God’s love is embodied for all people!

God’s love is embodied for all people!

         If you’re keeping track, we’re on the 12^th day of Christmas. We’ve been celebrating the birth of Jesus
—such a surprising occurrence, the seeds of the Kingdom of God are planted,
God has skin in the game,
God with us,
God’s story is now told from below.
—You know, Christmas!

         Well, we now reach Christmas’ culmination
—Epiphany. 

         God’s love painted on the sky as the sign of a star.
God’s love revealed to the Magi, the Christ Child.
They follow like sleuths chasing after a clue, and find a great mystery made manifest—God’s love for all people, packed into the child of Mary.

         Because of that child, we know that God’s bounty is without boundary. 

         God willing, this same mystery is also revealed in Christ’s body on earth—the Church… God’s love for all people embodied in us.

         It is the Church’s calling to receive and to be, what the Apostle Paul calls, the multi-colored Wisdom of God, this variegated, diverse, multifaceted, face of God for us, Jesus Christ our Lord.

         The center of Epiphany is this: God’s love is embodied for all people!

Prayer

         God’s love is embodied for all people!

         It’s one of those things, this revelation, this Epiphany. In retrospect it is obvious

—It’s like looking in your rearview mirror

—it appears closer and clearer, than it is.

In hindsight, God’s love for all people was always floating just below the biblical surface

—you could even say God’s love of all peoples is the worst kept secret in the bible.

         Think of it—In the beginning, that famous poem in Genesis tells, God created one ancestor for all of us.

         Abraham was a pagan from Ur of the Chaldeans, pushed into a relationship with God through no act of his own.

         Moses, the man who brought in laws to separate God’s people from foreigners, had a foreign wife.

         As Matthew’s Gospel makes abundantly clear in the very first chapter, every time particular people are excluded we have a Rehab, a Ruth, or a Bathsheba who breaks this mold.

         For that matter the Prophet Ezekiel has a vision of God on a throne with wheels, because God doesn’t concern Godself only with things happening in one place.

         The story of Jonah shows mercy upon the Ninnevites, foreigners who had shown no mercy to the Israelites.

         Isaiah goes even further and scandalizes us, not only with today’s reading about foreigners bringing people and goods to Jerusalem, but puts onto God’s lips words about Egypt and Babylon being God’s people before God ever dealt with Judah.

         The book of Proverbs is filled with sayings from foreign kings, and the book of Job is about a faithful foreigner.

         God’s love is embodied for all people!

         It was already there, but we look more closely when we see these strangers from the East acknowledging the Christ Child, signifying that all have access to God through him.

         And God doesn’t stop here, this truth triumphs in Paul’s ministry
—his whole mission is creating communities in which Gentiles, non-Jews, foreign people often excluded from relationship with God, are welcomed and given equal authority and affirmed as having equal access to God.

         By the last book of the Bible, Revelation, John is given a glimpse of the court, the political cabinet if you will, of the Lamb, Jesus Christ ruling as King of Creation, and finds countless peoples from all places present!

         Epiphany reveals something that, once revealed, is apparent everywhere; it’s like getting a new car, once you do, you notice that model everywhere,

so too, once we realize God’s great mystery is God’s love embodied for everyone we see it everywhere in scripture.

         And, in this particular time and place,
         -I especially hope love is manifest clearly for our Jewish siblings—as they encounter anti-Semitic attacks in Monsey and Jersey City, and increasingly violent hate crimes across this country.

         -I hope too for the ancestors of the Magi who discovered the Prince of Peace
—in the face of mounting threats of war in their homeland of present-day Iraq and Iran
—I hope peace shall blossom there, not war.

         

         And I hope we see
 God’s love is embodied for all people
 in our life together—in the Church.

         After all, that’s where the rubber hits the road, the church must always be aware that we not only receive this great revelation—God’s love embodied for all people—but we ourselves embody it…
either poorly or well…
to a great extent that’s on us
—how we live it out witnesses to that love we find in Jesus…

         We as church, must always be aware of who is being left out,

who has not heard,

who we, in our sinfulness, exclude and even try to separate from the love of God found in the Manger.

We cannot say:

“Hey, you have substance abuse problems, or you are depressed,

I don’t like your politics or cultural dress,

your skin tone scares me or your life is a mess,

Or you’re too young or too old,

you just don’t fit the mold.”

No, we live out the reality that first found us— God’s love is embodied for all people.

         In Paul’s day, joint Jew and Gentile Churches were mind blowing and transgressive

—he had to defend non-Jews as:

Part of the Family of God,

Part of the Body of Christ,

Part of the Promise of God.

Co-inheritors, Co-members, Co-Promisees.

He then goes on to say something stupendous and very strange,

“through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety (God’s multi-colored wisdom) might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

         Paul seems to be saying: “When the Church holds onto, and lives out, the Epiphany Revelation
— God’s love is embodied for all people —that shakes heaven, even angels quake!”

         In closing, beloved:

“Live out the great Epiphany Revelation, God’s love is embodied for all people, within Christian Community, in all the wonderful diversity God has offered to us, with such vigor that even angels in heaven stop what they’re doing and take note!” A+A