"God is Still Speaking" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 7, 2024 (Epiphany Sunday)
Scripture – Matthew 2:1-12


Last year, in the season of Lent, we started sharing our God Sightings at the beginning of our worship services.  Our theme during Lent last year was encountering Jesus – we read stories from the bible each week about people who had a life-changing encounter with Jesus; we gathered on Wednesday evenings for a time of meditation where we might encounter the still small voice of God in the silence; and at the start of each worship service, we started sharing with each other the times in the week when we had noticed God at work in the world, or when we were especially aware of God’s presence.

 

And then when we came to the end of Lent, we had a conversation at Session about how much people appreciated this opportunity to share, and so we have continued with this practice in the months since.  And from my perspective at least, it has been beautiful to see the variety of encounters that have been shared, and the depths of those encounters.  Collectively, we have spotted God moving and working in the world in too many ways to count.

 

Occasionally, someone will begin to share their God Sighting along the lines of, “Well… it’s not really a sighting, but this is how and when I was aware of God’s presence this week.”  And that’s perfectly alright! God communicates with us through all of our senses.  (And maybe we need to come up with a different name for it than “God Sightings” so that we aren’t privileging one sense over the others.  I’m also trying to be careful not to talk about God speaking to us, because that might limit God’s voice to only our sense of hearing!)

 

God created us with all of our senses; and God communicates with us through all of our senses.  If you think just about the sacraments – in baptism we see and hear the water being poured, and then we feel the water as it trickles down our forehead.  And in communion, we see the bread being broken, we see and hear the wine being poured, we feel the piece of bread as we hold it in our hands, and we smell and taste the bread and the juice as we eat it.  Through the sacraments, God uses all of our senses to tell us, “I love you.”

 

And it’s the same with our God sightings – sometimes we witness with our eyes an act of love so profound that we know that God is a part of it. Sometimes we hear God speaking through the voice of another person, nudging us in a new direction. Sometimes we feel the weight of God’s love when we are feeling sad or anxious and a friend wraps us in a hug. Sometimes we can smell God’s presence and the fulfilment of hope when the first rain begins to fall after a dry spell. Sometimes we can taste God’s presence at a potluck when family and community join together, like at the one we had last Sunday.

 

In the story that we read at Epiphany, the story of the wise ones following a star to visit Jesus, we find God communicating in a couple of different ways.  The obvious one here is the star – the magi came from the east to Jerusalem asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage”; and later on we read that the star stopped over the place where the child was.  The magi were astronomers and astrologers, people who studied the stars in the night sky, along with the meaning that those stars brought. They were foreigners, coming from some unnamed country east of Jerusalem, and wouldn’t have been followers of the God of the Jewish people, and yet this God chose to speak to them, to call them using a language that they would understand – the appearance of a new star in the sky.

 

And then we read about God communicating through the religious leaders of Jerusalem – people who had studied the scriptures, the law and the prophets.  When King Herod asks where the Messiah, the Anointed One, was to be born, they were able to quote the prophet Micah, who spoke of a leader coming from Bethlehem in the land of Judah. God communicates and gives direction through the scriptures. (Now what Herod did with this communication is a sermon for another day!)

 

And we also see God communicating through dreams. After the wise ones have offered their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Jesus, they don’t do as Herod had asked them to do, they don’t return to Jerusalem with directions about how to find the infant king. Instead, God warns them in a dream that Herod’s intentions are not good, and they find another route back to their home in the east… one that will bypass Jerusalem.

 

God is communicating with the people in so many different ways in the story, but in order for the message to be heard, the people have to be alert to perceive God.  If those magi hadn’t spent years studying the night sky, if they hadn’t been diligent in scanning the stars, they wouldn’t have noticed a new star when it appeared. And later on, if they hadn’t trusted that God might speak through their dreams, they might have brushed an odd dream off as a bad bowl of lentil stew before bed.

 

And isn’t it the same with us?  When we practice being alert to God’s presence in the world, we are much more likely to notice God’s presence. And so something like sharing our God sightings every Sunday, or asking ourselves every night at bedtime, “Where did I notice God today?” – these sorts of practices exercise our muscles of noticing.  And when we are practiced in looking for the presence of the divine around us, then epiphanies, or Aha moments of insight or recognition… they become second nature to us.

 

For God is still communicating with us each and every day – speaking to us, revealing their divine presence to us, embracing us in love. And may all of our senses be open to perceive this. Amen.

 

Outline of the Magi (and their camel)
from the Live Nativity in December