John 1:1-4a, 14, 16-18 Today is the day before Epiphany or, as UCC Pastor Vicki Kemper puts it in our daily reading for today, “Tonight the season of gift-giving and divine presence we know as Christmastide comes to an end.” Tomorrow, we enter a new liturgical season, Epiphany.
Epiphany has several tightly nuanced meanings. I ‘ve spoken about its several meanings before when we come to this multi-faceted feast day. The phrase it is most often translated as is “to make manifest.” It refers to the times when something becomes clear or visible or obvious; when something right in front of us suddenly becomes plain to see. In the scriptural sense it refers to events that happened when the Christ Child was born – angels in the sky singing praises and pointing shepherds toward the newly-born child; a star like no other shining over that same child; priest-kings from distant countries, bringing rich gifts and bowing down before the child in a stable -- all saying "look here – look here and understand what it is you are seeing. Something is being revealed to you that prophets have awaited for hundreds of years. Something is being manifested to you.” These are stories we have heard all our lives, whether we are children playing our first role in our church’s annual Christmas pageant or elders looking back and remembering so many Christmases long past, but this very repetition can create a problem for us. As we spoke last week, we’ve heard these stories so many times that they have, in a way, lost their meaning. Adorable as babies are, it is not the infant Christ who has filled our lives with grace upon grace – it is the adult Jesus – the Son – the Word -- who has made God known to us. In our daily reading for today our writer Vicki Kemper gives us a sentence that I found myself reading over and over again just for the beauty and wonder of what it says to us. Here she refers to our reason for these early stories – our reason for Christmas – as “the one who put flesh on God’s love.” God’s love for us is such an amorphous, formless idea – it is something we believe in but how can we image such a thing in our thoughts? How can it be part of our everyday world? We can know God’s love because the Son, the Word, chose to put flesh on God’s love, and he became that flesh that made love tangible for us – and presented God’s love in a way that we can at least partially understand. When we read, “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us,” this is what it means. Not that Jesus put on a human disguise, but that the Son, the Word, became flesh, just like us, to live among us as one of us. When we shake hands, when we hug those dear to us or reach out to lift up one who needs help, what we hold is God’s love. When we are down or lost ourselves and someone embraces us and helps us face the world, what we are held by is God’s love. When we welcome a new-born child, the flesh we welcome is God’s love. As it is written in our scripture for today, from the first chapter of John, “…from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace…No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, the Word, himself God, who is close to God’s heart, who has made him known to us. Grace upon grace…This is gift of Christmas…grace that is with us throughout the year, throughout our lives, because of Jesus’ gift of himself. Grace that is given us at Christmas, into Lent and Easter – and on through every moment of every season. May we always be aware of just how immeasurably we are blessed – and in so doing, let us share that gift – that grace upon grace with all around us. Amen. |
Rev. Cherie MarckxArchives
January 2025
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