Epiphany 3 January 27, 2013 SABC

 

          From this morning’s Old Testament reading we learn three important things about the Word of God:

(1) The Word of God comes to us in our hour of need.

(2)   The Word of God brings us under judgment and calls us to repentance.
(3)    The Word of God is comfort to the repentant sinner.

The God who made us loves us; he wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is to do his will. God continually speaks, and he wants us to listen to his word.   We listen best in times of need and the Word of God comes to us in our hour of need when, like the people of Jerusalem in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, we are ready to listen.

Some background:  Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians (modern Iraq) in 586 BC.  To prevent rebellion Babylonian policy was population transfer. The top third of the people were sent to Babylon as poor strangers.  It worked. Babylon fell not to internal revolt but to Cyrus of Persia (modern Iran) in 525 PC. The Persians had a different policy to prevent rebellion. They chose to co-opt the local leaders. Cyrus returned the gold and silver vessels for Temple worship. He allowed the descendants of the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. Some returned; many stayed. In 1949 there were still 150,000 Jews in Iraq; 5 years later practically none.

 

Most of the peoples exiled simply adopted the religious and cultural identity of the people among whom they were settled. The Jews were different. In their time of need God sent them the prophet Ezekiel and the writer of psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered you, O Jerusalem” The Jews kept the law of God: Sabbath, circumcision, the food laws. They met week by week for prayer and study, for fellowship, and to remember Jerusalem. In exile they invented the synagogue. The word comes from the Greek “to come together.” So when God’s time came, some of the Jews returned to Jerusalem while others remained in Babylon to support them. After 20 some years and considerable prodding by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the returned people rebuilt the Temple.

 

Then they fell into sin. Obedience to the Word of God had sustained their grand-fathers in exile. Obedience to the Word of God motivated their fathers to leave the comforts of Babylon to return and rebuild, but then obedience melted away like ice in the hot sun. They maintained the form of worship and sacrifice but not the spirit of sacrificial self-offering.

 

Ezra the priest came to investigate and reform. He came about 500 BC with the next generation of exiles. Ezra brought the people together outside the Temple and read from the Word of God.  The people were ready to listen.

And “all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.” They knew how far they had departed from the will of God, and they wept in repentance.  The Word of God brings us under judgment and calls us to repentance.

 

The people renewed their commitment to know and to do God’s will.  Every Jewish community had a synagogue where men, and women, met regularly to study and worship. Those community structures continue to this day.

 

The people repented and were comforted. The Word of God is comfort for the repentant sinner.   “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”  We are comforted in the sense of the Latin word “com” and “fortis” with strength. We are made spiritually strong by God’s love and forgiveness. The joy of the Lord truly is our strength.

 

We are made strong in the Lord and we are made able to share what we have, from the abundance of God’s love for us, to share food for the body and food for the soul – social action and evangelism together.  St. Paul reminds us in the Epistle that we are all parts of the one body of Christ, all strengthened by the spiritual joy of the Lord, continually strengthened by the spiritual food of Jesus own body and blood, the blood shed for our sins, the body risen as a promise of our eternal life in him.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus, the Word of God incarnate, comes to his people in their hour of need. As in Ezra’s time the people needed to hear again the Word of God which Jesus proclaimed in the synagogue in the words of Isaiah. His teaching brought judgment and some repented.  To them, and to us, Jesus offers the joy and strength to love and serve.

 
The Word of God comes to us in our hour of need.
The Word of God brings us under judgment and calls us to repentance.
The Word of God is comfort to the repentant sinner.

Epiphany 2013

Epiphany 2013

          The Bible is the record of God in relationship with the world and the people he created. It is a book written by adults for adults. We can, and we should, tell Bible stories to our children and to ourselves, but the Bible is more than the stories we tell. Today’s Gospel is a story of an event in a baby’s life, and it is more simply that story. The Epiphany is literally in Greek the “showing forth” of God’s light in the darkness of sin and evil. 

The prophecy of Isaiah 60 written down some 500 years before Jesus was born includes kings bringing gold and frankincense from Sheba, silver and gold from Tarshish. Why does Isaiah prophesy that they will bring gold and frankincense, silver and gold?  They will bring them to proclaim the praise of the name of the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, because he has made light shine in the darkness, and as St. John tells us, “the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.” Darkness does not understand light, and darkness can never overcome light.

 Today’s Gospel makes real the themes of Isaiah 60 and Psalm 72 about the promise of the messianic age, when the God of Israel will be universally acknowledged and worshipped as the only God. It also tells us of the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ life.  English-speaking Christians owe to John Henry Hopkins, a 19^th century Vermont Episcopal priest, the clear teaching in verses 2, 3, and 4, of his carol, “We three kings of Orient are.”  Hopkins reminds us that Jesus is, “King, and God, and Sacrifice.”

          “Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again, king forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.”  Jesus is king. Jesus is Lord. He is in charge, not us. That is good news, gospel news. The English lay theologian C. S. Lewis writes of humankind as rebels, called to lay down our arms in surrender. The story of the Fall in Genesis tells us of the universal human predicament. We want to be autonomous, free to do what we want, when we want, how we want. And we are not autonomous. We are limited – limited by location in time and space. In heaven we will be able to be at all places at all times, but until we get there we can only be at one place and one time doing one thing at a time. And we are limited by the network of relationships within which we live because we need them to be able to live. We have some freedom to chose within relationships, but we are never completely alone. We are always in relationship with the God who made us and who loves us. Spiritual maturity is recognizing that relationship, and recognizing that because God loves us he wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is what God wants for us.

          There is a comfort in recognizing that we live in relationship with Jesus, and that Jesus is king. Jesus is Lord. He is in charge, not us. That is good news, gospel news. We are not, finally responsible for everything, all the time. Our responsibility is to listen to Jesus’ “good, orderly direction” and do his will, recognizing that “his service is perfect freedom.” “Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown him again, king forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.”

          “Frankincense to offer have I, incense owns a Deity nigh, prayer and praising, gladly raising, worship him, God most high.”  Of all the religions of humankind, Christianity alone says that God became a man, “to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to . . . the God and Father of all.” A great many holy men and women have taught what they believe God revealed to them. They experienced God as distant, different, totally other than us, giving us rules to live by, and also giving us the hope of his mercy. Christians experience in Jesus God with us, showing us how to live, assuring us of his love and his forgiveness. At the end of life we commit our mortal remains to the ground, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We expect to spend eternity praising God, in ways shown us in the Revelation to St. John. We gather for worship here to practice what will be made perfect in due time. Worship for Christians is not an option, something that can be set aside if we have something better to do, guests or golf or snow. Worship is our life. “Frankincense to offer have I, incense owns a Deity nigh, prayer and praising, gladly raising, worship him, God most high.”  

“Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume, breaths a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb.” Bishop Thomas Fraser of  NC used to tell the clergy, “Be hard on yourself and easy on others.” We all know our own failures, our mistakes, our sins. And we find ways to excuse ourselves and blame others, but when we get serious with ourselves, we know that without a savior we are lost. We have fought for our own way with our own strength and we have lost.

Jesus was content to be betrayed by one of his own disciples into the hands of those who hated him, who told lies about him to a corrupt governor, and who rejoiced at his execution. Jesus gave up his own life for them, and for us. Nailed to the cross he prayed, “Father, forgive them.” And because Jesus, as son of God, prayed for us, we are forgiven sinners. Our life cost him his. “Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume, breaths a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb.”

But that is not the end of the story. “Glorious now behold him arise, King, and God, and Sacrifice; heaven sings alleluia, alleluia the earth replies.” The baby worshipped by the Wise Men is the same Jesus who died on the cross to redeem us and all who will believe from the death of sin and rose from the dead to bring us all new life in him.

 Today’s collect asks God to “lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face.” May God grant each of us, in this coming year, faith to see, as the wise men did, the glory of Jesus Christ, our resurrected and ever-living King, and God, and Sacrifice, crucified and risen Lord, and grace to follow where he leads the way. Amen.