Epiphany 010608

Song: where do I begin…..Where do I start?

Every aha begins with a question: where do I begin? Where did the story begin? Where is he who born king of the Jews?

Is this all there is?

What’s your question?

Everyone is looking for something

Where do I begin…….at the mall.

The mall is a great place to write a sermon- actually it’s a lousy place but it’s a great place to get material!

Cross section of humanity, all looking for something:

Hell-bent on spending Christmas money…seeking just that right item….determined at all costs to get a bargain…and d’y’know: not a smile anywhere.

What they’re really looking for, what WE’re really looking for, if we take time to think about it, won’t be found at the mall. The empty place in our soul can’t be filled by ‘stuff’.

Like the wise men, we shoppers are in the wrong place to find our hearts desire.

Wise men asked the expected but wrong person – assumed a king would be born in a palace, in the center of the nation, in the corridors of power.

But they should have followed the star and not their assumptions.

God guides us in unexpected ways via unexpected places to unexpected aha’s, epiphanies

Where do I begin…

The greatest love story of all time is that of God’s love for us. And it begins in the unlikely place of Bethlehem

Jerusalem and Bethlehem are only 9 miles apart. You can be close, and yet so far….

Close is comfortable, expected, status quo, close supports the powers that be. That’s Jerusalem. But it’s off by 9 miles as Walter Bruegemann says.

Where is he? He is not here in the corridors of power. He is not here in the important centers of world economics. He is not here in the comfortable places. He is not here in the places of power, self sufficiency, comfort and complacence;

God with skin on is among the poor, the oppressed, the ordinary people, with unmarried mothers and step families. He is in all the modest Bethlehem places of promise instead of Jerusalem pretension.

And this is what frightens the powers that be. What went wrong, thatChristianity is no longer a threat to the powers of the prevailing culture? When Christianity is tamed and used as a tool in gaining political power? How come we Christians are no longer a threat?

Where do I begin? The greatest love story of all time is about life-changing transformation—it is about wise men from the east, pagans from Persia, non-believers from Iran….what a delicious irony today…all reminding us that god with skin on comes for everybody; that God welcomes the worship and the gifts of all people everywhere.

As the bumper sticker says, God bless everyone, no exceptions.

That’s a story that’s threatening, for we live in a culture that’s about exclusiveness, about us and them. We depend upon difference

In the end, these men were indeed wise: they chose the God alternative: they ‘went home by another way’ – they chose a new beginning: changed plans, changed direction, changed allegiance. They reorient their lives from the traditional expectations of power to the baby with no credentials. It won’t win elections, but it will change life.

And when you find what you’re looking for, when you understand that God, and only God, can fill that empty space in the soul, then you give it your best: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

This new year, let’s commit to follow their example; to live the greatest love story with changed lives, threatening the status quo with our love of God with skin on, confounding people with the alternative of Jesus, contradicting the prevailing culture. Dare to be different. And give God nothing but our best.