From the Pastor’s Desk
As it should be we have celebrated the birth of our Lord and savior, we sang songs to his name, we have praised God, and we have celebrated his coming as well as his returned. This is part of the who we are as people of the way. We have at least two millennia of creating traditions that reminds us about the Christ that was born, lived and minister in our midst, died, and was raised from the dead. Indeed, this month, the first of the year 2011, we are reminded that God has not only revealed God-self once, but we are reminded that God continues to reveal God-self to us still today.
So as we come together to celebrate the Christ’s Epiphany, that is, God’s revelation to the world in the person of Jesus Christ, we are reminded that this God continues to reveal God-self to everyone who desires or is open to the Holy Spirit.
But this revelation is expressed in a few ways. The annunciation to Mary, the annunciation to the shepherds, the annunciation to the Wise men, the annunciation to Simeon, and the annunciation to Anna. In all these cases these folks were outcast, people who lived in the periphery. Mary a twelve or fourteen year old girl peasant girl who had no standing in Jewish society, a girl whose rights depended on her father or husband, otherwise she had none; she was an outsider. The shepherds, well even more rejected and marginalized than Mary, their word would not have been accepted in any court of the land because they were the lowest of the lowly; they were outsiders. The Wise men enjoyed the reputation of their work but they were not Jewish, and for Jewish sensitivities their practices as astrologers would have been reprehensible. To add insult to injury they were foreigners, they were the Goyim, as disparaging term used to refer to those who were not Jews; they were outsiders.
Then finally, we have Simeon and Anna, two old folks who seemed to have lived too long and had become a bit of a nuisances at the temple, spending way too much time there. Although we think of them very highly, the people around them did not, they were part of that population of older people who were not heard much, maybe they were a little “crazy.” Clearly, they were not part of the in-crowd, they were outsiders.
They all have something in common they were all waiting for the revelation of the Messiah, for his Epiphany. The epiphany came and it came first to the lowly (Mary), the outcast and marginalized (the shepherds), the foreigners (the Wise Men), and the old and forgotten (Simeon and Anna). This Messiah was not adjusting to the expectations of the people, he was not wealthy and powerful, he has not been to the best schools of the land nor had he studied under the best and brightest in the world.
Jesus, the carpenter from Galilee, was revealed to the world among the people to whom he was sent out to reach, not the proud and powerful, but rather, the lowly and despised. The agenda of the Messiah Jesus was clear to witness to the Kingdom of God being inaugurated in our midst through Jesus, therefore: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” Matthew 11:5). Because according to the Messiah Jesus he was anointed for this reason: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’” (4:18-19). Indeed, the revelation of the Father was made crystal clear in the life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah Jesus.
Your servant in Christ,
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