Throughout my ministry, I have been the
privileged confidante of concerns and fears of my parishioners. There was the
elderly couple whose grandson was a drug addict. How do they save him? There
was the empty nester couple who son transitioned to a woman. Will their friends
at church ever talk to them again? There was the grandmother who worried that
her grandchildren weren’t being baptized. Will they go to hell?
Today,
January 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany to honor the revelation of
Jesus, of salvation, to the whole world. The wise men who came to
worship the Christ child were not Jewish, but Gentile. Traditionally they have
been understood as coming from the three known continents, Africa, Asia, and
Europe, thereby representing the whole world. Epiphany is a recognition that
God isn’t sending a Messiah just for the Israelites, but for all people.
At the time, this was unprecedented! People were convinced down to their bones
that they knew who God loved and who God didn’t. Epiphany is an “ah-ha” moment.
Maybe God has a bigger plan and love for humanity than we sometimes realize.
Maybe our little boxes of who is in and who is out don’t matter to God..
In this New Year, may we all have many
“ah-ha” moments of seeing the love of God at work in our lives and those around
us, even those whose choices, or intrinsic natures, are very different from
ours.
(image above by J. C. Leyendecker)
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