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It's New Year's Day! Let's 2017 together, on the right foot, facing Jesus.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
You came to church today. I applaud you. In fact, I think if you find Joel Bronlater, he will give you a puppy. That's how excited we are. Just kidding, you guys.
Speaker 1:How excited we are that you're here in church with us today. My name is Bobby. I am one of the pastors on the team here at Commons, and I am the person who jumped at the opportunity to preach on New Year's Day. Let's just say it wasn't exactly an arm match for it, an arm wrestling match for it, though. I mean, I would have won.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. Totally wouldn't have won. But I am so glad that you're here with us this morning. I happen to think that being right here, being in church together is a great way to kick off a brand new year.
Speaker 1:But I'm curious. Maybe with a show of thumbs up or thumbs down, how do you feel about the year that has just passed, 2016? Let's see it. Thumbs I'm seeing some thumbs down, you guys. Okay.
Speaker 1:I see it. I see it. Okay. Thanks for that. Whatever your feelings are, especially if they are less than joyful, know that you are not alone.
Speaker 1:Jonathan and I like to go for afternoon dates that we call books and beers. This past week, we took our Kindles to a neighborhood pub and we got reading. Well, he got reading and I got distracted. That's usually how it goes. At one point in the afternoon, a woman alone at the bar declared to one of the servers and really to everyone else around that 2016 was the worst year of her life.
Speaker 1:And I thought, I have definitely been hearing a lot of that lately. So a few days ago, I did a Google News search. I just typed in 2016, and the very first article that came up was this one. Should we all just stop calling 2016 the worst? By Sam Sanders at NPR in The States.
Speaker 1:Here's how he opens the piece. Oh, 2016. The year it all went to hell. The year nothing made sense. The year we lost track of reality.
Speaker 1:The year Merriam Webster made surreal its word of the year. For many, 2016 hasn't just been awful and strange. It's become its own Debbie Downer catchphrase. Twenty sixteen itself has become its own meme. Sanders goes on to discuss social media hype and fear and hyperbole and privilege.
Speaker 1:Now before I continue, if 2016 was truly amazing for you, that is so great. Celebrate that. High five a bunch of people afterwards. They need your energy. But if 2016 really was the worst year of your life, I am not trying to take that away from you.
Speaker 1:As much as I can, I sit with you in that? I think we all do. But overall overall, I want us to be cautious about declaring 2016 as the worst of all the years ever ever ever. Just ask for a little caution. On this first day of the new year, let's challenge this hyperbolic refrain.
Speaker 1:Yes. I know. Some really terrible stuff went down this year. The world seems less predictable and more divided than ever. In the face of a temptation towards fatalism, I wonder, how do Christ followers engage in this year end grumbling?
Speaker 1:How is an alternative Jesus centered community supposed to live in 2017? Can we be more carefully reflective about the past? Can we participate in building a better future? Today, we are celebrating epiphany. Epiphany is like a messenger for us who shows up every year at this time to declare, God is with us.
Speaker 1:God is made manifest to us. God is always appearing. Epiphany is a feast day. And in some countries, January is a really big deal. It's the high point in the Christmas season.
Speaker 1:Today, we travel the road with the magi on their search for Jesus. And I hope that as we travel, we can get a sense of the sincerity of their search. The lessons that are there for us in the power struggle of Herod and the stillness that finally comes after a long journey and we really recognize God in our midst. So I'm going to read Matthew chapter two verses one to 12. You can follow along, and then we'll pray together and dive in.
Speaker 1:After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of king Herod, magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When king Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. In Bethlehem and Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written.
Speaker 1:But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod called the magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him.
Speaker 1:After they had heard the king, they went on their way. And the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child and his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Speaker 1:And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. Let us pray. God of this wonderful story. God of all of our stories. Every year through the rhythms of the church seasons, we are invited to consider epiphany, places where you appeared in the world to show us the way.
Speaker 1:We study this story, which may look the same on the page, but we are different. 2016 has changed us. Once again, we examine the magi, the outsiders who were brought inside by following a star and worshiping you. We examine Herod so wrapped up in his power that any whisper of threat brought terror and disruption. We think about Mary, the God bearer who fed you, wrapped you, chased after you, and witnessed great things through you.
Speaker 1:And finally, you, the Christ child, just a boy in this story. So simple, but still so full of mystery. And even here, long before miracles and teachings and disciples and last suppers, even here, you call us to follow you and we do. Open our hearts to what you have for your church today and in this new year. We approach you and you welcome us.
Speaker 1:You are the shepherd of our souls and the lover of our lives. In the name of the beautiful one we pray. Amen. Okay. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Matthew's account is neither Time Magazine cover story nor a tenth grade textbook. These accounts are gospel. Matthew is searching for new meaning in old stories, giving definition to an alternative community of Christ followers in an increasingly hostile world. In chapter one, Matthew is casting the Jesus story as a new Genesis story, tracing Jesus' line all the way to Abraham. In chapter two, Matthew is casting the Jesus story as a new Exodus story, tracing out Jesus' early years like those of Moses, setting Jesus up as a deliverer against yet another insecure king.
Speaker 1:The Magi of Matthew two play a fun theological role if only supporting to Jesus. Their importance is marked off by a tiny little Greek word used for emphasis. Idu, behold, or check these guys out. They do not belong in this story, so listen closely. And that's the point.
Speaker 1:The magi are outsiders from distant Babylonia, possibly modern day Iraq. They crossed thousands of kilometers for months and months to mark the birth of this king in an occupied territory on the outskirts of the Roman empire. We often think of the magi quite warmly, but it is likely that the heroes of this story would have had more negative connotations. The magi are strangers. They are the other.
Speaker 1:By bringing those outsiders into the story, Matthew was saying that the magi represent the far reaching, ever widening mercy and love of God. The biblical scholar Fredrik Bruner says it like this. The magi are walking illustrations of God's Catholic or universal grace. Going on to quote Hosea, the prophet, Brunner writes, I will show love to those who are unloved. And to those who are called not my people, I will say, you are my people.
Speaker 1:And they will answer, you are our God. Whether the magi knew that Jesus was a much bigger deal than any other earthly king is actually debatable. After all, the magi made sense of their world with science and astrology and diplomacy and maybe even a little magic. They weren't students of the Hebrew scriptures. But the tools that they did have, they brought them still so close to Jesus.
Speaker 1:Matthew two reads, after Jesus Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of king Herod, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. The magi read the signs so well for thousands of kilometers, but they're still left kinda tripping over themselves in Jerusalem, scratching their kinda weather worn faces and wondering, where the heck is he? Where is this new king? They're almost there, but Bethlehem is still seven kilometers from the capital city.
Speaker 1:Does anything like this ever happen for you? Do you ever look around for signs, moments when God might show up and guide you only to have these signs kind of fade away? Does 2016 feel like that for you? Do you ever think you followed God to where God is leading only to question the whole ordeal in the first place? Or do you ever spend a lot of energy and this one is so true for me.
Speaker 1:Do you ever spend a lot of energy going in a certain direction so determined about it, only to discover that the journey is not over and it wasn't really about that destination in the first place? So then, what are the bright signs in our lives that will lead us to epiphany, to seeing Jesus at work in our world? Just like the particulars of the Magi's lives matter in this story, like being from the East, following a certain star, giving valuable gifts, I am convinced that the everyday details in our lives are the things at least in part that will bring us closer to Jesus, that will draw us in. In fact, I'm kind of a nerd about tracing these kinds of everyday details in my life, which eventually lead me, I think, to all kinds of epiphanies. So now that it's 2017, guess what that means?
Speaker 1:I am starting a new line a day diary. A one line a day diary. You don't look as excited as I feel about that. Well, I think it's pretty exciting. Maybe it's not your one line a day diary, but I just finished writing a little bit of detail from every day of my life for five years in this book.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you, there are so many reflections for me, revelations for me, epiphanies for me when I trace out the details of my life with care. What is revealed to me time and time again through this practice is that there are guiding stars in my search for meaning, for epiphany, for God in the world. The stars are there, but they are tucked right into the everyday details of my ordinary life. If you were here on Christmas Eve, maybe you remember Jeremy saying that God loves our ordinary lives. But we have to be magi.
Speaker 1:We have to pay attention. So often, I don't realize the importance of a detail when it's happening, but I keep looking. I keep writing a line a day, a line a day, a line a day. And eventually, I see something astonishing. Take for example, a few short lines that I wrote on 11/05/2014.
Speaker 1:I was in Banff for a pastor's conference, and I wrote this. Bow River Walk. Drinks with Jonathan Bateman. Walk downtown like no big deal. Little did she know, me, that tomorrow actually would be our first wedding anniversary.
Speaker 1:I married that guy. Had no idea in the moment that that's what that story would lead to. Or take these lines from 01/31/2016. I wrote this. Let's just say also that I'm not super poetic in my line of day.
Speaker 1:I wrote Kensington Commons to see Karen and her church. Not Jeremy Duncan's church or Joel Braun's church, but my friend Karen's church. Little did she know that it would become her church too. These small details are stars in the night sky of Bobby Sokol. They gently guide me to God.
Speaker 1:I think that's what it was maybe like for the Magi and for Matthew who wrote about them. They just put one foot in front of the other. One detail added up to another. Even in the middle of a very harsh empire in a fallen down world ruled by a thin skinned autocrat. But before we too easily identify with the magi in this story, let's not forget our own place of power and privilege.
Speaker 1:Sure. We need to pay attention to the Herods, plural, of our time. But we also need to pay attention to the Herod in our own hearts. As if we're so keen to give up power and control. As if we're so ready to throw down our privilege, to preference the experience of those who are different from us, to trust in God whom we can't seem to see all the time more than we trust in ourselves.
Speaker 1:Encountering Epiphany in 2017 means we need to look for guiding stars, but also we cannot escape the struggle of the journey that leads us to Jesus. Verse three reads, when king Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. With the introduction of king Herod in the gospel, we find a city that is totally on edge. By the way, what is it with people of power passing along their anxiety to others? Like, we need more of that.
Speaker 1:We can imagine a powerful king like Herod the Great on Twitter. Right? It doesn't take much to imagine it. He would tweet all sorts of things, but he would also tweet about his special privilege in all these crisscrossing cultures. After all, he himself was racially Middle Eastern, religiously Jewish, culturally Greek, and politically Roman.
Speaker 1:It's just too bad that he didn't use all of that diversity for good. Instead, Herod ruled with contradiction, with fear, and with paranoia. He did build the second temple in Jerusalem, rebuild, and he was later responsible for the slaughter of innocents in Bethlehem. Even his own family wasn't safe from his violent outbursts costing many of them their lives. In Herod's presence, educated leaders and teachers became submissive yes men, telling him exactly what he wanted to hear.
Speaker 1:It's these yes men though, these religious teachers and priests who provide the next puzzle piece for the magi search for the new king. They quote the prophet Micah saying the Messiah, a shepherd to Israel will be born in Bethlehem. So the Magi, they definitely get their map. But Herod, he is super glued to his power. The invitation to come before Jesus to a humble little town, to offer gifts, and to bow low and worship is totally lost on Herod.
Speaker 1:Simone Wey, a mystic philosopher, wrote about the struggle of this kind of detachment, and she named it as a virtue. She said, to strip ourselves of the imaginary royalty of the world, absolute solitude, then we possess the truth of the world. I like that phrase, imaginary royalty. Even as Herod holds on to the corners of all his power, Matthew sweeps away so many details about him. And with one word, he dethrones Herod.
Speaker 1:In verses one and two, Matthew refers to Herod the great as king Herod. But early in the narrative, he drops that title. He drops the title king, maneuvering the magi to coronate the Christ child as king. It's a reversal revealing who is cosmically in charge. Herod is no longer the king in God's economy.
Speaker 1:He's just Herod in the rest of the chapter even until the mention of his death. Where Herod shows us the shadow side of the struggle, what happens when we cannot let go, when we can't die to ourself, when we can't see the truth that's being offered to us. The magi, they show us the bright side of the struggle. What happens when we leave home in comfort, when we face threat, and stay true to the mission and the love of God in our lives. A few weeks ago, I asked a dear friend of mine, Lisa, via text message what she thought of when she heard the word epiphany.
Speaker 1:She deals with conflict all the time. She's a divorce lawyer and a mediator. And also, I trust her spiritual sensibilities 100%. I was curious about her take on this kind of gritty revelation, the kind that comes after a long hard struggle. And this is what she said to me in all its text message oddity.
Speaker 1:Here it is. So I'd asked, which you can't see on the screenshot, what comes to your mind when you think about epiphany? And she said this, light. I also think about a valuable seemingly elusive insight where all of a sudden, everything hangs together and makes sense. And I said, interesting.
Speaker 1:And she said, I see it all the time with clients and me. Struggle, struggle, rail against things, tears, and then something becomes clear and everything shifts. And I said, tell me more about that. And then I said, oh, I love that. And then she said, I've gotta go to my strata AGM.
Speaker 1:And you love text messages. Conversations, they change so quickly. This is the path of epiphany. It's available to us when we search and participate in the bright side of the struggle. When it comes to the revelation of God in this gospel story, the star brought the magi thousands of kilometers closer to Jesus, but the scriptures guide them that last stretch to Mary's front door.
Speaker 1:And I get it. Finding revelation in the bible can be hard sometimes. I, for one, have had to wrestle with passages and history and ideas. Struggle. Struggle.
Speaker 1:Rail against things. Tears. And then finally, something becomes clear and everything shifts. I can't predict how the scriptures will come alive for you in your life and be directive. Maybe through your own reading and study or maybe something spoken at church Or maybe it's the way that your mind plays a song when things are hard and the night feels long.
Speaker 1:Or maybe the bible will come alive for you in the very way a good friend of yours lives out their theology with their whole life. The truth of God will be manifested through a star, a sunset, mountain pass, a snowfall, a city on a hill. And the truth of God will be manifested through a prophet's words spoken even by people who are more concerned with keeping their own heads than wrapping their minds around the wildness of God in a child. The truth of God is boundless like that. Together, the word of God in scripture and the word of God in creation will lead us to revelation and to deeper love.
Speaker 1:And what's waiting for us on the other side of that search and that struggle? Stillness. Quiet. Rest for our weary twenty sixteen bones. After the Magi's secret meeting with Herod, they went on their way.
Speaker 1:And the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. Or a more literal translation would be, they rejoiced. Joy, great, exceedingly. Verb, noun, adjective, adverb.
Speaker 1:After the noise of the city, the trickery of Herod, the thousands of miles along the dangerous road, the soreness of their bones, and the vividness of their dreams, this experience must have filled their hearts. They saw the child with his mother and they bowed down and they worshiped him. They opened their treasures and presented him with gifts. I imagine this moment so quiet, so still, so present like nothing else in the world mattered more. They accomplished what Herod could not, emptying themselves and offering gifts to experience the truth of the world.
Speaker 1:This story is a shining star signaling that Jesus is the new Moses. And this time, God's got more than the rescue of Israel on his mind. Paul wrote about the far reaching mission of God like this. The mystery is that through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise of Christ Jesus. Or as my friend Dan Matheson's grandfather expressed just before he passed away last week, Jesus is coming.
Speaker 1:To which his daughter Dan's aunt said, for you dad? And he replied, for all of us. Isn't that beautiful? The gospel passage for Epiphany ends like this. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
Speaker 1:There's no mention of the star, just the stillness of the dream and a worship encounter now guiding them before the next big struggle. So where does that leave us at the beginning of a brand new year? Hopefully, I hope, with a little more trust that Christ has come to us. Our struggling and our searching are not signs of God's absence. God will deal with the Herods of the world.
Speaker 1:They come and they go. Jesus is waiting for us to find him this year. And the holy spirit in you and in me knows the way. A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to The Current on CBC Radio one with Anna Maria Tremonti. I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1:She interviewed the author Chris Katarna in a conversation called how to manage anxiety in post 2016. In the face of a deeply contested time, Katarna made a case for engagement, for action, and for virtue. He warned against lulling ourselves into fatalism and to instead see this time as a season of discovery. A season of discovery. He said, if we reach 12/21/2017, the day of that interview, without a new major international conflict, I really believe that it will be because we have all helped to confront the politics of fear, division, and hostility within our own country and our own society, and I would add our own hearts.
Speaker 1:That's the kind of attitude, the sense of history that will serve us well in 2017. As 2017 begins, this is not the time to grab onto hollow memes to make sense of our lives. It's not the time to shy away from just action. It's not the time to be silent with our hope filled voices as Christ followers. This is the time to encounter the incarnate one.
Speaker 1:Jesus who stepped right into the human struggle, patiently grew up among us, and is carefully guiding us down an unknown route in a brand new year. Matthew will take us back to Jerusalem at the end of this book. There, the city will search again quite angrily for the king of the Jews. And knowing this, Jesus will ride into a disturbed town on a donkey. He will face down an empire by giving up his power to show the whole world the way to God.
Speaker 1:This is Jesus who is all love and who will outwit and outweigh to any violent threat that's thrown his way. It's 2017, you guys. Are you with me? I'd like to offer a prayer in closing. It's by a saint, of Moscow, Saint Filaret of Moscow.
Speaker 1:I'd never read it until this week. It's from a book called Prayer Book of the Early Christians. And I thought it was really appropriate, so I changed when it says new day to new year for our purposes. So let us pray. Prayer for a new year.
Speaker 1:Lord, grant us the strength to greet the coming year in peace. Help us in everything to rely on your holy will. Show your will to us every hour of every day this year. Bless our dealings with all people. Teach us to treat those who come to us throughout the year with peace of soul and with the firm conviction that it is your will that governs all things.
Speaker 1:Guide our thoughts and feelings in everything we do and everything we say. Teach us to act wisely and firmly without embittering or embarrassing others. Give us the physical strength to bear the labors of this year. Direct our will. Teach us to pray, rather yourself pray within us.
Speaker 1:Amen.