January 12, 2025 Sermon
/FULL TEXT OF SERMON
Fr. Jon Musser, Rector
The Feast of the Epiphany, Year C
Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the
Lord has risen upon you. (Is. 60:1)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It was wonderful having our family in town to celebrate various occasions these last couple of weeks. As very often happens with our family, one evening we were reminiscing and got on the subject of the college town where my folks and brother currently live and that several of us have lived in at one time or another. This town is called Conway, and when my mother-in-law moved there in 1977 the population was approximately 18,000; today, the estimated population is just south of 75,000. Needless to say, the place is not the same, and frankly that truth is kind of bittersweet. In as much as growth and revitalization continue to transform the community, the memory of what once was often lingers and is sometimes paired with anxiety and resistance towards what is to come. This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, which in its very nature plays with these thematic juxtapositions: change and resistance / new life and anxiety. In this new year, and in this new season, I want to invite us into a deeper reflection on how these contrasts are experienced in the here and now. How are we finding new life, but also how are we simultaneously experiencing anxiety and resistance to that change? How are we both the wise men - wise people - who seek that which overwhelms us with joy and Herod who fearfully schemes to maintain the status quo and keep everything just the way it is?
This feast day is particularly interesting because, from its earliest celebration, it has had multiple focal points or emphases. Epiphany, which was first observed in Egypt in the late second century, historically celebrated three distinct experiences in the life of Christ: his encounter with the Magi, his baptism in the Jordan River by John, and his performance of the first public miracle at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. These may seem disparate occurrences at first glance, however they all emphasize an epiphany - the sudden revelation or manifestation - of our Lord. So, the Epiphany is not a singular act or moment, but the sum total of all of these moments, or maybe more accurately the reality of every moment in which we experience the sudden and real power of Christ revealing himself to us - “God in man made manifest” as Christopher Wordsworth so beautifully penned.
In the Roman Catholic Morning Prayer office for Epiphany, the antiphon or short sentence recited after the Benedictus canticle reads, “Today the Bridegroom claims his bride, the Church, since Christ has washed away her sins in the waters of the Jordan; the Magi hasten with their gifts to the royal wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice, for Christ has changed water into wine, alleluia.” I love this antiphon because it not only weaves together the three gospel narratives of epiphany, but it also frames them in the present tense together, emphasizing once more that the reality of Christ’s presence among us, and his work of redemption and salvation, are things that happen outside of our rigid conceptions of time and space. The Epiphany is the experience of God revealing himself in Jesus even in this very moment. So, what is our Epiphany, or what are our Epiphanies, today? That might seem like a difficult question initially, but it is in a way the question that we have been asking in the parish hall over these last several weeks. Where do you feel God’s presence in your life right now? But it is more than that. How is God’s presence in your life creating moments of new revelation? What are you seeing differently precisely because Christ is revealing himself to you anew?
Sometime over the several days of Christmas celebrations, I had a wonderful conversation with Warren Flemming about how the Damascus Placemaking festival this past fall opened new insight into the ways in which we might re-envision our community in the future and for the future. I dare say that that is a form of an epiphany experience. When we look around us today, even just here in our own congregation, there are several new faces that were not here two, three, four years ago. There is new life here too, but in that new life is epiphany - new revelation and new insight. In the beautiful imagery of the Magi, how are we again overwhelmed with joy? How are we lovingly compelled to adoration and homage? How are we called to offer our gifts and treasurers? And ultimately in celebrating this day most fully, how in this very moment are we being present to the ways in which Christ is revealing himself anew in this place; and, how is that revelation changing and transforming us for the future? I invite you all to take some time in coffee hour today to think about this and reflect on what your answer might be.
I will acknowledge again, in returning to that sense of juxtaposition that I talked about earlier, that this might be a hard question to answer because of the barriers we put up in front of God’s presence in our lives. One of the most profound truths of Holy Scripture is that in hearing the history of God’s relationship to us, we often find ourselves reflected in both the righteous and the unrighteous. So today, I want to spend just a moment thinking about the pitfalls of Herrod’s anxiety and obsession. He saw, in the coming Christ, a challenge to his status quo. Even as he witnessed the world fracturing around him, he desperately tried to exercise his levers of power to reign in the rising tide of change that he could not control. As we know, in the end, and in the face of God’s revelation - God’s Epiphany - no amount of earthly intervention could stand against the coming of Christ’s kingship. And, that kingship is not simply change verses no change, or “progress” verses “regression”. There were many ways, then and now, in which Jesus calls us back to the roots of our faith, to old ways of doing things long forgotten; but sometimes, whether being called backwards or forwards, what we ultimately experience is a call towards change that we cannot easily control, and I will be the first to admit that that call is very often disorienting and maybe disappointing.
Now please don’t get me wrong here, while I very much doubt that any of us are as evil or dark-hearted as Herrod, I also suspect that many of us face times of disorientation with a similar desire to undermine its disruption to our status-qous and places of complacent comfort. I started by talking about the college town in Arkansas, called Conway. When I was a young boy, not much older than Anna, my maternal grandparents retired there, and back then it was still a small town of only about 20,000 people. I have wonderful memories of eating at a now long forgotten restaurant called “A Place to Eat” and cackling at the Abbott and Costello routine of telling my parents over the phone that I had gone to “A Place to Eat.” And I have very fond memories of going with my grandfather, my papa, over the highway to the old sale barn to watch the cattle auctions. Little did I know then that it was a memory for him too, of the long ago days when he and his brothers would buy and sell livestock to keep the family farm afloat. In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, that sale barn is now my little piece of paradise paved over to put up a parking lot. With the relentless years of unabated development and growth, I often look back on the Conway I knew and wonder about it. I often lament and mourn what has been lost, but I also at times see the good the new future has brought. The moral rightness of one trajectory over another is not easily determined, but what I do know is that change or not, there are those in the community who are even now looking for and celebrating epiphany. Not dwelling on the past, getting neither overly zealous nor overly anxious about what is to come, but in all looking towards Christ and asking, even now, how Christ is revealing himself anew in this place, and how is that revelation changing and transforming us for the future?
I pray friends that these questions may guide our celebration of Epiphany today, and that these questions may guide our ongoing experience of epiphany in the coming time ahead, so that we may most fully experience the newness of Christ’s revelation in place in this new season of life.
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.