I want to lift up little epiphanies. Times when the sacred breaks into everyday life and someone notices, and it makes a difference. These epiphanies are ours to claim.
I invite you to reflect on the year that has just passed. Among its challenges and its sorrows, did you catch any epiphanies? Did some experience, or coincidence, or “aha” moment, make a difference in your life to guide or inspire you or give you hope or courage?
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Neighborhood Congregational Church United Church of Christ
Laguna Beach, January 2, 2022
Matthew 2:13-15,19-23. After the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son."
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."
I love preaching in United Church of Christ churches. I can tell you what I really believe. Matthew’s Christmas story is not history. Matthew, a faithful Jew, is using every story device he can to convince his community that Jesus really is the Jewish Messiah. So, like the baby Moses, Jesus escapes being murdered by a paranoid ruler. Like Moses, he comes out of Egypt. His kingship is recognized by the very stars in the sky, recognized by foreign wise men. Matthew’s story is ours now. We don’t need convincing that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. So it is for us to discover the resonances of Matthew’s Christmas story for our lives today.
The reading you heard describes what came after the wise men visited. They were wise enough to realize that special Epiphany star meant that a great king had been born. But they were not wise enough to realize that King Herod knew nothing about this child. By asking Herod, “Where is your successor?” they accidentally started in motion Herod’s slaughter of all the babies around Jerusalem to preserve his throne, which the lectionary conveniently omits from today’s reading. This particular slaughter is not documented in history, but it’s not out of character for Herod.
After the wise men made their blunder and left the area, Joseph had a dream, a kind of little epiphany. Joseph has three dreams in the gospel of Matthew. Each dream is a clear and important communication from God, instructing Joseph to do some outrageous thing. First dream: Keep your engagement with Mary, who is pregnant, and not from you. Next dream, in this reading: Joseph, take your family and leave home in the middle of the night, or Herod will kill Jesus. The last dream: Herod is dead now. You can come home. These little epiphanies, these revelations by God, were not showy– they were all in Joseph’s head. They are not much remembered or celebrated. Joseph is not much remembered or celebrated. But Joseph’s clear understanding and willingness to trust these strange dreams, these little epiphanies, enabled Jesus to survive.
I want to lift up little epiphanies. Times when the sacred breaks into everyday life and someone notices, and it makes a difference. These epiphanies are ours to claim.
I invite you to reflect on the year that has just passed. Among its challenges and its sorrows, did you catch any epiphanies? Did some experience, or coincidence, or “aha” moment, make a difference in your life to guide or inspire you or give you hope or courage? (Think about it for a minute… Well, have you?) You get to call it. If you do recognize epiphanies, give God the credit.
I suspect that some people are epiphany-proof. They believe that heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, are separate. Epiphanies are just not allowed. And that’s OK. God will get through to them a different way. For a scientist, she can draw inspiration from the wonders of nature, whether or not she realizes they’re epiphanies. The activist has examples of great-souled people who have risked their lives for justice, whether or not they call those examples epiphanies.
And how do you recognize an epiphany? How do you trust it?
First, don’t rate or compare your experience. Don’t feel embarrassed if your epiphany seems silly and small. Enjoy it! Don’t feel guilty if you were blessed in some big way that someone else was not. Use your blessing for good. And don’t feel put upon if your epiphany places a burden on you, as Joseph’s usually did. Hard work can be very meaningful.
You can study other peoples’ epiphanies. What can we learn from Joseph’s dreams? He was willing to sacrifice his own ego for the sake of his beloved and someone else’s child. Always protecting his family, it seems. Perhaps that was what mattered most to him, and so God was able to reach him through that devotion.
I love epiphanies. I probably need epiphanies more than most people, because I’m stubborn, and I have a bad memory, and I’m supposed to be inspiring you! I offer a couple of my own epiphanies, for what it’s worth.
Since COVID made my world smaller, and grocery shelves sometimes barer, I had this epiphany: I can get by with so much less stuff, and so much less travel, than I have been accustomed to having, and enjoy life just as much. This little epiphany relieves worry: if the power goes out, or the grocery shelves are bare, I will just live more simply, and consider it a challenge and an adventure. This epiphany also leaves me so grateful for so many things I could live without. In-person church services! Every ingredient I use to cook my dinner, every green growing thing that I can greet on my morning walk, is a bonus for my enjoyment. I actually appreciate them instead of take them for granted, when I remember my epiphany. When I remember, my life is a continual hum of gratitude for all those things I used to take for granted.
Here’s another epiphany I had, and it was harder. I asked, in prayer, which of my various projects was most important. I got a crystal-clear answer, and it wasn’t an answer I wanted. The work I do for immigrants and people in detention is most important. It was an epiphany, because it wouldn’t be my answer. What I think is: I can do so little for these people. My Spanish is pitiful. I am frustrated and furious at a system that dehumanizes people and deprives them of the most basic human rights, that sets young people up for failure and despair, that breaks families apart. The young man I drove home from ICE detention out in Adelanto, near Barstow, was my son’s age. He’d spent over a year in immigrant detention, despite coming from Mexico when he was three years old, and attended school in Costa Mesa, kindergarten through 12th grade. He is home, awaiting deportation. He could have been my son if circumstances were different. This work breaks my heart. And…the scripture we heard tells us that Jesus himself was a refugee. His family fled for his life from political violence, and lived as immigrants in Egypt. So I know that refugees are beloved of God and worthy of dignity and compassion, worth advocating for, however badly. The epiphany is: this is sacred work, given to me to do.
Epiphanies can be powerful things. They can be misused, as Herod misused that star to order a massacre. But for us in the UCC, epiphanies are more likely to go unnoticed and unclaimed. I invite you to claim your epiphanies. Go out of your way to look for them. Share them when it’s appropriate. In these times, when there is so much hardship around us, so much loss and disillusionment, we need all the inspiration and encouragement we can get. The first and brightest Epiphany in our tradition is Jesus: his presence long ago in human flesh, and his presence among us now, transcending time and space and still revealing the sacred to us, showing us how to live. May the great epiphany of Jesus light your way forward in this new year as you discover little epiphanies of your own. Amen.
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