Christ Is For All of Us!

Sermon for Sunday, January 6, 2008

1. Good Morning. Let’s Pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the mediations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

2. Opening comments: Today is Epiphany Sunday and it’s the final feast day of the Christmas Season. It celebrates those events in Christ’s early life that revealed His divine nature to those around Him. Epiphany Sunday celebrates the astonishing reality that Christ is for all of us – not a privileged group but for everyone everywhere.

“Epiphany comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia,” which can be translated both as “coming” and as “manifestation” or “appearing.” While Christmas celebrates Christ’s coming in the Incarnation event, Epiphany celebrates Christ’s manifestation – the ways in which the Incarnation is revealed to us all!

In our first reading we heard the Prophet Isaiah predict this manifestation:

Nations will come to your light,

and kings to the brightness of your dawn. . .

They will bring gold and incense

and proclaim the praise of the LORD.

In our second reading St. Paul reminds us that this “manifestation” was a majestic silence-breaking by God. A riddle explained – a mystery disclosed and the mystery was this:

Eph 3:6: “ . . . that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

What is really happening here is that God is not only expanding His reign over the rest of the world but indeed is revealing the fact that He is in fact and has always been and will always be God of all Creation! Not just God of the Jews and not just God of the Gentiles of that time but God of all Creation at all times!

The twelfth day of Christmas – the Day of Epiphany – is about God making this sovereignty known not just to Israel but also to all the peoples of the world. To understand this story, we need imagination as Emilie Griffin puts it:

(we need) “the eyes not of rationalism but of revelation.”

The Christmas season begins with incarnation and ends with manifestation. As Griffin put it;

“the star that guided the Magi was governed, not by gases and gravity, but by God’s desire to convey a message to His people. It is a majestic story meant to be embroidered in tapestries shot through with gold.”

This feast day is in fact a celebration of the magnificent sovereignty of Almighty God! On that first day of Epiphany God revealed to the world the sign and seal of His absolute sovereignty over the entire world!

Jesus Christ is that sign and His birth, death and resurrection are the seal of God the Father’s absolute sovereign control over all of His Creation!

Now try to imagine this scene – you’re suspended out in space say in a space suit and you notice something out of the ordinary – a star moving - and look it’s being guided by God’s hand – how can you “picture” that? And look down on earth there are some men – wise men who see what you see and immediately decide to follow this star knowing as only truly wise men can that this has meaning. It’s not just a natural phenomenon without meaning. It has meaning for their lives and perhaps the lives of all humanity. These men have been looking for meaningful events in the heavens and this time they know they have found something tremendously meaningful! They’re so convinced of this that they immediately set out to follow it.

You notice something else that they too are being inexorably guided by God – perhaps you notice some angels – God’s messengers – whispering in their ears – nudging them to go – to follow that star!

Other learned men have been told about this event in holy writ but have grown tired of waiting and have missed the signs in the heavens. Isn’t it interesting that foreigners – wise men from the east – are the ones who noticed the “meaningful” signs in the heavens?

Now stop and think for a moment on this question – do you believe that this world – this universe - is being controlled – nurtured – superintended – guided - by a God – a Creator God . . . or not?

Perhaps you believe as does most of this modern world that we’re simply sophisticated machines covered with meat that evolved over the millennia from primordial slime and that any suggestion that there‘s an intelligence or even a benevolent intelligence behind all of this is discounted as the imaginings of uneducated dreamers trapped in a past world view!

Pitifully mewling for meaning in a universe which contains none.

Ah! The suggestion of the Feast of Epiphany must be discounted as the quaint musings of an ancient tribal mindset that needs to believe that there’s meaning behind everything. These poor people can’t accept the hard but brave reality that there’s no wonder any more only science and rationalism!

And so this brave new world sleeps as God acts and reveals Himself and His plan to redeem and restore His Creation!

Can you see the enormity of our calling to this blind and deaf modern world?

All about us people are sleeping and have no or very little sense that there’s a God and He has sent a rescue mission to His world and has revealed this to the eyes of anyone who is willing to look up!

God has revealed Himself to the world! The Theologians call this – General Revelation! St. Paul tells us about this in the first chapter of his letter to the Christians in Rome:

Rom. 1:19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Or put more simply by Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase “The Message:”

19 But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! 20 By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.

No! Nobody has a good excuse! Even if you sleep – your dreams will draw you to the reality that there’s a God! So people who don’t believe are without excuse – they are ultimately in rebellion!

So in fact we’re surrounded by many people who are in rebellion against a God they don’t want to believe in because if they did He would control meaning and their lives would be measured against His measure of meaning.

To accept such a thing is to run the risk of being found in deficit of real meaning! To be judged as less than what one should be – Oh! This is unacceptable to the modern man and woman!

But try to imagine such a life lived without any sense of any bigger meaning!

Think about it just for a moment will you . . . . . . The dreams of such a life have to end with death – but when will death come? It could come tomorrow! Will it be an easy death or will I die slowly and painfully. Since there’s no meaning and no God to appeal to – one has nobody to go to for consolation or for explanation.

The desire for meaning is proof in itself that meaning exists, just as hunger is proof that food exists, shivering is proof that warmth exists, loneliness is proof that comfort exists. For every lack, something exists that fulfills it.

So the span of such a life whether long or short is ultimately meaningless! But some may argue that even a godless life can be meaningful! But on what basis is meaning established? If you have no meaning in life then there’s no basis for measuring meaning!

Life just is – and a life that just is is focused on itself for the only thing that has meaning in a meaningless universe has to be the fulfillment of my joy, my peace, my health, my success and so on!

And so personal, individual meaning and truth are deemed acceptable and even desirable, while universal meaning and truth are rejected as non-existent.

But this is just as unreasonable as saying that whatever food one prefers is equally nutritious and healthy as every other person’s preference. Clearly a child’s craving for candy and a mentally ill person’s desire to eat chalk or hair or glass are not equivalent to the choice of eating a balanced diet.

But honestly – most of us can’t live without some form of “meaning” – most of us need an anchor of some sort of meaning or else depression and even suicide seem the only alternatives and so these people go out looking for meaning and they find all sorts of “meaning-mongers” out there to assuage their need for meaning!

Syncretism – the amalgamation of different religions into a designer religion seeking to fit with one’s own dispositions and personality propensities.

Consumerism caters to a vacuum of meaning with designer religions!

You see in our modern culture meaning has become not absolute but individualized. The thought that there is one God – one sovereign God - who is worthy of the world’s allegiance is passé! Going going gone!

Truth - what Is truth our Pontius Pilate culture queries!

Truth – there’s no absolute truth except the fundamental truth that each individual person is their own god! They and they alone get to choose what is and what is not truth – what is and what is not meaningful!

And so the world slouches in Judge Robert Bork’s words towards Gomorrah!

DO WE REALLY THINK THAT WE CAN SUCCESSFULLY TAKE OVER WHAT IS GOD’S WORLD? Apparently the answer is “Yes!” because so many of us functionally live in our own designer worlds where we are the final arbiter of what is and is not meaningful! In fact, we have usurped the Giver of all meaning and taken His place in our lives!

And in the face of all of this – we Christians are reminded today that our God sent His Son to rescue not only the Jews of the first century but all of His Creation since it’s very inception and that He has and will continue to accomplish this through us, His Church!

We bring His meaning to earth! We pay – Thy Kingdom Come Thy Will Be Done On Earth As It Is In Heaven!

When He comes again the heaven’s will again be used, though more dramatically. What would we do if we saw such a thing? What would we do if –we- saw that star, and knew what it meant? How hard would our hearts beat, how fast would our pulses race? How could we –not- go out and tell everyone about it?

Matthew 24:27 says, "For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."

Mark 13:24

“But in those days, following that distress,

“ ‘the sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light;

Mark 13:25

the stars will fall from the sky,

and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

Mark 13:26

“At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Today we are being reminded of the terrible but wonderful call upon each of our lives – and that is to bravely testify to a sleeping world to the reality of our sovereign Lord and to call His heaven down to earth – Thy Kingdom Come Thy Will be Done – ON EARTH – as it is in heaven!

Make no mistake our God is the God of all gods, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords!

He is God – and we are not!

May you and I find our meaning only and ever in Him and nobody or nothing else this new year! Amen and Amen!