Being Confronted
with Jesus
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 1-6-13
I
come to you today with some sad news.
For those of you who have been holding out throughout the twelve days of
Christmas to receive that one last present – I have to inform you that
Christmas officially ended yesterday on January 5th. Meaning, if you haven’t received what you
were wishing for this Christmas, you will have to wait until next Christmas.
Since
we last met, we have entered into a New Year!
I have been listening to radio and T.V. commentators speak with experts
about the tradition of making “resolutions” for the New Year and that only
about 42% of those resolutions succeed, as well as what types of behaviors help
in keeping those resolutions. I am
curious as to what resolutions some of you have made for this New Year. It seems the number one key to successfully
keeping your resolution comes in having “support” of at least one other
person. The second important key in
being successful in keeping that resolution is to take steps prior to the
resolution that will help prepare you for achieving your goal.
Maybe
your resolution is in the area of finances and working toward building your
savings account. Or possibly your
resolution might be in the area of downsizing and working toward living a more
simple life with “less” stuff cluttering up your home or personal life. One way of achieving these types of goals
would be to take some workshops on learning to recognize “consumerism”
philosophies as well as re-acquainting yourself to Biblical philosophies, such
as the financial freedom classes that we tried to offer this past Fall and will
be offered again later this Spring.
Maybe your
resolution is to become more involved in community affairs this year, or become
more pro-active in social Gospel issues.
Again, we offer many avenues with a biblical understanding for working
in these areas providing guidance, support, and commodore. Our upcoming monthly pancake breakfast is one
of those opportunities to help explore and provide input as to specific social
gospel outreaches we as a congregation wish to focus on. The council has been in discussions about
creating a Social Justice Ministry position and asking Wayne Laws to officially
join in the leadership as we work in becoming more intent in our Social Justice
outreach. There have been many building
blocks being laid this past year in order for us, as a community of believers
to start moving our vision of being an open and welcoming community of faith to
the larger community of Aurora.
Even
though January 1, marks the beginning of our calendar year, the Christian
Calendar year actually began this past Dec 2nd, which we commonly
recognize as the First Sunday of Advent.
So we are actually in the sixth week of the Christian New Year. During Advent we worked at preparing
ourselves for the birth of Jesus, so on the night of his birth, we like the
shepherds can come and welcome Jesus into our lives.
Today
is Epiphany, probably even more important to the world than is the day we
celebrate Jesus’ birth. It is in the
story of the Wise men of the East coming to pay homage to this “new king” that
we learn about the importance of what Jesus’ ministry is going to be. As you can see on the communion table this
morning, I have taken the baby Jesus out of the normal Nativity set along with
the camel and the Wise men. I have done this specifically as a focal
point, allowing you to ponder what this scene means to you specifically.
Note that these
porcelain images are in front and behind them is a plate with bread and a cup
with juice, for we cannot separate these two events. The Eucharist is a symbol of Christ’s ongoing
ministry in our world. This is a symbol
of welcome to all, an invitation to partake in the family of God. It is the reminder that “truth”, “grace”, and
“peace” are enemies of the selfish, egocentricism of humanity. It is a reminder of what the “economy” of God
is about and how this “economy” is in conflict with the economy of a separated
humanity.
There are multiple
subliminal messages found in this Epiphany story. When the angels of God spoke
to those shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth, the news of God’s grace was
being shared solely within the small community.
The Wise men from the East represent a message that “this king” is going
to be seen by the world. These men of
the East were star gazers and gave great meaning to world events by what they
observed in the night skies. Herod represents
the world and its interests. Herod is
not only the king, but he is living in Jerusalem which is the center of
religion for the Hebrew people. Jerusalem
represents God giving direction to God’s people.
Yet Herod was
totally unaware of what was happening outside of Jerusalem. Even those who were the experts in the book
of Torah and other religious writings were unaware of the movement of God, of
what was taking place just outside the city.
This has a strong message to the church of today. Is God moving through the church of the 21st
century or is God moving outside of the church?
There is a trick
that I learned very early in my teens as a young Christian, which is to replace
the name of the subject in scripture with my own, thereby making it personal. In doing this, I now am the one being
involved in whatever story I’m studying.
We can do this as a faith community as well. If we read this story and substitute
non-churched people (instead of the Wise men) coming to Mountain View asking “where will they find the gift of God?”
How would we react? How would we react
when we understand that these people are not coming to us with the anticipation
of finding God here, but thinking that we should be the ones who would know
where they could find God?
You see, many
churches could be substituted for both the implications of “Jerusalem” and/or
“Herod”. The “new born king” could
easily be substituted for movements that are working for human rights and equal
justice for all humans. Where do we stand
when we place ourselves in that light?
In the novel written by a Congregationalist minister over a century ago,
this question was posed. The book, In His Steps, a young pastor of a very
affluent congregation asks his congregation to ask themselves this one question
before making any decision – large or small, “What would Jesus do?”
In the story, you
follow four different people and how their lives changed because they took up
that challenge. As they continued to ask
themselves this question, their hearts grew more into the economy of what Jesus
was teaching. One man who had taken up
this challenge ended up losing his job because of his responding in the way he
believed Jesus would have responded of exposing corruption and graft in the
company he worded for.
The point that is
at hand in this morning’s Epiphany story is “How would we react when we are confronted with Jesus?” Herod knew that if he welcomed Jesus, his
entire world would be turned upside down and he wasn’t willing to give up what
he thought was “the good life” for a life that he couldn’t understand Jesus
would be offering.
The reality for us
today, is that we either embrace the birth of Jesus into their lives, or we
react like Herod, refusing to open our heart to the message of God. We can see where God’s message is being
embraced and lived. We as mainline
denominations see that in many cases, Jesus is not within our churches, yet we
refuse to open ourselves up and to make the resolutions to adjust our behaviors
that block our ability to bring Jesus into our congregational lives. It’s not that we do not understand about the
Jesus of scripture. For many of us, it
is the non-willingness to let go and let God!
The first step in the Big Book (AA) is to recognize that you are not in
control and that you must turn your life over to a higher power. For those of us in the church, God is that
higher power.
As we continue in
our journey on the road which leads us to the cross, may we be more like the
shepherds who embraced the herald of change and like the wise men who want to
come and pay homage to the one who truly has the power to change the
world. Amen
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