The Wisdom of God

St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
Ephesians 3: 1-12, Rev. Marianne Niesen, January 4, 2009

 

Can you believe it was just two weeks ago that we celebrated our Christmas Cantata with the choir and, in the evening, the Jazz Solstice Service? Two weeks! Just two weeks! It seems longer, doesn’t it? So much has happened. This is one of my favorite times of the year but you may be surprised to hear that it isn’t only because of Christmas. Don’t get me wrong . . . I love Christmas . . . but I also love the coming of the solstice. It does my heart good to know that the days are getting longer now - and it will continue that way until June 21st. No matter how dark it has been, no matter how cold (and it has been cold this year) everything around me now affirms that it won’t last. Light wins out. Warmth will come. It will not always be icy and treacherous out there. On so many levels this is a wonderfully reassuring time of year. As the refrain from the hymn Joy to the World affirms ‘heaven and nature sing’ of hope and warmth and good and light. We can take down our Christmas lights now because the heavens themselves will take over the job of lighting the night! (And, if you think about it, it’s nice to have help with the darkness!)

In a sense, that’s what the Christmas season is all about . . . help with the darkness.

Usually, on this Sunday, this last Sunday of the Christmas season, I would read Matthew’s story of the coming of the magi to Bethlehem. That is called the ‘epiphany’ which means ‘showing’ or ‘revelation.’ The coming of the magi reminds us that the ‘good news’ of Jesus is for everyone. Even foreigners. Even strangers. Even those rich travelers ‘from the east’ were welcome at the birth of Jesus. This is not a coercive message . . . you believe in this baby or else. Unfortunately through the years, some Christians have acted exactly like that. No, the epiphany is not about what we do, it is, first of all, about what God does. God reveals. God invites. God lights the way (remember, a star led the magi). The message is clear . . . no one can limit God’s light. No one owns the grace of God. Like the solstice reminds us, light wins and it is God’s doing. Our role - and we do have one - is to be instruments of the light - to make the world brighter.

And one of the very first ‘instruments of the light’ was a man named Paul. In fact, rather than reading the story of the magi today, I want to read another Epiphany text - from the letter to the Ephesians - written by Paul or a close associate of Paul. As we hear this text, realize that this is written before the other parts of the New Testament. When Paul went about his work of preaching and teaching, he didn’t have a Christian Bible with him. It hadn’t been compiled yet. If any gospels were written, Paul didn’t know about them. There is no evidence that he had heard the story of Christmas or the magi or any of the other stories we so take for granted. Instead, Paul relied on and he preached from his personal experience of the risen Christ. He had met the Lord. He had experienced the light and the liberation of knowing Christ and he was compelled to share it. He risked everything for the privilege of sharing this good news, which he believed was world-brightening. Listen to the text:
 

This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called.
 

First, you notice, Paul is in jail. He was in prison or, as other translations relate, ‘in chains.’ That is a particular way of being in prison . . . he is literally chained to a Roman guard, completely dependent on the guard for everything and watched constantly! And he is writing to ‘outsiders.’
 

I take it that you're familiar with the part I was given in God's plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief. As you read over what I have written to you, you'll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God's Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order.
 

Paul is writing about something he calls a ‘mystery’ which has only come to be understood recently . . . in other words, he is sharing new mysterious ‘inside’ information with ‘outsiders.’ And then he gives them the ‘scoop’ . . .
 

The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of God all their lives (what I've been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board. This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details.
 

Do you hear the surprise - the‘epiphany’ - for Paul? The way Paul experienced the love of Christ, and the gospel he preached was that everyone was welcome at God’s table of love. God had left no one out. And, letting people know that became his ‘life work.’ Remember, Paul was a Jew. He had heard all his life about the separation between Jews and Gentiles, clean and unclean, believers and pagans (like the Romans). And he had been enlightened to see that in God’s world, there were no separations. Whether he’d heard the story of the magi or not, Paul clearly got the point. God’s love was boundary-breaking, earth-shattering, empire-challenging, life-changing. The ‘message’ was that everyone had a place. He continues . . .
 

When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God's way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.
 

The story gets even better, Paul says . . . God can use anyone! Just look at me! Can you see what he is doing? He’s setting them up . . . if you are part of the ‘insiders’ (which you are), you have work to do. No excuses. We have light to spread!
 

My task is to bring out in the open and make plain (do you hear it . . .enlighten, revelation, epiphany) what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through Christians like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels! (Heaven-and-nature!) All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we're free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go.
 

Wow! This is how Paul proclaims the amazing news of God’s embracing love that we have just celebrated in Christmas. God’s love knows no bounds - and we who believe have work to do! Insiders and outsiders no more! That epiphany light is ours to share!

Like the magi in Matthew’s gospel, Paul gave up everything - home, security, long held beliefs - to do what he believed God had called him to do. To follow his star. And, like Jesus himself, Paul risked the wrath of Rome to do it. Remember, the Romans believed that Caesar Augustus was god, the Lord of lords, the King of kings, the savior of the world. Caesar Augustus was the prince of peace who had brought peace to the world by fighting wars and conquering enemies. That was the only way it could be done, they said. But, Paul had seen another light. And he preached throughout the Roman empire what he had come to know in Christ. There were no insiders and outsiders. There were no enemies. All were part of God’s family. And peace would come not through fighting but through creating a more just world, a world where all had enough. A world where even the powerful would kneel at the cribs of babies and bring gifts.

You can see why Paul ended up in prison! He directly confronted the power of Rome with the message of Christ. Jesus - not Caesar - was the light of the world. Hope would come not through Rome’s next victory but through the actions of Christians who lived a different way. Paul proclaimed to all who would listen . . . our only hope is Christ’s vision of justice and God’s embrace of all. Christ will help us with the darkness! Paul proclaimed the coming of Christ as the solstice event that would make a difference. Does it?

Just two weeks ago, on December 22, the solstice, Associated Press writer Mitch Stacy published an article that was carried by many news agencies. The title was 15 year old John Halgrim wanted to help orphans. Here’s the story in brief . . .
 

In early 2006, a 14 year old boy named John Halgrim learned he had an inoperable brain tumor. The only options for him were radiation and chemotherapy. The outlook was grim.

"Before he got sick," Stacy writes, "John went to church most Sundays with his family but wasn’t what you would call religious. He acknowledged that something happened to him when the cancer showed up.

‘I learned I needed to change my life,’ he wrote in the journal he started keeping, ‘I learned I needed to live my life through God’s eyes and not my own.’" (In other words, John’s cancer was an epiphany, a revelation, a star that would lead him.)

John learned that, as a child with cancer, he had a wish coming from the Make-A-Wish foundation. When the Make-A-Wish folks arrived at his home, they asked what his wish would be.

"‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ John told the woman who spoke with him. He had considered a trip to the Bahamas . . . but as his illness intensified, a wholly different idea came to mind. . . maybe the mission videos he’d seen at church planted the seed, the ones showing kids living in slums without running water. Or maybe it was that TV program about parentless African children being forced into slavery. Whatever the reason, John became fixated on those children and that place.

‘I want to stop the hunger in Africa,’ he told the wish-granter. ‘I want to open an orphanage in Africa..’"

The wish-granter didn’t know quite what to do with that agenda. "John, that’s a really big wish . . . I’m not sure Make-A-Wish can do a wish like that. Do you have a second wish?"

"‘Nope, that’s my only one.’"

John got sicker and sicker and the Make-A-Wish people tried to figure out how they could help. Eventually, the pastor of his uncle’s church, heard about it. Someone brought a video camera to John’s home and he spoke about his wish. More people heard about it. Money was raised - and then more money. Shortly before his death in late 2007, he actually saw an artist’s rendering of the orphanage that would be called the John E. Halgrim Orphanage. Then, the brain tumor had spread and he could barely move and had difficulty seeing. But, he understood and gave a weak but happy thumbs up. He died a couple weeks later. At his funeral, another $15,000 was raised. And just this past November - a year to the day of John’s funeral - John’s mom was in Kenya to dedicate the building that would house her son’s wish come true.
 

The Christmas season ends today with the Epiphany. But, while the season ends, Paul and John and the magi remind us that we dare not let the light and hope and promise of Christmas ever end. No matter who we are, we can brighten the world. May we, like Paul and John and the magi, be ‘epiphany’ Christians. Living epiphany is how we make the love of God real today. Epiphany happens whenever we level the barrier between insiders and outsiders - like Paul. Epiphany happens when we give of ourselves to make a difference - like John. Epiphany happens when we offer what we have, our particular gifts, to make the world better - like the magi.

May we, here at St. Paul’s, in this new year of 2009, dedicate ourselves to living epiphany and in so doing, may we be instruments of light and love in our day, in our time. May that be our only wish - and our best work. Amen.