant and immediate demonstrations of divine love.   Amen.  

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[i] William Barclay, commentary on the Gospel of Mark from the Daily Bible Series

[ii] http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=546

[iii] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MkEpiphany3.htm

[iv] From the Outside In, by Ronald W. Johnson, p.22.

[v] ibid.

Faith In Motion

      John 1:43-51
      

           I’ve only played a proper game of Dominoes a couple times in my life.   It’s enjoyable, especially if the dimple-numbered pieces being used are a nicely weighted kind.    But still, for most of my forty-two years dominoes have been used for another form of play.    You know … for diligently and oh so delicately setting them up one in front of the other in a pattern constructed to create a delightful chain reaction.    

            The goal is always to make a long line that will work.   The fun tension is in knowing full well that one slightly out of place piece might bring the movement to a dead stop.   My, what frustration and a sudden sense of failure can happen when it’s all been set in place, the first piece tipped into motion, and then it glitches a few seconds later!     When all that forward motion plays out perfectly, though, it’s such a joyful sense of accomplishment.  Hmmm … I wonder how many dominoes we could successfully set up in here in our sanctuary?   

            Today’s Bible passage is what has caused me to be thinking about dominoes, chain reactions and … church life.     The Fourth Gospel begins so beautifully and poetically.  The mystical sounding language paints a broad picture about Jesus as the Word in the world.   All of John is full of this sort of symbolic language.    Yet as we reach verse 19 of the first chapter it also starts to get very direct and practical as well …

             This is where we read about religious authorities from Jerusalem grilling John the Baptist about his identity and authority to baptize with water.   It’s where we read of his confession that he is but a vocal mile marker pointing the way to the Messiah, the Lamb of God.  His purpose was to help set the Messianic movement on earth further in motion … to humbly fall forward and help start the chain reaction of responses to Jesus’ ministry.   

            After telling the religious authorities what they demanded to know, John was standing with two of his own disciples.   We read that as they stood there together, Jesus passed right by them.  This set up the scene up nicely for John to put faith in motion.    So he did so by telling the two about who Jesus is.   They reacted by moving on from John and starting to follow the Lord.    Jesus noticed the two toppling forward in the Messianic movement.   He asked them what they were looking for.   They responded by saying that they wanted to know where he was going to be staying.   Jesus responded to them simply by saying, “Come and See.”  

            This was not an invitation to one particular time and place.  He would be staying in on place.  He would be staying the course of his divinely constructed destiny.  This was an invitation to move forward with him in His mission.  

            This inspired one of the two, Andrew, to soon after continue the active chain of invitation by proclaiming the identity of Jesus to his brother Simon, who was later renamed Peter by Jesus.    Around that time Jesus found another man, named Philip, who was from Andrew and Simon’s hometown, inviting him to also follow the new movement.   Philip did so by going right out and finding a friend named Nathaniel to tell him the Good News. 

            Noticing the motion pattern here?  The pattern of being found then going out to find?   Of seeing and then inviting others to see?    Are you catching on to how we can consider all this faith in motion, this movement, this Jesus chain, to be like line of dominoes?   We can call it Domine Dominoes, after the Latin word for Lord!   

             As we know, though, one piece even ever so slightly out of place can bring the chain to halt.    In this case, the out of place piece could well have turned out to be Nathaniel.   And so early in the line!   Specifically, what was out of place was Nathaniel’s response to the invitation.   He didn’t move his faith immediately forward.   He instead asked, in what sure seems to have been with a straight-up skeptical, plainly prejudicial attitude, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  

            Now, to Nathaniel’s point, a fellow pastor has written this – “Nazareth was a dump. It didn’t feature in any Old Testament prophecies. No great personage had come from there. It wasn’t the seat of any power and no great families hailed from Nazareth. It was a simple backwater town. No great schools, colleges, universities. There was nothing. Nazareth was nowhere.”[i]   

             What was Philip to do with this response?    Condemn and dismiss his friend for having this prejudicial attitude?   Re-set the movement someplace else?    What would you have done?

            The Gospel only tells us that he replied with understanding and further invitation to move forward in faith.    Philip did so by repeating Jesus’ invitation to come and see.

            We can tell from the text that Jesus had been observing and listening to this exchange.  How did He, our pure example of righteous living, respond to Nathaniel’s prejudicial comment about people from Nazareth?     He responded to the human prejudice with holy positivity.   Jesus just toppled it with grace by praising Nathaniel for being a truly open and honest Israelite.    There was no harsh judgment here, just loving a person right where they were at in their thinking and believing.   Having been accepted in this manner, Nathaniel’s faith moved forward.  He thus fell into the growing line of disciples on the move.   The first chapter of John ends with Jesus promising Nathanial that he’d be seeing even more awesome things as the Messianic movement progressed.

            What a beautiful lesson this teaches us about how the kinetic movement of the Messiah and His disciples does not come to a dead stop when skepticism and prejudice are presented.  It instead stands with such fruits of sin and helps the person move ahead along the path of peace and hope in Christ.            

            The positive and peaceful chain reaction to the Good News of Jesus Christ is still going strong today.    It is a most impressive and endless display of faith in forward motion.    And praise be to God, as it moves through modern day disciples, it continues to overpower skepticism and prejudice in our human race.  

            I don’t know about you, but I’ve sure had a few Nathaniel moments in my life.    The environments I was raised in had lots of different prejudicial seeds being planted and watered and pulled and used.    And I believe I have absolutely had our Lord meet me in many great moments of deep honesty with myself, always with the invitation to “come and see” greater, more holy realities where equality and justice are in motion and have been in motion through history.    

            Speaking of God and history, of the Jesus chain, my children have the day off from school tomorrow.  We will all not receive our mail.   It’s a federal holiday, signed into creation by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.    This gets me wondering if a few decades ago anyone ever skeptically, prejudicially asked, “Can anything good come out of Atlanta?”   I’m sure lots of good has come out of Atlanta throughout American history.   We must to be especially mindful, though, how eighty-three years ago today, On January 15^th, 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born there on Auburn Avenue, the heart of the African-American business district.   He was steeped in the freedom-forwarding movement of Christ and His disciples from the start.    As he grew and aligned further in Gospel faith, he both personally experienced and learned about the hard history of racial segregation and slavery in America.   As a Baptist minister and bold, leading civil rights leader he preached the positive, peaceful, forward motion of non-violence as the only faithful reply to deep, nation-dividing racial bigotry.  

            One inspiring example of this is what he had to say following a fire-bombing of his home by terrorizing white supremacists on January 30^th, 1956.[ii]    Aware that the situation could quickly topple forward into mob violence between blacks and white police, God gave Rev. Dr. King the grace stand on his porch and proclaim the following –

            “We must love our white brothers … we must make them know that we love them … Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: ‘Love your enemies; bless them that curse you’ … this is what we must live by …remember,” concluded King, “if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance." 

            What a powerful and proactive witness to faith in forward motion, to movement with Jesus Christ that does not cease to invite any member or group in the human race to come and see greater things like reconciliation and justice for all.    Though this prophet of holy peace died in tragic violence, the positive and peaceful chain reactions of his work have helped me and my children to live in a much more harmonious America than before I was born.  Even more racial and economic reconciliation is needed and Dr. King’s legacy pushes me to keep faithfully falling forward in the cause of Christ alongside all God’s children.   

            Through the Holy Spirit and until a final day of divine peace for this world, Jesus will keep finding and calling people right where they are at.   It does not matter where they are from or whether they are at first skeptical and prejudicial.   And our Lord will keep inspiring us to find each other, to accept each other, to positively push each other toward actively sharing in the Good News movement.  

            Hmmm … I wonder how many more Domine domino chains I – and we -- can help God set up across our country and the world?    Amen.  

           

           

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[i] http://thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/leaving-the-shadows-epiphany3/

[ii] Read his book Stride Toward Freedom (1958)

Joyfully and Humbly Give Your Gifts to Jesus

   Epiphany 2012, Matthew 2:1-12

For the Church all across the world, the sacred season of Christmas has officially come to a close.   This seems to be the case for the secular celebration of late December as well, evidenced by the fact that I’m now seeing Valentine’s Day items flooding the stores I most often frequent.   I believe I’ve even seen a wee bit of leprechaun peeking at me with a reminder that St. Patrick’s Day is coming soon enough after that.    So, yeah, we are moving on from buying, then giving and receiving gifts with our loved ones in celebration of Jesus’ birth.   

Now it is time to faithfully focus on bringing ourselves everyday as loving gifts in worshipful service to Him. 

We’ve shifted into the church season of epiphany.   What does this mean?   A common understanding of epiphany is that it is a flash of fresh insight – most especially of the spiritual sort.     Perhaps you’ve found yourself at one time or another lost in a revelatory moment and saying, “Ah, I’ve just had an epiphany.”              

A couple evenings ago, for example, I had a rather sudden, wonderfully overwhelming, and completely re-energizing realization about how very full my heart is with hope for my family life right now.    This wasn’t at all a brand new insight.  Yet the way it dawned on me while resting on my living room couch late Thursday evening in an otherwise empty manse felt like God had directly and lovingly whispered in my ear.   My heart all of a sudden felt as big and bright as the moon was that evening.  

The broader, biblical meaning of the season of Epiphany, for us as individual Christians, as a congregation, and as part of the universal church in the world, is discovered in this morning’s familiar Scripture passage.    While it talks of giving Jesus presents, it even more so proclaims how his presence is a gift to all humankind and how we gift Him every time we openly, actively bear witness to this. 

At the heart of our passage are the mystery men who visited Christ’s meager manger.    Most common Bible translations – such as the NRSV in our pews and the traditional King James Version – identify them as “wise men from the east.”    Other more modern translations have called them “scholars” (The Message) or “magi” (Common English Bible).  

I most like “magi” because it is closest to the ancient Greek word magos (pronounced mahghas).    This word has influenced our having the word “magic” in our vocabulary and refers to the people who were considered in ancient Middle Eastern times to be mystical seers.    As we know from today’s text, they were people who expertly studied the stars for spiritual guidance and who could also interpret dreams as messages from God.   

No proper interpretation of Matthew 2:1, it’s worth quickly noting, labels these intriguing travelers as kings.    This tradition and the beloved Christmas carol that comes to mind is most likely the result of reading Matthew 2 with Isaiah 60, verse 3 in mind, which, prophesying about the Messiah reads, “Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”   By the way, there is also no biblical indication of how many Magi there were … three gifts were presented and that’s about all we know about the numbers!

I believe the most helpful thing that can be said about these mystical gift-bearers to the newborn King of Kings and Lord of Lords is what New Testament professor Mark Allen Powell has written.  In an online commentary, he states “The Magi of Matthew 2 are depicted as persons who do as they are instructed, seek no honor for themselves, and who gladly humble themselves.”[i]    These were not people of Jewish faith, yet they interpreted that a rising star – some scholars speculate it was a comet – was instructing them and leading them to worshipfully bow down before and greatly gift Israel’s true, divine King.   That was an epiphany.    Then they followed it until they were right under it and right before the newborn Jesus.    There, the epiphany erupted further and overwhelmed them with joy!    What a beautiful moment!   

           

The original Greek word Matthew used to describe their behavior in the presence of the Christ child (that is often translated as “homage”) refers to the ancient spiritual practice of falling upon their knees and touching the ground with their foreheads as an expression of resounding reverence.  I find this faithful gesture is worth a whole lot more than the gold, frankincense and myrrh they brought combined.  Especially since, again, they were outsiders to Israel who accepted that the precious, holy gift of Emmanuel was as much for them as it was for Abraham, Sarah, Ruth, King David, and all the forbearers of Hebrew tradition.  Their gesture was one of receiving at the same time it was of giving.  Their utterly devout actions enrich the epiphany by bearing witness to the amazing truth that Jesus is the gift salvation to absolutely all of humankind.   

            

So the Magi are role models of how to respond to a holy epiphany.   It means letting such a holy moment lead you closer to the very heart and living presence of the Lord.   It means being there with overwhelming, worshipful joy.  It means reverently presenting yourself as a precious gift to God’s glory in Christ.

            

Keep the image of the Magi in mind and heart every single day of this freshly unfolding new year.   Maybe put today’s bulletin cover on your fridge.   Just don’t forget about them.   They are more than figurines put away with the Christmas crèche.   They are spiritual guides silhouetted in Christ Light.   And they exhort us by example to not only have a deeply individual piety, but to get back up off our knees and journey with others back into the world – fraught as it is with evil-intentioned Herods – in order to expand the message about God’s all-redeeming love in our Lord.

           

It’s wonderfully appropriate that on this celebration of Epiphany we are ordaining and installing church officers.    Agreeing to serve as a church leader is about so much more than having time and talent to serve the practical needs of this historic faith community.    It is about a commitment to humbly, actively answer ongoing epiphanies.    As it was for the Magi, it is about joyfully being silhouetted in Christ light.  It is about words and deeds that reverently identify, celebrate and build up the all-inclusive, ever-expanding kingdom of our God.   It is not just about what tasks you’ll do as you fulfill a term, it’s more deeply about being on a journey of faithful interpretation, vision and holy action as God inspires and guides members and visitors alike through our bright congregational presence in this community and beyond.

            

In the spirit of epiphany, of being open to ongoing holy revelations, I read an article in this month’s Presbyterians Today magazine about what healthy congregations focus on.  It exhorts us to pinpoint the guiding, gathering and redeeming Light of Christ on “caring for and working to transform the community around [us] by offering service, advocacy, spiritual guidance and worship.”   

            

Did you hear the word “transform?”  That’s epiphany talk.   It’s talk about not allowing the Christ-light that is shining through FPC to become dim and spiritually static.  After all, the Magi didn’t stay by the side of our Lord’s meager manger.   They had a very reverent visit and then moved on to follow the Light wherever it needed them to go.     To hammer home the point about needing to be a lively, enlightened presence not only within the doors of our buildings but even more so beyond them, the article offered this compelling quote by author Leonard Sweet – “The church is measured, not by its seating capacity, but by its sending capacity.”  

           

Faithful friends, our God summons us all to observe illuminating signals in this world.  As we do so with humble, joyful, truly reverent faith, we are also sent out to serve the Light of the World in every location it is present.   It is present in the pews next to you.  It is present in our nursery and Sunday School rooms.  It is present throughout the Community House as we gather there for table fellowship and committee meetings and as we open those doors to homeless in Hunterdon, to Seeing Eye training, to Haytown Nursery, to quilters, and to whomever else has need.   It is present with people in our neighborhoods and workplaces and various social circles who may not share our faith, but, like the Magi, may well have the starlight of our Savior rising to direct their lives.    It is present everywhere we present the great gift of ourselves to Jesus.   Christmas may have come to a close, but sacred calling has always just begun.    Amen.

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[i] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=1/6/2008&tab=4