The First Sunday After the Epiphany

It is ignorance that binds man to evil.

By JIM PURCELL

In the Liturgical Calendar, this is the first Sunday after the Epiphany. Simply put, the Epiphany was the baptism of Jesus, as it is taught in Matthew 3. In it, Jesus comes to an incredulous John the Baptist in the Wilderness to be baptized. God showed his impartiality in His works by Jesus presenting himself to the prophet John, a holy man but still a man. Jesus came to be baptized in the way any one of us would be baptized. In response to John's surprise, Jesus said, "Let it be so for now; for it is prosper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness."

So, Jesus was baptized and the heavens opened up and the Spirit of God descended like a dove and God said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

This was a defining moment in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, an ongoing ministry that began so long ago in Nazareth and continues until this day. In Acts 10: 34-43, the Apostle Peter tells us that he truly understands that God shows no partiality and expects every nation -- every one -- to do what is right by God. God announced Jesus with the Holy Spirit. Jesus was healed the people, preached the law of God and the Kingdom. As a result, he was later crucified, died, was raised from the dead by God and was raised as the judge over the living and the dead.

Understanding who we are, and the world around us, is our liberation. 

For me, the Epiphany was a dynamic moment for many reasons, one being that it was a time when God peeled back the layer of heaven for a moment to show mankind the world beyond this world, and the order that existed beyond our knowledge; beyond our ken. God showed his confidence in mankind to accept the revelation of His works as He intended them. It is not for mankind to edit or change, or add to or take away from the Word of God.

In American history, one of our giants is the immortal Frederick Douglas, born a slave named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, in 1895. He is not remembered as a slave, though. Frederick Douglas is remembered as a social reformer, an abolitionist, an orator and a statesman. It is he who said, "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

These are good words from a good man. Of course, Mr. Douglas was addressing equality. But, in this quote he tells us that ignorance is the environment that allows for injustice. Before even one man or woman is unfairly judged or any people are oppressed, first there must be ignorance and the few controlling the many unjustly.

How does such a bitter root take hold in the ground? Well, there are those who will tell you science is the enemy of faith. The enemies of peace will want to control the facts. They do not want God's message to make itself heard in the world. They do not want the justice of heaven to rule the nations because that is something other than the justice of corrupt men. We are left asking: What is the truth?

I am a fallible man, who has been broken before in my life. I am no different than any other sinner among us. But, I go out of my way to grow as a person. I win some battles and I lose others. Yet, I never cease to wonder and express awe at the revelation of God's universe every day. I see God and His works in the every day miracles of our universe, in the insights into God's universe that are constantly evolving our broadening our spiritual landscapes and in the understanding that it is not a few men and women who should rule us, but the precepts that God instills into us, as individual people. God gave us humanity. God gave us the daring to move beyond the shadows and into the light. It was God who taught us that the ignorance of the status quo is an unacceptable way to live life.

How do we know that? Well, if everything was hunky dory then He never would have needed Christ to walk among us. He never would have needed to announce his Son. If everything was just fine, then God would not have needed to peel back the heavens and show mankind the world beyond this world. It was God that showed us ignorance is the death of the spirit. And, it is His wisdom, not the false wisdom of man, that we should look to for answers.

God shows us where we should walk in the discoveries we make in the quiet of our own souls, in the warmth of those who love us and in the achievements of those who reveal our universe to us and make it larger than it was before that showing. No, do not look to one man, or one political party or one guru to decide how you will live, or how a people should live. Let the Word of God counsel our hearts and let our hands and minds join together to understand ourselves more clearly, and our universe more accurately, than we did just yesterday.

Have a wonderful Sunday and thank you for reading this. AMEN.

Enduring Value of Childhood Bible Stories

 by V. Wayne Sorge

Even though I have no conviction that a real Adam and real Eve existed, I still value the story that I believe to be inspired in the Hebrew Bible of humanity's creation. I remember my mother had an old black flannel board for telling Bible stories to children. She died in a car accident when I was four, but I took possession of her story materials and often told the stories to
my friends, real and imaginary.

My favorite was the Creation Story which showed the sun, the moon and the earth and sea as well as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The story always told of the fall, of Cain and Abel and of the beginning of civilization. Early human communities needed a coherent story for how they became to be that would be easy to tell and read is a truth beyond a literal truth in the stories.

There are some who use narrow interpretation of Biblical faith to exclude what they condemn any progressive views that they label as the Social Gospel, sometimes deriding such early twentieth century prophets as Walter Rauschenbusch and Shailer Mathews. One longtime friend of mine who is a fundamentalist minister told me that Rauschenbusch had started the Social Gospel and claimed it was a contradiction to the teachings of Jesus.

He quoted Matthew 28:19 suggested that the great commission which speaks of making them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost precludes what he called the everything that Jesus had commanded them. That includes all the instances of healing, caring, feeding, defending and helping the oppressed and outcast. How anyone can use the Great Commission to the Church as a means to avoid social responsibility is beyond me.

But the more I think about it the more I think Rauschenbusch would likely disavow any credit for starting the Social Gospel. I do not believe he deserves credit for starting it, as he merely emphasized what he found in scripture. Rauschenbusch spoke of the ministry of Jesus saying extends to all human needs and powers and relations.

That call to care for one another is rooted in the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, but also extending back to the beginning of scripture and the Creation story. I contend that from time in that story, when God created Eve there was Social Gospel. My contention is that if someone believes God created Eve simply as a companion for the pleasure of the man, that person becomes a fundamentalist.

 If one believes that God created the two for one another, that's the beginning of the Social Gospel. Care for one is self expanding Social Gospel that reflects our responsibility as part of the Kingdom of God. Our
understanding of what that involves should be expanding rather than contracting.

God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, but we who believe are maturing creatures who should have a faith that begins with those stories of childhood, but expands in our ongoing potential for Christian understanding and service.

(This story was from the late and very great V. Wayne Sorge, a fellow seminarian and friend of mine gone too soon. He was a journalist and author, a decent man in a ruinous world and a Christian with something to say. I miss him a great deal. -- Rev. Jim Purcell)