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01/17/21 – On the Epiphany Road

ON THE EPIPHANY ROAD

January 17, 2021
2nd Sunday in Epiphany
1 Sam. 3: 1-20; Ps. 139: 1-18; 1 Cor. 6:12-20; John 1: 43-51
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

 

The season of Epiphany leads us from the revelatory star the Magi from the East followed to Bethlehem; then, the self-revelation of Jesus’ identity proclaimed by God at his baptism. From the baptism, we read about the start of Jesus’ public ministry when his message and the signs of his identity are made public. It is in the Epiphany time that we are challenged to discover who we are in relation to God and God’s Word Made Flesh.

Psalm 139 proclaims the wonder of our omniscient God who ‘formed us in the womb’ and ‘knit our inward parts.’ God knows us, both as we are and as we are meant to be in the future. Like the child, Samuel, God has commissioned us from our birth to “seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8) The Apostle Paul in his letter to the congregation in Corinth declared our bodies were created for good and we should use them for good purposes. In our gospel reading from John, disciples are drawn to Jesus because of who he is and our search for our own identity in the world and the kingdom of God.

In the biblical history of the Hebrew people. The book of 1 Samuel bridges the era of judges and the monarchy. Samuel’s role as a judge, prophet, and kingmaker began before he was born. His mother, Hannah was barren. She so longed for a child that she promised God, if she were granted her desire, she would give up the child in service to God. God answered her prayer and at age five, Samuel was taken to the temple in Shiloh, where he became an assistant to the head priest, Eli. Samuel’s identity was shaped by his mother’s faithfulness and Eli’s tutelage. Sadly, Eli’s fate is a cautionary tale. We are given to assume that Eli was a faithful and devoted priest, except for one fatal flaw. His two sons, who inherited their positions as priests, abused their power in shameful ways. They sexually abused women who came to the temple to pray. They fed themselves on the choicest parts of the animal sacrifices instead of reserving them for God. It appears they crossed a moral line God would not forgive. Eli’s sin was not one of commission, like his sons, his sin was one of omission. He did not act to stop his son’s abuse of power. When God called Samuel, it was to deliver the terrible message that God would punish Eli, his sons, and descendants by ending the family’s line of priestly succession and by cursing them with short lives. Eli serves as an example of how not acting in the face of evil taints us with evil and becomes a part of ourselves. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who will be honored tomorrow, commented on the failure of people, most notably white clergy, who said they supported the cause of civil rights for all people, but would not take action or even speak out: “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Psalm 139 extols God’s role as our Creator. In poetic language, the psalmist gives voice to the lofty theological concepts of God’s omniscience, omnipresence, transcendence, and immanence. God is big and powerful enough to create us, but also so close to us as to be within and beside us. The psalmist describes our relationship with God as being like the divine hand had knit us together in our mother’s womb. God knows us so intimately that our every thought and deed is known. The psalmist suggests if we know ourselves more, we can know God more. When we delve deeper into who we are, we will catch sight of the Divine. At the very core of our being there is the Holy Spirit who brings fullness and life.

If you only read the verses listed in the lectionary, you hear: “Great! God knows who I am, everything about me!” If you read the verses left out, you hear: “Oh! God knows everything about me – I can’t hide anything!” The psalmist challenges us to ask ourselves what do we let God touch in our lives and what do we want to hide? When we uncover what we would rather God or anyone else not see, we are ready to begin the work of repentance that leads to transformation. We were created to play a special part in God’s realm; it is our responsibility to become the person God intends us to be that we might fulfill our part.

The Apostle Paul wrote a letter from Ephesus to a congregation in Corinth, a seaport city. The influences of diverse peoples, both living in and traveling through, made it a vibrant city for commerce and the arts.  A stopping place for sailors and traders, Corinth was also known for licentiousness. Paul was concerned that some Christians were interpreting freedom from sin as having a license to do whatever they chose; and, their choices were harming the community. In his letter, he also warns that indulgences may become addictive, thereby enslaving them to their indulgence. Taking the tact of Psalm 139, Paul argues that God has created us with a spiritual and physical body that makes us who we are. If we fill our bodies with things that have no benefit or harm others, we have no room for God. When we use our bodies for evil purposes, the evil becomes part of our identity.

In our gospel reading, John gives us an account of Jesus drawing people to him to become disciples who will eventually become his body on earth, the Church. John’s description of Jesus acquiring disciples differs from the other gospels. In John, Jesus does not find his disciples — they find him. The disciples are drawn to him, sensing the Holy Spirit in his being and his message. In the reading for today, Nathanael almost misses finding Jesus due to his reticence to learn more about the man to whom Philip wants to introduce him. When Philip tells Nathanael that he has “found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth….” Nathanael responds: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Nathanael is like us. We have so many labels we use to identify people and, in so doing, we habitually pass judgment. These labels reveal more about us than the people upon whom we place them. Can anything good come from Mississippi or from Philadelphia? From Livingston County or Cook County? From Pekin or South Peoria? Is there any redeeming quality in someone who is a Trump voter or a Biden voter? A conservative or a liberal? A White Evangelical or a Progressive Christian? There are more boundary building labels than people because we can heap them one on top of the other for a single individual, cutting off any chance of hearing their voice or treating them as a child of God. To break through the walls that divide us we have to look deeper than skin color, language, religion, beauty, wealth, gender, or sexual orientation. We must also become intentionally self-aware when we are pre-judging others.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech said:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

More than 50 years later, his dream is far from being realized. That is our sin, both personal and corporate. We must not hide it and resist the light of the truth that God has revealed to us in Jesus Christ. As Paul wrote to a congregation in Galatia that was fraught with division and conflict: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

The Epiphany season is the first leg of our journey to transformation into new creations in Christ. These weeks between Christmas and Lent, we are challenged by God’s Word to seek revelations about who we are and who we can be.

Amen. May it be so.

 

 

© Rev. Denise Clark-Jones, 2021, All Rights Reserved
Westminster Presbyterian Church | 1420 W. Moss Ave. | Peoria, Illinois 61606
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