1-12-19
Grace to you and peace to you from Lord and Savior Jesus
the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Imagine for a moment that you are president of the United
States. You are going about your business, doing your president thing, when one
morning you hear a knock on the door of the Oval Office. Some dignitaries from
various nations approach your desk with a question. They eagerly ask, “Where is
the new president of the United States? Our intelligence has informed us that
a new president is now in office, and we have come to pay our
respects.” Your blood suddenly turns cold. To your knowledge there has
been no election, no new president. You are the one in power,
and you’d like to keep it that way. After all, you've worked so hard
to get here. Who, then, could these ambassadors be speaking of? And what might
it take to keep all this confusion quiet?
If you were looking for the person “in charge” in our
country, you would look at the White House. Likewise, where else would you look
for the birth of a king than in the royal palace the seat of power?
When the wise men finally showed up to finally take their
place in our nativity scenes, they knocked on King Herod’s palace door. They
were not the “Fun Kind” of surprise visitors. Their arrival
struck fear into the hearts of those in power. Their arrival signaled to those
who had a stake in the status quo that change was on the
horizon. And for someone like King Herod – comfortable, in control, and backed
by the Roman Empire, change is a bad thing. Change means revolution.
But this is not exactly how Christmas cards and Hallmark
store displays have taught us to imagine the scene, in a stylized stable with
well-behaved animals, dirty shepherd next to richly dressed men bearing gifts,
with bright pointed star hanging overhead, shining light on the serene scene.
In reality, Christmas is long over by the time the star leads these wise men to
the place where Jesus is. Their journey was long and hard, probably through
mountains and deserts…and when they finally arrived, their news brought
fear and not joy. But through hardship and suspicion, they still pressed on,
until finally the star stopped and revealed to the wise men where Jesus was. It
was there, in a house somewhere in Bethlehem, that these wise sages of the East
witnessed the unveiling of God face to face. They saw firsthand God’s
“epiphany.”
This season we have now entered has a funny name.
“Epiphany” is not a word you hear a lot. “I had an epiphany at work today,” you
might say to a friend, referring to brainstorming a good idea for a project. It’s
just a fancy way to describe that light bulb moment, quite literally, when a
realization dawns on you, when suddenly things make sense and you can’t figure
out how you couldn't see it just a moment ago. It’s when the world
suddenly shifts into focus, like putting on a new pair of glasses …. and it
takes you a moment to get used to how clear the world looks.
When those really good ah-ha moments happen – some people
have cited falling in love, or having a child, or when you land that perfect
job – your life is never quite the same again. And how could you live your life
in the same old night now that the dawn has arrived? How could you put on your
old out-of-date glasses now that your way is bright and clear? You can never go
back, nor would you want to. You are living in a new world. Everything has
changed.
Everything changed the night when Jesus was born, when
the King of Kings and Lord of Lords revealed his face between bands of cloth in
the straw of a manger. Everything changed when angels announced his birth and
shepherds sang his praises. Everything changed when these men from another
religion and another country acknowledged Jesus, a baby born into poverty, as
their true king. As Mary’s song, the Magnificat said, the world is turned
upside down – the mighty would be brought low and the lowly lifted up, the hungry
would be fed and the full sent away empty. The ordinary order of the world of
haves and have-nots could no longer hold. All because God revealed God’s true
character in a baby born in Bethlehem.
But Epiphany is not just a one-time occasion that we celebrate
and remember having happened in the past. No, God has Epiphanies all over the
place. The God we worship is continually revealing to us who God is and how God
is working in the world – through people, through churches and congregations,
and even through other unlikely sources.
Even novles, Movies, plays, and
musicals can sometimes be a medium of God’s epiphanies.
When I was in high school, I fell in love with the
musical Les Mis, and played my library copy of the ancient technology called a
“CD” on repeat, and watched the anniversary productions on PBS. As you can
imagine, I was very excited when a few years ago, a movie version with a
star-studded cast came out in theaters.
As you might recall, Les Mis follows the fortunes of one
man, Jean Valjean. At the start of the musical he is a hardened criminal,
released on parole after 19 years in prison. He, like many in our own time, seeks
work but is turned away time and time again because he is an ex-con. Hungry,
cold, and desperate, he finds himself sleeping in a church, where the bishop of
the church welcomes him, feeds him, and offers him a warm place to spend the
night.
But Valjean saw the fine silver cutlery while he ate and that
night, he stole the silver and took off. He is caught and dragged back before
the bishop. Valjean knew that he blew his only chance - he would go back to
prison for the rest of his life. The soldiers knew that too. They sneered and
repeated Valjean’s paper-thin lie – that the bishop had felt sorry for Valjean,
and GAVE him the silver. Yeah right. Like any person, even a bishop, would be
so THAT kind to an ex-con.
But instead of press charges, the bishop took the silver
candlesticks down from the mantle, and said, “you forgot, I gave these also…” The
soldiers and Valjean are both aghast. Valjean is released, but the bishop was
not finished. He told Valjean that he must use the silver to become an honest
man, and that his gift had rescued Valjean’s soul for God. The bishop had given
him his freedom, and said that he had a soul worth saving.
The rest of the musical reveals to us how this man chose
to live the rest of his life after this epiphany - to live for others and not
just for himself. At the end of his life, on his deathbed surrounded by his
loved ones both living and dead, he is able to sum up his life by this maxim:
“to love another person is to see the face of God.”
Though we don’t know what happened to the wise
men after they saw the face of God, we can assume that they were never
the same again. They had given fine gifts, but had experienced the greatest
gift of all. Their lives had changed. For one thing, they had become fugitives,
sneaking out of the country to avoid becoming Herod’s informants. Herod had no
intention of paying homage to the newborn king. He would rather snuff out any
threat to his power than see the true face of God revealed in a humble child.
But God continues reveals himself in unexpected places
and to unlikely people. God reveals God’s face to a teenaged girl and her
carpenter fiancé…..to tired shepherds in the middle of the night… and to
star-gazing sages of the orient…. also, to you and to me. For God revealed
God’s face in the form of a small child so that all people could have a place
at the table – Jews, gentiles, men, women, non-binary people, and children,
black and white, carpenters and lawyers, straight, gay, depressed, happy,
mentally-challenged, socially challenged, financially challenged, bored,
addicted, busy, ex-cons and bishops. We see the face of God in all these
people. Thanks be to God, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment