Sermon by the Rev. Ernie Lewis
23 January, 2022
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10
I Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21
Psalm 19
Now we’ve come to the third Sunday after the Epiphany of Jesus. How’s it going for you?
Heard all the stories before? “Been there, done that?”
I have a feeling Epiphany is liable to get lost, shuffled off to the side of the road after the anticipation of Advent and the excitement and nonstop frenzy of Christmas; kind of a “letdown.”
In reality, Epiphany is important because contained within it is a kind of “roadmap of discovery”: directions to the path to learning more about this Jesus and how we might encounter him anew, just as the first people who met him did.
What I’m suggesting is very like what folks who do good science do. A few of them become famous; most remain anonymous. But they all have one thing is common. Something drives them all! And that “something” is what I want to talk about as a way of approaching the stories of Epiphany.
Let’s start with some of those people who changed the world and the way we perceive it. They were all driven by that “something”.
There’s Archimedes, sitting in his bathtub doing a lot more that taking a bath! He’s observing and he’s thinking!
There’s Galileo. Instead of listening intently to the sermon, he’s gazing up at the huge chandelier that hangs from the ceiling of the great cathedral at Pisa. He’s observing and he’s thinking.
There’re those botanists and zoologists who realize that the plants and animals that inhabit the East Coast of South America are curiously like the plants and animals that live along the West Coast of Africa They’re observing and thinking!
There’s Alexander Fleming, at St Mary’s Hospital in London, noticing a petri dish covered with a layer of growing bacteria. It’s been sitting on the sill of an open window. He notices some curious round circles where the bacteria have been killed off. He’s observing and he’s thinking!
From these folks have emerged things we take for granted: principals of physics, plate tectonics……and penicillin!
All these folks saw something which might have easily been overlooked………but they thought, “Hmmm! What’s happening here?”
And they took that next step to look deeper; to find the answer!
The “something” is that “Hmmm!
Each of those people entered a kind of dialogue with what they observed.
They were driven by the need to understand, to get “inside it”!
I want to suggest we follow their lead with the stories of Epiphany.
Try putting yourself in each of them. Feel the atmosphere, the sounds, the setting. Breathe in the air and open yourself to the likelihood that something very important is happening right in front of your eyes! Then allow yourself to exclaim, “Hmmm!”
Let’s join some Zoroastrian astrologers who spy a new star and exclaim, “Hmmm!” They take off to see what it’s all about. Their quest ends in a small house in a small village in Roman-occupied Judea where they find a toddler. There’s “something” about him. They don’t understand what exactly, but they know this is the one to receive the gifts they have brought.
Let’s attend a wedding reception where an impending embarrassing social disaster is narrowly averted by this guy, one of the guests by the name of Jesus, who looks at some jars filled with water but now are full of the finest cabernet around. Nobody can understand it….but we and the servants see it all! “Whoa!”, you say, “who is this guy and how did he do that?” Then you and the servants hurry home to tell everybody you know what you just experienced!
This evening you join the congregation for Shabbat services in a small synagogue in Nazareth. It’s the town where Jesus grew up. As an honor he’s chosen to read the scripture of the day and to elaborate upon it. That’s a very tricky thing to pull off in the congregation where everybody has known you all your life! But he stands up, reads the scripture appointed for the day from the prophet Isaiah, then says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
There’s a congregational “Hmmm!”
Now the word is out!
Everybody who hears and sees or even hears about him is saying, “Hummm!” They rush to have a look at him and see what this is all about!
How about you?
Do the stories of Epiphany elicit a “Hummm!” from you?
Who is Jesus for you?
There’s a huge difference between knowing that someone exists and knowing them personally!
In future weeks we’ll follow Jesus as he becomes more well known by the wonderworks he performs and the words that he speaks. Plan to go with him in person. Watch as he preaches. See him talking to all kinds of people, See him healing a bunch of sick folks and telling wonderful stories!
Get to know him and don’t be afraid if you hear yourself saying “Hmmm!” In fact, welcome that reaction! It’s the right one!
This is the trajectory, the journey, of epiphany!
When people come face to face with Jesus, they have the same reaction! And that reaction leads to other reactions and those to still others as his followers dig deeper and deeper into what it means to be in relationship with him. Things begin to move! The result is what our presiding Bishop calls “The Jesus Movement”. It changes everything, the way we pray, the way we care for each other, the way we care for our earth and all our fellow creatures who share life with us on this whirling blue ball “our island home”.
It all flows from that simple, “Hummm!”
This Jesus, this One like none other, still beckons us to know him better and better.
The great physician/organist/missionary Albert Schweitzer summed it up so beautifully: “He comes to us as one unknown, without a name as of old by the lakeside he came to those (men) who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words, “follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks he has to fulfill in our time. He commands, and those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the tasks, the conflicts the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.”[1]
Hmmm!
Amen.
[1] Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest of the Historical Jesus
