A Reflection for Epiphany
Sunday St. George's Episcopal Church, Engelhard, NC January 6,
2019 Thomas E Wilson, Preacher
Paying
Attention
In the Church Calendar
this is the Feast of the Epiphany and the 12th
Day of Christmas. In the Secular Calendar this is the first Sunday of
the New Year and the 6th
day after New Year's Resolutions. So, what was your resolution? One
of mine was to pay attention. I decided I needed to do more often as
I was looking over the lessons for today. Looking at the first two
Chapters of the Gospel of Matthew; there are four stories about
paying attention.
The first story when
Joseph was asleep and he has a dream to which he pays attention. I
believe that dreams are a way that God usesbto speak to us. Pat and I
have studied dreams for a number of years. I do not take dreams
literally but I do think they are messages from my personal
unconscious which goes back to when before I was born, and the
collective unconscious which stretches back to the beginning of the
universe, given in symbolic form. We take the dreams and look at the
symbols and then prayerfully consider them and what they might mean
in my life and how God might be using them. God is constantly
speaking to us; the trouble is that when we are awake, we are
overwhelmed by the noise of the ego of our conscious mind about our
own agendas. We are so focused about our own desires, we cannot see
the bigger picture. In dreams however, our own egos are asleep and we
are open to hear what God is speaking As Frederick Buechner writes:
“I choose
to believe that (God) speaks nonetheless, and the reason that (God's)
words are impossible to capture in human language is of course that
they are ultimately always incarnate words. They are words fleshed
out in the everydayness no less than in the crises of our own
experience.” In this first story
Joseph's ego had made a decision to end the engagement with Mary
because he was afraid of looking foolish in the eyes of his
neighbors. However, the dream with images and symbols told him that
the deeper meaning of his own life had more in common with God's love
than his own pride.
To pay attention we have
to go beyond the limits of our mind and enter into the mystery of
awe; awe that there are so many things that are beyond our puny
understanding. Richard Rohr in his meditation for last Wednesday
wrote:
Jesus
clearly believed in change. In fact, the first public word out of his
mouth was later translated into the Greek imperative verb metanoeite,
which
literally means “change your mind” or “go beyond your mind”
(see Matthew 4:17 and Mark 1:15). Unfortunately, in the fourth
century, St. Jerome translated the word into Latin as paenitentia
(“repent”
or “do penance”), initiating a host of moralistic connotations
that have colored Christians’ understanding of the Gospels ever
since. The word metanoeite
referred
to a
primal change of mind, worldview, or way of processing and
perceiving—and
only by corollary about a specific change in behavior. This common
misunderstanding puts the cart before the horse; we think we can
change a few externals while our underlying worldview often remains
narcissistic and self-referential.
This
misunderstanding contributed to a puritanical, externalized, and
largely static notion of the Christian message that has followed us
to this day. Faith became about external requirements that could be
enforced, punished, and rewarded, much more than
an actual change of heart and mind, which
Jesus described as something that largely happens “in secret, where
your Father who sees in secret can reward you” (Matthew 6:4, 6,
18).
The second paying of
attention is when the Magi see a star. The Magi were Zoroastrian
priests from the Parthian Empire, modern day Iran and much of the
Middle East. They studied dreams, astronomy and natural phenomena
which they understood was the way their God, Ahura Mazda, was
speaking to them. Then they prayerfully considered what they had seen
or imagined and interpreted them for possible options for action.
They believed that all of the universe is connected and all events
had meaning for our lives. When they saw the star, they decided that
this heavenly event had earthy significance. They decided after study
and prayer to take a journey west to Judea. In August, 2017 Pat and I
went down to South Carolina to see the total Solar Eclipse, it was
also a pilgrimage to cause us to take less seriously what our life
might look like after I retired the next year, a changing the way we
were used to seeing the universe. We were standing in a field,
looking up into the sky and all we could do was to laugh in wonder.
Now of course we understood the scientific explanations for an
eclipse but since we believe that all things in God's universe are
connected we chose to also see the spiritual dimension of us stopping
to pay attention. It did not tell us of what we should invest in the
Stock Market but our prayers of thanksgiving got deeper. In case you
are interested, there will be a lunar eclipse, a Blood Moon, on the
night of the 20th
and morning of the 21st
of this month from about 10:30 PM to 2:30 AM. The next time you can
see a Blood Moon will be on July 27th
but you will have to go the Indian Ocean to see it.
The Magi went to the
Jerusalem Priests and asked if they might be of help. The Priests
studied and looked in their books and passed on the information.
However, since the Temple Crowd were in the pay of King Herod, they
thought it best not to explore its meaning further. Herod was not
overjoyed about a Son of David being born as a rival to Herod. Herod
was an Idumean, a descendent of Esau not Issac; and although he was
raised as a Jew, he was seen as an outsider and was only in power by
the support of Rome. Herod tried to curry favor with the Jews by
massive building projects like the Temple Complex but those around
him did not fully trust him, after all he executed one of his wives,
her mother and brother, and three of his sons out of his fear of
losing control. Herod paid attention because he saw plots against him
wherever he looked. In the Magi's Zoroastrian Religion Ahura Mazda,
the Creator God, had an adversary, Angra Mainyu, the destructive
spirit of Evil, which 1st
Century BC Judaism and 1st
Century AD Christianity would borrow as Satan, and the Magi would
have thought that Herod was under the rule of that demon. Herod sent
the Magi on their way as part of a plan to kill this possible rival
to his throne.
The Magi paid attention
and went to Bethlehem as a part of their pilgrimage to find a deeper
spiritual meaning in their lives. They took the natural event of a
birth of a child and in it they saw the deeper miracle of life.
Matthew writes that “they were overwhelmed with joy.” Joy is
usually the response when we stop to pay attention to what God is
doing..
While they were there they
paid attention to a dream about avoiding Herod. When they left,
Joseph had another dream telling him of danger from Herod and to go
to Egypt for safety. Joseph paid attention and stayed there as a
refugee. After a few years Joseph had been paying attention to the
news from Jerusalem, when he heard that Herod was dead, he thought
that he was safe in going back home, But he had another dream which
warned him to avoid Bethlehem and go to East nowhere Nazareth to stay
off the radar. He paid attention and the Gospel continues
Matthew begins his Gospel
be telling us that we need to pay attention because something is
happening because everything is connected. Later on, he remembers
Jesus warning that there will be wars and rumors of wars but they
would need to pay attention to a deeper truth that the Risen Christ
will be with is us even to the end of the ages.
Again to quote from
Frederick Buechner:
If I
were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I
was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be
something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless
mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the
excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and
hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key
moments, and life itself is grace.”
Paying Attention
Long journey from
Christmas to Epiphany
took twelve days for some
Zoroastrian priests
bringing precious presents
out of the easts,
of the frankincense, myrrh
and gold brilliantly.
Getting to the house, they
dropped the gifts,
got down on their knees,
the formulas saying,
spent some more time to
their God praying,
and left giving Herod's
report short shrifts.
Basically, that is what we
are called to do;
dropping our treasures and
our conclusions,
remaining open to see
desires as illusions,
defining reality as if we
didn't have a clue.
This is a wondrous
universe made for awe
where the holiest prayer
is a joyous guffaw.
