Epiphany sermon

Epiphany

           

           

            Listen to the words of Isaiah:“… A multitude of camels

                shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah…”

          Epiphany gets me thinking about Camels.

Camels are remarkable creatures—a miracle of design.  Without Camels the history of northern Africa and what we call the Middle East would have been very different.

          And the Magi wouldn’t have made it to Bethlehem.

          Camels have two humps and are larger than their one-humped cousins, the dromedaries.

Those two humps are made of fat for the camels to live on when there’s nothing to eat. And when they do eat, they eat the sparse, thorny plants that survive in the desert.

          Camels have thick fibrous pads on their feet to keep the heat of the sand from burning them and to maintain better balance. They can travel 70 miles a day and can store 30 quarts of water in their stomachs. In extreme heat they can go without water for nearly a week.

          Camels have flaps on their nostrils that close during sandstorms.

They are a miracle of design. You couldn’t make up an animal more suited for that part of the world than a camel. And since they can carry 600 pounds on their backs, they made trade and exploration possible in the harsh, barren regions of the middle East.

          Because of Camels, great and sophisticated civilizations flourished in one of the most inhospitable areas of the world.

          Camels almost certainly carried Balthazar, Melichior and Caspar on their long journey to from Babylon to Judea.

          So, Epiphany makes me think about camels and about those exotic astrologers they carried to Jesus.

          Bethlehem was a tiny village in the first century when the Magi arrived. A back-water town. A “one horse” town—or, more accurately, a “one camel” town.

          The Magi were wealthy men from a high priestly caste. They were sophisticated—and important enough to demand an audience with King Herod and to cause a stir in Jerusalem.

          Bethlehem must have seemed strange and primitive to them.

          I have a mental picture of the Magi as they approached Joseph’s simple working-class house. They must have wondered if their calculations were somehow off, it they had read the heavens incorrectly. How could the Golden Child the stars had foretold be here in this ordinary place?

          The word of their arrival would have spread like wild-fire through Bethlehem. The whole village must have come out to gawk and wonder at these astonishing foreigners. Their caravan would have drawn a crowd of on-lookers, pondering what would bring men of unimaginable wealth to such an unimportant place.

          Balthazar, Melichior and Caspar were used to marble palaces and royalty. Yet there they were, ducking their heads to enter the low doorway of a carpenter’s house, dropping to their knees on the straw-covered, dirt floor, opening gifts of astonishing value before a simple, teenaged girl and her toddler son.

         

          Epiphanies seldom come on camel back.

          Epiphanies are seldom wrapped in silk and gold.

          Epiphany is the un-concealing of God in the midst of life. And epiphanies seldom come on camel back. God is seldom revealed, seldom unconcealed in the spectacular and remarkable events of life.

          In fact, there is a dictionary definition of an “epiphany” that I memorized many years ago because I knew I needed to remember it. It goes like this: “an epiphany is the sudden, intuitive knowledge of the deep-down meaning of things, usually manifested in what is ordinary, everyday and commonplace.”

          God is manifested to us like that: suddenly and intuitively. An epiphany points us past the surface meaning to the deep-down meaning, the essence, the very core and marrow of understanding.

            But seldom is “god-ness” manifested in the unusual, spectacular and extraordinary. When God comes to us, it is in what is ordinary, everyday and commonplace.

          Epiphanies do not have as much to do with “what we’re looking at” as they do with “the way we see.”

          Let’s give the Magi credit—they knew how to see. For two years and thousands of desert miles, they had expected to find a Prince, a King, a Golden Child in a Royal Palace. Yet, when they entered that humble home and saw that commonplace family in the midst of their everyday life with their ordinary little boy, they knew how to see. They brought out their gifts and they “fell down and worshiped him.”

         

          If only we knew how to see so well.

          When I lived in Divinity Hall at Harvard Divinity School, my best friend was Dan Kiger, who’s became a Methodist minister in Ohio. Dan and I played Gin Rummy every day for an hour before dinner in his room for a penny a point. All these year’s later, he still owes me money.

          On the wall of Dan’s room was a poster consisting of thousands of black dots on a white background. I stared at it for countless hours while Dan decided what to discard. I thought of it as an interesting “impressionistic” picture.

          Then one day, while we were playing Gin Rummy, a friend from down the hall came in to borrow an envelope from Dan. While Dan was looking for an envelope in his desk, Hank said, “that’s a great picture of Jesus” and pointed to the poster of a thousand dots.

          After Hank left, I sat staring at the poster for a long time. “How’s that a picture of Jesus?” I finally asked Dan.

          He got up and pointed to one of the thousands of dots. “That’s his left eye,” was all Dan had to say. Suddenly, I saw it—it was Jesus! And I could never again see it as merely thousands of dots.

          Epiphanies are like that. If we only know how to see, God is everywhere in our world, in our lives.

           

          We need eyes to see.

          We need to see that God is manifested to us in what is common and ordinary.

          We need to see the one dot in the millions of dots that is the left eye of God.

          The Sufi’s have a saying. Whenever you hear hoof beats, look for a Zebra.

          Those are the eyes we need. Eyes to see Zebras and Camels in the midst of what is ordinary…eyes to see God in the commonplace…eyes to see Star Light in the dust motes of our everyday lives…eyes to see the Christ Child in every child’s face….eyes to see what is “most holy” in what is “most mundane”….

hoppin' john

I mentioned to a nurse who gives me my bi-weekly shots that we had "Hoppin' John" for New Year's Day--as we have for years.

She had no idea what I meant, so I told her.

Bern and I aren't true Southerners, we're from Appalachia and neither of us ever had Hoppin' John in our childhood. But I found out about it at some point and we started a New Year's tradition.

Here's a little verse many of you will know:

"Beans, beans, a wonderful fruit,
the more you eat the more you poop.
The more you poop, the better you feel,
so eat your beans at every meal."

The main ingredient of Hoppin' John is black-eyed peas, which are, of course, beans not peas. And they work like the verse says, believe you me.

Then their is rice to mix with the black-eyed peas and some kind of pork (we had ham) and cooked kale.

That's Hoppin' John. And it is gooood!!!

There's a story to it--the kale stands for green money, the rice is for happiness, the black eyed peas are for health and the pork is for luck in the coming year.

Or something like that--I may have everything but the kale.

I really love it, but be prepared to always be near a toilet for a couple of days....

have a new year like mine

Today I was thinking about my cousin, Mejol.

What I was thinking is what I would say about her.

And this is how it would go: "I have no brothers and sisters, but I am not an 'only child'--I had Mejol."

Mejol is 6 years older than me and my parents had adopted her as a sort of child of theirs before I was born. Mejol wasn't an orphan--she had a mother (my mother's sister, Georgia) and a brother (Bradley) named for my father. But her father, the other "Jim" on my mother's side (several more "Jim's" on my father's side) had what would now be known as PT SD. from being in the navy in the Pacific in WWII. He wandered away a lot and spent his last years in a VA hospital in Virginia.

But Mom and Dad were childless and growing older (in those days, 38 and 41 were 'older') so they had Mejol be a surrogate

So, when I came along, Mejol was still around and was at our home a lot as we were at hers. She went on vacations with us to the Smokey Mountains for several years. (Why Appalachians went to the mountains for vacations is an unanswered question.)

She corrected my spelling all through school--I still can't spell and thank God for spell-check on the computer except that no matter how many times I tell it to 'ignor' Mejol's name, it won't.

She also, when I was 12 or so, locked me in her room with a copy of Catcher in the Rye and an album by Bob Dylan. That afternoon literally changed my life forever. It drug me out of just being a boy from the coal fields that I had been, to something else. Better or worse, I'll leave to you--but, believe you me, I was never the same after Salinger and Dylan.

I talked with her for almost an hour tonight on the phone. She still keeps me from being 'an only child'.

I love her so. She has molded and formed me in more ways than I can tell you.

For example, she is the only other person on either side of my family that is an Episcopalian!

My journey to the Episcopal Church was made possible because she made the journey first.

Imagine how profound that is to me.

I hope you think about something this New Year that formed and shaped you and made you who you are the way Mejol did for me.

That would be my New Year's gift to you.

Happy, Happy One!

Man ("-impulator") of the people

So, 800,000 federal employees are not getting paid (though many are working without pay) because the President is being pissie about his 'wall' that not only won't be built, CAN'T be built because it would require incredible purchases of private land and destruction of several environmentally endangered places and (besides all that) there are simply areas along the southern boarder where a wall simply couldn't be built.

(That's a long sentence, I know. And probably not correctly punctuated. But I don't think or write straight when I'm thinking about all this.)

And then, yesterday he signed an executive order freezing the salaries of ALL federal workers except the military!

Several trite sayings come to mind: "adding insult to injury"; "pouring salt on the wound" and "flogging a dead horse", among others.

Retired 4 star general McChrrystal said today that the President was "dishonest and immoral".

And I won't argue with that.

Enough is enough.

Come on Robert Mueller, get stuff going.

The new Democratic House is set and ready to help you....

"The time has come," the Walrus said.....There are many things to bring out of the shadows into the light of truth and decency and honor.

Let's get going.

{Oh, as an afterthought, our Commander-in-Chump (er, Chief) flat out lied to the troops he visited in the Middle East over the holidays. He told them he gave them a 10% raise when it was really around 2% and said they hadn't had a raise in years when they've gotten one every year and some higher than his in the Obama years. Isn't lying to Americans in service to their country just damn wrong?}

 

church bells and jeans

We live in hearing distance of two church bells--First Congregational Church and St. Peter's Episcopal Church. They toll the hours.

There is something comforting and centering about hearing the church bells each hour.

Sort of like the pair of jeans I wear almost every day for some time. I don't wear them when I wash them, every two weeks or so.

There's a split at the knee, in the inside stitching that will need to be sewn sooner or later. But they fit perfectly and are oh, so soft and I feel comfortable and centered wearing them.

Things that both comfort and center are things to be appreciated and thankful for. Things that comfort and center are blessings.

Bern does that for me, most of all. Our years together have not always been perfect--but in great measure they have been comforting and centering.

Our new dog, Bridget, does that better than any dog we've ever had. She is so easy and sweet and good you just feel good around her.

Bacon does it for me too--if not to crisp and not too rare.

Birdsong as well--not much this time of year in Connecticut.

Pinot Grigio does too.

I'll give you a blessing: take ten minutes and think of the things that give you comfort and make you feel centered.

And give thanks for each of them.

(You're welcome....)

I'm surprised how much it hurts....

In the next 24 hours, there is a huge possibility that Sears will be no more.

Lots of big box stores have been going out of business--but Sears? Or, as I remember it, Sears and Roebuck...that's a whole different thing.

Most of my clothes and Christmas presents came from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. It was a staple at my childhood home. And there was a Sears store in Bluefield, across two mountains from where I grew up. We'd go there often.

Sears was Amazon but in a catalog, not on line.

And the out of date catalogs were in my Grandmother Jones' outhouse to use like toilet paper--not pleasant as I remember it, and not very effective.

That outhouse was a two seat outhouse though I never used it with anyone else and couldn't imagine doing that. But it did mean you had twice as much poop and pee to put in the ground before you had to dig a new hole and move the outhouse. And there was, besides the Sears catalog, lye to throw in after you were done to dilute the smell.

But truly, though I visited many Sears stores over my lifetime, it was the Sears and Roebuck catalog that I thought of when I heard the company had one day left before total bankruptcy. The Sears in Meriden closed several years ago and I've never been in a store since. Yet the end of Sears surprises me how much it hurts.

Childhood memories are precious. And one of mine is dying.

 

Going to Brooklyn

John volunteered to drive, which made my heart leap up! I hate driving to Brooklyn. I'd rather drive to Columbus, Ohio than Brooklyn.

Eleanor was asleep when we got there, after an uneventful two hours.

But she woke up and we gave her our presents--about 40 cut-able pieces of food and all these pans to cook food in.

She spent over an hour tearing the Velcro that holds the pieces together with a toy knife and putting the pieces in pans. She wanted no help. thank you! And very few suggestions, thank you very much.

Then we went to lunch at a bar less than a block away--nothing you need is far away in Brooklyn.

Mimi started feeling bad and retreated to their 13th floor apartment. I had, on a whimsy, a fried oyster sandwich and fries. The sandwich was amazing as were the fries.

Then we drove back to New Haven, where John lives, to pick up our car. The trip back was a typical Brooklyn to CT drive--40 minutes longer than the GPS had initially promised.

Tim and Mimi were great (besides Mimi's feeling bad) and Eleanor was, as always, amazing! So cute, so smart, so fun.

There was a woman on the street where Tim and Mimi live, with her head on the pavement, though her feet were on the ground. She was there when we went to the bar and had moved maybe five feet when we came back. Bern and I had seen her before. She's a local. John hadn't. He's a psychologist for the VA and has worked in several mental hospitals and had never seen anything like her.

He and Bern talked about her in creeping traffic for nearly an hour.

I almost smacked them both.

This is a woman that needs to be in an institution that we, in this country, have chosen not to maintain because of the cost. Nothing short of 24 hour care would help her--but we let poor folks like her, with serious mental health problems, be on the streets of Brooklyn and most any city of any size.

Children can be held, against their will, in detention, away from their parents, from Central America but a clearly disturbed woman can't be housed for her own good.

Make American Great Again! Give me a break....

Make America Sane Again! should be our goal.

God help  us!