The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
I don't know if you have noticed it, but every Sunday during Epiphanytide we have had Bible readings that touch on the theme of light triumphing over darkness. There are so many ways to understand this. Of course, there is the darkness of sin and the light of forgiveness or redemption. There's the darkness of heart and soul of the people who don't know God and so think that their whole life is confined to this little world full of crime, war, trouble and
despair, and the contrast with the light and glory in the souls of people who know that we only suffer for a short time in this world but will have all of eternity to enjoy the beauty, love, power and glory of God. And there's the darkness of living without hope, of feeling that the world is a mess and there's nothing we can do about it, and the enormous contrast of knowing that we, simply by our faith and our obedience to God, are already working to transform this sad and sorry world into the Kingdom of God. Over and over again, we have been shown the Epiphany, the revelation, of god and his son Jesus in our lives and in this world we live in, and in the years and centuries that make up the total history of human people. We have also been shown what we can do to help bring this Epiphany to others who may still, as the Bible says, be sitting in the darkness of not knowing God and so having ho hope and no knowledge of forgiveness and glory.
Isaiah reminds us of this, and of the fact that God is still making for us a dawning of the light, and making for us a time of joy and glory that will become more and more apparent to us and to those around us as our faith deepens and grows, until that wonderful day when we will go home to God and see the majesty of his love and glory with no end.
Paul's letter to the church in Corinth reminds us of the other side of the coin. Even when we have come to know Christ and his Father, even when we've been baptized and become members of Christ's body, the church, we can still bring darkness and gloom to the world, instead of joy and holiness and glory. We do this by little quarrels, and sometimes big ones, with each other. We do this by forgetting to look for Christ in everyone else, and forgetting that we are all sinners and need to keep on working at growing in our faith and following the way Jesus taught us to live. Paul's letter to this church in Corinth sounds like a father who is fed up with the kids fighting about small, unimportant things...which is exactly what they were doing. Does it really matter whether Paul or Apollo baptized Jane or Jim, Martha or Joe? No. What matters is that they ARE baptized into God's family, into the body of Christ, and that by their baptism they become sisters and brothers to one another. And obviously the people in the church in Corinth have forgotten this and begun fussing about who baptized who, who was baptized first, and probably about things like whose turn it is to bring cookies for coffee hour or wash the Communion cup and plate. This is sure to bring gloom and loss of hope and love to any group! We need to be sure that once we are baptized, we behave like baptized people, looking for Jesus in everyone we meet, and remembering that our life together in Jesus is so much more important than who was baptized first, or by whom!
And then we come to the Gospel. We are reminded again that Jesus' coming brings to reality the prophecy that the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. That light is Jesus' love and teaching about God's love, and the fact (although they didn't know it at the time) that Jesus' death would do away with the power of sin over them, if only they accepted him as God the Son. And then Matthew goes on with the theme of light. Once you've seen the light of Christ, you have a responsibility to help spread it to others. Jesus emphasizes this by picking his first disciples. Their job will be to learn from him, and spread the word and the teaching to others, both while he is with them and after he returns to heaven. We, in our baptismal promises, promise much the same thing: that we will look for Christ in everyone, that we will follow and obey him as our Lord, and that we will bring others to him.
One of the really interesting things about how Jesus began choosing his disciples is that he choose some fishermen. If you were trying to get the news out about a really important thing, you'd probably hire a public relations firm from Madison Avenue or someone like that, right? But Jesus choose a group of laborers, mostly not very well educated, mostly smelly and dirty from working hard all day, sweating because their job was rowing heavy boats and helping pull in nets loaded with hundreds of pounds of fish, seaweed and junk off the bottom of the lake. Then they'd have to sort out the fish...which ones were food to eat, and could go to market? Which ones were "trash" fish and only good for fertilizer? After that was done, they had to wash the dirty nets, get all the mud and stones and weeds out of them, mend any torn ropes, clean the boats, and finally go home to supper...and probably fall asleep right afterwards. They were not high school or college or seminary graduates. They could probably read and write a little, since Jewish boys were taught to read enough to be able to read the Bible. But they never had a class in preaching or pastoral care or leading a church. Why did Jesus choose these men, instead of well-educated Pharisees and scribes, who knew the Bible forward and backwards, and had training in teaching and preaching?
We don't really know the answer, but the long-ago fathers of the church in the first few years after Jesus had some ideas about this. And those ideas take away our excuses for not telling others the Good News about Jesus. Here is what they said:
One bishop, named Ambrosiaster, who lived about 300 years after Jesus' time on earth, said that it was important for Jesus to pick laborers and working men, not educated men, to help preach and teach. He said that the Good News of the gospel was strong enough to speak for itself, and it would sound more honest and real from uneducated preachers, not form someone who had studied languages and learned to be dramatic and make the gospel sound thrilling and exciting. He said that the people who were preaching against Jesus were the leaders of the Temple who had learned to use language in ways to trick the people who heard them, and that the gospel needed to be preached simply and straight from the shoulder without any fancy words or frills, so that people would believe it.
Another bishop, named Chromatius, from a town named Aquila, who lived a few years after Ambrosiaster, around the year 400, said that if Jesus had picked educated and well-known people to help him, the folks who listened would have wondered why these big shots were saying all this about Jesus. The people would wonder if maybe the important folks doing the talking were trying to con them, or set them up for something, or manipulate them into what we would now call a scam...so they wouldn't believe the educated, fancy speakers. But they would believe common people, like the fishermen, who worked hard and didn't make much money at their jobs.
So, you see, you and I, who are just everyday folks, have no excuse not to help spread Epiphany to others. We have no excuse not to tell our families and friends the Good News about Jesus, and help them come out of the darkness of sin and
despair into the lovely light of God's love and Jesus' forgiveness. In fact, people are more likely to believe you or me than they are to believe TV evangelists or famous preachers! So, maybe we should get down to business, and make spreading the Epiphany of God's love our number one priority. If we've been baptized, it's our job, anyway, just as much as if Jesus had walked along the
streets where we live and pointed to us and said, Come, follow me...I have a job for you! Amen.
