Among the many glories of following the liturgical calendar is the opportunity it affords week after week to visit some the events in Scripture and also to look into the lives of some of the saints, including some fairly obscure ones that we otherwise surely would overlook. In the past week we have had days commemorating Wulfstan of Worchester (11th c.), Fabian of Rome (3rd c.), Agnes of Rome (4th c.), Vincent of Saragossa (also 4th c.) and Phillips Brooks of Massachusetts (19th c.). These are not all household names, and I find myself looking up some of them all over again every year when their days come up. 

But this week also is sandwiched between two days that commemorate incredibly important events in the lives of Sts. Peter and Paul. Last Monday was the feast of the Confession of St. Peter. You remember the occasion: Jesus asks His disciples, “But Who do you say that I am?” And Peter responds with his confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Tomorrow is the other bookend of this special week, the day that we celebrate the Conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, his unique encounter with the resurrected Christ, Who, when Paul asks Who He is, says, “I am Jesus, Whom you are persecuting.” The dramatic result, of course, is that Saul, the persecutor of the Church, becomes Paul, the missionary evangelist to the Gentiles. 

In between these momentous events of confession and conversion comes what has been designated as “a Week of Prayer for the Unity of the Church.” How absolutely perfect that the days between the great confession of the Apostle to the Jews and the amazing conversion of the Apostle to the Gentiles should be devoted to prayer for the unity of the Church! Every week should be such a week, especially in a time when efforts at unity are counterbalanced by deepening divisions. We need to devote ourselves more frequently and more intentionally to praying for the unity of the “one holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” Apart from this sort of intense and collective prayer, our objectives have no chance of being realized.

What does this have to do with our gospel reading for today (Luke 14:14-21)? In a word, “everything.” When we ponder this event that occurred early in the public ministry of Jesus, our focus tends to be on how it reveals the Messianic authority with which Jesus read and taught Scripture, and His self-revelation to His townspeople as the One anointed by the Holy Spirit to preach and to perform miracles in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. But there’s more. Jesus is using the words of Isaiah to indicate just what sort of ministry would be His, and just who it was to whom He would be ministering. It’s not a ministry to the persons who populate very many Anglican or Episcopal churches. It’s to “the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed.” 

You will remember our Gospel reading from a few weeks ago when Jesus said, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Combining the two, we have the objects of Jesus’ ministry and ours: the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned.

Yes, there was the one person who came under Jesus’ teaching whom we call the “rich young ruler” (who may not have been rich, young or a ruler). But in that context Jesus Himself said of him “How hard it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”  When He was criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” We know that He healed many blind persons, and St. John even devotes an entire chapter of his gospel to just one of those healings. There, in John 9, Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

In our epistle reading today, we hear from St. Paul that “the members of the body that seem weaker are necessary,” and that God has given “more abundant honor to the member that lacked honor,” and that all members should have “the same care for one another.” Put this together with Jesus’ other words and you have a very different picture of ministry from the one in which most of us are engaged. We prefer to worship and socialize with persons who are more like ourselves, and whether intentionally or unintentionally, we tend to distance ourselves from those who are the “less honorable” and “less presentable.” In our OT reading, Ezra and Nehemiah exhorted the people to “send portions to him who has nothing.” We know intuitively that there must be “something” wrong with those persons, and we trust the secular society to deal with them appropriately. With Scrooge in Dickens’ Christmas Carol we ask, “Áre there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” Are there no city missions? Are there no welfare programs?

For the most part, we’re not very good at dealing with such persons proactively, with seeking out those who are unlike ourselves and whose suffering somehow seems self-inflicted and therefore somewhat deserved. There are glowing exceptions, and most of us find occasions here and there to break out of our comfort zones to do this sort of service for the “less honorable” persons. But we take note of those occasions by virtue of the very fact that they are quite exceptional. 

If we feel condemned by Jesus when He holds up mirrors to ourselves, so be it. But I believe that His words more often than not are meant to provide direction and encouragement rather than condemnation. Yes, we fall short, and many times in reading Scripture we are reminded of that. The standards held up by Scripture are lofty if not unattainable. Were it a simple matter for us to fulfill all righteousness, to be perfect as He is perfect, to be holy as He is holy, to be pure and blameless, then our earth would be a very different place; the reach of the Gospel message already would have spread “from shore to shore” and the disparity between the “haves” and the “have not’s” would be dramatically narrowed. Along with the reduction in the number of “have not’s” in our world would come a significant reduction in criminal activity, as it is those who live in the grip of poverty who are most likely to lash out blindly at a society that they perceive as being quite content to leave them in their condition. 

Why is it that Jesus had a passionate love for the poor, the captives, the blind, the oppressed, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned, yet we who are said by Paul to possess the mind of Christ do not share that same love? What would happen if we possessed the heart of Christ? Would that be a different story? Is there more to it than sending contributions to the City Mission or sending missionaries to the great unwashed of Papua New Guinea?

What is it, exactly, that holds us back? Fear? Busyness? Lack of authentic compassion? It is emphatically not lack of opportunity. We leave such ministry to those who have had a special calling to it, yet we may put ourselves at risk of being among those on His left to whom Jesus might legitimately say, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me” (Mt. 25:42, 43). 

How could that possibly be? Could it be because, consciously or unconsciously, we have limited our company to those who look like us, dress like us, share our comforts and our common interests and are in a position to show reciprocity when we help provide for their temporary needs? When we do that, we are making a mockery of our pledge to “be like Jesus.” Jesus, the King of Heaven, made his company with a rag-tag group of persons who had absolutely nothing to offer Him other than their devotion. He nourished them and, by the Holy Spirit, gave them gifts they never imagined possessing. Galilean fishermen, a tax collector, two zealots: these are among the ones who were chosen by God to accompany Jesus in His earthly ministry and then to proclaim the Gospel message, usually at the cost of their own lives. 

The unity of the Church for which we are to be praying requires more than just trying to reconcile the Eastern Church with the Western Church or the Anglicans with the Episcopalians. It has to do with our recognizing that we are a people called to serve, and that our service must include an openness to the needs of others who are not like us, to see the Church as a very diverse collection of sinners from every segment of society, persons just as spiritually needy as ourselves in addition to their being significantly needier materially speaking. If the Church were to unite in addressing this woeful aspect of its neglect and disunity, many things would change. 

Jesus Himself said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Then, in His High Priestly prayer to the Father, He asked “that they all may be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me” (John 17:21). When we fail to live out this unity in love, our witness as the Church of Jesus Christ is greatly diminished and the world has far less reason to believe anything we are proclaiming. When we, like Jesus, begin to minister to “the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed,” the unity of the Church is demonstrated dramatically and we make a difference in our world despite our diversity, despite our many denominational labels and despite our quibbling over minor theological differences. 

May we be among those who, by seeking to do His will and follow His example, will cease to grieve the heart of Jesus, even if it means taking up our crosses on paths occupied by the “less honorable” and “less presentable.” Only God knows where those paths might take us. But never be afraid to ask.

Ephesians 4.1-16
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, ‘When he ascended on high He made captivity itself a captive; He gave gifts to His people.’ (When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that He had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) 
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from Whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

​In our reading from Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians we encounter virtually every word that is of paramount importance in describing what the Church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be like, how it is to act, and how we are to relate to one another in Him: humility, patience, forbearance, love, unity, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father, grace, gifts, maturity, truthfulness, growth and, one more time, love. When we simply read or hear the passage straight through, we cannot fail to catch some of this. But it seems to me that when we extract all of these critical words and list them one after the other, the message may become even more forceful.

The prevailing thoughts here unmistakably have to do with love and unity. Just about everything else can be subsumed under one or both of these headings. If our relationships were to be characterized by love and unity rather than dissention, disunity and contentiousness, then it would not be at all difficult to find humility, patience, forbearance, grace and truthfulness in our interpersonal relationships. Seriously! 

Let me emphasize that the central point in Paul’s teaching here is absolutely not about our personal piety in relation to God. He may simply be assuming personal piety as an inevitable underlying reality. But everything he has to say here is horizontally relational: it is all about how we get along in unity and love. We’re not even to “speak the truth” apart from love! This may very well be one of the places where we are most prone to fall down. The more confident we are that we have the TRUTH in any area, the less likely we are to convey our convictions to one another in love! 

Do you see how totally upside down this is? “Speaking the truth in love” does not mean digging in and demanding that others see things precisely the same way that we see them. As soon as we do that, we are damaging the unity of the faith that is supposed to characterize us. If we dig in deeply enough, we are likely to decide that we must form a whole new denomination in a Church that already has quite enough divisions.

We shared recently the remarkable story of Pope Francis speaking to a gathering of Lutherans and Catholics at which a Lutheran woman asked him whether she might ever be allowed to share in the Holy Eucharist with her Catholic husband. To this Pope Francis could only reply with the words of Paul in our passage from Ephesians: “One Lord, One Faith, One baptism.”

I spent some time on Friday pondering some possible itinerary modifications in the upcoming Chicago Master Singers tour. I thought about a possible lunch stop in a small but characterful and characteristic Belgian town by the name of Mechelen, also known as Malines. Gayle and I visited there last summer and I noticed a rather large plaque in the cathedral identifying Malines as the location for a 7-year long dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans known as the Malines Conversations (1921-1927). The entire agenda for the 7 years had but a single item: the possibility of forging a corporate reunion between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. The conversations ended without anything resembling a substantive resolution of any major issues. 

Many similar conversations, if less extensive, have occurred between Anglicans and Lutherans, Anglicans and Orthodox, Catholics and Orthodox, Catholics and Lutherans, etc. Notable was a gathering of Catholics and Lutherans in 1999 in Augsburg, Germany. It was there that the Augsburg Confession was drafted in 1530, a document that became the normative doctrinal statement for all Lutherans. The result of the 1999 gathering was the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” and it was hailed as something of “momentous significance” and “poignant symbolism.” Unfortunately, both parties went away and separately elaborated on how it was that they could cleverly craft language on which they could agree while simultaneously retaining the very theological positions that separated them in the first place. Meetings this past week in Canterbury that were hoped to heal the deep divisions within the Anglican Communion worldwide resulted only in the sharper drawing of lines in the sand and the causing of further splintering within a single branch of the Church of Jesus Christ.

We have made very little progress towards unity and love in our relationships, whether denominational and corporate or individual. And this is nothing new. Morning Prayer in the past week has been in I Corinthians, where Paul bitterly laments the divisions of the Corinthian believers into those who were of Paul, those who were of Apollos and those who were of Cephas. The Church got a very early start on failing to focus lovingly on the things they held in common. Our earliest creeds were not written for the purpose of articulating our common faith as much as for the purpose of combating heresy. Today we still cannot come to the Eucharist as one holy catholic and apostolic Church, because there are too many bones of bitter contention that keep us apart. 
 
The heart of Paul, the heart that we see so clearly in Ephesians, would be deeply grieved by the state of the Church today. My own heart is deeply grieved by it, though I find immense consolation in the fact that Grace Fellowship brings together persons from such diverse faith backgrounds without dissention in our study of Scripture, our fellowship and our worship. But even this small gathering of persons in Jesus’ Name could go off the rails so easily were we to drift from our loving unity as we seek to discover, affirm and speak God’s truth.

We are not talking about minor matters here. Paul started this out by exhorting, even begging us “to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” He says that “each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” And he says that the whole point of God having given us His various gifts is that ultimately “all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Then he adds, “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” 

How easy it is for us to drift off into chasing the latest “wind of doctrine,” being more intrigued by its novelty than warned by its departure from the faith. You recall Paul’s lament over his flock in Galatians: “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him Who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel.” He asks, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” 

One Lord, one faith, one baptism: One Lord, Who was made flesh and crucified for us; One faith, by which, in the Holy Spirit, we are enabled to say simply, “Jesus is Lord;” One baptism, through which we are united with Christ in His death and resurrection.

Summarizing his teaching, Paul writes: “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from Whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” 

What would the Church look like if it were “joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped?” What force might it exert in the world if it pulled together instead of pulling apart, if it were to quit playing spiritual tug-of-war? The world would take notice. They would have no choice. What a difference we could make!

This is not a matter on the same level as which candidate we like. How do we like Jesus Christ? Do we take as passionate a stand for Him as we do for our favorite candidates? Do we even mention Jesus Christ nearly as frequently as we mention political candidates? What if we had a meter that clicked each time we said a name? How would the Name of Jesus fare? Not just in our conversations “out there” in the world, but even in our conversations among ourselves. 

Whoever it is that may be leading, it’s Jesus Who clearly is losing by a wide margin. Let us all take care that for us, “speaking the truth in love” means speaking His truth, openly, clearly and frequently, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Here in today’s Gospel we have one of the best known and most beloved of the stories about Jesus. Much is made of the fact that He chose a wedding feast at which to perform the first of His miracles, or “signs,” as John prefers to call them. For many, the important message is that Jesus blessed with His presence an important social occasion that the Church would come to view as a Sacrament. And for still others the importance is mostly symbolic: Jesus should be the unseen guest at every special occasion, and His presence spiritually should govern our social behavior at such gatherings. 
 
For John the Evangelist, it was important to mention that this event occurred only 3 days after Jesus had called His first disciples, and that they came to believe in Him. The timing and the evidentiary value of this “sign” were of paramount significance to John. Again, in the final verse, John writes, “This beginning of His signs… manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” We may miss this critically central point to John’s inclusion and placement of the event if we over-sentimentalize it or exaggerate its symbolic meaning, and forget exactly what it is that John meant by “signs.” 

 3 When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.”

Jesus’ words to Mary often have been heard as harshly dismissive, as a rebuke of her for even calling the situation to His attention and implying that He would do something about it. He asks in Greek,  
 
Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί, literally, “What is that to Me and to you?”

The underlying Hebrew idiom commonly occurs in the OT, and it is translated into almost identical Greek in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the OT). In every instance without exception the phrase indicates the exploring of a relationship. For example, in Genesis 23, Abraham is negotiating with a Hittite over the price of a field in which he wishes to bury his dead, and he offers him 400 shekels. The Hittite says to Abraham, “What is that to me and to you,” i.e., "What’s the big deal between us? 400 shekels is a mere trifle, given our relationship.” Several times in the gospels the demons ask Jesus, “What is that to us and to You?” before Jesus casts them out. Clearly they are not speaking dismissively to Jesus; on the contrary, they are expressing an awareness of their relationship to Him. And so here, when Mary tells Jesus, "They have no wine," Jesus responds, "What is that to Me and to you? My hour is not yet come." In effect, He says “Watch me work.” And He changes the water into wine. 

The phrase is an idiom that has to do both with identifying relationships between persons and also with how those relationships dictate the events that will flow out of them. For Abraham and the Hittite, it was, “Let’s just seal the deal now.” For Jesus and the demons, it was “What do You have in mind to do to us?” And they were cast out. For Jesus and Mary, it was essentially, “I can help with that.” In no instance is it a dismissal of one person by the other. 
 
In fact, it is simply the recognition of a relationship that would determine what would happen next. With both the Gadarene demons and Jesus and Mary there is a reference to time: the relationship is thought to be pushing its appropriate time frame. Jesus was not prepared for a premature public demonstration of His miraculous power, and the demons were not ready for their final judgment. Jesus saves His statements that “the hour has come” for the very end of His ministry (John 12:23, 17:1). On this occasion, only a few persons were even aware of what had happened, and perhaps it was only the disciples who came to believe in Him as a result of this sign.
 
Jesus’ addressing his own mother as “woman” also has been seen as problematic in English translation. Some translations soften it with “dear woman” or even “dear lady” despite the absence of any word meaning “dear.” Remember that Jesus addresses Mary in the very same way from the Cross, when He is tenderly committing her care to the beloved disciple John. There is nothing dismissive or harsh in this form of address. It is both formal and respectful. It is the same form of address Jesus uses for the Samaritan woman in John 4, for a Syro-Phoenician woman commended for her great faith in Mt. 15, for a Jewish woman who began praising God when Jesus healed her on the Sabbath in Lk. 13, and for Mary Magdalene when He appears to her by the tomb in John 20 after His resurrection. 

If Mary had heard Jesus’ words as being harsh or dismissive, it seems unlikely that she would immediately have responded the way she did by instructing the servants to “Do whatever He tells you!” Clearly Mary had some expectation that Jesus, having spoken these words, was about to take action. It also is clear that Mary had a rather prominent relationship with the family celebrating this wedding. Not only did she manage to get invitations both for Jesus and for His brand new entourage of disciples, but she also had the authority to tell the servants what to do. 

We all know the subsequent story backwards and forwards, including the considerable scale involved in changing the water in six sizeable waterpots into wine, and into very fine wine at that. It seems inevitable and perhaps not at all inappropriate that the Church has attached sacramental significance to this event, both with regard to marriage itself but also with regard to the wine. Obviously this was not a Eucharist, nor does it in any way correspond to the rather more obvious Eucharistic implications of the Last Supper. 

But it seems unmistakable that a miraculous transformation of water to wine in the very first miracle of Jesus, or, using John’s preferred terminology, the very first of Jesus’ “signs,” foreshadows another miraculous transformation that occurs when we participate in the Holy Eucharist. Here, too, we encounter the glory of Jesus, as did the disciples at the wedding feast. And here, with them, we declare our faith in Him through the Creed, we remember the sacrifice of His Body and Blood, and we celebrate His Real Presence with us at this table, a presence every bit as real as His presence at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee.
 
Here we gather in a perpetual celebration of His miraculous presence. Here we feed on Him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving for the offering of Himself in “the gifts of God for the people of God.” Here we share in the never-ending remembrance of His self-sacrifice on the Cross, and here we share in a foretaste of the marriage feast of the Lamb that we will celebrate with Him in the fullness of His glory. All of this is a privilege that exceeds both word and thought. It is a gift beyond imagination. It is a faith experience that never can be allowed to become routine or casual. 

This is why self-examination, confession and the making right of relationships is so vitally important as a safeguard against the very possibility of partaking unworthily to our damnation. Yet of absolutely equal importance is the recognition that never once will we partake “worthily” if we are waiting for it to be a matter of self-worth. Never will you or I be “worthy” to partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus apart from our recognition that we are here by the grace of God alone; that His lovingkindness, His righteousness, His pardon and His peace allow us to gather in His Name and in His holy presence and, with all our hearts, to accept that this bread and this cup are the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and that here we are united with Him and He with us and we with one another. 

Here more than anywhere else do we experience the intimacy of our fellowship with Him and also our everlasting life in the community of faith, that fellowship with those who hold hands under the banner of one Lord, one faith and one baptism, with those who have died in that faith and with those who continue to live in it here “below.” Here is where our divisions must cease, where our unbelief must be vanquished, where our self-worth must be stripped away, and where, with the eyes of faith, we will see Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, the unseen Guest at every wedding feast, and the Host of this feast at His table. 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen

One of the glories of the Liturgical Church is that we’re always celebrating something. We celebrate Advent before we move to Christmastide, then we observe a few weeks of Epiphany before we descend into Lent, then Eastertide prefaces Pentecost or Trinity, depending on what we choose to call it. We no longer even need to refer to weeks in January or the summer and fall as “Ordinary Time.” No time is “ordinary” when we are re-enacting the story of our redemption year after year, constantly reminding ourselves of how redemptive history unfolds. As long as we avoid allowing the cycle to become routine, it never will seem “ordinary.”

Wednesday was the Day of Epiphany, which this year ushers in 5 Sundays in Epiphany. What does Epiphany mean? What does it mean to us? What should it mean to us? In the non-liturgical church, an “epiphany” is a bright idea, and the word itself brings nothing to mind other than perhaps something those “high church” people observe. But even for the Liturgical Church, the true meaning of Epiphany as the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles often may be lost in images and legends that obscure its significance. 

We all have a special fascination with those mysterious sages whose visit to Bethlehem gives Epiphany its name. Yet we hardly know anything at all about them. We don’t even know how many of them there were, though they did show up with three highly symbolic gifts. We know that they came from somewhere in “the East,” but we don’t know their names, we have no idea how they happened to be more astute students of Hebrew prophecy than persons living in Israel at the time, and we don’t know how it was that only they noticed the star and recognized it as His star, the star of the “King of the Jews,” One Whom they should come to worship. We know that they made their way to Bethlehem with a stop in Jerusalem when Herod asked where they were headed. And we know that they were warned in a dream to take a different route home. That’s it. 

And that’s where the legends take over. Now we are surrounded by representations of these sages. We have decided that there were three of them plus a page, we have made them kings, we have given them names: Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar and we even have decided that one of them was black. All over Europe their initials appear on lintels of homes and businesses, and often these writings in chalk remain visible throughout the entire year until only the date needs to be changed in the following January. Is this why we celebrate Epiphany? Is this why it’s a season of the Church year? Yes, that’s part of it; but at times the story may do more to obscure the meaning than to explicate it. 

Pentecost is the festival that we call the “birthday” of the Church, but I tend to think of Epiphany as a festival that almost equally deserves to be called our birthday as the Church of Jesus Christ. It is the day that first reveals what Paul called “the musterion,” the Mystery of Christ. Yes, there is the general sense in Paul’s writings that the “Mystery of Christ” is the same as our Memorial Acclamation, the “mystery of faith:” “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” But for Paul, the “Mystery of Christ” was inseparably related to his unparalleled Damascus Road encounter with the risen Christ and his special calling as apostle to the Gentiles. Peter had a glimpse of this in his mission to Cornelius and the vision that preceded it, but the special ministry to the Gentiles was left uniquely to Paul and his missionary companions. 
 
This is an essential aspect of the Mystery of Christ: that in the redemptive work of Christ, salvation is now freely extended to the Gentiles quite apart from any connection to Judaism. We may wish to celebrate our Jewish roots, and this is a good thing we should continue to do. But in Christ, we are now brought into a privileged relationship with God that previously came only through identification with God’s chosen people. 

All of this is what the arrival of these sages from the East prefigures. They came out of nowhere and receded into nowhere, never again to be heard from, yet forever to be remembered. The very thought of them is a blessing to us and, by a long-standing tradition, a blessing to our homes. They came from some unnamed Eastern land seeking the Jewish Messiah, the Christ, the King; what they found was a baby in humble surroundings, not at all what they must have been expecting. But they, along with a motley group of shepherds on the night shift, were the first and presumably only ones to visit Jesus, Mary and Joseph while acknowledging Jesus as the Christ Child. Soon the Holy Family would be off to Egypt to escape Herod’s “Slaughter of the Innocents” and to fulfill the prophecy of Hosea, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son” (Hos. 11:1, Mt. 2:15).

Epiphany celebrates this visit of the sages. It’s a small pericope in the story of Jesus, but far from an insignificant one. It announces that the reach of God is now extended to all of humankind, to Jew and Gentile alike. The point is made powerfully, in that Gentile sages were allowed to be among the very first persons to greet Messiah’s arrival and to recognize Who He really was. The very nature of their gifts may speak symbolically of this recognition as well as prophetically of what was yet to come in Jesus’ life. Gold spoke of Jesus’ Kingship and Deity; frankincense spoke of His Priestly function and His holiness; myrrh foreshadowed His role as the Suffering Servant and His sacrificial death on the Cross. Collectively, these costly and even extravagant gifts further underscore the sense of the sages that they were bearing treasures for the King of Kings. 
​
In addition to the legends and traditions that have accumulated in conjunction with these sages, many of our most beloved Christmas and Epiphany hymns expand on their appearance in profoundly devotional ways. A personal favorite despite its frequently maligned seasonal reference is “In the Bleak Midwinter” with its text by Christina Rossetti. In reference to the gifts of the sages, it asks the question, 

“What can I give Him, poor as I am? 
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; 
if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; 
yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.” 

He asks no greater gift than this, the gift that every one of us is able to bring regardless of our economic standing. In fact it is a gift that has no limits at all other than our reluctance to surrender to its comprehensive requirements. Giving one’s heart clearly implies the giving of one’s entire self, a gift that pleases God more than any other gift; yet it is one that makes significant demands on our selves. Whatever service or sacrifice it may be that God is requiring of us, it is bundled together with the gift of our hearts. May we be ready today and each day to discover what God wishes to do with our gift and willingly, no, eagerly to offer it to Him without reservation. After all, the gifts of God for the people of God come without measure and without reservation. Amen. 
 
"What Child Is This?" lyrics
(William Chatterton Dix, published ca. 1865)
        
What Child is this, who laid to rest,
On Mary's lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping?

This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear: for sinners here,
The silent Word is pleading.

This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh;
Come peasant, king to own Him.
The King of Kings salvation brings;
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.

This, this is Christ the King
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,
The Babe, the Son of Mary.

The Gospel Reading (John 1:14, 15, 29, 30, 43-46):
 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only One from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” 
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes One Who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’ 
43 The next day Jesus purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip and said to him, “Follow Me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”

Christmas 2015: a homily for agnostics
John 1:14  And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only One from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

“The Word became flesh.” What does that mean? What could it possibly mean? 

The surface meaning is obvious; we take it for granted. It speaks of the Incarnation, a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem, One Who is Emmanuel, “God with us;” One Who is Jesus, through Whom “God will save;” One Who is our righteousness, our hope, our companion, our friend, our Redeemer.

But what does that mean? How can we really even begin to fathom the eternal Word of God becoming flesh, taking on all of our human limitations, experiencing all our joys and sadness, accepting the excruciating self-sacrifice of a Cross, rising victoriously from the dead, ascending to the throne of God, interceding for each one of us, and waiting with divine patience for the moment unknown even to Him when the Father once again will say, “It’s time.” It was time 2,000 years ago for the incarnation: what Paul called “the fullness of time” in Galatians 4:4. And it will be time for Him to return to establish His Kingdom, the Kingdom that is from everlasting to everlasting, the Kingdom that will have no end, the new world that we call, “world without end,” when God Himself will be with us and He will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21:3,4).

But what does that mean? How could we ever access these truths in a way that works for our inquiring and scientific 21st century minds? What does that mean? 

I had an epiphany this week: not the one that is coming up on January 6th, but one that relates profoundly to my long career as a professional musician. We have a relative who fervently believes that because of his long, illustrious and highly successful professional career, he now has a more profound understanding of Biblical truth than most other persons. But my epiphany went in precisely the opposite direction. I suddenly realized that my existence in what someone anonymously called “the cloud of unknowing” is just what has so richly enhanced my life as a believer.

I have made a number of references in past weeks to my “discovery” of icons and other works of Christian art as sources of devotional meditation on a different level from anything I have experienced in the past. 

Let me explain by backing up a bit. In my decades as a professional musician, I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me, “I don’t attend very many classical music concerts because I don’t understand the music, I don’t have the hidden knowledge or background of study that would enable me to access what the music means.” 

To such persons I always say the same thing. Even when they ask me to recommend a book they could read or a course they could take, I simply say, “Come and see. Sit quietly and let the music flow over you and around you. Close your eyes sometimes. Make not the slightest effort to ‘understand’ it. Just hear it and let yourself feel it. If you do just that simple thing, you will understand the music as well as any professional musician who has a degree in musicology or theory or performance. It really is that simple to discover what music means.”

You may think, “It’s easy for him to think such things, with his comprehensive knowledge of music.” But if that’s what you think, you have completely missed my point. What I’ve done in the past few days is to take myself outside the box of my professional expertise and put myself in other areas of mystery and perceived complexity. I’ve looked again at some favorite icons and other Christian art. In so doing I’ve realized that some, perhaps even most of the ones that have affected me most profoundly are also among the ones that I understand the very least from an intellectual and analytical perspective. 

What do they mean? I admit that I may have no clue. What, precisely, was in the mind of the artist? Am I accessing his truth at all, or am I simply importing my more limited understanding of what the canvass might mean. What was the artist really saying? What am I seeing? Are they the same? Might they be radically different? And at the end of the day, does it really matter?

Let me use another example. In the past two weeks I have discovered the sacred poetry of someone of whom I had never previously heard: Malcolm Guite. I even ordered a book of his poetry and, in this age of almost instant gratification, Amazon had it on my doorstep the next day. I also have said several times recently that my favorite poet is George Herbert. But when I actually read a poem of Herbert or Guite and am deeply moved by it, I may go back to it and realize that I absolutely did not “understand” it or even try to access it intellectually, and whatever response I had to the poem may not have corresponded at all to what the poet himself intended or felt. And I have come to think that this is okay, that it’s every bit as acceptable as my asking uninformed persons to come and hear classical music without a hint of “insider knowledge.”

I found this epiphany to be quite liberating. It made me feel that it is actually okay for me to hear a piece of music, or stand in front of a painting or sculpture or read a poem or see a great play and go away having seen or heard or felt something absolutely profound, rivetingly worthwhile, deeply moving, and all the while perhaps not really knowing what it means.

What does the Incarnation “mean?” Will I ever have perfect understanding of it from the Author’s perspective? Will “the Word became flesh” suddenly become crystal clear to me? Will I be able more accurately to project the time that this babe of Bethlehem will return to establish His everlasting Kingdom? Will I suddenly have a clear picture of what that Kingdom will look like and where its geographic center will be? And if my answer is “no” to all of the above, should I withdraw from society to work it all out, while also studying art and literature and music in order better to understand what every masterpiece really means? Is this a fair parallel?

Yes and No. When I stand in awe in front of a work of art, or hear an astonishing piece of music, or read some amazing literature, I do not expect the Holy Spirit to enlighten my understanding in the same way that I expect the Spirit to help me understand Scripture. But perhaps the Holy Spirit expects me to suspend my disbelief when contemplating the greatest mysteries of all: what actually happened in the Incarnation; what actually happened in Bethlehem or on the Mount of Transfiguration or in Gethsemane or on Golgotha; precisely what happens in the Eucharist; or what’s coming next and when it will happen.

I will continue to ask my innermost questions at precisely the same time that I continue to proclaim God’s Holy Word. I will revel in the mysteries that Jesus Himself says are “hidden from the wise and prudent yet revealed to babes” (Mt. 11:25). I will continue to stand in awe at how newborn Christians can so quickly develop brilliant insights into God’s Word, how my own students at Moody were able to make observations that inspired me, how my seminary classmates sometimes could contribute more to my deepening understanding of God’s truth than could my esteemed professors. 

This much I know for certain: “The Word became flesh and took up residence on earth, making His tabernacle among us:” from Bethlehem to the Cross to the Resurrection and Ascension; “and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the One Who was uniquely begotten of the Father’s love, the One Who fully realized all that is embodied in the concepts of grace and truth, of lovingkindness and eternal verity.” And He’s coming again, perhaps sometime soon.

What does this mean? What does it mean to you? Do you remember what I say to persons who are afraid of classical music? It is the same thing that Phillip said to Nathaniel after he had found the incarnate God, the One he identified as “Him of Whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” He simply said, “Come and see.” When we do come and see, then like Nathaniel we are able to respond, “You are the Son of God, the King of Israel.” And when we do that, in the truest spiritual sense, we will come closer to understanding the Incarnation, to knowing something of what it means.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Collect
Almighty God, You make us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of Your Son Jesus Christ: grant that we, who have been born again and made Your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by Your Holy Spirit; and grant that as we joyfully receive Him as our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold Him when He shall come to be our Judge; Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

"Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“Lord, when was it that we saw You hungry and gave You food, or thirsty and gave You something to drink? And when was it that we saw You a stranger and welcomed You, or naked and gave You clothing? And when was it that we saw You sick or in prison and visited You?”

How often has any of us tried to apply these verses to our own daily lives? Do we let ourselves off the hook by remembering a time long ago when we actually went out of our way to help someone less fortunate than ourselves? Are we inclined to bask in that distant memory, thereby shutting out altogether the needs that surround us daily? Do we support Anglican Relief efforts instead of pondering the deplorable plight of countless persons in North Chicago or Waukegan or Milwaukee or Chicago?

2015 is being called by many “the year of the refugee.” Has that touched our own lives any more closely than through our reading the newspaper or the internet? Probably not. What could we have done to translate our detachment or our fear or even our hatred into compassionate action? Have we spent any time at all pondering that?

“What would Jesus do?” We know that line so well that many are able simply to “Tweet” it as WWJD. But, seriously, what would Jesus do? Would He be as indifferent as we are? “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

I visited an elderly woman in an assisted care facility in Wheaton a few weeks ago, and I took her a copy of a gospel hymn I have known since childhood. It’s titled, “Does Jesus Care,” and one or two of you might know it. The chorus repeats again and again, “Oh yes, He cares, I know He cares, His heart is touched by my grief.” Do we condemn ourselves when we sing such a song? “Oh yes, He cares;” but do we?

Let’s think about Jesus for a moment: the incarnate God Who willingly surrendered all that it meant to be equal with God in order to become a servant, to suffer an excruciating death, even the death of a Cross. How did He enter this world? He was, in every sense of the title I saw in an internet post this past week, “Jesus the Refugee.” Even while He was still in the womb of the Virgin Mary He made an incredibly difficult journey from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea.  

We think of such “old wives’ tales” as driving over the railroad tracks in order to induce labor, but how about a 100-mile journey on a donkey? That certainly worked. On arrival, the woman of this pilgrim family was ready to bring the Messiah into the world. Yet there was no room for them in any inn. A stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ. No one in Judea was interested in housing Galilean pilgrims, least of all those from Nazareth, apparently a town with a very low reputation. They arrived as refugees and were treated with disdain, contempt, or at the very least, indifference. Who would not go out of his way to accommodate a pregnant woman who was about to give birth? Who would not give up his own room for her?
 
Their sojourn in Bethlehem did not last very long. In no time at all Joseph was alerted in a dream that Herod’s henchmen were on their way for the “Slaughter of the Innocents,” the day we observed on December 28. For Joseph and his recently delivering wife and her recently delivered Son, this meant yet another arduous journey as refugees to a hostile country, Egypt, where they we assured by the angel of temporary asylum. 

Once Herod died, Joseph had another dream in which he was informed that a return to Nazareth was safe. Nazareth! What sort of reception were they likely to encounter there? It was “home,” but this “Holy Family,” as we innocently call them now, would have met with ridicule and disgrace back in Nazareth, where Jesus might have been regarded as illegitimate and Mary would have been the object of contempt. Yes, they were “home,” but in a sense they still were refugees.

Maybe this was okay for Jesus, the Son of God, to handle. But things never got any better for Him personally. When a scribe came to Him and said, with all earnestness and sincerity, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go,” Jesus simply replied, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Still, He was the refugee, even after John the Baptist had acclaimed Him as the “Lamb of God,” both Andrew and Phillip had identified Him as the Messiah and Nathanael had declared Him to be “the Son of God, the King of Israel.” How could such a Person still be without a place to lay His head? 

Did it ever get any better? Not as far as the Gospel records tell us. Every home in which He stayed was a temporary dwelling, and every room He occupied was a borrowed room, including the one where He celebrated His “Last Supper” with the disciples and where He greeted them as their Resurrected Savior. When He wished to find a place to be alone for prayer, He could not slip into the prayer chapel of a nearby cathedral or synagogue. He prayed on hillsides and in gardens and on mountain tops, regardless of the weather or any degree of physical discomfort. He truly was “Jesus the Refugee.”

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” How many times have we wished for the opportunity to embrace Jesus, to take Him in our own arms of love, to give Him shelter in our comfortable homes with central heating, air conditioning and a guest bedroom? How often have we wished we could have prepared a meal for Him when surely He must have been incredibly weary and hungry? “Lord, when was it that we saw You hungry and gave You food, or thirsty and gave You something to drink? And when was it that we saw You a stranger and welcomed You, or naked and gave You clothing? And when was it that we saw You sick or in prison and visited You?” Never? Was it nothing more than our pious wish, never translated into action?

What exactly is our attitude towards the refugees of our world? Shall we stand with one of our most prominent political voices and say, “Send them back?” Send them all away, back to wherever it is from whence they came, regardless of the squalor, the crime, the slaughter, the oppression, the incessant danger to life and limb; back to hunger and want, to grief and pain. Why not? Otherwise they may prove to be an inconvenience to us at best or perhaps a threat to us at worst or at least a drain on our unstable economy. Never mind that our economy, about which we speak incessantly, remains the most stable on planet earth, and that our standard of living is without parallel and cannot even be compared to the economies of third world nations. “Send them back.”

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” What would Jesus do? What would “Jesus the Refugee” do? He told stories about such persons as a Good Samaritan or a young lawyer who was instructed to sell all his possessions, give his money to the poor, and come follow Him, to give up his considerable wealth to follow the Guy Who had no place to lay His head. 

We speak glibly about compassion as though it were a natural human trait that we all possess. It might surprise you to know that the OT word for compassion rarely occurs in reference to a human being: it is reserved almost exclusively for God Himself. No, despite our most genuinely altruistic moments, compassion is not a human trait that we possess, exhibit and exercise in our daily lives. But surely this is OT stuff and, when we turn to the NT where Christians are motivated by the indwelling Holy Spirit, God’s compassion will rub off on us, will become internalized in us, will become a fruit of the Spirit that bears eloquent witness to God-with-us in Christ Jesus.

Alas, this is our spiritual fantasy in a world where we are surrounded by narcissistic persons who are enamored of their own self-worth and inherent goodness. The NT word for compassion occurs c. 22 times, and more than 2/3rds of the occurrences refer to the compassion of Jesus or of God the Father. Only a few are applied to the disposition and actions of Spirit-filled believers. No, compassion is not a natural human or even a common Christian trait, and all it takes is an international refugee crisis for us to be exposed as persons frightfully lacking in compassion. Few of us have stood on the shore of the Rio Grande and watched a large family trying to wade across the river to our land of plenty, pleading with us not to report them to the authorities who might arrest them or turn them away. Gayle and I witnessed this, and we never will forget it. 

But don’t we need to protect our own economy, our own freedoms, our own way of life, our own comfort zones? “Lord, when was it that we saw You hungry and gave You food, or thirsty and gave You something to drink? And when was it that we saw You a stranger and welcomed You, or naked and gave You clothing? And when was it that we saw You sick or in prison and visited You?” We may have seen Him just yesterday, perhaps even earlier this morning, in an age when the plight of the entire world is an instant visual on our cell phones or I-Pads or computers. [And speaking of such devices, I was seriously saddened to hear on the news and read in the Tribune this past week that the 4 major internet providers spent 32.5 million dollars to provide internet access on 22 miles of the Chicago Metro system. I tried to imagine how many homeless, hungry, thirsty, coatless persons could have had their Christmastide radically changed by the equitable distribution of 32.5 million dollars! The Metro riders and the internet providers will never know the difference this slight inconvenience could have made!]

We are not short of opportunities to meet the needs of “Jesus the Refugee.” He is on our doorstep. He pleads with us today for a place to lay His head. He begs us not to require a flight into Egypt or a borrowed room or a hard wooden floor for an overnight stay. He is in North Chicago and Waukegan and Milwaukee and Chicago, and He is hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked and about to be imprisoned. Will we find ourselves among those on His left to whom He will say, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me. Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

No doubt John the Evangelist was recalling these words of Jesus when, writing his first epistle, he said, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet turns his compassion away from him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or with tongue, but in action and in truth” (I John 3:17,18). What does it mean for us to show God-like compassion? The very word “compassion” means to “suffer along with” someone else. How many of us have given thought actually to suffering with any other person, least of all with someone we don’t know and of whom we are somewhat suspicious? 

Paul admits in Romans 5 that “one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.” But then Paul shows us the extraordinary, compassionate act of God, the truest imaginable demonstration of “suffering with” someone. He writes, “God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” He even calls us God’s enemies, who “were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” And the author of Hebrews urges us to fix our eyes on “Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

May we be found among the righteous who, in the power of the Holy Spirit, are able to exhibit the compassion which truly belongs to God alone. When we do that, we will demonstrate powerfully that we are born “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.


Collect for the day

Almighty God, in the birth of Your Son You have poured on us the new light of Your incarnate Word, and shown us the fullness of Your love: help us to walk in His light and dwell in His love that we may know the fullness of His joy; Who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.