One Year Later - Epiphany & Insurrection

Today is Epiphany, following the 12 days of Christmas, when we traditionally celebrate the magi reaching the Christ child, offering their gifts, falling down in worship, and heading home by a different road. 

Epiphany – the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12) ALSO a moment of sudden revelation or insight. From the Greek epiphainein, which means “to reveal”

A lot has been revealed recently. COVID-19 has stripped some things away and accelerated other things. But today, I’m thinking of something in particular that was revealed on January 6, 2021.

It was revealed to me that many of my fellow American citizens are deeply angry and distrustful of the foundation of our country to the point that they broke into the Capitol building in a wave of human bodies, causing death and destruction as they called into question the peaceful transfer of power that is a cornerstone of our democracy.

I am a Christian and ordained clergy. I’ve spent a lot of time preaching and teaching that our first allegiance is to God, above and beyond any citizenship we hold earthside. I truly believe that when I live by the law of love I see in the life of Christ, all other things fall into place.

And also, I am an American. That was my birthright and privilege even before I was a Christian. I was raised singing Yankee Doodle and Proud to be an American and the Star-Spangled Banner. I memorized the pledge of allegiance before I knew the Lord’s prayer. When I’ve traveled abroad, other folks have recognized by citizenship without my passport as soon as I open my mouth.

And I love our country. I love it the same way I love myself most days – for all that it is and all that it might yet be. I’ve never felt myself to be perfect, but I’m earnestly struggling to be better than I was yesterday. I understand the United States of America to be a most exquisite, daring experiment – can the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be enough to hold us all together? Can the founding document of our Constitution provide enough of a foundation that we citizens who come from every corner of the globe, who carry different languages and religions and traditions and traumas can build a society that not only survives, but thrives?

I heard God’s call on my life as my heart broke for our brave military members who were deployed into desperate situations after 9/11 because I knew some of them as high school and college classmates. I signed up with the Air Force recruiter and eventually swore that I would “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the office upon which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

I don’t know that any thing is perfect in this life except for God. So I hold the Constitution like I hold the Bible. It’s good, really good, but it’s also has human fingerprints all over it. Humans that were inevitably influenced by their context. In the same way that I wear mixed fiber clothing, eat shrimp and strawberries, and am ordained as a woman, I’m glad that Constitutional rights and liberties have been extended over time to include women and people of color. Like Dr. Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” 

In the same way, I hold our national Capitol like I hold my church building. It may not have power, in and of itself, but its structure and its symbolism, the history and legacy that infuses every space points to something bigger, grander, and more meaningful than itself. The Capitol is the temple of our American democracy and last year’s acts felt like desecration.

Insurrection – a violent uprising against an authority or government. From late Middle English: via Old French from late Latin insurrectio(n- ), from insurgere ‘rise up.’

My fellow Americans rose up against our democratically elected government. And I understand up to a point – I don’t feel particularly seen, heard, or respected by my elected officials on a national level most of the time. There have been seasons when I’ve called and written my congressional representatives regularly, but Ted and John have never responded.

I’ve learned that the most effective arena where I can see change is my local government because the issues as well as the decision makers are closer. We are neighbors. We might know each other beyond the politics of the moment and want to do what might be a compromise so that we can all move forward in some way together. At the national level, the electorate becomes so much bigger, more diverse, and for most elected folks, this is their career. They become more interested in the optics and the spin than in policy and honesty, because those things could end their career and then what? But our government at every level is just us, citizens who offer themselves in service to our country.

So, on one level, I absolutely understand the frustration when those folks who are supposed to represent me, don’t see me, hear me, or respect me. I also know that as much as they are there on my behalf, they are serving on our behalf and there are lots of nearby neighbors, not to mention national ones, who fervently disagree with me on the values and strategies that should define America.

That’s the challenge and the opportunity of how we are built. And for 245 years it has worked. I am grateful to live in a nation that is founded on this premise, that “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Union - the action or fact of joining or being joined, especially in a political context; a state of harmony or agreement. From late Middle English: from Old French, or from ecclesiastical Latin unio(n- ) ‘unity’, from Latin unus ‘one’. 

I believe in free, open, and fair elections and I believe in perfecting the processes so that every citizen gets to exercise their right to vote. I believe in the processes that examine elections after the fact to look for errors, tampering, or undue influence. I believe the same election procedures that gave us Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton gave us Donald Trump and Joe Biden. 

We often say we will never forget, whether it’s the Alamo or D-Day or 9/11. There is something powerful in what we remember, and what we forget. It speaks to our values and priorities. So I will never forget January 6, 2021. 

I pray for my fellow Americans. We have been and are being manipulated to distrust one another when one another is really all we have. We are our essential services. We are our supply chain. We are our government. We are in this together - this life, this nation, this opportunity to love and serve one another. Let us have a new epiphany - recognizing our common humanity, offering our gifts, and recreating home in a new way.

Water-washed & Spirit-born

A couple of Sundays ago at the Krum Church we did two fun things: 1) we celebrated Epiphany (when the 3 wise men, kings, or magi – whatever you want to call them – came to worship the Christ child) and 2) we started our new Sunday schedule with two worship services (11am and 5pm). I came home Sunday night intoxicated on a blend of joy, Holy Spirit, and exhaustion. It was magnificent.

Last week was no less exciting as we launched into our new series – “from Water to Glory.” As a liturgical, connectional church, we keep the Christian calendar. This means that last Sunday was the time we were called to remember the Baptism of the Lord. Jesus, who knew no sin, came to be baptized by his cousin, John, in the river Jordan. And in that moment, as he came up from the water, the Spirit appeared like a dove and the voice of God spoke, "You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). 

In the sacrament of baptism, we are born anew by water and the Spirit (John 3:5). We are water-washed and Spirit-born, brought into a special covenant as God’s grace is poured out upon us.

As United Methodists, we understand God to be the one who acts in baptism. Yes, we show up, we profess our faith, we present our child, but ultimately baptism is something God does with, for, and to us. As such, we don’t baptize someone more than once, although we do take opportunities, like this Sunday, to remember our baptism and be thankful.

Because I believe that God speaks over each of us in our baptism and beyond, “You are my child, my beloved; with you I am well-pleased.” Of course we feel inadequate, we may try to quibble and say that those words only apply to Jesus. Most of those protests come from the place of shame, because we don’t feel like we deserve for God to feel that way about us. After all, unlike Jesus, we’re not perfect!

But hear this good news, brothers and sisters – God loves you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you are ever baptized, God is just crazy about you, so much so that God will keep calling you and calling you and calling you, like a suitor who won’t take a hint. God wants a relationship with you!

Not because you did anything to deserve it. None of us deserve it. But simply because God made you for God’s self. You are God’s beloved child and God wants to be in your life like any good parent does.

As much as I get frustrated, tired, and otherwise less than good in my parenting relationship, it’s been a place of unsurpassed divine revelation for me. When I look at my boys, when I hold them in my arms, when I observe their wit, their curiosity, their humor – my heart swells with love. And if my little old heart, puny and human, can feel this depth of love, I can’t even begin to imagine what God feels for each of us. God’s love is an ocean compared to my water drop.

We make a covenant in our baptism and when we accept God’s grace that we will grow by faith toward perfection in love. Make sure you heard that correctly – perfection in love, not the world’s standards of perfection which are all warped and tangled up with fame, wealth, success, etc. God in Jesus Christ doesn’t promise those things. Being a follower of the crucified and risen One doesn’t come with a lot of guarantees of worldly comfort.

But being perfected in love is a different story. It means letting your heart grow, letting your love swell to encompass not just your family, your friends, your tribe. If you let God really get ahold of you, you find yourself loving strangers, enemies, those the world finds unlovely and unlovable. It’s an uncomfortable spot, because when you love others, really love them despite everything else about them save that they are God’s own child, you can’t treat them the same way anymore.

That’s the ground we’ll cover at the Krum Church these next few weeks. How do we grow from the waters of baptism to the glory of resurrection? We’ll look to the pioneer and perfecter of our faith as the trailblazer for our own journeys. May we have the grace to let God work in us!