If you read my Epiphany reflection from yesterday, you might be wondering, still, what’s the point of this season? Something about the color green and discipleship and stardust? I admit, I didn’t spell it out all that clearly. That’s partly because I’m overcoming a disrupted and out-of-sorts sleep schedule, it’s also because I’m trying to figure it out, myself. It’s worth noting that all the Christian seasons have a singular purpose in that they help us remember and participate in the life of Jesus Christ, so we don’t end up like those “foolish Galatians.”
Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and the season after Pentecost.
This liturgical rhythm, if you blog about it every evening, or observe it some other way, has a surprising energy about it. It’s got a poetic soul. It can change you. Your eyes and ears and other senses start to work a little different than before. Or maybe it’s not the liturgy. Maybe it’s just the commitment to something other than appetite and distraction (which could be the whole point of liturgy, I don’t know).
Like I mentioned in the previous post: Advent is the waiting, Christmas is the celebration of the coming, and Epiphany is the living, going out into the wilderness, squaring off with temptation. Why did God come to the planet in the first place? He’s going to show us (hint: it’s not about posting political memes). Epiphany means “to make manifest.” This is where we discover what it means that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Epiphany is an especially Anabaptist liturgical season. Theologically, Anabaptists emphasize the daily grind. Yes, yes, Christmas and Easter are important, but I get my high off not buying things and wearing black and fasting and eating roots and being constitutionally unsettled by empire and consumerism. January is buy nothing month for me. If a need comes up, I’ll see what I can borrow. I’m already off to a good start: I’m using my nephew’s old snow jacket for a family ski trip this week (thanks, sis!)
All this emphasis on Jesus can, if you’re not careful, reduce a man to parroting progressive talking points and sharing Democracy Now links and reading Sojourners op-eds and thinking that all this means he’s on the narrow way. I gave a sermon about this problem in early November, back when we all thought Hillary was going to win the election in an historic landslide. I get it, though. And I don’t pretend to know what does and doesn’t cross the line between Christianity and cultural progressivism. I just know that there is a line. It’s one of those questions we just have to feel out, through trial and error and prayer and honest reflection. But make no mistake, the gospel is calling the rich and the poor, conservative and liberal, employer and employee, white and black, to repentance.
Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand!
If switching from Fox News to MSNBC is why God came to the planet, then we might as well give this whole thing up. If that’s all you’re getting from it, then you’d better open your Bible or take a fast or go on a pilgrimage. It’s not just the conservatives who get comfortable with fundamentalism. The progressives do, too. And too often they equate their heart for the poor with the policies they advocate, such that anyone who disagrees with their means becomes an opponent of their ends, which is caring for the “least of these,” which means if you oppose the ACA or a minimum wage bump you’re a Pharisee putting heavy burdens on the people Jesus loved the most. This is all part of the Rachel Held Evans system (or Rachel HELL Evans, as a pilgrim I know would say).
R - Run away from your past
A - Attract people with the same wounds as you
C - Create a space where you can monetize resentment
H - Hammer out blog posts that use all the buzzwords
E - Elicit social media disciples to spread your message
L - Let the virus spread
(Okay, this is very uncharitable. I promise I’m mostly kidding.)
Epiphany. To make manifest. I’m not saying we can’t have some idea of what Jesus was getting at. I’m saying that his words cut deeper than perhaps we’re willing to admit. I’m saying we’re never so clean as to not need baptism and fire and the Holy Spirit. I’m saying the moment we think we’ve got the Way, the Truth, and the Life figured out is the moment we need to change things up. Sometimes I tell people I’m looking for lowercase-t truth.
Lowercase-t truth ain’t a bore
That’s the thing I’m looking for
Cut a broad swath and shave close
Make room for the Holy Ghost
When I think I’m getting too partisan, too secure in my own views, I like to read philosophy and poetry. It keeps me unplugged. There are all kinds of peddlers out there trying to make a mark out of you, selling this and that, promising answers. Not that answers are a bad thing, but they’re more an apartment than a home. Don’t pay for a house when you’re renting a flat. Be ready to move when the Spirit calls. Don’t bury your intuition in certainty. This is getting a little preachy. But I think Epiphany is the right time for preachiness. Epiphany wouldn’t be worth its name if it didn’t have the potential for making a person say, “Oh! Of course! It’s obvious! How could I have been so blind!?”
Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand!
Some folks say, “People don’t change.” Nah. People do change, and sometimes they change very quickly. The Christian faith puts a lot of stock in the power of change. Epiphany is all about change. Preaching and repenting and dropping your nets and following the shepherd-leader. I want to be comfortable with change; mind-altering, earth-shattering, divinely-inspired change. Someone once told me that with my long hair and scraggly beard, the only thing I’d be getting is change (spare change, he meant). I think he was giving me an Epiphany sermon.
If you think I’ve been too hard on progressives in this post, just wait for the reflection where I take a shot at conservatives; it’s coming, I just don’t know when. In the meantime, I hope you have an epiphanous 2nd day of Epiphany, and 3rd day, since this one’s almost over. And one more time, since I feel sort of bad about it, that RACHEL system thing is a joke, even if it’s a tiny bit true.
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