Epiphany, Year A, January 6 2008

A Light From God
00 Epiphany 08
January 6, 2008

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalms 72:1-7, 10-14
Eph 3:1-12
Matt 2:1-12

The season of Epiphany begins now and goes on for another four weeks. It’s a time when we consider signs from God. Some have asked me why my car is not in its accustomed spot under the tree. Well, it seems that in this last week about a million birds have decided to flock into that tree. My car has been buried in droppings.

Now, here’s the remarkable thing. Our new associate pastor, Lewis, always parks right next to me. Now do you think there is a single speck on his car? There is not. Is this a sign?

We got a Christmas card from Wyatt and Anna that pictured the three wise men offering their gifts to Jesus. The caption read, “Mary was worried all these gifts might spoil him.”

The world is searching for a light from God.

Our beloved Lorraine Stewart is fighting for her life this morning. She has always been a light to us all, and she has sought the light of God all her life. All the more now.

I know of a number of people struggling to get free of addiction and alcoholism. They are tearing themselves and their families apart. They are searching for a light from God. Their families are too.

And yes, your pastor is also searching for a light from God.

The wise men, when they finally found that light, were filled with joy. Isaiah speaks of the joy, the joy of the glory of the Lord rising upon you. This is how powerful the longing for that light is. When we find it, it fills us with joy.

I recall a story from Ken Burns’ documentary about World War II. There was a little girl named Sasha who had been interred with her family in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines. They were not treated well. They all were slowly starving to death and many of their friends had died.
Sasha had a little brother. Toward the end of the war, they began to find leaflets dropped from American planes. “We’re coming,” they said. The little brother, who was about five, had a little suit he had saved for the day of his liberation. Every day he would put out the suit, hoping that day was going to be the day.

One day they heard a great rumbling and without warning the front gate came crashing down under the tread of an American tank. The day had come at last. The little boy ran and put on his suit and went running to meet his salvation. That’s the kind of joy we’re talking about. The joy of salvation. The joy of liberation.

The kind of joy you feel when you find that light from God.

You may not know that it is very likely the wise men were from what was then called Persia, probably the city of Babylon. That country is now called Iran.

How many of you are aware of the letter from Muslim leaders entitled a “Common Word Between You and Us”? Matthew, our gospel all through this church year, was the one most quoted by the 138 Muslim leaders who signed it. They quote Jesus, the king of the Jews the wise men from the east came to see, when he said:

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called Children of God." Matt 5:9 (NRSV)

The story of the Old Testament is the story of Israel, a nation created by God for the purpose of healing the break between God and his creation. People were created to be the image of God, but they refused that purpose very early on. God therefore called Abraham and began a centuries-long process of shaping a nation.

We believe that whole process was for the purpose of bringing forth Jesus. It was a kind of cultural and religious husbandry program. This is why we have all those boring “begats.” The families that God created to be the citizens of his special nation were the Petrie dishes in which he was growing the living culture necessary to produce the desired result. That desired result was Jesus.

Jesus is our king, our Messiah, whom the wise men called “king of the Jews.” That will be the inscription Pilate will put on his cross at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is not like other kings or political powers. He is not a president, he is not a dictator, he is not an emperor.
He is instead the image of God, fully and completely realized, so perfectly realized that we call him the Son of God. He is our king, he is our high priest, and he is our prophet. He commands and we obey. He makes an offering of himself, and we offer ourselves with him. He speaks for God, and we understand God through him.

Our purpose is to be that light for which the world is searching.

Of course, as we learned last week in the terrible story of the murder of the innocent babies by King Herod, some are searching for the light to snuff it out. This is to be expected. There really is no fence-sitting when it comes to following Jesus. Our way is the way of peace and justice, because Jesus’ way was the way of peace and justice. Those who will be brought low when the Messiah comes certainly don’t want him to come.

The world searches for the light of God’s peace and justice. I do. You do. If we were to look deep down inside ourselves, we’d know that we really wanted these things above all other things. Our problem is that the means to them offered by the powers of the world invariably lead to injustice and turmoil and even violence.

And so the world is fragmented, broken apart into disconnected pieces. Without wholeness, all the pieces suffer. Even the wealthy and the powerful are suffering, perhaps worst of all. Look what anxiety Herod is living with. Look at our own tremendously prosperous country. People can have almost anything they want. Are they whole? Are they happy?

The world is searching for the light from God.

Our denomination has come up with a very evocative identity statement. “We are the Christian Church, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. I think that is wonderful.”

What a gift! What an opportunity! Isn’t it marvelous to be given such a privilege?

We are Philippi Christian Church, a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world.

Amen.