Sermon Trinity NY. Jan. 5, 2025 Sunday Sermon, The Rev. Kristin Kaulbach Miles
The three themes for today’s scriptures are arise shine, redemption as relationship, and another road home.
Epiphany, one of our seven principal church feasts, means manifestation, the manifestation of the divine, specifically the coming of God into the world through the birth of Jesus. It’s about seeing stars and people and discerning what is true. It reminds us that paying attention is a very important practice
The writer Sylvia Boorstein says that liberating understanding comes more from seeing how things are than from seeing how we are. She says we ruminate and regret and reflect and rehearse endlessly. We pass by now only briefly on the way from ruminating to rehearsing, hardly pausing to relax. In her book about meditation, Don’t just do something, sit there. Sylvia shares how she has covered her habit of transforming neutral fact into painful opinion many years ago.
Many years ago when she phoned a monastery to arrange for a private retreat, the person she spoke with said you need to speak with Robert. the retreat master. She left a message for Robert and was assured he would call back. The following day she had a message on her answering machine from Robert saying he had returned her call. The day after that she phoned and was told once again that Robert wasn’t there. She explained that she had called Robert and Robert had called her and here she was now calling Robert again. She added, maybe this is a sign that I’m not supposed to do my retreat there. The response she got was “I think it’s just a sign that Robert isn’t here.”
Epiphany is a day to receive God’s gift of God’s self for us by being present to where we are to see more clearly what is, not more than it is and not less .
The first theme arise shine from our Isaiah passage is written from the experience of Babylonian captivity. It expresses hope for the Israelite people to return to Judea after great pain tremendous dislocation and struggle. In contrast to what they gone through, this passage lifts up a different reality that they will be honored, that they will be homage to them , gifts from foreign powers rather than oppression. It expresses blessing for the future
In order to get there Isaiah offers that people must find their own way to arise and shine, to stand up in the darkness and to declare in word and deed what grace has allowed them to see. Jan Richardson has a poem called “How the Stars Get in your Bones” . It’s basically how to arise, shine how to turn to the light again and again. to allow grace in us but that is how the stars get in our bones. “It comes from the helpless place in you that despite all cannot help but hope. The part of you that does not know how not to keep turning toward this world to keep turning your face toward this sky, to keep turning your heart toward this unendurable earth knowing your heart will break but turning still.” I. tell you she writes “this is how the stars get in your bones. This is how the brightness makes a home in you”
Theme two Redemption is relationship. Our Psalm 72 is a royal hymn likely used for a coronation of a Judean King. The king has power and the Psalm says it is to be used to protect and help those who don’t have it. This mission had been entrusted to the monarchy but it becomes a calling for all of the people with these Psalms long outlasted the monarchy. It becomes a call for us to rule your people righteously in the court of justice, to defend the needy among the peoples, to rescue the poor, to deliver the poor who cries out in distress and the oppressed who has no helper, to preserve the lives of the needy, to redeem their lives from oppression and violence.
The Psalm speaks of redemption, to redeem. In ancient Israel, the responsibility of redemption in the earthly realm fell to family members. To redeem a person was to assume a role of intimacy, almost like a family member. not to keep pain or need at arm’s length . Another way of saying this is in Ephesians where we hear about access to God. The Greek noun has to do with ushering someone in into the presence of another. Ephesians relays that Jesus was God’s intention from the beginning with the relationship with creation. For Matthew, this relationship brings together the intimacy, the coming into the world and living with such vulnerability with each of us. That’s what’s incarnation is about. Proximity – God with us, us with one another.
Third theme. Another road home. The wisdom of the wise men you see in our gospel involves the practice of wandering, of wondering. It involves generosity, sharing. It involves a spiritual hunger one that has taken us here today to this community and leads us forward. Wisdom is a beautiful invitation to look around for the light, a willingness to be curious . It also involves assessment and discernment. Perhaps, we don’t know where we are going but we do know that some of the paths we have traveled previously may no longer be fruitful.
We are invited to take another road home, perhaps the way that Silvia Goldstein has offered, a practice of awareness as to make our minds aware of the stories about ourselves and others that distract us so . We can’t see beyond the shadows to work with what is before us. Perhaps that practice is another way home to ourselves and God. Perhaps we are missing out on the wonder and the joy that is actually here. In the translation of Wycliffe’s Bible, the choir beautifully sang in our prelude. “They saw the star and joyed with a full weight joy.”
In this Epiphany season may we wonder together, may we see the divine purpose within us. If so moved, may we try on one or all of these themes to arise, shine . redemption as relationship, another road home.