Speaker 1: Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: Today, we all find ourselves in a bit of a curious place in the calendar. I think in some ways, this is just part of shaking off the fog from those days between Christmas and New Year's when everybody just shuts their alarm off. We do little more than attend to what we're gonna watch or whether we're gonna take off our pajamas and put on actual clothes or which leftovers we might eat, you know, all the important stuff. I think sometimes too, this curious place in the calendar might be there because we might be feeling a little groggy from not going to bed in 2022 and waiting until 2023. Right?
Some of us are feeling that this morning. Perhaps also, there's always a bit of a letdown after Christmas before January goal setting and initiating kicks in. And listen, I think all of that is natural. I really think that the truth around this, it's centered in the fact that Christmas is actually meant to be a twelve day festival in the Christian tradition. It's called Christmas tide.
And in this tradition, Christmas Eve night is just the beginning of a series of feasts and commemorations held around the globe, including today's celebration of Mary, the mother of God, full of grace. The party is meant to last until the evening of January 5 coming up this week before the feast and the liturgical season called Epiphany begins on January 6. And all that that means is that if you are feeling a little overdone, a little fried, a little partied out, like you're maybe in between things, you're in good company. You're feeling time as it's meant to be felt. These long held rhythms of attending to the turning of winter's tide.
And it is our custom here around Commons to actually just settle here in this pause of sorts. We leave the color and the lights up, the candles up, the ornaments are still around to catch our eye for another moment. And you can do the same. For the record, I'm a full endorser of leaving those decorations up at home till at least January 15. Leave them up through Christmas tide at least.
Here at Commons, we also stretch our imagination of how Christmas is not just one day, a one day stop in our culture's frenzy, but it's rather a call to take our time with the celebrating and the remembering and the reveling. But then also, we also, as a community, we look ahead to the coming days, to the season of epiphany that's just around the corner and how it is such a fitting observance for all this weary world. We're gonna jump into all of this together in just a moment, but first, I want to offer a New Year's prayer together. So will you join me? Loving God, you are present to us now.
Yes. In this quiet moment that we share and in the friendly faces that greet us here today, you're here in the grace of shared community and we're grateful for that, to our experience of it here. And as we sit on the cusp of this new year, perhaps there is a little bit of uncertainty about how to feel about it. There are the pressures and the difficulties. There's the unrest and the turmoil in our world.
There's also maybe some hope, some expectation. And so today, we turn towards your goodness and we ask for courage to trust, to trust that you are ahead, you're behind, you're above and below and beyond us, renewing all things. We pray, would you guide us now as we turn to ancient words? We ask in the name of Christ who is with us. Amen.
Alright. Well, if you are taking notes today, we are gonna work our way through the first person, what you want, epiphany shared, and the oddly specific. First, just a quick description, heads up about this season of epiphany. It's a season in Christian timekeeping. Often gets overlooked, which is super weird because the feast of Epiphany on January 6 was the original Christmas.
This is the day when the early church members commemorated Jesus' birth, and it was once the feast of Christmas was moved to more closely align with winter solstice, as we currently celebrate it, that's when this feast of Epiphany took on a life of its own. In Eastern churches, Epiphany became the day when Christians remember Christ's baptism. We're gonna talk a little bit about that here in a sec. In Western churches, Epiphany began to commemorate three different events in Jesus' life. The visit of the Magi, his baptism, and his first miracle, which you may remember took place when he took a wedding reception to the next level.
And what these moments and what these narratives have in common is this step beyond Christmas. Yes. God has come. Yes. Christ arrives and lives as God with us, but what Epiphany acknowledges is how we started to catch on to this.
Epiphany moves us from Advent's anticipation and longing into an exploration of how and where Jesus showed up in the world, how Jesus reveals and makes the divine apparent. Hence, why it's called epiphany. And we see this or we see these themes. They show up in the story of the Magi who followed a star and arrived with gifts for the toddler Christ, revealing how the Christian story is meant for everyone, including pagan astrologers. We see it in the story of a wedding feast that has run out of wine and how Jesus' first miracle says something about how the divine must feel about friendship and intimacy and celebration and surprises.
We see it in the story of Christ's baptism. This profound real time revelation of the divine nature as simultaneously creator and human and spirit. And it's this baptism tale I wanna just start with briefly today. We're gonna come at it though from a different angle. See, three of the four gospels tell us that before Jesus went public, he went out into the wild places East and North of Jerusalem where his relative, John the Baptist, was gathering a crowd.
John there was preaching and calling the Jewish peasants around him to return to the law of Moses, to its justice, to its equity, to its purity of heart. And there, he was baptizing these Jewish recruits, and baptizing was generally a ritual reserved for those people who were becoming Jews. These people were already Jews, and John was baptizing them as a signal that they were new returnees to the great tradition. And one of the gospels tells us or the three of the gospels tell us that this one day Jesus shows up in this crowd, that he walks down into the water, that John baptizes him, and that just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, Jesus sees heaven being torn apart and heaven or heaven the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice comes from heaven.
You are my son whom I love. With you, I am well pleased. And this moment is a centerpiece of epiphany reflection. Most of the gospels present the divine here as an interplay of intimate relationship, and how in Jesus, there in that river, we catch our first glimpse of this striking image. John's gospel, however, takes a different approach.
There is no scene of Jesus pulling off his sandals and then almost slipping on the edge of the rocks of the river there. There's no cinematic shimmer of divine light on water. There's no voice echoing with Trinitarian reverb. No. John's gospel simply cites John the Baptist's eyewitness account.
All it says is John gave this testimony. I saw the spirit come down from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. And I have seen and I testify that Jesus is God's chosen one. And what I love about this take on an epiphany moment is its reminder that the good news embedded in scripture doesn't arrive through lofty theology or in carefully crafted narrative structure, but rather in first person observation. And here's the deal.
I think the gospels change when you read them less as a sanitized and removed report of what might have happened and realize that they're based in many cases on what is a claim to first person encounter. See, John saw something in Jesus. John encountered something in Jesus, it appears, which just might mean that what I see and encounter matters too. It might mean that maybe epiphanies still happen, and we're gonna come back to this. But before we do, let's keep reading.
John one verse 35 tells us that the next day, after John makes this confession, John the Baptist was sitting again with two of his disciples. And when he saw Jesus passing by, he says, look, the lamb of God. And when the two disciples heard him say this, they got up and they followed Jesus. And turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, what do you want? So let's stop there because there's a few things to note.
First, each year the season of Epiphany highlights the stories of how Jesus' friends and disciples came to gather around him, and this text is just one of the accounts that's often read and reflected on at this time of year. And second, John the Baptist is offering a significant revelatory description of Jesus here. It's full of epiphany wonder. We can't spend a lot of time here on this, but John's description of Jesus as lamb here is very similar to the image of a lamb that we encountered during our upside down apocalypse series earlier this fall, or last fall, I guess it is now. Where in the Jewish imagination, the lamb could come to represent the sacrificial and the redemptive work of God.
And consequently, this became a victorious image, became an emblem of rightful power and renewal brought to bear on the world. And the point is just this, that John reveals Jesus with this statement about him. He names something about Jesus for us. But then third, there's that curious line where Jesus asks these disciples what they want. And I wanna suggest to you that there's probably some creative license embedded here.
I mean, how do we read this? What do you want? Like, Jesus is in a hurry and doesn't have time to give autographs that day? Or what do you want? Like, is Jesus weirded out by strangers following him?
That's likely, I suppose. Maybe it's what do you want? Like, Jesus just wants them to make up their minds. Like, are we coming? Are we going?
What's happening here? Whatever the case, I don't think Jesus is actually bothered. The Greek verb for want that's used in this sentence, is how you say it, it means to seek or to crave or to demand. I mean, this is why some versions of this story translate Jesus' words as, what are you looking for? And I'm not sure it matters, but I like the urgency implied in the translation, what do you want?
I think Jesus is actually revealing something of the divine about the life we live with and in God with this statement. On one hand, scholar, William William Barclay, notes that Jesus could be performing a kind of impromptu job interview here. See, many young men at the time were looking to have nuanced conversations about the details of the law. They wanted to debate it like the scribes and the pharisees did. Many young people in the community had hopes of acquiring religious position and power like the Sadducees sect.
They could have seen Jesus as a means to this end. Jesus could have been asking them if they were nationalists, if they were just looking for a military commander who was gonna rid Palestine of Rome's stench like the zealots who were all around the country at this time. Or it's possible that Jesus is identifying them as looking to separate from society, form a prayerful, tight knit community out in the mountains like the Essenes near the Dead Sea. There was all kinds of reasons that people were drawn to Jesus. Remember that his disciples ended up including tax collectors and laborers and zealots and businessmen, and this indicates that they probably had different reasons for buying in.
Certainly, could be part of what's going on in this question, but I wonder if there isn't something more here. The revelation of sorts of how the divine sidles up to you and me. See, because there's all these other places in the gospel text where Jesus asks probing questions like this. In Mark 10, for example, he asks a blind man, what do you want me to do for you? In John five, we hear this story of how he asks a lame man, do you want to get well?
And in each of these instances, there's this profound space that opens up, Where at least in part the divine reveals itself in the longings and the pursuits that we carry on with. The longings that we give voice to. The longings we persist in. And this is not to say that the gospels are suggesting that we all adopt a philosophy of life based on certain wish fulfillment. I think we all know that's not the right way to think.
We all know better than to blindly trust the assurances of the self actualized and the self made person who says that we can make ourselves into whatever we want. Quite frankly, life's loss and weakness and indifference do not cooperate with our wishes sometimes. No. When Jesus turns to these young men and asks them what they want, I think there's something deeply grounding happening. I think he's teaching them that self awareness is a spiritual practice.
Jesus is asking them to carefully identify the forces that are guiding their desires, to daily pay attention to the want that's fueling their choices. And in teaching them this, Jesus reveals some healthy rhythms of spiritual life. And these might be helpful for you as you look out at the New Year. These are rhythms that maybe you wanna employ as a kind of question inventory. Do I know what I want?
Like, are my desires making me a deeper, more fulfilled, more compassionate person? Also, what meaning do I want to shape and then offer the world? What do I want? Does my use of time reflect my deepest desire? Or what do I want?
Am I pursuing the things and the goals and the connections that matter the most to me? Am I forming and sustaining relationships that are making me better? What do I want? And do I trust that the mystery of the divine is there in my wanting and in my looking? The divine is there showing up and renewing me and others through my pursuit of these things.
Curiously, there's something almost playful about the lines that follow this question. Because Jesus asked them what they want, and they respond, well, rabbi, we just wanna know where you're staying. Just super weird, by the way. But, basically, it's equivalent of saying, we were wondering if we could hang out. To which Jesus says, come along.
You'll see. And I think that's such a lighthearted invitation into 2023 that some of us might need to hear. Come along. You'll see. Now with this said, I really like how John's gospel frames Jesus' first encounters with his disciples.
See, in the other gospels, Jesus goes looking for his followers, dropping in on them as they go about their business. And what I love about what the writer of John does is this author seems to flip this script. We see John the Baptist seeing Jesus there in the crowd, really seeing him for who he is perhaps for the first time. And in his excitement at this epiphany, he calls Jesus the lamb of God. And then his friends get up and follow Jesus.
And then a little later, we see one of these two men that has followed Jesus to where he's staying, a guy named Andrew. We see him get so excited to who Jesus is that he runs and tells his brother, a guy named Simon. And in his excitement at this epiphany, he tells Simon, we have found the Messiah. And so what we see here is instead of Jesus finding his new recruits, we see regular people finding Jesus and revealing and naming who Jesus is in the process. And this is a sequence worthy of epiphany lore.
There's also this curious interaction where we read that Andrew brings his brother Simon to Jesus and that Jesus looks at Simon. And he says, you are Simon, son of John. He's just declaring the obvious, apparently. And then he says this. He says, you will be called Cephas, which is also translated Peter.
And this is a crucial moment. Matthew's gospel will tell a very similar story of how Jesus renames Simon as Peter, meaning rock. And this is a sign that Peter is going to be a cornerstone of the new movement that Jesus is starting. The writer of John has a very different focus here, though. Because the verb describing how Jesus looks at Peter, imbleppo, means to literally look in or upon something or someone.
It describes a curious, intent, focused gaze. And I'm not saying that Jesus made it weird by staring at Peter for too long. It could almost be that. What I actually imagine is that Jesus has this slight grim crossing his face as he sees Peter. As he names who Peter is, as he imagines who Peter might be, as he reveals to Peter and to us that epiphany is a shared project.
We're in one way, like Andrew and Peter, we make our way in the world looking for renewal. Like them, we search for truth. We unearth ways toward justice and equity, and we encounter these things in Jesus. And when we find them, we are right to name them and celebrate them even as the season of epiphany invites us to, to consider all the ways this story opens our eyes to where the divine shows up. But then, on the other hand, like Peter, perhaps we need to remember that this story helps us see who we really are, Just as we find in the curious, thoughtful gaze of our friends and our loved ones and our therapists and our children.
Sometimes, we come to know our best selves when we see ourselves through others' eyes, which just might mean that your love and your skill and your affection and your capacity and your dreams and your persistence born from adversity and your quirkiness and your voice like Peter's, all of these are an epiphany that graces this world with the divine touch that it needs. Now there's one final note to be made before we head out and take hold of all that Epiphany brings to us. And it's this passing note made by the author of John's gospel. In verse 39, right after Jesus invites these two men into the rest of their lives with what feels like a very coy, come along and see, we read that these men went and they saw where Jesus was staying and they spent that day with him. And it was about four in the afternoon, which is a lovely summation of what sounds like a perfectly magical and also perfectly normal day.
Right? Just a warm afternoon spent among friends. The kingdom of God showing up in the curiosity and laughter shared by new acquaintances. The glory of God revealed through the miracle of conversation. And what's notable though is that oddly specific reference to it being four in the afternoon.
What's going on there? Commentators dialogue and speculate over this. Is this just the ancient author remembering these events much later and giving a time stamp like you would if you were telling a familiar story about that thing that happened that was so wonderful that one time? We can't be sure. But I think we are safe in assuming along with scholar j Mike Ramsey Michaels that this note isn't symbolic or theological.
It reflects historical tradition in some way. And that is something that speaks so loudly of the way the divine arrives and emerges in the world. It seems to me that if Jesus could show up as God made flesh, that if his physical presence in the world could captivate the hearts of the earnest and the yet still flawed, that if in whoever he was, the imaginations of those who met him couldn't help but use big metaphors to describe him, Metaphors that stretched across time and cosmos to consider that in him, the great love that creates and knows and cares had actually showed up. If in reeling at these thoughts, they could also be so careful as to note that they had chanced upon him on a particular afternoon at four. At that particular moment, then perhaps the same is true for you and me.
And I think we know when it happens in the slightest changing of fortune, especially when it's unexpected, in new opportunities found in risks, in the quiet that visits us as we read, as we pray, as we meditate, in tender kisses, and in long pauses, in the care we receive in our illness, in our fear, in our need. In that moment when someone, for some unexplained reason, advocates for you, and it makes all the difference. In the peace that finds you when you have every reason to be worried, in the knowledge that you are known to someone, somewhere, in the difference you make, in the justice you contend for, in the bread you break around tables there, in the oddly specific details of your life, God appears. Which is why as 2023 begins, my prayer is that you would set off with eyes and ears and hands open to receive such unassuming visitations. And that you would trust as Rainer Rilke once asserted that you have not grown old, and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.
A very blessed New Year to you all. Let's pray. Oh, God of unexpected arrivals, We are present here to all that the days ahead hold for us. And what a gift it is to sense in these ancient words some of the opening that you bring into the world with you in Christ, but then I think also we experience it in so many small ways. It's embedded there in our great desire for change.
We can find it there in the things we long for and search for and work for. It's there in our daily encounters with those we love, with those we serve, with those we advocate for, and also, it's there in quiet moments like these. And so we open our hearts in whatever way we can. We confess our hesitancy, the ways in which this we're not quite sure how to feel about all that lies ahead, and we ask simply for courage to trust that your goodness goes before. We ask these things now in the name of Christ, our hope.
Amen.