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"The Real Epiphany"
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Jeremiah 1:4-10
1 Corinthians 14: 12b-20
Luke 4:21-32
Today is the fourth Sunday after Epiphany. Some call this
period after Christmas and before Lent “ordinary time.”
Others consider it a season – of Epiphany - because it
has a specific theme. “Epiphany” is derived from
Greek, meaning “revealing” or literally “center
of showing” based on its parts “epi” and “phany.”
One cousin word is “Episcopal” which literally means
the “center of vision” based on its components,
“epi” and “scopal”; we recognize them
in other words that are more common like “epi-demic”
and “tele-scope.” But I digress. We are in a season
infused with epiphanies about Jesus. In his article for the
January edition of the St. Mark’s PostMark, David Fletcher
points out that the best known feature of Epiphany is the visit
of the Wise Men, who are also known as the kings or Magi. Matthew’s
Gospel tells us that they bring gold, precious herbs and incense
to the infant Savior. Other prominent stories of Epiphany include
the baptism of Jesus and the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs
his first miracle of transforming water into wine. So here on
this rather insignificant fourth Sunday after Epiphany, late
in January, when church attendance tends to hit rock bottom,
we hear the account of Jesus visiting his hometown of Nazareth.
And what is going on is nothing short of nuclear. Ka-boom! Do
you not realize that the reading we have just heard from Luke’s
Gospel is the Real epiphany – the revealing of the absolute
essence of Luke’s message? You can forget everything else,
including the gold, gallons of wine and foamy waters of baptism.
Today is when the rubber hits the road and the message of the
Gospel is unveiled to the world. What is that message? It is
something so astonishing and upsetting that there is a complete
“180” among the people who hear it. At one terminus
of the pendulum is this report: “All spoke well of him.”
At the other end is this: “All were filled with rage.”
What happened? How can a supportive hometown crowd that is polite
and respectful at one moment be changed in a matter of seconds
to an angry, murderous mob which wants nothing less than to
fling Jesus off of a cliff and watch him break every bone of
his body on the rocky, trash-strewn ledges below?
This Gospel story has inspired and challenged me to come up
with a message so alarming that you too would want to throw
me in front of an express Metra or a 100-car, 100-mile per hour
Union Pacific triple-engine train headed for Kansas City. I
have considered one of the many arresting statements made by
Martin Luther King, Jr. leading up to his assassination: “Injustice
anywhere is injustice everywhere.” Or “In the end
we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence
of our friends” or “When you are right you can’t
be too radical; when you’re wrong you cannot be too conservative.”
As I expected, I don’t see anyone even raising an eyebrow
at these. Perhaps if I declare that anyone who drives an SUV
is going to hell, it’ll cause several of you to shift
in your pews. But it still isn’t enough to invoke the
mob action seen in Nazareth. How about an ultimatum: unless
you come up with the money to pay off our $2.4 million building
loan in two weeks, I quit. Or perhaps this: everyone must invite
one guest to St. Mark’s between now and Easter, or I quit.
Or something really incendiary: that I plan to publish in the
next PostMark everyone’s pledge commitment, alphabetically
by last name. That’s probably the closest I can get to
invoking true outrage. The problem with each of these actions
and ultimatums is that they would result in either my resignation
or yours, in the case of the latter only to benefit one of the
many other faith options in the area, some of which we’ve
already done enough to support. This would miss the mark for
several reasons. Jesus does not present an ultimatum and the
people in Nazareth have no intention of leaving their synagogue.
The one thing they have in mind is to get rid of Jesus once
and for all.
Perhaps what will make you want to get rid of me is in fact
what Jesus said to the people in the synagogue in Nazareth,
which is simply this: that God’s love is not confined
to any particular group of people, religion, ethnicity, nation,
gender or race. Moreover, God may be more concerned with exactly
those people we detest the most or think the most unworthy of
God’s attention and saving work. Jesus reminds the people
in Nazareth of story from their own scriptures - that their
God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, sent the prophet Elijah
to the widow at Zarephath in Sidon. She was not a Jew, which
made her unclean and untouchable, and also being a widow, the
lowest of the low. It is to this outsider, a seemingly unlikely
person to whom God brings abundance and healing. To put her
in proper perspective, this widow is the modern equivalent for
us at St. Mark’s to someone...let’s say a former
parishioner, who stands at the front doors on Sunday mornings,
telling anyone who will listen that they are going to hell if
they stay at St. Mark’s or in the Episcopal church, and
that they can find true Bible-centered theology and Anglican
worship at a church just five minutes from here.
So that no one is confused or unclear, Jesus doubles the evidence
and reminds the people in Nazareth that the prophet Elisha,
called by their God, bypassed the many lepers in Israel and
went to Naaman, an arrogant and crass general in Syria. Yes
to Naaman – not only not a Jew but moreover, a commander
of an enemy of Israel. It was Naaman who experienced a miraculous
recovery from leprosy, and not those who were suffering in Israel.
Who is for us the modern-day equivalent of Naaman? Perhaps it
is a leader of the Taliban or an organizer of the Sunni insurgency
in Baghdad, and it is this person whom God blesses with healing
and fortitude.
Some of you may have heard of or seen a popular game show
called Deal or No Deal. Twenty or so closed shiny metal briefcases,
accompanied by models from Hollywood, are arrayed on a stair-step
stage with blue velvet carpeting. Each case contains a piece
of paper displaying certain sum of money ranging from one cent
to a million dollars. As each case is selected and opened, the
contestant has the option of cashing out – taking the
money offered a deal-maker or opening the next briefcase. It’s
an elimination game, so that it is to advantage of the contestant
to select cases containing all of the low sums, leaving the
large sums for the next round and compelling the deal-maker
to offer more money. It is an exciting and tense game, especially
if the contestant keeps refusing the deal-makers offer by slamming
down a Plexiglas lever and yelling “no deal.” In
Nazareth in the synagogue, we see a version of Deal or No Deal.
Jesus opens all of the cases, and not liking what they see,
the people shout “No Deal” – no deal to his
message and no deal to Jesus. But the problem is that there
are no more cases to open. What is in fact a million dollars
looks like chump change in their eyes.
How radical is a message of universal salvation? What does
it mean to us that every single human being is made in the image
of God? What does it mean that there is no one who is outside
of God’s saving and unfathomable love? What does it mean
that there are absolutely no exceptions to this rule, not even
the welfare mother who is addicted to crack and having her ninth
child, nor the child molester, not the unrepentant mass murderer,
nor the radical Islamic fundamentalist cleric who recruits pregnant
women for suicide bombing missions, nor those who reject the
Gospel, nor those who have abused and distorted it.
Do we really believe this message that Jesus proclaims? Where
is Christianity today? Has the church, Episcopal, Catholic,
Baptist or Nazarene taught this message and lived it out in
word and deed? Or are they, we, all blind to it and obsessed
with, depending on the denomination - decorum, safety, self-interest,
getting into heaven, condemning sinners, protecting turf, and
preserving power and privilege?
It is difficult for mainline Christians, and I believe especially
for Episcopalians, to articulate what they believe, much less
to share it with others. What difference does it make in your
own life that you are a Christian? When asked this question,
many pastors and lay people do not know how to respond. Yet
you would think that people who experience a life-offering,
life-transforming gospel would have something to say and couldn’t
help but share it.
This fourth Sunday after the Epiphany may indeed be the Real
Epiphany – the revealing of the Gospel message, a message
that is so radical that it shakes the foundation of the world,
the church, and of each of our lives with its scope, power,
obnoxiousness and scandal. But as in Nazareth, it can be rejected,
minimized, rationalized, and proof-texted away – literally
flung off the side of a cliff or thrown under a speeding train.
Yet, however we try to destroy it, the message reappears, presenting
itself over and over again with its simplicity and its invitation
to enter a new reality, which Jesus calls the Kingdom of God.
Here in the United States and in this safe, comfortable hamlet
of Glen Ellyn, churches are often seen and experienced as clubs.
They are like competitive businesses that seek their own interests
first, rarely entering into cooperative efforts or sharing with
each other. It is socially acceptable and advantageous to belong
to a church. The message of the Gospel is muted, dissected and
de-commissioned in climate controlled comfort. St. Paul talks
about the fruit of the Spirit. The mushy, moldy fruit of our
situation can be seen around us. This week, the Chicago Tribune
reported the results of a survey of college freshman who say
that their top life priorities are to achieve wealth and fame.
Over 81% of these young adults, the highest percentage ever,
report that they hope to get rich. Shockingly, only 30% say
that one of their goals is to help the needy, and only 22% are
interested in being a leader in their community. If we claim
to be a Christian nation, with thriving Christian youth groups,
this survey says something is wrong. To me, it says that the
radical message delivered to the people in Nazareth by a man
named Jesus has been forgotten or rendered impotent, and that
the body of Christ is on life support, severely malnourished
at best, a Frankenstein at worst.
As one of our parishioners told me this past week, “to
be a Christian is to be a crazy radical.” I think that
is right, and it means seeing and re-claiming the radical message
of the Gospel confidence. In all truth, I am not trying to get
myself thrown off a cliff or heaved under a train. But if that
is the result of this Epiphany – of re-telling the gospel
message of Jesus, so be it.
Amen.
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