Manifest Faith

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Epiphany Sunday, January 11, 1998

Matthew 2:1-12

January 6th marks a day in the Christian Calendar we call Epiphany. It signals the day when we recall the arrival at the Bethlehem manger of those magi, those kings, those wise men from the East we read about a moment ago in the Gospel of Matthew.

You will remember, as Matthew tells the story, these wise men arrive in Bethlehem with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. (One of our members sent a fax this week with one of Gary Larsen's cartoons from "The Far Side." It shows the stable, three wise men at the door, and an angel rejecting a bearded figure, in crown and gilded gown, walking off the edge of the cartoon, the caption reading, "Unbeknownst to most theologians, there was a fourth wise man -- who was turned away for bringing a fruitcake.")

In any case, on the twelfth day of Christmas, January 6th, Christendom celebrates the epiphany, the manifestation of Jesus as Christ to the whole world. When those easterners, those foreigners, those outlanders arrive at the manger, to Matthew, Jesus is now recognized as way, truth and life by the gentile world -- by us -- and indeed, as later Christianity asserted, as Christ for the whole world.

Our question this morning: how do we make this universal claim tangible?  How do we manifest our faith in Jesus as the Christ for all the world? The clue to making our faith manifest, it seems to me, lies in the ministry of Jesus himself.

I

So then, the first clue to making our faith manifest lies in what we call "Incarnation"-- God's enfleshment. When God becomes one of us behind that cheap hotel on Bethlehem's back street, God comes, not so much with an inspirational message, nor a catalog of spiritual principles; God submits to flesh and blood. At Christmas -- at Epiphany -- and throughout the whole of the Christian year, as we celebrate our Lord's ministry, we affirm one who refuses to back away from the problems of empire, the intrigues of politics, the clash among religions, the self- centeredness of the human heart.  God's incarnation, God's enfleshment, God's becoming fully one of us is a willingness to identify in our struggle, to be responsible and loving in this world.

I am not sure we always want to accept or convey this particular message at the heart of our faith. For some reason or other we tend to deny it. We will often give nature our first claim in identity with God. I am always intrigued, for instance, by what usually passes for calendars of the New Year in so-called Christian bookstores. Look at the them. You will see a glorious glen enveloped in early morning fog, a snow-capped mountain range in the Austrian Alps, a sunset behind a desert butte. Gorgeous. They remind me of my old church camp experiences when, at the close of a wonderful day, we would retreat to some small knoll known as "Inspiration Point," and there, witnessing the rosy clouds of a Bristol Hills sunset, we would sing the old hymn, "This is My Father's World." And we would believe it!

But is it wholly true? Is God's world really so far apart from the stress and tangle of the city, the challenge and glory, the surprise and joy, the triumph and tragedy of urban life? One of the things I always treasured in years past here in Boston was the Christmas crèche laid out on the common near the Park Street Station. We are wary these days of imposing religious belief on anyone in our pluralistic society; we shy away from identifying any religious tradition with the muscle of the state. And rightly so. But that creche on the common -- Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, a lamb, a king and the babe in the manger standing amid the granite and glass of commercial Boston -- that crèche in view of the brightly holiday-spangled State House where our representatives tackle issues making a difference in the health, education and welfare of what we call our "Commonwealth," that crèche providing silent witness to men and women dealing in drugs, dozing on benches, holding out Dunkin' Donuts Coffee Cups for loose change, that crèche near residences where families try to make it together, where loneliness and warmth, callousness and care, anger and gladness rub against one another,

yes, that crèche on the common said to me as loudly as any hymn atop that  church-camp knoll, "This is my father's -- this is God's world!"

So first of all, we affirm on Epiphany what those wise men witnessed in the manger: Incarnation. God become flesh, dwelling among us -- among us, loving us, you and me, this city, our world -- flesh, full of grace and truth.

II

 The second clue to manifesting our faith is Crucifixion. The Cross confirms our confidence in God's ultimate and loving care for our world. It really is the sign that we take this God-made-flesh seriously. The Cross is the authentic sign of our credibility, the sign of our service. To be men and women under the Cross means we identify with those on the margins, that we throw our lives and resources on the scales in behalf of the broken and defeated. It means we enter the lists on behalf of those who, because of age, or race, or gender, or sexual orientation or health or income, find themselves without power, identity or selfhood.

What does this action look like? What manifests the risk of crucifixion amid the hurly-burly of this world God deeply loves? Well, just as a member faxed me the comment about the fourth wise man and his fruitcake, so some anonymous friend put in my mailbox some months ago a cool little chestnut illustrating our work in this world. It is called "The Pit" -- and it goes like this:

A man fell into a pit and couldn't get himself out.

A subjective person came along and said, "I feel for  you down there."

An objective person came along and said,
"It's logical that someone would fall down there."

A Congregationalist came along and said, "We're meeting next Thursday night at 7:30 PM at the church to work out a process to get him out of the pit."

A Pharisee came along and said, "Only bad people fall into a pit."

A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit and the speed of the decline.

A fundamentalist said, "You deserve that pit."

Confucius said, "If you had listened to me you would not be in the pit."

Buddha said, "Your pit is only a state of mind."

A realist said, "That's a pit."

A scientist calculated the pressure necessary, pounds and square inches, to get him out of the pit.

A geologist told him to appreciate and study the rock strata.

An evolutionist said: "You are a rejected mutant destined to be removed from the evolutionary cycle, in other words he is going to die in the pit so he can't produce any more pit-falling offspring."

The country inspector said, "Did you have a permit to dig the pit?"

A professor gave him a lecture on the elementary principles of the pit.

A self-pitying person said, "You haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit"

An optimist said, "Things could be worse."

A pessimist said, "Things are going to get worse."

Jesus saw the man in the pit, took him by the hand and lifted him out.

Of course. And to pick up where Jesus leaves off is our own task in this world. And for love's sake, for God's sake, for faith's sake it can be risky and dangerous getting us into deep trouble, sometimes at no small cost. So at Epiphany we stand active and witnessing as servants in a world not always eager to receive what for God's sake we have to offer. And that may feel and be a little crucifixion.

III

Incarnation. Crucifixion. And lastly, we manifest our faith through our confidence in Resurrection. We live by hope. We live with the conviction that the God who conquers death stands sovereign over everything separating us from Divine love and from our neighbors. It means resting in trust that no chasm is too deep; no relationship so deteriorated; no grief so overwhelming; no injustice so impenetrable; no life so paralyzed; no system so corrupt as to be immune from God's power to change and to save. Faith in the resurrection means new life, a new world for us all.

And in many ways this hope is aimed at you and me. Thank heaven. We can get so discouraged over so many things. And the weather this week didn't help!

I suspect there are some of us here this morning who have worked hard at something for a long period of time and gotten rotten results, everything seems to just stay stagnant, running in place, hitting into dead ends. Is it a relationship gone stale? A job search with resumes, phone calls, interviews, references all drifted off -- where? -- into thin air? Is it a life partner pursued in every restaurant, personal ads in The Globe or The Herald, a bar stool or sushi restaurant in the Back Bay and North End with results in scraps and tatters?

Others of us find ourselves something like Sisyphus working hard at a project, nurturing some enterprise only to get slammed with a serious setback. A thesis carefully prepared only to have it savaged by a professor.  Some therapeutic moves enabling us to get a grip on something driving us to ruin -- and then a tumble back into our previous condition, indeed a worse condition. Or children, the love of our lives, gone on to some world alien to us, fallen into some terrible addiction or wounded marriage or disappeared off the face of the earth.

And yes, someone here seems to have had it hit all at the same time! A seriously ill spouse, a job in jeopardy, a child in need, a devastating fire or flood, a huge debt to pay. All of it leading to despair and a sense of helplessness.

Well, few if any of us avoid these circumstances forever. Life hits us all in the face from time to time. The difference, we discover, lies not so much in the nature of the burdens we face, but in how we handle them. We all know those who anesthetize themselves with drugs or alcohol, those who are finally overcome by circumstances. But we know those as well, who, somehow, take their circumstances and transcend them.

Do you remember Hubert Humphrey, that indefatigable Happy Warrior from Minnesota? He got chewed up in Lyndon Johnson's policies in Viet Nam; lost the Presidency in the venomous conditions of 1968; found himself in constant debt, ashamed of how politicians without vast personal fortunes had to pander themselves to support their campaigns. Eugene McCarthy, in reflecting on Humphrey's life, offered a vivid image of  Humphrey's generally ebullient outlook. "Hubert Humphrey," said Eugene McCarthy, "loved his home on Lake Waverly in Minnesota. Lake Waverly is a very minor lake, named after the town of Waverly. One can get a rough measure of a lake and town by the manner of the naming. If the town is named after the lake it usually indicates that the lake is a good one. If the lake is named after the town the quality of the lake is usually questionable. Lake Waverly was less than the town, but by a narrow margin. Nonetheless, Humphrey loved the lake, saw the best in it, and talked only of its positive qualities. "It held water, it would float a boat, it froze over in winter, one could skate on it, it had some fish, and it was blue for a few months before it turned green. What more could one expect from a lake . . ."

It is an approach to life. What, then, do we hope for? Well, the big things, of course: world peace, the eradication of poverty, the reconciliation of the races. But closer to home, deep in our own hearts and lives, as one of my colleagues writes,

We can hope for many things:
 the courage to bear up under pain;
 the grace to take our successes lightly;
 the energy to address tasks that await our doing;
 the meaning to be found in giving ourselves to others;
 the liberation that follows when we forgive another;
 the comfort to be taken in opening our hearts to another;
 the joy to be gained in even the most common endeavor;
 the pleasure of one another's company,
 the wonder that wells within the simple fact of our shared humanity.

Indeed, a manifestation of our faith resides in the depth and radiance of our hope in the one born in that Bethlehem manger.

So, on the Epiphany Sunday, 1998, God grant we manifest our faith in our sovereign and savior, Jesus Christ, committing ourselves wherever we find ourselves, whoever we may be, to the loving and healing of our world -- incarnation; to a task risking something for Love's sake -- crucifixion;  committed to bearing a profound and resolute hope that what must be done can be done, that the grace and patience of God can carry us through the worst of what life may throw at us -- resurrection.

Now, that is faith manifest.