Will you join with me in prayer:
O God, in this Epiphany season remind us first of your baptismal vow to us—that we are your beloved, in whom you delight.  Free us to delight in this day.  Let your light illumine our way, your Spirit breathe in us, your Vision inspire us, that we may be set free to love one another as you first loved us.  May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our salvation.  Amen.

On this, the third Sunday of Epiphany, we have gathered to celebrate, to ponder, to take into our hearts, the growing light of Christ in our midst.  Particularly here in New England, we may be aware of the lengthening days, but also must be prepared to learn patience, for the growing light does not necessarily mean that warmth is upon us, as we were well aware of this morning, struggling through the biting cold to make our way to join each other in this holy place.  Indeed, the growing light yet deepening cold may hold up for us a paradox—a reality in which so much of truth is held, where seeming opposites come to dwell together in one place.  Light may come through what at first may be a shadowed way, that new birth comes through what can feel like a death, as we are called to release the old.

One of my favorite Epiphany poems by T.S. Eliot speaks of this truth.  Entitled ”the Journey of the Magi”, Eliot speaks in the voice of one of the wise men. Listen:

“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This:  were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.  I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different:  this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad for another death.”
“Were we led all that way for birth or death?  I had seen birth and death,
but had thought they were different.  This birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.”

Here at Old South, some of us may echo these feelings at times as the new disclosures and manifestations of Christ among us are revealed.  Were we led all this way from 1669 to 2004, these 335 years…for birth or death?  Surely this is a time of new birth, new leadership.  Our search committee, led by the Spirit, is burning much midnight oil through these dark nights, seeking the new birth to lead us forward into God’s future of hope and love.  Yet for many of us the changes have felt like hard and bitter agony as we released the old to make room for the new.

As the wise man in Eiliot’s poem declares, “we returned to our places, these kingdoms, but no longer at ease here in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods”, gods of materialism, fame, fortune, power, control:  all empty now of meaning since the light of Christ has shined into our hearts.   Our interim senior minister, Carl Schultz, has reminded us over and over, “Faith faces forward”.   Epiphany reminds us that at times we must be led by a star, into the land new life, hope renewed, revelation of Love being manifested in yet new ways.

Today’s gospel reading from our United Church of Christ lectionary for this, the third Sunday of Epiphany brings this into our awareness.  In it, we find Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returning from the days of temptation in the wilderness, coming home to Nazareth, where he had been raised.   As was his custom on the Sabbath, Jesus went to the synagogue.  There was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah where he reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set a liberty those who are oppressed.”

Jesus proclaims the hospitality of God, dismantling barriers and building bridges, beckoning all the excluded and disabled and powerless out of the shadows into the light of day.  God’s realm is a community in which all have a place in a full share of life.  At first these words seem welcome to the neighbors of Jesus and the room warms with pleasure.  But with a sickening rapidity if we read further, (to be continued in next week’s lectionary—stay tuned) the gathered congregation turns into a lynch mob and Jesus narrowly escapes with his life.

Jesus has come not to talk of attractive ideals but to actualize the hospitality of God, the new community of inclusion.  This is not a benign announcement of religious principles, but Jesus is serving notice that the present arrangements of human society are obsolete.  The coming of God’s community where all are of one body, each is needed and interdependent on another requires the abolition of human structures which alienate and oppress and starve out the needy, and which maintain enmities between societies and races, giving way to a new way of being.  Jesus proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord is one in which the barriers keeping the banished and excluded sides of ourselves and our neighbors must be turned into bridges in which even these can be welcomed for healing and empowerment.  Jesus is doing nothing less that inviting us to live with him in his solidarity with humankind, his compassion based on the principle of love in which there is room for everyone, where creation itself is transformed by this Love.  As scriptures tell us, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Such compassion is no easy task, holds up no easy vision, but we are led there by a star.  Our human tendency is to build barriers and even use the word of God to justify separation rather than connection in the human family.  Need we look further than the anger, inflammatory remarks, even rage that is being raised by the inclusion of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal church, or even closer to home, the Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling on gay and lesbian marriage declaring that separate is not equal, and the corresponding hatred, fear, confusion, and bitterness it is revealing?  Barriers or bridges, what is God asking us to build?

In the second scripture reading this morning, the Apostle Paul, writes to the church in Corinth, a community in which he had spent a year and a half in his earlier ministry, and a community that was now in trouble again.  He gives us a great example of a pastoral response:  affectionate, firm, clear, and unswerving in its compassion for these brothers and sisters in Christ.  Paul does not disown them, throw them out because of bad behavior, nor fly into a tirade over their irresponsible ways.  Instead he takes them by the hand and goes over the ground again of how we learn to be inclusive, loving, and caring as a community.  He brings forth the wonderful metaphor of the body, an interdependent whole.  We are called to understand again that the way of maturity is from dependence as children, to independence as we come to acknowledge and act on our own gifts, to interdependence as we see that each member of the community has its own function, is not interchangeable and the same, yet is needed if the synergistic dynamic of full life is to be lived.  Our culture does well with the dependence and independence parts.  This reality of interdependence is far more difficult for many of us to fathom. We receive God’s love so we can return God’s love to one another.

Rumi’s poem called “The Guest House” reveals this attitude of inclusiveness:

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still, treat each guest honorably
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes
Because each has been sent
As a guide from beyond.”

Let us recognize what Jesus told us—that whatever we do for the least, the last, the lost, we have done for Christ himself.

Let us begin by becoming more aware of our bodies as metaphor and symbol.  We can easily name many parts:  limbs, organs, cells.  If we only stop there we live partial lives.  It is for us to grasp the larger self with Christ at its center that we recognize this makes each part, each of us, more significant, not less.  We are not all to be one single part blown up huge:  an enormous brain, a gigantic hand, a massive foot.  But rather recognition of dignity and honor in the connection, not so much in the comparisons.

As the Italian proverb says:  “Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.”  The way of compassion allows us to release both places of either shaming or inflating ourselves.  We enter the place of humility, which comes from the word, “humus” which means, “ground” or “earth.”   To be grounded, to be humble, is to be in touch with reality, neither superior nor inferior, but connected, needed, affirmed for our reality, loved for our unique place in the larger picture.

As John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony said,

“We must delight in each other,
Make others conditions our own,
Laugh together, mourn together,
Always having before our eyes our community
As members of the same body.”

Only by keeping compassionate company with our own experiences of joy and sorrow—and coming to know how Christ keeps company with us will we be able to embrace one another in all of our uniqueness and into fullness of life!

Perhaps my growing up on a farm in rural South Dakota made me very aware of the incredible brilliance of a starry night, as well as the interdependence of life.  As for all human beings, the enormous desire to belong, to be included, is counterbalanced by the need to be truthful and honest to oneself, to the unique creation that we are.  And not all visions can hold both such realities. Led by a star, the wise ones saw such a world revealed to them…shepherds with kings, cows and sheep with angels,…a new birth held it all:  God revealed through the vulnerability and helplessness of a baby, trusting us to hold and care for him.   A poem by Louise Gilpen speaks of such a vision of inclusive love.  It is called, The Two-Headed Calf.

“Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
“freak of nature”, they will wrap his body in newspaper
and carry him to the museum.
But tonight, he is alive in the north field
With his mother.
It is a perfect spring night.
The moon rising over the orchard,
The wind in the grass,
And as he looks into the sky,
There are twice as many stars as usual.”

Led by a star, the Spirit calls to us from God’s future into our present.
Calling us into a new land, taking down barriers and building bridges.
At times this new place is elusive, unknown, feels dangerous.  But we are offered Christ’s nourishing Spirit to give us courage and guide us onward.

To paraphrase writer Paul Monette, “Home is not so much where you come from, but perhaps, finally, through God’s grace, a place where you get to.”  What is this strange vision that leads us on to the home God has prepared for us, where we are one family on this one planet, trying to learn to trust life, to learn how to love one another?   This vision that asks us to dismantle barriers and be bridge builders to the human race, becoming willing to release attitudes of separation from and resistance to the “other”.  This vision moving us beyond indifference, recognizing that I am bound up with everyone and everything in a single bundle of life!  “Life is short and we do not have much time.  So be swift to Love—and be kind.”

God is love, the scriptures tell us.  And Edwin Markham’s little verse points the way:

“They drew a circle that shut me out.
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took them in.”

Inspired by the Holy Spirit and Christ’s courageous example, may we be given the power to draw the circle large enough to hold all of God’s creation in a loving and compassionate embrace, boldly proclaiming with our brother, Jesus:

“This,
This,
This is the time and the place
This is the year for God to act!”
So may it be.  Amen.

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Benediction:

Led by the light of the Spirit and the compassion of Christ,
Go forth into the world to serve God with gladness.
Be of good courage;
Hold fast to that which is good;
Render to no one evil for evil;
Strengthen the fainthearted;
Support the weak;
Help the afflicted;
Honor all people;
Love and serve God,
Rejoicing in the power
Of the Holy Spirit.
And the blessing of God Almighty,
Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit
Be with you all.  Amen

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