“A Mystery Revealed”

Matthew 2:1-12; Ephesians 3:1-12; Eccelesiastes 3:1-11

Rev. Jason Alspaugh

FirstBaptistChurch of Dayton

Sunday, January 1, 2017

In Ecclesiastes, the Teacher, Qoheleth, is certain that there is “nothing new under the sun.” There is a time for everything, and there’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before. It’s been said that those who do not remember or learn from history are doomed to repeat it,[i] but the Qoheleth would say that even if we know our history we will repeat it; history will repeat itself because there is nothing new under the sun; give it enough time and war will come back around; give it enough time and peace will come back around. “What has been is what will be,” Qoheleth says, “and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.”[ii]

The Teacher might laugh at the idea of human progress. As each New Year approaches, many of us think back on the year that is ending, and we consider where we made mistakes and where we could be better. And then we resolve to do better. We sing “Auld Lang Syne” and press forward. The underlying thought is that we can get progressively better year after year. So then by the time we’re old, we won’t be so bad; we’ll actually be pretty decent human beings. It’s the first of January, and we anticipate a clean slate, a fresh start, something new. But the Teacher asks, “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’?” No. “It has already been,” he says, “in the ages before us.”[iii] If there is anything more than what we already know, it’s wrapped in mystery; and it’ll always be a mystery.[iv]

And yet, today, as we celebrate Epiphany, we celebrate a mystery revealed. The word epiphany is synonymous with the word for apocalypse that Paul uses in his letter to the Ephesians, and it means “to reveal.” Advent and Christmas day have come and gone, but it’s still Christmas and there is still more that is to be revealed about Christ. It’s not readily apparent to us what mystery is being revealed in Matthew’s story of the wise men’s visit. The wise men, the magi, these astronomers, “following yonder star,” come to pay homage to a child whom they believe is born to be a king (King of the Jews to be exact). This is disturbing news to Herod, who is currently King of the Jews; and so, of course, he wants to locate the perceived threat. So he sends the magi on to find the child. Ultimately they do find him, and they are overjoyed, and bow before the child, and present him with regal gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This is where the pageant typically ends. But all of this is fairly straightforward. There’s nothing particularly mysterious about it.

But what we may not see is that the magi are presented as the first Gentiles, the first non-Jews, to adore Jesus as king. We may not see the fulfillment of Isaiah’s messianic prophecy that: “Nations [i.e., Gentiles] shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn…They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of theLord.”[v] What we may not see in the adoration of the magi is that the veil of a great mystery is beginning to lift. It’s been said that the magi’s worshipful act “was one of the first indications that Jesus came for all people, of all nations, of all races, and that the work of God in the world would not be limited to only a few.”[vi] With the arrival of the magi we begin to get the sense that there is something new under the sun.

We see the fullness of this mystery revealed in the words of Paul to the Ephesians. “In former generations,” he says, “this mysterywas not made known to humankind.” And what was the mystery that was revealed to Paul and other apostles and prophets? What epiphany might we celebrate on this day? It is nothing less than the revelation that “the Gentiles have become fellow-heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” I would pause for effect here, but this should not come as a surprise to us. After all, we are those Gentiles; and we are here because of that revelation.

This might come across as very old news, but I imagine that was also the case for the Ephesians. After all, they were those Gentiles, too, and already counted among the saints. Paul even concedes this, saying, “I’m sure you’ve already heard all this before.”[vii] But still he found it important to remind them that they were once alienated and estranged; and that “in Christ Jesus [they] who were once far off [had] been brought near by the blood of Christ.”[viii] Again and again Paul uses the phrase “in Christ,” reminding us all that Christ is central to this story of a mystery revealed. The advent of Jesus Christ and his life, death, and resurrection lead to the epiphany that a door has been opened. Christ has opened a door to God. Paul says, “we have access to God in boldness and confidence though faith in him.”[ix]

This is the good news, the something new under the sun that is ever new; and it is ever transforming us, ever challenging us. Paul speaks of an extravagant God whose grace and love and power in Christ are “immeasurable” and “boundless.” If we’re being honest, that kind of talk can make us a little nervous; especially the religious purist in us. “Immeasurable” and “boundless” sound good when we are alienated and estranged, but once we “have been brought near,” once we’re in, we have a tendency to start doling out grace in measured portions, drawing up boundary lines, and putting locks on the doors. We can begin to behave in ways we once criticized, treating others the way we never wanted to be treated ourselves. The gospel of Jesus Christ opens a door, transforming us from outsiders and insiders into “all,” to one. A door has been opened and we are challenged to be greeters instead of gatekeepers.

As lovely as it may sound, this revelation does not come easy. Because the revelation we receive at Epiphany not only reveals something of Jesus, but something of ourselves. The revelation of God’s love in Jesus, which goes beyond the boundaries of tribe and clan, will also reveal what we are like—it will reveal our best and our biases; our faithfulness and our fickleness. The light of Christ brings everything to light, and we are seen for who we really are. Just look at Herod. The very mention of the Christ child by the magi reveals Herod as anxious, fearful, and power hungry. The magi did not perceive this, but we the readers do. Herod may have convinced the magi that he was curious and humble, desiring to only to “pay homage” as they did, but we see Herod as he really is. And we will all see the kind of cruelty he is capable of when the magi are warned in a dream not to return to him. Now we might want to distance ourselves from the Herods of the world, but we are a part of the same species, and what lurks in them lurks in us. And so, if we are to live into the good news that has been revealed, we are going to need some help.

Paul is adamant that it is by the grace of God that he has received this revelation. It is given to him; gifted to him by the Spirit of God. It is important for us to note this, because for all of our goodness and good intentions, it’s clear that we still need God’s help to live out the life that Jesus has set before us and to share it with others. Elsewhere, Paul says that “God was making friends of all people through Christ. God did not keep an account of their sins against them, and God has given us the message how to make them friends.”[x] This is God-given ministry of reconciliation that Paul practiced, as he sought to bring Jewish and Gentile Christians together. And now, by the grace of God, we are commissioned, just as Paul was commissioned, to a ministry of reconciliation, of friend-making.

In essence, we are called to make “the mystery of Christ” known. We are called to proclaim the good news, which is inclusive, expansive and open to all.[xi] This is a call to evangelism. Now I know “evangelism” is a word that has been given a pretty bad reputation. We hear that word and we think of people being converted by coercive means. We hear that word and we think it’s about getting people to believe the right things. Understood this way, evangelism has become more about us than about God or Jesus. But there is another way of evangelizing that puts things into proper focus; and it begins with the Spirit.

We often respond to a reading of Scripture with the liturgical phrase: “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.” We would do well to remember this phrase when thinking about evangelism. Peter Gomes has said that “the only standard for Christian inclusivity [according to Paul] is faith working through love:

it was for this that Christ came and died on the cross, and it will be by this standard alone that we will all be judged. That is the gospel, and that is why we call it the good news. It points beyond the pages of the Bible, and even beyond the history in which it is found, to an inclusive, comprehensive future in which all of God’s creation is to be embraced.[xii]

He goes on to say, “The key to God’s will for the church is not found in text or in history, but rather by reverent and radical listening to what the Spirit has to say to the churches…Scripture without the Spirit would be a dead letter, and the church without the Spirit would be a museum.”[xiii]

So what does evangelism look like when we begin with the Spirit? Well, I think that is a good question for us to ponder, as we move into a new year. The possibilities are rather endless, but at some point it will undoubtedly involve the Spirit disrupting our measured and bounded ways of doing things. The Spirit will surely challenge us to be as “immeasurable” and “boundless” as Jesus when it comes to grace and love and sharing the gospel. William Sloan Coffin once said that “Jesus subverted the conventional religious wisdom of his time. We have to do the same. The answer to bad evangelism is not no evangelism but good evangelism. Good evangelism is not proselytizing but witnessing, bearing witness to ‘the light that shines in the darkness, and [the fact that] the darkness has not overcome it’; bearing witness to the prophet’s cry: ‘Let justice roll down like mighty waters,’ and to the prophetic insight that we all belong to one another, every one from the pope to the loneliest wino on the planet.” Friends, when we begin with the Spirit, when we listen reverently and radically to what the Spirit is saying, we bear witness not to ourselves, but to the one who loved us and gave himself for us, that all might know life abundant and everlasting.

Paul once spoke of followers as “shining like stars in the world.”[xiv] And it’s been said that “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”[xv] All of this has me thinking that we can be like the star that led those magi to the Christ child; that the light we bear, the light we have been given, can lead others to the One who is its source. May it be so.

1

[i] A saying attributed to George Santayana and (later) Winston Churchill.

[ii] Eccl. 1:9

[iii] Eccl. 1:10

[iv] Eccl. 3:11b; 8:17

[v] Is. 60:3, 6b

[vi]

[vii] Eph. 3:2

[viii] Eph. 2:13

[ix] Eph. 3:12

[x] 2 Cor. 5:19, TEV alt.

[xi] In The Scandalous Gospel, Peter Gomes says that in the Bible “…the notion of a chosen people is one that expands rather than contracts…”

[xii] Peter Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel, 203.

[xiii] Ibid., 204

[xiv] Phil. 2:15

[xv] Madeliene L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.