Gracious and loving God, as we enter this time of meditation, may you
take the imperfect words of my mouth, the meditations of each of our
hearts, directing them to a perfect understanding of your love, your care,
your presence with us. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.
Grace and peace be to each, to all, from God our Creator and the Lord
Jesus Christ.
My dear friends…
I want to take the liberty and opportunity to thank our "signers" for
worship. There was a time in the history of the church, when we talked
about contemporary worship as involving
interpretive movement. For a lot of us, that meant dressing people
up and putting slippers on their feet so that they could dance before
the Lord
just like David. And trust me, I built that setting many times in my
ministry. If David could dance before the Lord, I would say, we need
to have dancers in worship as well. But at that time of my life, I
did not
understand all the implications and applications of interpretive movement.
When we sing a hymn, when the choir does an anthem, what you see here
in front of you is interpretive movement at its finest. When the music
flows,
so do the hands and the heart of the signer. Dear friends, you have
become, for me, a focus to immerse me more clearly and more fully in
worship and I thank you both so very much.
I hear many times from people who visit this church that there is
a sense of energy here, that when they come to this place, something
occurs
in their lives that doesn't occur in many other places. There's a sense
of presence here, they say…the presence of something more powerful than our
own minds and our own journeys, a presence so powerful that it does seek
to enable and empower us. Coming in to the church this weekend, you cannot
possibly miss all of the indicators of a special presence. The sign on the
door off the parking lot: CAST & CREW ONLY. NO CHURCH MEMBERS THROUGH
THIS DOOR. How do you like that for welcoming and inviting? But what it
tells us all is that something very special is occurring here, something
that has a wonderful sense of presence, power and energy. And…we need
those bursts of energy, empowerment and light in our lives.
The Prophet Jeremiah says to a people who are lost and dispirited,
a people who find themselves in captivity, a people surrounded by darkness
without much light, he says to them, "Rejoice. Sing, shout and give
thanks." My guess is that those people in 587 B.C. or B.C.E.,
however you choose to define that era, those people did not want to
rejoice nor
sing, shout and give thanks.
My impression is that Jeremiah speaks to us as well today. Christmas
Eve was a wonderful time to rejoice, shout and give thanks. It was a burst
of light for us. But now Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are past. This is
Epiphany Sunday, and what's the reality of my world now? The reality for
many people is that the Christmas parties are over, and the opportunities
for socialization have largely passed. Another reality is that income tax
forms are in the mail. Even here, this morning in worship, no more carols.
And soon the lights that adorn the trees in our homes will come down as
well.
I had a conversation with a gentleperson yesterday who said to me, "You know, all we have to look forward to now are weeks of snow, ice,
cold and dark skies." "All we have to look forward to now are
weeks of snow, ice, cold and dark skies." Yet in the face of all of
that, if that's the reality of your life, in the face of that, Jeremiah
says, "Rejoice, sing, shout and give thanks." Jeremiah does not
deliver that message to us without joy in his own heart, because Jeremiah,
too, knew what darkness was about. "Rejoice, sing, shout, give
thanks." Rejoice, be hopeful, even when there doesn't seem to be
anything to be hopeful about. That was Jeremiah's message. Find it within
yourself, because of God's presence in your life, to be hopeful, to be
about rejoicing and giving thanks. The people of 587 B.C. felt absolutely
powerless about this situation. They sensed that their time for
celebrating had long passed, and all that was before them was depression
and occupation. In the midst of all of this, Jeremiah said, "Trust
God's presence in your life. Be hopeful. Be joyous. Sing, shout, give
thanks."
Jeremiah delivers that message poignantly to us as well. There is
much darkness about us. In a world where saber rattling and where weapons
of
mass destruction abound, who has what and what will they do what with
what they have? We keep talking about a recovery in the economy, but
I don't
see it in my retirement plan. Hmm. And then there are my children.
You know, most of my dreams were tied up in my children. For some who
are here
this morning, they have lost a child. There's darkness. "Rejoice,
sing, give thanks, be hopeful." For some of us, with our children,
we thought that their marriage, that their relationship was the culmination
of our dream for them. They found the person with whom to be happy.
And
yet this morning as we gather here, we have heard from our children
via a phone call or a letter or a dispirited comment that the relationship
is
struggling. There is darkness. How am I to be hopeful, to rejoice and
to give thanks? Jeremiah declares that we must.
And then there's the Matthew story we read this morning. These three
wise men, these three wise people,who take this journey to discover,
to find in the midst of their darkness, their lostness, their uncertainty,
the promise of light in their world. How much empirical and pragmatic
data
did they have to set out upon this search? They had only the directive
of a treacherous king. Yet, they went to discover a burst of life and
they
went bearing gifts, and what they discovered was an incredible gift
to them, the affirmation again of the presence of the Lord. We begin
worship
many Sundays of the year by singing that. I'm not sure how often we
listen to it. No matter how dark it is, "Surely the presence of the Lord is
in this place." No matter how dark and difficult it is, surely,
the presence of the Lord is here.
This morning, as Donna so eloquently invited us to offering, we bring
our gifts, we bring our presents, but it's the gift of God's presence
that we seek to take with us. I think it's important for us to refer
even
further to the text from Matthew this morning, because we discover
that after the wise men had come to the manger scene, they did not
go back by
the same route that they had come. Scripture tells us that they returned
by another road. That's what scripture teaches us. Can we read between
the lines for a moment? My guess is part of the reason that they chose
another
road home was that this devilish Herod was not going to let them off
easy about what they had found and where they had found it. Is it possible
that
Herod had threatened their lives and life's stability? Could Herod
have promised death if they did, indeed, find something hopeful and
wondrous
for the world? And what was it that inspired their generosity and led
them to risk all to save this child, to tell the parents and child
to flee to
another place. Let's take note that the gospel does not call them smart
men. The gospel does not call them rational men. The gospel calls them
wise. Perhaps it's because of the spiritual wisdom, the spiritual insight,
that led them, a kind of intuitive knowing that speaks to every part
of our being and says, "I can't not do this." For the writers and
the English students in the congregation this morning…I know it's a
double negative. But I also know out of double negatives comes much
goodness and positivity. The call to the wise men was so powerful that
they said, "This is something I can't not do."
There are people in this church currently studying for ministry, not
at convenient places in their life. They're not 22 years of age, unmarried,
with all their dreams in front of them. They are people in the midst
of
their life's journey who have received a call so powerful that they
say, "This is something I can't not do." And it's not just those
studying for ministry. We come to this place, all of us, for this burst of
energy, this burst of presence, that sets before us things, opportunities
and places where we need to say, "This is something that we can't
not do."
When I was little, although there are those in this congregation and
in other places that might suggest I never, ever was little, or to
say it
another way, when the top of my head was closer to the ground, my mother
would wake me up in the morning, myself and my sister, by singing to
us, which annoyed the devil out of me [and which I used to annoy the
devil out
of my own children]. She would either sing "Good morning, merry
sunshine, how do you do today?" Or she would say, "Rise and
shine, children, it's time to get going." Over that song and those
words, any intention you had about sleeping late was gone, and whatever
Mom had orchestrated for you was waiting downstairs. I'd like to suggest
to you that in Epiphany, in this burst of light and energy, in this burst
of presence, God is saying to us, "Good morning, merry sunshine…"
to annoy the devil right out of us. I think God is saying to us this
morning in the burst of energy and presence which is Ephipany,
"Arise, shine, it's time to get going." This is a wonderful
opportunity for us, and a wonderful responsibility as well, to explore the
burst of Christmas energy and to keep the light alive, because God does
not just come to visit us on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. And
scripture bears that out for us. After the birth of the Christ child, God
did not stop touching the lives of the shepherds. God did not stop walking
with Mary. God did not stop caring about anyone else in Bethlehem, after
the angels had departed and the stillness of the night had reasserted
itself. The grace of God broke again into the calm day after day of human
existence, and more people were called to say, "This is something I
can't not do." And in recalling, in recalling this event, we,
too, lay claim to the gifts which were laid before the newborn Messiah
but they
are not gifts of material measure. The gift we receive today is the
gift of love sent to us in the reality of Christ Jesus and the absolute
affirmation that God continues to send us God's love.
In our fellowship around the table today, in our communion, we
fellowship with the one who calls us back, or calls us from the world to
send us back into the world. When we embrace the Epiphanies of God in our
lives, we begin a journey that leads us to share the light with the world
just as that little sprite carries that candle down the center aisle in
the Boar's Head Festival..
We probably had one of the finest family Christmas times together
that we've ever had this year…and not because there wasn't some darkness. We
have two daughters-in-law who are currently in "competition…and one
of them has two children…which tends to tilt the competitive balance in
our minds. We are, I think, much like you are in your families. How many
times have you said when the presents are opened, and the family is
gathered, we did too much this year? Or…we simply did too much. Or…this
is obscene. Well, this year we committed and covenanted with each other to
be very, very simple. We focused, all of us, on the plane ticket to bring
Christopher from L.A. to his brother's, his nieces, his mom and dad. We
focused on the power of our presence, one with another. And there was a
burst of light. And there was a burst of energy. And that light and that
energy will not go away. Tom Long, a great preacher, a great teacher,
tells a wonderful story. The story is about Christmas Eve at a church in
Bronxville, New York. That church had a tradition, and the tradition was
every Christmas Eve they had a living nativity out on the lawn. They had
live animals there, with a stable and they had wise men and shepherds and
all that. Now understand, they were not adorned like the characters are in
the Boar's Head Festival. We're talking about aluminum foil crowns here
and bathrobes with roughly sewn patches. And one year they thought that
they would do something extra special to help this living nativity come
alive in a different way. So they went to their Greek Orthodox brothers
and sisters and borrowed those brass censers in which you put incense and
get all of that smoke and the aroma of the incense. The wise men were
going to come out to the nativity scene from the church through this cloud
of smoke and the aroma of this incense. So they lit the little pots inside
the church as they prepared to open the door and go out. They didn't
realize that the smoke they had generated in the church would activate the
church's electronic fire alarm system. On this particular Christmas Eve,
there were not only shepherds and wise men…there was not only the Holy
Family and live animals…there were yellow slickered firemen unrolling
hoses to douse the fire. And when they discovered it was simply what the
wise men had created, the fire chief was heard to say by many who were
there that night, "You wise men are setting off alarms all over
town." The wise men of 2000 years ago would understand that, as
should we. It's time for us to be setting off alarms all over town, that
the presence of God is real…it's alive! There is a burst of energy
and light in our hearts, in our families, in our church and in our
community,
that will never again dissolve in darkness.
It's not about presents. It's about presence.
Let us together break the bread of life.