Sermon for Today

Alright, I said on Facebook I was too embarrassed to post this. But after reading through it I don't think it is horrible. It is short, but that is okay since I've also been working on a funeral this week. Here it is. Enjoy!

Well here we are back at the manger one more time; well probably not the manger but we are back with the young family, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. We've seen angels, inn keepers, and shepherds and now today we have some new visitors, the magi. Now the actual day we would normally celebrate the visit of the wise people was this past Tuesday, twelve days after Christmas. But we didn’t worship on Tuesday so here we are today--celebrating epiphany on the first Sunday after epiphany. But I think that is alright. Because epiphanies do not always come to us when and where we expect them. They are not orderly. God doesn't always reveal godself to us when we would like for it to happen. Or I think better said there are times when we are able to see God and there are times when we can't.
Today we read about people who recognized the epiphany and those who didn’t. I think I have always worked with the assumption that the magi were the only ones who could see the star. But that really doesn't make any sense. It is a star. There is no way in my mind that anyone who is looking would not be able to see the star. I mean it is a big ol’ bright star. But only the wise people are really able to see it for what it is, a revelation of the divine. But even still they aren't quite sure where it is pointing them. They begin where most anyone would think to look, the big city, a government center. There are many of us who believe that Barack Obama will bring real change to our country but it also seems that there are some who are following a star to Washington DC thinking that he is the savior that will finally bring peace to our world. And that is what the wise people were doing. They saw a star and they headed for Herod. If they were seeing signs of a new ruler, then surely the current one would know where they should look. But he wasn't there. Instead he was in the place where they probably never thought to look, in the humblest of settings, among a carpenter and his young wife. And he had been born in a manger among cattle and sheep. Not in a palace among royalty.
Epiphanies are occurring all around us all the time in the most ordinary of situations--if…if we have the eyes to see them. As I told many of you this past week I have been working on an article with my friend Mary Sue. It will hopefully be included in a book on faith and politics. The book is tentatively title Split Ticket and it is divided into three sections, ours being called “’Dude…Wake Up…’: Political Epiphanies.” In it we are talking about how in so many ways we are alike. We both grew up in working class homes in the southeastern part of the United States. We both were active in Southern Baptist churches. We both attended Baptist colleges and ended up at the same seminary going to the same church. We were both ordained by that church two weeks apart. We lived together for four years after seminary. We were together all the time. We were so close that people started treating us as a couple. We would get wedding invitations addressed to the two of us. Which we both agreed "One invitation, one gift." And then we both moved to California two weeks apart. Our lives are intimately connected.
And then this year with proposition 8 that changed just a bit. We are still intimately connected but we recognize more clearly that there are ways that I experience the world that she will never be able to and vice versa.
The day after election day I said to her "I'm mad at all straight people today." Not because I thought all straight people had voted for Prop 8. I knew that was not the case at all--Mary Sue had worked tirelessly trying to get folks to vote no. But instead I was angry because straight folks had something that I couldn't have. All in all I had celebrated the election of Barack Obama for only a few minutes before I was brought back down to grief over the loss of a civil right.
Now what does all of this have to do with epiphany? Well I'll tell you. I had been looking to the legislature to bring about change and acceptance. Throughout the entire campaign I had never believed that proposition 8 would pass. Perhaps in Georgia or Florida where I had lived before but not in California. So when it passed I was not only saddened but I was shocked. And while I still believe that change will come about through legislature it can't be where we look for healing and acceptance.
It is also during epiphany that we normally would be reading the story of Jesus' baptism and it is there that I had always drawn my acceptance. When God looked down and said that this is my beloved in whom I am well pleased I believed that God not only spoke those words of love to Jesus but to all of us. And it is there that we look for love and acceptance. We have love that no one can ever take away, because it is not offered to us by any legislature or any human for that matter but by the Creator. And that is epiphany. Epiphanies are anytime when we are able to see God's love revealed to us. That first epiphany those three wise people had eyes to see God's love being revealed to the world. And when they were able to see that they left changed.
A few days after proposition 8 passed I was marching from Civic Center to the Castro in protest. And in that march I had this intense feeling of connection with those folks that marched in Selma and Birmingham. And I also realized that I could never fully identify with those marchers because unlike them I was not being attacked by dogs or hoses. And the police were not our enemy but our protectors. But I identified with them none the less. And was able to once again celebrate the election of our president because I realized an achievement of one group is an achievement for all of us. It was only when I was able to once again recognize that I was fully loved regardless of what some people or a legislature said that I was able to once again love the people around me and feel a connection to those with whom I was different but so very much the same.
That was one of my epiphanies that occurred this year. It did not occur where I expected it to, but instead in the most unlikely of places, walking down Market street after a loss. And I left differently than I had come. We celebrate epiphany every year like we do other celebrations of the church year because we need to be reminded. And on epiphany we are invited to remember that love came down in the most unlikely of places. Because we forget. We lose our eyes to see. I saw this great movie yesterday, "Revolutionary Road" and there is a line in it that says "we never forget the truth, we just become better liars." And so let us remember today that we are loved. God loves us fully and completely. And God comes to us wherever and whenever if only we have the eyes to see.
What are the places that God came to you? Where was God's love revealed to you? Let us begin anew today looking for God in our very ordinary and unlikely places. Amen.