Both Their Lord and Ours

Epiphany could be seen as the Forgotten Season, a wasteland between the euphoria of Christmas and the intensity of Lent.  I’ve always liked to emphasize this time as an expansion of the Gospel to the ends of the earth, a time to enjoy the AHA moments.  What began with the visit of the Three Kings continues the sacred journey  as they returned home by another road.  The Church is invited to remember these stories about pushing back the frontiers of God’s Kingdom, and to become engaged in pointing to the Holy Signs still unfolding all about us. 

Isaiah  caught the universality of God’s Reign as he wrote to the Exiles in Babylon, where they thought that they were far from God’s Country.  “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (49:6)  Before this, the Hebrews thought of Yahweh as a REGIONAL God, sovereign over a few hundred square miles of rocks and scattered oases.  Could it be that Yahweh is Lord of other places, too?  Even (yecchh!)  Babylon??

We often neglect or skip completely over the salutations of Paul in his letters to the churches.  Yet there’s where a lot of his understanding tells us how he views God, before plunging into his long sentences and weighty thoughts.   Don’t ignore any of this Sunday’s reading, which includes “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours…” (I Corinthians 1:2)   What?  ALL those who in EVERY place?   This surely sounds as if God is universal, and that there’s no hidin’ place down here!  It also expands the mission duty of the Church in the 21st Century to bear light and vision beyond our comfort zone…

“The next day [after Jesus was baptized] he (John the Baptizer) saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!'” (John 1:29)  Linger here, for a bit, before continuing with the narrative about Jesus and his first disciples.  Too often we read this as the SINS of the world:  separate and personal errors and misdeeds.  But here The Sin is singular and the world is everyone!  What then IS The Sin of the World?  I believe that we’re talking of self-directed arrogance, just as when the First People thumbed their noses at the Creator back in the Garden of Eden; or when later generations tried to build a tower to claim the heavens for themselves.  This is the brokenness that Jesus came to fix, to take away the world’s prideful rebellion against the King.  Believers are to stand with John and point:  “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

there’s a Woody Allen movie — was it “Sleeper”? — where the girl asks Woody’s character, “Do you believe in God?”   And he replies, “Well, yes, I think there’s a Divine Being who regulates the world….except maybe for New Jersey.”   Being in seminary in that state at the time, I thought the line riotously funny!   Readings for this weekend will again remind us that a restorative and saving God is truly omnipresent in ALL the world.   Even New Jersey.

God Bless Us, Every One.                          Horace Brown King