Take Joy
A sermon for Epiphany and the New Year delivered at Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church on January 5, 2020
Note: full text of the reading referenced in this sermon can be found here.
I grew up in a religious home, but because we weren’t Catholic or Orthodox or any other denomination with close ties to Old World traditions, I didn’t grow up with any strong feelings or associations about this little holiday called Epiphany. I suppose it was always there, sort of on the edge of my awareness — I can remember from a young age that it was always listed on the calendar. It seemed like such an afterthought, though.
At some point, I learned that Epiphany was the day to celebrate the arrival of the Three Wise Men who had traveled so far to bring their presents to the baby Jesus. I did find this interesting, mainly because I always found the Magi themselves interesting. Like, who even were these dudes? I was always taught that astrology was a sin, but if you read the story, that’s exactly what these guys were doing. Not only does the astrology work, but they seem to get a pass for it. Apparently, Jesus must have liked his presents — but how did they even know that’s what he would want? How many babies do you know who are into smoky smelly resin and yellow metal? What do you suppose happened to these fellows? Who ended up with the gold?
It’s an odd story. Naturally, it seems more odd than it was originally because the specific symbolism and agenda of the author of Matthew’s Gospel is lost on us here in 2020, but I think it’s still pretty odd either way. It was always the odd stories in the Bible that made an impression on me.
Nonetheless, despite having this interest from a very early age and, even more mysterious, despite the miracle of having all the information in the world in my pocket, I never knew until just the other day why they call it “Epiphany”. I always wondered, but I guess never badly enough to look it up.
It’s just that I’ve always thought of “epiphany” simply as like “a big sudden realization of something.” You know, a eureka moment, that sort of thing. That’s fine. What bothered me is that I felt like there wasn’t remotely any such thing in the story of the Magi. I mean, yeah, they realized what the star meant, but that’s way at the beginning of the story, whereas this weird little afterthought of a holiday is supposed to be all about the end. Like, did they get all the way to the Christ child and only then does the light bulb go off? Like “oh yeah, that’s why we were doing all this and carrying all this stuff from our far off land!”
Maaaybe, but the story doesn’t give any indication that that’s how things happened.
Well. Fast forward two thousand and twenty-something years and there I am a few days ago and I started thinking it might be a bad idea to try and get up here and facilitate an Epiphany service without, you know, at least googling the word.
Of course, you all probably already know this, but in case you don’t, the answer is quite simple: the primary meaning of the word isn’t “realization” at all — certainly not in any intellectual sense of the word — but actually “the sudden appearance or manifestation of the divine or a divine being.”
It all makes sense now. Baby Jesus was appearing to the Magi — and, symbolically, to the wider world. Epiphany. The more common use of the word is essentially, therefore, a metaphor; we’re comparing a breakthrough of thought or inspiration to the appearance of something holy.
As Unitarian-Universalists who celebrate reason, progress, beauty, and art, perhaps we might argue that’s not really even a metaphor.
This is also, of course, our first service together in the new year, and I want to say that I am sincerely happy to find myself here in 2020 with all of you.
I thought about trying to claim that the state of the world made it difficult for me to celebrate on New Year’s Eve, but ultimately I knew you guys wouldn’t believe me. You’d have been right. I had a great time on New Year’s Eve; a couple of our favorite friends were visiting from Alaska and we all made merry until nearly 1:30. Excellent time. We were all among the cheering.
But I gotta admit, I almost feel this sort of pressure to downplay that, like it’s shameful in some way. Honestly, even jolly old me has to put forward a little extra effort for holidays. It feels at times that we are in some ways encouraged to feel guilty for enjoyment, encouraged to be anxious and austere instead of celebratory or, heaven forbid, frivolous.
I think it’s important to resist all that.
Now, I’ve certainly never been accused of being a Pollyanna. We do find ourselves in some fairly dark days. There’s no sense in ignoring all that, no reason to avoid talking about it. There’s a lot to talk about. We seem to be staring down the barrel of a new major war with the potential to have devastating consequences that reverberate around the globe. The entire continent of Australia is on fire, it’s been burning for days and it’s still burning and there isn’t really any way to fix it. The fires can be directly tied to climate change, serving as both a red flag in the present and a harbinger of more things to come, and all the while we still have no idea what we’re going to do about climate change itself. If anything. Many would argue that we’re stuck with a completely dysfunctional government and, lest we forget, there’s still a human rights crisis in our own country with kids forced into camps on our southern border.
It is pretty dark out there. I certainly understand the impulse to let all this get the best of us. It’s overwhelming. It can be hard to enjoy things under such conditions. And should we? To refer back to our opening reading, how are we to find heaven or peace or joy in what we see all around us in this new year? Why should we?
Surely, what is prerequisite for heaven and peace and joy is hope — and from where are we to derive our hope?
One of the many advantages of our UU faith is that we simply have way more to work with. Not only can we find truth and meaning in the spiritual texts and traditions of all faiths, nor only through art and philosophy, but we have available as well things that might ordinarily be labeled in a church as “merely” secular. By this I refer not just to science either but to the record left to us by history.
When we take advantage of this wealth of knowledge and context and understanding, we are better able to see where our own responsibilities and beliefs lie in the present — especially since we UU’s place such a high premium on sober assessment and reason. The truth is, it doesn’t take a lengthy examination to reveal the secret that it might seem pretty dark and hopeless out there now, but it also pretty much always has seemed equally as dark and hopeless. The threat of climate change is grave and we cannot understate it, but this is far from the first time our civilization and/or existence has been threatened.
Now, of course, we can look at that a couple of different ways. We can look at that and say it’s depressing to think that the world has always been so difficult for we humans, that it’s sheer luck that we’ve made it this far, that our downfall is inevitable and sooner rather than later. I mean, you can choose to do that. The alternative is to see it as comforting. We’re always facing the end of the world and we’re always surviving it. Our track record is great so far. We’ve done it before and can do it again.
Again, rather than absolving us of responsibility, this helps us define it. Look back through the ages and you will see: each time has its primary challenges and the task of the people living in any time is to work in any way possible to overcome those challenges. The ways we do so are not only, and maybe not even mostly, the ones we consider direct.
It’s about how we approach each day, what we bring to the world and what we take from it, because this, more than anything else, is how we influence our world and build the bright future that we’re capable of having.
I chose that reading this morning in large part because it was written on Christmas Eve 506 years ago but sounds like it was written specifically for us today; because it was written by an Italian Catholic friar but sounds freakishly like something a New England Unitarian-Universalist might say. To repeat the first part:
“There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!”
I love that urgency, that enthusiasm just dripping off the words. I take it seriously. If we cannot conceive of heaven — that is to say, the world living up to its highest potential — now, how are we to build it in the future? We belong to a religious tradition that rejects the idea of damnation, so why should we act like the damned? If we are helpless to affect any major change in this world, surely we are not helpless to take heaven into our hearts and bring it to life around us. Surely we can work toward making heaven here in this room, among this congregation, and from there out into the community. And I often imagine, if we were able to do that much, what major change might ultimately grow from such fertile soil? It’s no easy task — if anything, it’s a big part of the work of a lifetime.
If, in our pursuit of a better future, we lose our peace — whether inside our individual selves or among us as a collective body — how can we ever get anywhere? Taking peace also isn’t easy — today or in any other time. Perhaps for many or most, it doesn’t even come naturally. So it is nonetheless our responsibility, a task we are called to work on — and for us, that’s a call that comes not from scripture or any other sacred threat but from a commitment to a set of principles, from a commitment to life itself, and from a commitment to one another.
As for joy, what value is there in any of what we do if we find ourselves now or at any other time bereft of joy? This isn’t the same thing as happiness and it certainly doesn’t mean satisfaction. It represents something much more essential. It’s why we still gather together in a church building even though we’re no longer required by law or by deity to do so — because we’re able to take a certain measure of joy only when we come back together again and again, united in common purpose despite whatever our differences might be. It’s what we take when moved by music or literature, by images or drama, what we take when we love those around us, when we remember to give thanks, when we look around and see this beautiful, wonderful world for what it really is.
To meet the challenges of our times, we can afford neither panic nor despair. We UU’s believe that within all of us can be found tremendous courage and brilliant light. We need to draw on that courage and march that light forward into the darkness we talk so much about. We can only do it by taking heaven, peace, and joy in the here and now, and we definitely can’t do it without one another.
The story of the Wise Men is odd and intriguing and fun, but I think the second half of our 500-year-old reading does a much better job illustrating epiphany — both in its divine sense and its secular:
“Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.”
Those of us familiar with Ram Dass, who died just a couple weeks ago, are likely familiar with his version of that last line: “We’re all just walking each other home.” Isn’t it interesting, in addition, to think of ourselves as pilgrims on our way home together?
Maybe we should start the year off with that thought. Maybe it would get things off on the right foot firstly to be aware of this shared pilgrimage through life and then to consciously intend to continue this pilgrimage, to make it manifest each day.
Let this be our epiphany. Even as we face this age that seems without hope, may we never for a moment fail to see and be surrounded by life’s meaning and purpose, life’s unbelievable beauty, and our own boundless capacity for love and creation. May we always have the courage to claim it — and may we have the good fortune to do so together, all of us.