[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage #591, Epiphany 1, 1/13/08

[rmcgregoralbq at aol.com]

Baptism of the Lord, January 13, 2008

Isaiah 42:1 9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34 43
Matthew 3:13 17


Epiphany Loud and Soft

Isaiah says God's chosen one will accomplish his mission without amplifying his voice, without using the media.  The Psalmist tells us it was not El Niño that got everyone's attention a few years ago, but El Niño's Padre.  Jesus may never have raised his voice, but Peter lifts his voice to address the whole world.  Matthew shows us Jesus quietly submitting himself for baptism, but God then breaks the silence.

The Psalmist heard the same thunder storm we hear, but he could take one step back and recognize it as God's voice.  We have to take several steps backward, back behind the meteorology, behind the physics, back behind a closed-system universe, before we can hear God speak, before we can see God's glory.  Has God lost his voice, or have we lost our hearing?  

It was ironic that "El Niño" was glorified when "oaks whirled" and the heavens alternately opened and closed.  Some knew about the slight warming of the Pacific Ocean, but everyone knew the name "El Niño."  Our general awareness falls short of glorifying "El Niño de Dios" (The Son of God), but our intuition is that a person is behind events that shake the world.  The question is, who?  Do we have the tools to build a world consensus?  Is God manifest to the whole human community?  Or, is epiphany a private experience like an audience with the Pope? "...a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."  (Matthew 3:17)  But, who heard it?  If the servant Isaiah described were to come, who would know it?  He doesn't raise his voice.  He doesn't harm the environment.  When the earth shakes, people call it an act of someone -- El Niño, Baal, Tenchi Kani No Kami, God -- a name will surface.  “Acts of God are not covered by this policy.” But it is an epiphany only meaningful to insurance companies?  What about the manifestation of God at a higher resolution, the one Peter proclaims?  "We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead."  (Acts 10:39-42)  Should the one who judges the living and the dead not be know by everyone?  Is this one not more important to know than El Niño?

It seems to me that there are two models for epiphany, the one an event out of nowhere that freezes you in your tracks and the other a subtle process that requires intuition and commitment to interpret.  The resurrection of Jesus was the former kind, and Isaiah's prophecy is the latter kind. "He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching." (Isaiah 42:4)  As Christians, our memory and our experience of God's self-revelation commit us to serve the world in two ways.  We are to raise the resolution of the world's image of God by identifying God with us in Jesus.  We are to serve justice in the world "until he has established justice in the earth".  This is the commitment incumbent on all who have seen God in Christ, who have witnessed the epiphany both loud and soft.


May these thoughts strengthen you. 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 
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