Sermon: Epiphany = Engaging Difference?
My older son has been a dreamer since he was very young. Now in Grade 11, he has recently discovered a new world, the “Art of debating”. He joined the debate club at his high school, and now he learns a new skill each week. One day last month, after having gained some knowledge and experience, he came home and, sitting next to me at the kitchen table, said, “Mom, let’s debate.”
Those words brought out my competitive spirit, and even though it seemed an unfair game as it would not be the same as debating in Korean for me, I accepted the challenge, and attempted to debate my son. Then he said, “Mom, That’s not how you debate. You are trying to provide the solution. The art of debating relies on the fact that each one stands on their feet and engages in the process, exploring the differences, rather than trying to close the gap.” Hmm… I thought to myself, Cool. (What it could mean for me is … trying to stand on my feet!)
That was one of my most recent epiphany moments. One of the definitions of epiphany is “a moment when you suddenly realize or understand something important”. It was an ‘aha’ moment that led to the awareness that I have developed an inclination to fix or provide a solution — “close the gap” — when a question arises and difference emerges, rather than engaging the difference and considering opposite positions in equal regard. (Some years ago, in my earliest years of ministry, I learned “I matter”). It made me think of a saying I had pondered for a while in the past: “God’s hospitality to difference”, as an Indigenous Elder stated.
I said my older son is a dreamer. I think that the gene came from me, and I got it from my grandmother. Just before Advent began last year, I had a memorable dream. I was passing a pond, and saw two big, round, beautiful things behind it, in the distance. I looked at them closely and recognized that these two things were lotus flowers of the same size, side by side. At a glance, they might look identical, but these two were not the same. Both had red and yellow petals and they swayed gently like sea plants would wave in the water. What was inspiring about the scene I saw, the two lotus flowers, which symbolize wisdom and enlightenment in East Asian religions, is that the two lotuses were held gently above water and they were equal. The equality was the most beautiful part of the image. After I woke up, the image inspired me to ponder again the sacred practice of God’s hospitality towards difference. The two lotuses could be the metaphor of sharing leadership and power equally; of relationships; of friendship, of adults and children; a metaphor of the juxtaposition of two or multiple different ways to lead or serve — lay or ordained or commissioned, two mother congregations, Mary and Martha; the wisdom for partnership… This equality opens us to the art of co-creating. With this dream, I began to see engaging difference is not just appropriate for any relationship, it is a fascinating process that moves us toward integration and integrity in the end. we can achieve integration and integrity only through gently holding duality or diversity in the art of equality. It would give us a very different impact on our life, relationship, and community, from the alternative of fixing the difference as if closing the gap.
Friendship can be a good metaphor to use as we think about engaging difference. Many queer theologians have written about the power of passionate friendship and how relationships or friendships are so often a place where we experience and learn about our relationship with God.
I really appreciated Epiphany moments during this past Advent in which I learned that when I meet a person as a new friend, I am about to encounter an incredible and authentic individual being whose depth brings not only personality but culture, in a way that has been uniquely integrated into who they are as an individual. Thinking about it, friendship is an awe-inspiring invitation to receive. When my new friend asked me to dance, at my own home… That was a door to an epiphany to me. It was the first moment in my life in which I was invited to dance in my home, with a guest! When I was a young adult I danced, but it was on the dance floor, I was with a crowd of people, and so, I could be anonymous!
Re-entering the relational joy of dancing was the unexpected invitation and the door to the exploration of difference. Then, on Christmas morning, Louise Rose said, No Virgin Mary, or Dreaming Mary, sing Dancing Mary had a baby boy!
In the Christmas-Epiphany story, there are a number of points that invite us to think about God embracing the hospitality of difference and the people of faith engaging in difference. I would like to note two fun facts: The Magi brought their treasure chests, opened them, and offered Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It’s not a story of conversion. It’s the story of two lotus flowers — a Jewish family and the “gentile” Magi — and the gifts the Magi brought filled the room with a beautiful aroma.
Then, the star… the star in today’s reading that heralded the news of the birth of the Messiah, and which led the shepherds and the Magi to explore the brilliance of the night under the strange, new starlight, is not meant to be searched for with science.
John Dominic Crossan, a prominent scholar of the Jesus Seminar, says that any attempt to identify the guiding star with a natural astronomical event is misguided. The star in Matthew’s Gospel does not simply shine in the sky; it moves! It not only leads the Magi westward to Jerusalem, it then turns and moves south to Bethlehem. There, “It stopped over the place where the child was.” This is no comet, or conjunction of planets, or supernova. If it was, the star where the light came from would be fixed in its position in the sky, relative to the other stars. Epiphany is not a history, but a parable, that tells us how God incarnates on earth and in flesh. Epiphany reveals the light to our understanding and relationships. The star moves, guides, dances, inspires, challenges us to come out to explore the darkness of the night, look for the unexpected and find the hidden place where the brilliance emerges and stays. The Magi and the shepherds follow the star that moves and they engage the most holy difference… Immanuel — God in flesh or the glory in the squalor — … The Messiah born in the most humble surroundings, which was wholly different from the most people’s expectation about the Saviour, the King, they had been waiting for.
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| Rainbow star, 2012 |
On this Sunday as we celebrate Epiphany, I invite you to the art of engaging difference I also invite you to the movement of the star that leads to the brilliance of new understanding, new friendship, new dances, new strangeness, and new hope. Not everyone is skilled at being comfortable embracing and being fascinated by the presence of difference. But let’s try the wisdom of three lotuses, three Wise Ones. In this new year, let us embark on the journey of the Epiphany-night, as if we were the shepherds and the magi who came out and embraced the difference of the altered sky. Let us find baby Jesus, with treasures in our hearts and hands, and at the same time we open to receive and be fascinated by the treasures of the Other, the gifts of those whom God favours (Luke 2:14).
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