Epiphany

Safer Than A Known Way

Isaiah 60:1-6

Psalm 72

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

The gifts have been opened, the Christmas dinner isn’t even leftovers any more, the wrapping paper is out with the trash. The malls have moved on to Valentine’s Day or whatever the next commercial occasion is.  But in the church, it is still Christmas.  Today we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. 

The literal meaning of the word epiphany is manifestation.  We use it in ordinary speech – we suddenly see or understand something that was not clear to us before - we light up - and we say we have had an epiphany. 

And that is part of the church’s use of the word, too.  We have seen something new; it has been clearly revealed to us.  It is God coming to us as a baby, it is the Word made flesh.  And coming to us – not just the Jews.  Epiphany celebrates God’s revelation to the Gentiles, which is what we are.  After all, the wise men who came from the east were not Jews.  They were most likely Persian and they certainly did not know the God of Abraham.

 So today on epiphany we celebrate God’s manifestation in the world and we do that in lots of different ways. Over on Park Street, the three kings are getting ready for tomorrow’s parade when they will ride camels down the street and pass out candy and toys.  In homes in New Orleans and elsewhere, people are cutting into King Cake, hoping to find the bean or little trinket that signifies good luck for the year. And we are remembering the magi, known as kings but more likely scholars of astronomy, who traveled to find the newborn Jesus, the one the themselves identified as a King. 

But I'm not going to start with a story about any of those kings.  I want to begin by talking about a different king:  King George VI, King of England, crowned right before the start of WWII.  He was an unlikely and reluctant king, pressed into duty following the abdication of his brother Edward, who wanted to marry an American divorcee named Wallis Simpson.  All this seems rather quaint now, even in Great Britain, where royal scandals have muted the sense of outrage that people felt in 1930s, but it was quite a to-do at the time. 

King George had lived a quiet life and seemed to prefer that.  And he was reluctant to take the throne for another reason:  he stuttered.  Some of you may have seen the movie, “The King’s Speech,” that chronicles his struggle to overcome his stuttering.   It is a powerful and moving story.

England entered the war against Hitler in September 1939 and King George, after months of effort and determination, spoke to his nation by radio broadcast – speaking clearly and from the heart.  Several months later, he gave another radio speech, the customary King’s Christmas address.

He spoke about the hope and promise of peace to a nation at war, a nation gripped by uncertainty about the future, fearful and yet courageous.  At the end of that Christmas day address he quoted from a little poem, saying these powerful words: 

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”  The words remind me of those other Kings, the ones who came from the east – they had a light to follow, one leading them into the unknown.  We think of them as key figures in our nativity scenes, there in the stable with Mary and Joseph, worshipping the newborn baby, kneeling down in the straw among the animals. But there was no mention of a stable in their story, there was no manger or sheep and shepherds. 

There was instead, as another poet once wrote: 

A cold coming…,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
….
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time … 

                                                  (T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi)

They had the light, they found and followed the star, and they were entering the unknown, but it was anything but safe. It was a hard time, a cold coming.  And they might have doubted what they found and how their journey turned out.  The first king they encountered was not the one they were hoping to find.  They went to King Herod, and you know how that ended up. Not safe at all – not for the kings from the east, not for the King of the Jews, not for the boy babies of Bethlehem.

And I wonder, too, about the return trip of these kings, these magi.  What happened to them when they did not have the star to guide them? Why did they know to trust the warning of a dream, to act on some fleeting whisper in the dark, that midnight message from a God they did not know?  How did they find their way home? 

The known way back, through Jerusalem, by way of the palace of King Herod, was no longer safe, if it ever was.  It was not safe for the baby, but it was also not safe for them.  What they had seen in Bethlehem must have marked them forever.  When they touched the light of the world, it must have lodged in them somehow.  Then as they traveled home under a starless sky, maybe they were carrying some of that light within them.  When they touched the Child, they had taken hold of the one who was known to them only as Mystery, but that Mystery was the one who would lead them “better than light and safer than a known way.”

And so it is for us, too. For the past six Sundays, like the wise men we have been invited to follow the star.  As we prepared for Christmas, as we pondered the meaning of Christ’s coming, as we waited through Advent, we have been also been on a journey not unlike the kings.  The light that guided them has guided us, and we, too, have found the child who is the king – the king of the Jews, the king of creation, the king of our hearts.

And now that we have found him, we cannot go back to the old way. It is so tempting to ask for certainty, to seek the familiar, to try to follow the known way.  It is so human to want to know where we will end up, to have a lighted path, to pursue a safe destination, but everything has changed now.

We will find our way home, but if we travel that journey in faith, the path will not necessarily be one of our own choosing.  We will not always know, and maybe never know, exactly where we are going.  But God knows the way.  And the voice of love that whispered to the wise men also calls to us. 

God waits to take your hand.  Reach out into the darkness and you will find the way. Because the one who is the way, the truth, and the life is tugging on your hand, waiting to lead you on, to bring you home, to keep you safe.

We stand at gate of the year, the year of our Lord two thousand fourteen. It is tempting ask for a light that we may tread safely into the unknown. But instead, dear friends:

‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.  That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’

© Martha C. Highsmith

Christmas Eve

The Hidden Jesus

In the neighborhoods around my house, most people don’t go all out with the Christmas decorations.  Along my street many of the houses have a wreath and maybe some candles in the windows, or a few strings of white lights wrapped around the evergreen shrubs.  With the snow on the branches and the lights sparkling, it is always quite beautiful.  And very tasteful and elegant – not much in the way of reindeer balancing on pitched roofs or windows outlined in multi-colored running lights. People don’t drive down our street to look at over-the-top Christmas decorations!

There is one house on my street, though, that did not get the memo!  The little front yard is crammed with just about every plastic figure you can imagine.  There is a seesaw with two penguins on it, going up and down, next to a little polar bear. There is an inflatable snow globe with things going around inside.  There are reindeer and a sleigh.  There is an illuminated plastic nativity scene, with a giant blow-up Santa and a snowman looming over Mary and Joseph and the Baby, and the wise men bear their gifts lined up by the sidewalk, next to a row of lighted candy canes.

Some people, I suppose, might find this display on the tacky side.  And some people might think it is inappropriate to plop the baby Jesus down in the midst of the penguins and the elves and the Santa Claus.  (And what do penguins have to do with Christmas anyway?  Don’t they live at the South Pole?)  And the baby who should be at the heart of it all is almost hidden, barely noticeable, surrounded as he is by all those other figures and decorations that have nothing to do with the story of Christmas – at least the one recorded in the Bible.

I’ve decided, though, that this display is just right.  After all, that is just how Jesus came to us.  He was plopped down into the world with all kinds of inappropriate things going on around him.  Most of what was happening in and around Bethlehem had nothing to do with God’s reign – it was all about Caesar’s reign. And there was nothing tasteful and elegant about his birth.  He was conceived outside of wedlock; he was born in a stable full of mess and manure; he was visited by the poorest of the poor, the shepherds. 

Jesus was just one of many, another child born in a difficult situation to a young woman, a child destined to grow up and live a life of poverty.  Who in the world would pay attention to a poor baby, born of poor parents, in a poor country?  There was no reason this birth should have been noticed at all, let alone become a story told over and over again in times and places very far removed from that stable, including here.

It makes me wonder:  Why would God choose to be revealed in such a hidden way?  Wouldn’t it be better if God were easier to recognize?  After all, we wouldn’t be likely to miss God if God came to us as a voice from a burning bush, would we?  Or as God did to the people standing on the banks of the Red Sea waiting for the waters to part?  Or in fire and smoke and sacred words on a holy mountain?  But even those people, God’s chosen ones, often missed God’s presence.  Even in the promised land, they continued to wait and hope for God to be revealed, for God to come and rescue them again, to give them safety and freedom.  They understood through the prophets that God would send a savior, the Messiah. In a time of war and upheaval, the saving word of God that came through Isaiah to the people must have seemed strange news:

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” 

They were hoping for a mighty army, and instead they got a baby.  They were hoping for military victory and instead they were promised peace, a peace that would need the same kind of care and tending that a newborn needs. 

And all that was long ago, and where is that promise of peace now?  If this Child has been born – and we do believe that -- then why isn’t there endless peace now?  Why is the world still filled with injustice?  Where is righteousness?  Where is the child who will save us?

________

One year and ten days ago near where I live in Connecticut, twenty boys and girls and seven women were murdered by a young man – almost a child himself and certainly a lost and troubled soul.  In the aftermath of this tragedy, it has sometimes been hard to understand where God is, to know the presence of the savior.  It has seemed sometimes that evil and destruction might win out.  But then God speaks in the words of the mother of Ana Grace, one of the children who was killed, and she recalls setting up a table with candles to light for those who died that day, and she says: 

"Do we have a table with 26 candles (one for each of the children and teachers), or do we have a table with 28?  We put 28, because at the end of the day, it's a gesture of the compassion that we need to move forward."

And so the mother of a murdered child lights a candle for the murderer and his mother.  And suddenly, in words that are both simple and stunning, the hidden Jesus is revealed.  God is present.  And the power of peace overcomes everything else. The families of the women and children who were killed at Sandy Hook have asked that people honor the memory of their precious ones by paying it forward – by doing something kind and compassionate and generous and loving for someone else.  It is a lesson that we have to learn over and over again, this lesson in compassion.  It is a lesson that the memories of those precious children of Newtown teach us. It is a lesson that the precious child of Bethlehem teaches us:  “Love one another as I have loved you.”

________

Last year, we had a huge snow after Christmas – more than four feet in some places.  The Christmas display in my neighbor’s yard was buried under the white stuff.  Only the top of the big Santa and the crowns of the wise men were visible.  As the weather softened in the weeks after the snow, bits and pieces of other figures emerged.  But the Baby, low and small, was the last to be uncovered.   It took a big thaw to reveal the hidden Jesus who had been there all along.  I think that is a kind of parable for us.  There is a hidden Jesus always present, but the storms of life have piled up so much stuff that we no longer notice him.  There is a hidden Jesus in us, but we have to thaw out our frozen hearts, let our busyness and sinfulness and distraction melt away, in order for him to be revealed. He is here all along. And the way of life he intends for us – the time of endless peace and justice and righteousness – is present now, also waiting to be revealed. He himself reminded us this when he said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you."

At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus – with bright lights and candy canes or elegant wreaths and candles, with gifts for those we love or random acts of kindness for total strangers, with treasured manger scenes or plastic ones displayed in the yard.  And may our celebrations continue through the days and weeks and years to come, so we come to reveal with our own lives the hidden Jesus who is in our midst.  Let us be reminded that Christ is still present in our less-than-perfect world, amidst the tacky displays of our lives, in the places where we least expect it.  Christ is present!

           

© Martha C. Highsmith

The Economy... up close and personal

Yesterday on the radio, there was a report about the current state of the economy (when is there not???).  According to the story, “more than 330,000 people filed new claims for unemployment insurance benefits last week,” and that is good news, because these numbers are at pre-recession levels.  There is actually a technical term for this phenomenon:  froth. Apparently economists build into their projections and prognostications a certain amount of joblessness.  We have now achieved “normal froth.”

In my on-line dictionary, one of the definitions of froth is triviality. And I think of my friend who was just laid off, and I know that for that family, there is nothing normal or trivial about unemployment.  And I realize that we hear these terms and the numbers that go with them and forget that every number is a person, a real person, struggling in the day-to-day, out of work, and for some, out of hope. 

If I multiply  my friend’s grief by 330,000, it is almost overwhelming.  I think when we/I am confronted with huge calamities, I cannot take them in and so I ignore them.  But today, I am thinking about 330,000 tragedies, all playing out in someone’s life.   And there is nothing trivial about that….

Blueberry Pie!

Off the Bush

Last year, my sister gave me three blueberry bushes for my birthday. I planted, watered, fertilized and covered with bird netting.  The bushes bloomed and the fruit formed, and as soon the berries were almost ready to pick, the squirrels reached in through the netting and ate them!  I got a total of four blueberries.  I don't mind sharing, but I felt I should have at least gotten an equal amount.

This year, my friend built a an arched canopy to hold the netting and I anchored it at the bottom.  In this little tent, the berries have ripened. Yesterday, I stood in the yard and ate a handful for breakfast. And tonight, I picked a cup before the rain started and made a little galette for my supper.

Sweet!

On the Plate

The Desert Shall Rejoice!

I have spent a few days in Phoenix, Arizona.  I was there to officiate at the baptisms of my newest relatives (baby first cousins twice removed).  Phoenix is a desert valley surrounded by mountains, in a landscape dotted with imported palm trees and native saguaro cactus.  It was hot – 110 degrees – and very, very dry.  I left Connecticut in the midst of cool temperatures, torrential rains, and widespread flooding.  The contrast could not have been greater.

To offer the blessing over the water in baptism in a dry place is to know how precious the gift of water really is. It is easy to take it for granted when it is so plentiful.  I think it is the same way with the love of our family – easy to take it for granted because it is so overflowing.  This week, though, we did not need a drought of love to know what a rare and precious bond we have.  We were together with memories and celebration and babies and catching up and laughing and crying and eating cake and talking. 

It was blessing, pure blessing, like sweet rain in the desert, poured out on all of us.  Little Lindsey hugged her mama and added her sweet tears to the celebration; all-grown-up-almost-seven-year-old Ian poured the water and then later on swam like a fish in the pool; and baby Brennie sat up and showered his wobbly smiles on all of us.  And it was a gift of God, as precious as a spring of water in a dry place.   

Buying a car

Today I bought a car.  And it took more time, more paperwork, more checking, and more signatures than if I had bought a gun.....