Coming and Going

Happy 2011! After our snow day last week, it’s great to be back at Emanuel, starting the New Year out right by spending time in worship. Since we were snowed out last week, today’s service includes elements of Christmas – the birth of Jesus – as well as Epiphany. So our service has included both Christmas carols and Epiphany hymns, and my sermon likewise has one foot in Christmas, and the other in Epiphany.

In the church’s liturgical calendar, today is Epiphany Sunday, which celebrates the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles, which, I’d guess, is most or all of us. Remember that up to this point, everyone who encounters Jesus in the story – Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, presumably the shepherds, Jesus himself – are all Jews. But on Epiphany Sunday, we give thanks that this revelation spread to the world at large. The word “epiphany” has made its way into our secular language to describe those occasional “Aha” moments we all have, those moments when we understand something for the first time or connect the dots for the first time, when, figuratively speaking, the little light bulb over our head goes on, and we say that we’ve had an epiphany.

Our Old Testament reading sets the stage. Part of God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis was not only that God would bless Abraham by making his descendents a great nation, but that great nation of Abraham’s descendents would become a blessing to the other nations. Our reading from Isaiah recalls this promise: the surrounding nations would come to Judah, to Jerusalem, seeking God’s glory. And they would come to Judah, to Jerusalem bearing gifts – the abundance of the sea, the wealth of nations…and, specifically, gold and frankincense. Matthew’s Gospel portrays the Isaiah reading come to life, in the form of – the Magi, or wise men, watchers of the skies who came from Persia, with gifts for a king. More than a little naively, they traveled to Jerusalem, the Jewish capital – where else would a "King of the Jews" be born, they supposed, asking “where is He who has been born King of the Jews, for we have seen His star, and have come to worship.”

While they may have been wise in tracking the movements of the stars in the heavens, perhaps they weren’t so wise in the ways of worldly politics. For in coming to Jerusalem and making their inquiry, they set off the paranoia of Herod, the local puppet ruler propped up by Rome – because as far as Herod was concerned, there was already a King of the Jews, and Herod was his name. No others need apply. To borrow some language from the old western movies, Jerusalem and Judah weren’t big enough for two kings of the Jews. But Herod forced a smile, consulted his religious advisors – who said the king would be born not in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem, a few miles down the road from Jerusalem. Herod sent them on their way, telling them to come back when they’d found the baby, so that Herod could also come and….worship. Yeah, worship, that’s the ticket. Of course, the rest of our Gospel reading tells us that Herod had, not worship, but murder on his mind.

Jesus’ birth was revealed to the Wise men, and they traveled for many miles to worship. Jesus’ birth was also revealed – by the wise men – to Herod, and he sent his men many miles to murder. And likewise, Jesus’ birth is revealed to all of us, and to our neighbors.

How will we respond? When we come to worship, what gift will we offer? And by what road will we depart? As we mark the turning of the calendar and the beginning of the new year, these are questions to contemplate.

On Friday night, I took the train into the city to spend part of New Years’ Eve at my home congregation, Old First, at 4th & Race Streets in Center City, for their New Years’ Eve Watchnight Service. While this is not a tradition in our churches – and in fact it’s only the 2nd time Old First held such a service - it’s a strong tradition in the African-American community. I’m told it came out of the time of emancipation, when on December 31, 1862, New Year’s Eve, slaves were counting down the hours and minutes until January 1, 1863, when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would take effect, and, on paper at least, they had freedom, glorious freedom. Pastor Michael, the pastor at Old First, who once served a congregation in NYC primarily of immigrants from the islands of the West Indies, also told us that there is a West Indies tradition that the way you bring in the New Year’s Eve will determine how you spend the whole year. In some West Indies communities, New Years Eve watchnight services are bigger than Christmas Eve service. Old First’s service didn’t actually run until midnight – we started at 7 pm and ran till about 8:30 – but it gave the feel of awaiting the New Year, in the presence of God and among the folks who for 20 years had been my church family week in and week out. It was a small group, about 15 of us gathered in a circle at the front of the church – though I told them that at Emanuel, it would be considered a good Sunday attendance. It was a meditative time for the 15 of us who were there, a time to consider the joys and struggles of the past year, to confess and ask God to forgive us our past failings and to help us to be more faithful in the coming year, to share our hopes and dreams for 2011. And, of course, I lifted up a prayer for Bridesburg, and for Emanuel Church, that we here can be a place of hope and love and peace for the beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has planted us.

Which path will we follow in the coming year? It’s tempting for us, as it was tempting for the Wise men, to go back to Herod, to give lip service to worshipping Jesus while living in ways which, though greed and gluttony and fear and hate, through our personal choices as well as our choices of how we participate in the wider society, bring death to our neighbors, or ultimately even ourselves. It’s the road many of our neighbors travel; perhaps it’s the road on which we found ourselves all too often in the past, and it’s tempting to return to what we know, to what’s familiar.

Or, like the Wise Men, we can turn from the failings of our past and follow the prompting of the Holy Spirit within us, and, having come to worship the newborn King, depart by another road, rejoicing and giving thanks for all we had heard and seen. We can follow in the way of Jesus, the way of love for God and neighbor. We can follow in the way of Jesus, being open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, embracing the future God has in store for us. For our congregation, celebrating our 150th year of service to this community, we can move out of the shadows of fear and discouragement, to say “yes” to the ways in which God is calling us to glorify God and serve our neighbors, to say “yes” to God’s call for us to say “welcome home” to those feel spiritually orphaned and homeless, to say “yes” to being the place of faith, hope, love, and peace that God is calling us congregation to be.

As we come forward in a few moments to the Lord’s table, may our souls be fed and our spirits strengthened, so that we can depart, rejoicing, to say “yes” to God in the coming year. May we, like the Wise Men, have our ears open to hear the voice of Jesus, our hearts open to feel the prompting of the Spirit. Where God leads, may we follow. Amen.
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Wise men and women still seek Jesus. Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org