No Hometown Hero: A Homily for the Fourth Sunday After Epiphan

Preached at All Saints, King City, Sunday, 30 January, 2022. Readings for this Sunday: Jer 1.4-10; Ps 71.1-5; ` Cor 13.1-13; Lk 4.21-30.

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4.27)

What hometown doesn’t love its heroes?  In my home parish, the whole town crowded into the community centre to watch two of their own, figure skaters wo had trained in the local arena, compete in the winter Olympics.    We love local heroes because we’ve seen them grow up and spread their wings, and while we want them to do well, we also enjoy some of their fame that reflects on their place of origin.

Today’s gospel, which continues the story of Jesus’ return to Nazareth, invites us to think who Jesus speaks to and who Jesus serves - besides us!   Last Sunday we heard how Jesus read the words of the prophet Isaiah to his hometown synagogue – about God anointing one who would bring good news, freedom, and healing to the poor, to the captives, and to the oppressed.  Jesus then implies that he is the one who has been anointed to do all this (“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” Lk 4.21) and awaits the reaction.

Jesus certainly does provoke a reaction from the hometown crowd, and that reaction is complex, moving from approval to murderous rage.  It moves from approval at “the gracious words that came from his mouth” (4.22) to remembrance of who they think Jesus is (“Is not this Joseph’s son? 4.22) to homicidal rage when Jesus provokes them by saying his mission is not just to make his hometown look and feel good (4.23-29).   What makes them change their minds so quickly?

The answer seems to me to be that the locals want Jesus to be the hometown hero, but Jesus isn’t that interested in the role.   Sometimes it’s said that when the people in the synagogue say “Is not this Joseph’s son” (4.22) it’s said in disapproval, that Jesus has started acting above his station and should be cut down to size.  I don’t see it that way at all.  I see the “Is not this Joseph’s son?” question as being about ownership.  It’s like they’re proudly saying, “Hey, this boys with all the wisdom, he’s Joseph’s son, he’s one of us!”.  Remember that this point Jesus is still popular.  Luke has just told us that he’s preached in neighbouring towns in Galilee and “was praised by everyone” (Lk 2.15).  I think people are excited that the local hero is come how, and now they’re wondering what miracles and amazing things Jesus will do for them.

What they get instead is an antagonistic Jesus who basically says that he has nothing to offer his hometown. Jesus cites a proverb (“Doctor, cure yourself” 4.23). puts himself in the same company as the prophets Elijah and Elisha whose miracles benefitted gentiles but not their own people (Lk 425-27) and says that he won’t do the miracles and teachings he’s done elsewhere (4.23 – the reference to “the things we heard you did at Capernaum” seems to refer to the following verses, 4.31-37, suggesting that Luke’s chronology is out of synch here).  In other words, Jesus seems to almost taunt the hometown crowd by saying, “Yes, I may be one of you, but I’m not here to serve you”.  It would be a little bit like the local kid who won Olympic gold or a Stanley Cup to say “No, I’m not coming home to do the Fall Fair parade”. 

Imagine a young cleric who pitches up at All Saints as a curate or as your new incumbent.  Let’s say you’ve known him or her since they were in Sunday school.  They’re a rising star, they have the whole Diocese buzzing, and you can’t believe your luck that this clerical prodigy has come home to be your priest.   You have high hopes of this person filling the pews, breathing new life into the parish, and looking after you. 

However, in their first sermon, that new priest says “Don’t expect to see much of me, because I’ll be out all night looking after the homeless, I’ll be in the shelter and in the food bank and with the John Howard Society and the ex cons, and if I’m not there I’ll be spending a lot of time up north helping First Nations communities with drinking water.  Besides, I know you all, and I don’t see a lot I can do here to help you, especially when there’s other people that need me more.”   How long would it take before the Wardens caught an earful of complaints?  Anger and betrayal would be very human reactions.   We all want our needs to come first, and most of us want our guy to put our needs at the top of the list.

However, Jesus never gave any indication that he wanted to be the hometown hero.  Before he was born, his mother Mary knew that Jesus would be the one who would lift up “the lowly”, feed the hungry, and send “the rich away empty” (Lk 1.52-53).   When the aged Simeon met the infant Jesus, he prophesied that the child would “salvation” for “all peoples”, “a light for revelation to the Gentoles and for glory to your people Israel” (Lk 2.29-32).   In the Temple, the boy Jesus reminded his parents that his “Father’s house” was not their house (Lk 2.49).  At his baptism, the voice from heaven called Jesus “my Son, the Beloved” (Lk 3.22) and in their duel in the desert, even the devil admits that Jesus is “the Son of God” who passes every test (Lk 4.1-13).  So by the time Jesus returns to Nazareth, we as Luke’s readers know that Jesus is far, far more than just “Joseph's son”.

From the very beginning Jesus has announced that he will be God’s son for all people, and not just a comfortable, chosen few.   Now, in the Nazareth synagogue, that point becomes clear. Jesus bluntly tells the hometown crowd that he won’t be the local hero, that he will take the love and salvation of God to those who don’t yet know him.   We need to be clear that this gospel is not about Jews rejecting a Jesus who wants to serve only gentiles.  That is so not the point.  The point is that Jesus does not come to serve the few, but to serve the many, and sometimes that’s a challenge for the faithful.

Today’s gospel reading calls us to whether we see Jesus as the hometown hero of our personal church family, or whether we are willing to share Jesus with a wider world that needs him, needs him even more than we do.   Are we here to be served, or all we called to serve?  How can we cooperate with Jesus’ mission to those who lack our comforts, our privilege, our faith?   Yes, we all have our own needs and our own prayer concerns, and make no mistake, Jesus knows them and knows you far better than you know yourself.   So trust that you are part of the flock that the good shepherd has safely in his keeping.   But ask yourself who else has needs, who else has Jesus come to serve, and how you can you as disciples and church help?  Do you expect Jesus to serve you, are will you help Jesus serve others?  Those would be fruitful questions to explore with your next priest.

God Speaks Today: A Homily for the Third Sunday After Epiphany

Preached at All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 23 January, 2022.   Texts for this Sunday: Neh 8:1-3.5-6.8-10; Ps 19; 1 Cor 12:12-31a; Lk 4:14-21

“[T]he priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding.” (Neh 8:2).

Last Sunday I talked about revelation, about how we only know God because God wants us to know God’s self.   I want to continue to explore that idea today, because this Sunday’s readings also show us how God speaks to God’s people.   Today’s readings tell us how our identity as a church and people of God is dependent on our hearing and understanding the word of God spoken to us in scripture.

 In Nehemiah and Luke the people hear the words read aloud to them and react in quite different ways, reactions which speak to how these words have power, how they can challenge and even transform those who hear them.   For we who hear the word of God spoken in our midst today, these readings remind us of we are formed and shaped as church, Sunday by Sunday, in our encounters with this word that comes from God.

 As Anglicans, many of us have an uneasy relationship to scripture.   Bible studies attract a dedicated minority of parishioners.   Most of us are content to put the bible into the hands of experts, priests who have been to seminary and taken courses on Hebrew and Greek, and learned how to interpret it and explain it in preaching.  Now experts have their place. Paul says in our second lesson that not all of us can be teachers (1 For 12:28-30).   But our understanding of the bible as church never rests on any one person's understanding of it.

 Like many other preachers, I have my trusted commentators and interpreters that I consult before starting a sermon, because it's not up to me alone to decide what scripture means.   Preaching and interpretation should be guided by the received wisdom and discernment of the church built up over time.   Preaching should not one person’s eccentric and uneducated opinion.  That's why we read it together, argue over it, and work together to try and understand the bible.  Our decades-long discussions about same-sex marriage are an example of how this process plays out o ver time (some would say interminably).

 We hear and read scripture together because it belongs to the church.  We may not read or hear it all with the same confidence or knowledge base, but it is ours.  The bible is our family story, it shapes and guides our actions, it gives us hope for the future and, most importantly, it is our best way of knowing who God is and how God relates to us.  So the bible belongs to all of us, whether we have been to seminary or whether we are new to church and barely know our Philistines from our Philippians.

Our reading from Nehemiah is all about the relationship of God’s people to God’s word.  We don’t hear this book of the Old Testament that often in the life of the church, so we need to understand the this is a book that’s about God healing and restoring, and healing and restoring are what we need after two years of pandemic!

Nehemiah writes about how the Jewish people return to Jerusalem and rebuild it after their long captivity in Babylon.   As slaves and exiles they haven’t been allowed to be themselves as God’s people, and so this is a story about they re-discover who they are and who God is.   

So our first reading describes a special occasion, as the people get to hear a reading the Torah, the first five books of the bible.  As exiles and captives of Babylon, scripture was denied to them, but now they are free to hear their own story again as the people of Israel, God’s people.  Nehemiah tells us that this is for ALL the people:  “the men and the women”, and the reading takes half a day, “from early morning until midday”.   This seems like an extraordinarily long time to us (the people stand - do they get to sit down again? (Neh 8:5) but instead of complaining, we hear that the people weep, even though they were told not to.   Why would they weep?

To understand why they would weep, we need to remember what Nehemiah means by “the book of the law of Moses”.  The book of the law, or Torah, includes the first books of the Bible, from God’s naming of Abraham as the founder of a people dedicated to God, through Exodus, where Moses leads his people out of slavery to the promised land, and then in Deuteronomy and Leviticus giving the people laws that will set them apart as God’s people.  In other words, this is the story of creation, rescue and salvation by a God who loves, leads, and cares for his people.   So of course the story is emotional for a people who God was rescuing again, leading them back to rebuild a shattered Jerusalem that had seemed lost.

 If you have ever heard Martin Luther King’s last speech in Memphis, just before he was murdered, and heard him talking about his dream and of how he had been to the mountain top and seen the Promised Land, and heard the African American audience cheering along because they believed that they were the children of a God even in a racist America, well, then you have an idea of why these people would have wept when they were allowed to hear God’s word read again and were reminded that they were no longer slaves.

Nehemiah and his priest, Ezra, thus read scripture to the people to remind them who they are and who God is.   The message is about celebration, about having the freedom to rest and to worship God, and to share with one another.   This is a totally inclusive message, for it calls the listeners to remember that they are blessed, and to share that blessing with those around them who may be less fortunate:  “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine, and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared” (Neh 8:10).  This celebration is for all, not for a few, because no one is excluded from God’s family.

Likewise in our second reading, we also hear Paul talking to a  people who have been  set free.  The church in Corinth included foreigners, free people and slaves, a whole cross section of the Roman empire.  Paul reminds them that through their baptism and through the Holy Spirit they are, profoundly, remade and made together in Christ.  

The transforming presence of Christ in the world is seen strongly in our gospel reading from Luke.  Again we have a scene where the word of God, in this case Isaiah, is being read to the people, in this case the synagogue in Nazareth that Jesus has been part of all his life.   The parts of the message — “good news to the poor”, release of prisoners, healing, freedom, favour - are from the Old Testament, so in this sense the gospel closely matches the situation in Nehemiah, God’s people being encouraged by the faithfulness and love of God as described in scripture, but here the situation is different because of who the reader is and what he says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:21).

In other words - “this is all happening now”.   Jesus, by announcing that he is the Messiah foretold by scripture, moves the promises of God from the future to the present.   We go from “God will save us” to “God is saving you, now”.   It will take a long time for the people around Jesus to get it, and in fact, in the verses that follow (4:22-30) there is a riot as the people try to kill Jesus.   For the people that new him then, Jesus’ claim that he embodied God’s power, was unacceptable.   For us, the people that hear him now, the challenge is, can we allow ourselves to be shaped and transformed by the word of God that we hear?

Our gospel today begins by telling us that Jesus was “filled with the power of the Spirit”, reminding us that he speaks with God’s authority and with God’s purpose.  Likewise, when we hear the gospel read in the midst of our assembly, we remind ourselves that this an event that touches all of us.  “The Lord be with you” says the reader, and we acknowledge, “and also with you”.   That exchange of words brings us all together, as God’s people, waiting to hear what God will say to us through these stories of the words and actions of his Son.

Each Sunday, we are reminded of the same things that the returned exiles in Jerusalem hear, and that the people in the Nazareth synagogue hear, that God is faithful to his promises and faithful to his people.   The exiles hear that God is their strength.   The Nazareth synagogue hears that God is fulfilling his promises now.   Likewise we hear the same thing this morning.  We don’t hear the promise of some distant future, but rather, we hear that “the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” - right here, right now, God is delivering on his promises.

 “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”.    Jesus uses that word “today” elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, especially towards the end.   Just before he enters Jerusalem for the last time he enters the house of Zacchaeus and says “Today salvation has come to this house” (19:9).   On the cross, Jesus says to the man hanging beside him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise” ((23:43).  We get the sense in the synagogue in Nazareth that the focus has shifted from future to present, that God’s promises are embodied and happening now in Jesus.

Today, dear saints,  this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.    If you take away one thing from this sermon, it’s the encouragement that God is speaking to you, in the here and now, in the doldrums of Covid and in whatever situation you find yourself in.  God is speaking to us, and God is promising us freedom, good things for the poor, healing, restoration.  These things are happening in the here and now, thanks to Jesus’ presence in our midst, even in a remote Covid service!   

The same joy that gave strength that allowed the Jews of Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem gives strength to us now.   The same Spirit that sent him to Nazareth now touches us.  That same Jesus who embodies all these promises is in our midst, making us his body, his presence for us to show one to another, and to the world beyond.   We may still face troubles in our lives, but we know that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus which is our hope and our salvation,  happens today, each day, right here, right now, through the word of God proclaimed in the midst of us.    Dear saints, I pray that this knowledge gives you hope and strength.  Amen.

The Bible Tells Me So: A Sermon for the Second Sunday After the Epiphany

Preached at All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 16 January, 2022.

Texts for this Sunday:  Is 62:1-5; Ps 36:5-10; 1 Cor 12:1-11; Jn 2.1-11

 

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. (Jn 2:11)

 

This week at our Monday night bible study, someone asked the question, “How can we be sure that God exists?”  It’s a great question, and one that I think every person of faith struggles with from time to time, if we’re honest.   Indeed, the phrase “person of faith” seems to contain a tacit admission that God is not a matter of certainty, not something or someone that we can empirically know, but rather something that we have to believe, without the assurance of proof.

Today I want to spend a few minutes thinking this question through, and I will suggest that this current season of the church year, Epiphany, is a good place to start.  Epiphany is from a Greek word that means a revelation, a showing of something to someone.   In the life of the church, Epiphany ends the traditional twelve days of the Christmas season as a kind of summary of what Christmas has been all about.

So what is Christmas all about?   Christmas is about God revealing God’s self to humanity.   All of the scripture readings we hear around Christmas – Gabriel appearing to Mary and then to Joseph, the shepherds telling the shepherds to go to Bethlehem, the star leading the Magi to the Christ child, the baptized Jesus declared as God’s beloved son – all these stories do the same thing.  These stories all teach us that God wants to be known, that God wants to be in relationship with us as Emmanuel, God with us.  In other words, all these stories are about revelation, about God revealing God’s self to us.

How does God reveal God’s self to us?   Primarily, through scripture, and this point needs to be made because it’s fashionable for people to say that God speaks to them through nature, or through the love of their pets, or through charity work, or some other very personal way.   Without wanting to call these sentiments into question, we need to admit that without scripture, we are free to imagine any sort of god or divinity we care to think of.  Scripture safeguards us from creating our own gods, an activity that we humans are notoriously prone to (see calves, golden).

The reason the church listens to scripture is because it is only through scripture that we hear the voice of a particular god, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of the prophets, the God foretold by John the Baptist, the incarnate Son of God Jesus who comes to us, lives with us, dies for us, and who rises again.  If it were not for scripture, we would not know this God.

At this point, someone might reasonably object and say, well, how can we trust scripture?   Aren’t parts of scripture judgemental and awful?   Isn’t scripture an ancient book produced by fallible humans?   Can’t we modern, rational people find some better, more enlightened way of thinking about God?

As an old man, after writing many, many books, the theologian Karl Barth was asked by a television interviewer to explain his life’s work.  Barth paused, and in his heavy Swiss German accent, said that his life’s work amounted to this:  “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so.”

Barth was slyly using this old children’s hymn to remind us that the bible is ultimately all that we have to go on.   Of course the bible is a human production, but the bible is also God’s revelation, it is the human-authored record of God’s wanting to break through to us, to love us, and to save us.

Let’s try to use today’s gospel, the story of the Wedding at Cana, to think this through.  The story only appears in John’s gospel, so we have to take John’s word that it actually happened, but if you’re not willing to trust John literally, let’s at least consider why John felt the need to include it in his account of Jesus.   

John calls this miracle  “the first of [Jesus’] signs”, and in John’s gospel, the word “signs” means a miraculous thing that Jesus does to point to his identity as the Son of God, and John leaves it up to us to believe them or not.

So why this particular miracle?   It’s not a healing, a cosmic struggle with a devil, or a resurrection (though we find these things elsewhere in John to be sure).  All Jesus does is create wine out of water for wedding guests who are already, as the steward notes, pleasantly tipsy!  In fact, Jesus creates so much wine (6 20 gallon jugs = about 600 bottles!) that we have to wonder, is this excessive amount of wine included simply to demonstrate Jesus’ supernatural powers?

Certainly that’s part of it.   Creating water our of wine points to God’s creative power, to be sure, but it also points us back to the idea of Emmanuel, God with us.  Jesus wants the wedding guests to have a good time.   He wants to celebrate with them, he wants to share in all the joyous moments of a wedding with bride and groom, family and friends, which is presumably why he was there as an invited guest in the first place.    Jesus’ commitment to the success of the wedding feast shows God’s desire to bless us with friends and happiness and times of celebration.  The story shows God’s commitment to very texture of our human lives.

Again, that’s part of it.   However, we know that life isn’t all celebration.  Life also contains times of sorrow and tragedy, and these moments are anticipated as well.  When Mary urges Jesus to act, and he says “my hour has not yet come” (Jn 2.4), she does not know what her son means.   Jesus however knows, and we as John’s audience soon learn, that the Son’s hour means his death: “when I am lifted up [on the cross] from the earth, [I] will draw all people to me” (Jn 12.32).

Jesus will embrace the entire gamut of human experience, from his mother’s love and pride to the joy of the wedding guests to the hatred of the mob and the slow death of the cross.  Indeed, he must do all these things so that he can promise to Martha, at the time of their shared grief for Lazarus, that “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11.25).

All these things are hinted at in the Wedding at Cana.  Why does John include it?   To show us a Saviour willing to share all the moments of our lives, the good and the bad, in joy and sorrow, in life and death, so that he may be life for us.    Why does only John include it?  That we can’t know for sure.  Perhaps only John of the four evangelists knew of it, though much of what we think about how the bible is written is educated guesswork.  Can we trust this story?   Perhaps not, though there are far more fantastic things that scripture asks us to believe.  

At the end of the day, perhaps the best question we can ask is this:  what does the Wedding at Cana tell us about God?  It tells us something vital about the character of God, namely that God wants us to share our joy and laughter, even our tipsy moments, just as God want to share our sorrow and fear and even our death, so that he may save us after our death.   At the end of the day, all we can say is that “Jesus loves us, this we know, because the bible tells us so”.   Amen.

The Baptized King: A Sermon for the Baptism of the Lord

 

The Baptized King:  A Sermon for the Baptism of the Lord.  Preached online at All Saints, King City, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 9 January, 2022.

 

Texts for this Sunday:  Isa 43.1-7; Ps 29; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3.15-17, 21-22.

“I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming” (Luke 3.16)

All through Advent we’ve heard in scripture the wonderful promises to a people that sorely need good news. We’ve heard God tell his people that the bad times aren’t going to last. A saviour will come to lead us out of the darkness and back to the light of God. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light, Isaiah says, and for us this Christmas, as always, that light was a star that led us to the manger in Bethlehem. We saw the baby lying there, and perhaps we wondered, as the shepherds and the Magi wondered, what sort of king will this little one become? What kingdom will he inherit? What deeds of power will he do?

Today we get our first real glimpse of him since this last Christmas.  He’s over there, on the muddy bank of the Jordan, the humble carpenter from Galilee, patiently waiting his turn to be baptized, while others go into the water before him.  As is always the case in the gospels, it’s usually hard to see how Jesus is any sort of king.

Why is the king waiting to be baptized?  Have you ever wondered why Jesus needed to be baptized? John the Baptist was out there in the desert, telling the people to confess their sins, repent, and get baptized. John was even telling the proud and holy Pharisees to repent, even though they were the expert keepers of God’s law. He warned them to straighten up and fly right, because the one coming on his heels came from God himself. The one coming was bringing the fire and the winnowing fork. He was going to sort the good from the bad, and woe to you if you were one of the bad!

I think after that preaching, the crowds were expecting someone impressive.  Luke tells us that the crowds were “full of expectation” (Lk 3.15).  I’m sure John was as well.   In Matthew’s gospel, the Baptist is scandalized when Jesus comes down into the muddy brown water of the Jordan, where all the others have stood before him (Mt 3.14).  

Why did our Lord and Saviour, the Alpha and the Omega, need to receive a baptism from John just like any other sinner? Did he need a baptism for the forgiveness of his sins? All the gospels agree that Jesus was a blameless person, a person without sin. Jesus had nothing to repent of, which makes sense, because why would the Saviour need to be saved himself? So there’s got to be another reason, and I think the reason has to do with you and me.

How did Jesus get into that muddy crick to stand before John? He would have to climbed down the bank like everyone else, literally stepping in the footprints of all the sinners who had gone before him. He didn’t have to do that. Jesus could have stayed up there on the riverside in a blaze of glory and said, “That’s right, folks, I’m the guy he was talking about”. He could have said to John “Good work, John, I’ll take it from here.” For that matter, Jesus could have stayed with the Father in heaven. But he doesn’t.

I think the whole point of Jesus’ baptism is to say, this is the moment when God announces his purpose, to send his son to stand in the mud and water with us rather than to lord it over us. This is when God unveils the servant who will save us, the healer who will heal us, the light who will lead us and bring us back to God.

When the voice from heaven says “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Lk 3.22), we hear the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy that the Saviour would not be a king as the world understood kings, but a servant.   Isaiah wrote: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations” (Isa 42:1).

Jesus’ baptism is God’s announcement that Jesus is the servant who will do all the wonderful things that Isaiah prophesied. Jesus will go to the bruised, to those whose hopes are faintly burning, to those imprisoned by illness and by social stigma, he will teach and he will heal. His mission is to bring God’s justice, God’s kingdom, to the earth, even if it has to lay down his life in shame and pain to do it. As the preacher Barabara Taylor Brown puts it so well, he serves us by coming to us, “where we are, over and over again, when he could save himself the grief, the pain, the death, by insisting that we come to him where he is” (Barbara Brown Taylor. “Sacramental Mud”. Mixed Blessings Cambridge, Mass: Cowley Publications, p. 59).

He comes to us because he loves us, as the Father loves him. Each of us first experiences this love at the moment of our baptism, when God names us and sets his spirit on us. From then on, as we move life we have the reassurance of knowing that we too are beloved children in whom God’s soul delights. We can find strength for whatever crappy, muddy place we find ourselves in, Jesus is standing there with us. When we find ourselves in darkness, when the way forward seems unclear to us, Jesus is the light, he’s the guide that takes us by the hand. When you feel down, or lost, or just not worth much, say to yourself, “I am God’s beloved child”. If you doubt it, if you don’t think you’re worthy of saying that, just remember that you were worth dying on a cross for.

As we face this new year, with all its doubts and fears, how will you live in the knowledge that you too are God’s beloved child?   As you imagine All Saints post-Covid, with your new priest, how will you love and serve others so they may see that they too are loved and called by God?

Christ Bless Our House: A Sermon For The Feast of the Epiphany

 

Preached at All Saints, King City, Ontario, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday, 2 January, 2022, the Feast of the Epiphany (transferred from 6 Jan).

Lections for Epiphany:  Isaiah 60.1-6, Psalm 72.1-7,10-14, Ephesians 3.1-12, Matthew 2.1-12

“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." (Mt 2.2)

This Sunday is the last time in the season of Christmas when we make our way to visit the child Jesus in Bethlehem, and today we journey in the steps of the wandering Magi, those mysterious figures who “bearing gifts … traverse afar”.   

Who were the Magi?   A year ago I preached about how the Magi are included in Matthew’s nativity story because they point to Jesus.  Like John the Baptist who we saw before Christmas, the Magi are included in the gospel because they point to Jesus.   They recognize God’s acts of revelation, of God revealing God’s self in the star and in the babe in Bethlehem, and they respond to it.   The Magi are thus an example for us, so that we are ready to recognize God in Christ and to respond with gratitude and adoration to our Saviour.

A year ago my sermon text was Ephesians 3.9-10, in which St. Paul tells us that the church has the same job as the Magi, to show the world the “wisdom” and love of God as we follow Jesus and show his love to others.   Today I want to talk about another, and very old, way that you and your family can show the love of God to the world, using a piece of chalk and your front door.

Since the middle ages, Christians at Epiphany have customarily had a blessing said over their houses.  In part this tradition remembers the journey of the Wise Men, but it also reflects the Christmas mystery of the Incarnation, when as St. John writes, “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us”.   The faithful would ask Christ to visit and bless their own houses, in the form of a simple message or prayer written about the doorway.  This custom has beenrecovered by many churches today, and I commend it to you this Epiphany.

Using a piece of chalk, write the following above the doorway of your house or apartment:

                                   20 + C + M + B +22

Does that look like algebra to you?  It’s actually quite simple.  The “20” and “22” are the new year.   The letters represent the traditional names of the Magi – Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar – but also in Latin stand for “Christus mansion benedicat”, meaning “May Christ bless this house”.  The three “+”s are not plus signs, but rather are crosses, their threefold number representing both the three crosses of Calvary and the number of the Trinity.

At the back of the church you’ll find some chalk, and a simple set of prayers which you and your family can say together after you write out the blessing prayer.    You can wait until Thursday, Jan 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, to do this, or do it now. 

As the Omicron variant of Covid seems everywhere, my hope is that this simple act of prayer and devotion will make your home feel safe and guarded by our Lord Jesus and the holy angels.   It might also serve as a small act of witness to your neighbours.  If someone asks you what this cryptic code means, you can explain it to them and even offer them your chalk!

May God bless and keep us all in the new year, and make our homes places of warmth, love, faith and kindness.