Epiphany 3 - B

One Person

Introduction

Margaret Mead once wrote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

She was an anthropologist, she studied human culture, and her studies showed her that it is the little person, who acts on what they believe, that makes a difference.

We might not always know their names; like the Chinese student who stood in front of the row of tanks during the Tiananmen Square uprising in the eighties, or they might become heroes, like Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat in the whites only section of the Alabama bus she was riding.

I think it might surprise us to go through history and see how often the actions of one person have changed everything.

It can be a famous person, or a stranger; a leader, or an average citizen… but that one person, if they are thoughtful and committed, will make a difference.

With the Kids – Making a Difference

Ryans Wells

The Ryan’s Well Foundation grew from the commitment of one boy, Ryan Hreljac, who learned of the great need for clean and safe water in developing countries in his 1st grade class. With the support of friends, family and the community, Ryan raised enough money to build a well in Africa. In 1999, at age seven, Ryan's first well was built at Angolo Primary School in northern Uganda. To this day, the well continues to serve the community.

Although Ryan started raising money for water projects in 1998, the Foundation was not formed until 2001. Since then, Ryan’s Well has helped build over 700 wells and 830 latrines bringing safe water and improved sanitation to over 736,000 people.

Resting My Soul

Our Psalm makes a big deal about relying on God. The Psalms usually do. God is my refuge, my mighty rock, my salvation…

Tradition holds that the Psalms were written by King David. They were written as poems, or perhaps even hymns to be used in worship. They were meant not as logical statements about God, but as emotional reactions to God.

Not so different than our hymns are meant to be. I mean, think about it… last week we sang “Open my Eyes, that I may see and Here I am Lord… today we have already sung Seek Ye First and Tell the stories of Jesus… these are emotional songs… they stir feelings in us… they remind us of not only our love for God, but God’s love for us.

That is a key point. God’s love for us.

The great leaders of the Bible, Like King David when he wrote the Psalm; are not really all that talented, or special – sometimes they are the last and least – but they recognize something at a very deep level; they recognize that God loves them, and that God empowers them.

Sometimes, like Jonah, they are stubborn. Sometimes, like the King in the city of Ninevah, they recognize right away when God is at work in their midst. But at some point, they see that it is God who is empowering them to be better than they could be on their own.

Mother Theresa, someone who many people would call saintly in her actions; was, as she herself claimed, a very average person; someone who got angry, who lost faith, who was often tired and cranky… but she knew something else.

She once said this: “I try to give to the poor people for love - what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.”

It’s sort of a variation of the “there but for the grace of God go I” theme.  To say that we realize that we could not possibly do it on our own – that our own courage would fail us – that our own sense of inadequacy, or shy-ness would get in the way…

But with God, with God, all things are possible.

This past week was the day we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. A social activist who changed the way blacks and whites see each other forever. But before that, he was a simple preacher. He knew what I am talking about. He was humbled by who he had become just by being willing to stand up. Here are, prophetically, some of the last words he said:

“I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

That is what we need to be about. Believing that as we do God’s will, it is about more than us, it is about the horizon, and the Promised Land just beyond.

Recognizing the Moment

I don’t believe Jesus did random things.

I don’t think he just happened to be walking upon that stretch of beach that particular morning. I think he knew these guys.

Maybe he had seem them with John the Baptist like Nathaniel and the lads, Maybe he saw them yesterday at the rally where he was preaching… but somehow, I think they made an impression on him and he knew them – saw into their souls. Knew they were destined for greater things.

So it is not to random fishermen that Jesus offered this call. It is to Simon… and Andrew… and James… and John. It is to people who were destined to become preachers, and apostles…  Jesus knew intimately that they were not living out their true gifts and their potential, and he offered them a choice.

That is the reason they jumped at it. They were already thinking about it. They were probably fishermen because that is what was expected of them, or because it was the only opportunity, or because they were following in their father’s footsteps…

But along comes someone who knows better and offers them a choice, God’s choice… and they leap at it.

Don’t get me wrong. My father knew when he was 10 that he wanted to be a doctor, and he will die a retired doctor. That was his calling. No one had to come along and tell him to change. Somehow he knew himself enough. And a lot of us do too.

But others of us are waiting for that call. And I guarantee it comes to each of us.

“Come with me” is the equivalent of God waking you up at night with a whisper saying “join the church” or “be an accountant” or “go back to school” or “forgive your sister”…

Or whatever it would take to put you on the right track.

I firmly believe that for most of us call is not a onetime thing, it is a lifetime journey. The thing is we have to be thinking a little about what life has in store for us and be willing to take risks to get there.

Imagine how different James life would have been if he had decided to finish mending the nets and ignore Jesus? The question for me is always that, am I ignoring what God wants me to do.

It is something for all of us to think about.

Conclusion

All of us are called, all of us are servants. What we forget is that it is how we live our lives that makes a difference, not what we believe.

I think Martin Luther King said this best too, so I leave you with this to consider:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well!”

Epiphany 2-B 2012

LISTENING

Introduction

What keeps you up at night? I go through periods when I cannot sleep. Sometimes it is a bad dream, sometimes it is just thoughts and fears running through my mind. Sometimes I am so excited for tomorrow that I just can’t sleep.

Anyone ever told you to “sleep on it” when you have a problem? You know the opposite of being up all night worrying or wondering is to fall asleep and have life sort itself out in those hours of relaxation. 

Sometimes that happens too. I remember once, a decade ago, I wrote an entire sermon for about five hours on a Saturday night, I struggled to get everything right. Then woke up the next morning and in 20 minutes had written a completely different sermon. During my sleep my mind worked some things out.

Interestingly, a lot of the significant encounters of the Bible happen during the nighttime. Jacob has the dream of the angels and the ladder into heaven, for example. Mary is sleeping when the Angel Gabriel wakes her up. Nicodemus comes to Jesus during the night. Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion.

I could go on. It seems that a lot of the time what happens when we sleep is that dreams and visions come from God and straighten things out for us.

In today’s readings we are talking about call – about listening to the voice, the dream, the vision….

Time with the Kids – Come and See

-         Ever found anything you wanted other people to see? Sea shell, frog, etc.

-         How excited were you?

-         That is what this guy Philip was like when he first met Jesus, he was so excited he wanted to tell all his friends. Come and see.

-         We can do that to… We can say to people, come and see when they ask us about God.

Knitting it together

As a young child Samuel was just doing what was expected, he went to work in the temple because it was expected of him; he had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up, or what life was really like.

If we fast forwarded his story, he becomes the first major prophet to preach in the nation of Israel, he changes everything and is key to the future of the nation.

But look at where it begins…

A young boy named Samuel is awoken in the middle of the night when he hears his name being called over and over again.  Each time, he hears someone say “Samuel,” he gets up out of bed and goes to Eli's room. 

He logically thinks it must be the only other person in the temple who is calling his name… but eventually, with Eli’s help, he realizes he is not hearing a human voice; but that it's God speaking to him. 

And so he finally responds by saying, “Talk to me.  I will listen to you now.”

It took a number of attempts to get through to Samuel, to make him aware of a presence that he couldn't necessarily see or understand.  Samuel couldn't hear God calling to him at first because he was in his own way – not allowing himself to think outside the box.

But let's not be too hard on Samuel for not catching in so quickly; after all he was just a child.

But even when we become adults, there are all kinds of reasons why we can't or won't hear God calling to us.

Sometimes we ignore these callings because, like a childhood nightmare, they scare us. 

Sometimes we misunderstand them and think that there something else other than God trying to get our attention.

But the thing about God's callings, those divine naggings as I like to call them,  is that they are persistent.  

They won't just go away.  God doesn't give up on us.

God knows us better than we know ourselves…

The Other Disciple

When I ask people how Jesus called the disciples and who it was that he called the answer would probably always be the same – he was walking by the seashore and saw some guys mending their nets and said, “come with me and I will make you fishers of men.”

Curious, eh? In the gospel of John it is completely different. First off, the disciples are already following someone – John the Baptist; who sort of introduces them to Jesus. Then the next person to be called, Nathaniel, someone we do not really hear about again until we are told he is at the crucifixion, was actually called by his friends, not by Jesus.

We sometimes forget that lay people are called too.

But we are realizing more and more how important it is to talk about how God calls everyone to do specific things, to share unique gifts and talents, to be active in certain communities, to speak our thoughts out loud.

That doesn’t mean we always hear it, or get it, or pay attention.

One of the best descriptions of what a call is like comes from a professor at STU, Father Dolan, who said, “A calling is like a little fly that won't stop buzzing in your ear.  It will just keep on buzzing until you finally pay attention to it and swat that sucker!”

We often resist doing the things we feel called to do.  We keep God at an arm's length. 

We say, “You want me to do, what?”  “No offence God but I have my own plans, etc. free will and all of that.” 

But if one approach fails, God will try another and another and another until we get it.

Nathaniel didn't want to follow Jesus at first. 

He tried to get out of it by making smart-aleck remarks about people from Nazareth, the place where Jesus was from. 

But Jesus convinced him to follow him not by making an argument about why it was a good idea. No.  He convinced Nathanael to follow him by not giving up on him, by keeping his eyes on him and his hopes set on him from the moment he laid eyes on him sitting under a fig tree. 

The psalmist tells us that God has searched us and knows us well.  God knows us in a deep, intimate way that began when we were knit together in our mother's wombs.  Therefore, God knows what our gifts are; God knows all about our hopes and our dreams.  Who better then to give our lives direction?

Conclusion

Whether you're a young person starting out in the world, trying to figure out which direction to go in, or someone at middle age trying to re-evaluate your life; or a senior discerning your purpose at this unique time in your life, God calls you to go this way and that.

And all the little times in between too, in decisions that might not seem so major.  If you listen you will find that God has a word for you. 

We are all called to do different and many things throughout our lifetime.  Pay attention to the things that happen around you.  Maybe they are trying to tell you something.  Keep your ears wide open to hear the voice that calls to you in the night.

Epiphany - Year B

A Different Way

Introduction

So, have you packed away all those Christmas decorations yet? For some reason, it seems like a lot more work to take them down than it does to put them up. Did you notice that the stores are already on to Valentine’s Day?

Christmas has been over for many people for a couple of weeks but for the church, the season of Christmas ends with Epiphany, which we have been celebrating today. Epiphany marks the visit of the Magi or wise men to Bethlehem to visit the baby.

If it seems a long ways from the shepherds and angels...well...that's because it is. 

I'm sure the wise men were moving as fast as they could, but it takes some time to get from the East to Bethlehem on the backs of camels, especially when you're not exactly sure what you're looking for. 

Most scholars say it took up to two years for them to actually get there and when they arrived, Jesus' crib had been changed back into a feed box and the holy family had moved from their temporary lodgings in the shed behind the inn into a more permanent home.

Jesus, then, had moved from cute and cuddly to his terrible twos.

Children’s Story

Of Frankincense and Myrrh – Gifts and Specialness… What would we give God?

Science and Religion

We can learn so much from the wise men – a group of people that we usually don't quite understand

or lump in with the rest of the Christmas characters. We don't usually spend a lot of time trying to understand their wisdom and apply it to our lives. But today we are being called to do just that.

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus telling them to embrace the mystery of Christ, to let it be revealed to them. When we do that, when we are willing dive in and swim around in the divine for a little while, then we are truly wise. 

Astrophysicists tell us that the star that the wise men followed was actually a planetary alignment – Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, all in a row, something which happens about every 400 years. It was rare and it was odd and those who know about these things would call it a sign.

And just in case you want me to back this up with some rough-shod historical science, how about this; a planetary alignment happens about every 400 years and changes everything. And here's how history proves it...

Jesus is born. 

400 years later, the Roman Empire falls. 

400 years later, the holy Roman Empire falls and divides Europe in half. 

400 years later, the first Crusades are launched. 

Another 400 years brings us to 1600 when the King James Bible was written, the 30 years war began, and the first colony was settled in Jamestown in America. 

Add another 400 years, give or take, and we're talking about now. And we live in a time when we don't know what's going to happen to the environment, to the economy, to society. But if I had to guess, I would say we might be in a time of great change. 

We might be in a place where the star is leading us into something new and different.

Perhaps all of this significance is why we can't help but be fascinated by the wise men. Perhaps it's why we push them into the manger scene although they couldn't possibly have arrived yet. Their silk robes and kingly presence, turbans and spices and camels are an interesting contrast to all of the swaddling clothes and hay.

To the shepherds, Jesus was a baby – soft and cute. To the Magi, Jesus was a hero, star-prophesied and glowing with destiny.

Matthew and Sherlock Holmes

Perhaps that's why I love the characters of the Magi so much – these Persian priests. I've been there before.  Trying to find the place I need to be at a given moment in life, not knowing exactly how to get there, trudging along in the cold, taking a stab in the dark, not knowing what might come next.

The story of the wise men is like a biblical Sherlock Holmes story. I recently went to see the second Sherlock Holmes movie when it was in theatres. And like any Sherlock Holmes story, you have this eccentric detective with a mystery to solve. 

He has no idea what the solution will end up being, where it might take him, what adventure he is about to go on. But he knows that he will figure it out, that he will end up where he needs to be. So he depends on his keen observational skills, on hunches that seem to come out of nowhere, on clues that are revealed one at a time, on all of these things in order to solve the mystery.

We often forget that the wise men went on a wild adventure like that to get to Jesus. But it's true. I mean, it's not like they were handed a map with “X” marking the spot. It's not like their camels were equipped with GPS.  

Not only did they not know how to get to Jesus but they weren't even entirely sure what or whom they were looking for. They had seen this star and heard about this special baby being born. They put the two together and began a trek to this place called Bethlehem that nobody had heard of; a little po-dunk place, off the beaten track. 

They were travellers, seekers, searchers, journeyers. This is what made them wise. They didn't dismiss those yearnings and longings that kept pulling them forward, closer and closer to God.

The Magi likely thought that the manger was their destination; that the purpose of their trip was to witness and pay homage to the babe of Bethlehem. But really, little Jesus was and is just the starting point.

And that's what the prophets have been trying to tell us for centuries. 

We hear Isaiah proclaim today: “Arise and shine for your light has come.” Even though the world feels like a dark and hopeless place, God is there, a bright light that fills you. “You will see God and then you will be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice because you will be filled with God's abundance.”

Matthew tells us that the Magi chose to go home a different way. Instead of going home the way they came, they chose a different path. Their experience of Jesus changed them. They didn't go back through Herod's territory where they would be questioned about the whereabouts of Jesus and the young child would end up killed. 

Instead, they went out into undiscovered territory. Scripture doesn't tell us what became of the Magi; it just gives us that one evocative statement that says, “They left for home by a different way.” 

Conclusion

 Once you experience God in your life, when you see that divine light shining, you are changed. You can't walk the path you did before. Finding Jesus means taking risks in life, and may mean risking all simply to find him.

But once he’s found, life may have to take a different direction, one that is responsive to and obedient to God’s call.

So as we move away from Christmas and more fully into this new year, are you willing to seek God out and be led in a different way, like the wise men of old? What does your new path look like? How is it different from the well-worn path you have been walking? 

Be brave and allow yourself to shine out there in the world because you are truly radiant. Jesus is the light of the world but you are a light in the world. Arise and shine!