The Epiphany -- Year A Isaiah 60:1-6, 9 Psalm 72: 1-2, 10-17 Ephesians 3:1-12 Matthew 2:1-12 January 6, 2005 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder, Chaplain Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi In the Name of Christ Jesus -- Sun of our night and Lamp of our days. Amen. Last week, I joined with almost 120 staff and campers to attend the annual Winter Solstice senior high session at Camp Bratton-Green in Canton. I think we all had great fun. Camp is just a fun place to be -- at least that's my experience of it. Besides being part of a really fun and innovative staff, and being around lots of young, energetic people, I like being at camp because it refreshes me. There's never a time at camp that some spark is not enkindled within me, giving me something to take from that place. As much as I had hoped not to in the days leading up to Christmas, this year camp made me realize just how hectic I had become this Advent. I enjoyed being at camp for some time to think, to look at the stars and realize, too, that our daylight hours are increasing once again. The stars are so bright over camp -- the sky clear, the night air fresh and sharp. We had a good week, because the theme was well planned. The week, on the whole, was well organized. Things fit together neatly, which is somewhat unusual for camp. (There's usually something that unravels during a session and has to be rethought, and very quickly at that!). Oftentimes it's these changes of course that get us most energized -- when things out of the ordinary happen, when the unexpected occurs, and something catches us off our guard. These things create something new in our week's experience and have on more than one occasion shaped our lives and our long-term memories dear to many of us. It's these moments I value most -- because they shake us and sometimes rattle our cages. They're surprising and refreshing. They're oftentimes breakthrough moments. The effect is long lasting and becomes a part of us. Many times it's some little thing that may give insight into our relationships as church and community of faith and as children of God. But other times the moment is profound enough to solidify in heart and mind the presence of God working in this world yesterday, today and tomorrow. Such was one of my earliest memories of camp. Such was the day when I knew beyond all doubt that there is a God. Surprise! Surprise! God is a surprise…Right before your eyes It's baffling to the wise. Surprise! Surprise! God is a surprise! Open up your eyes and see! So went the refrain of the session's theme song that week some twenty years ago now. Beyond the silliness of lunch time songs and laughter and mail call, we would piece together a new verse to the song before heading off to our cabins for rest period. The daily themes from the verses were setting the stage for our overall theme. That year in particular, we were focusing on great characters from the Bible and the ways in which God surprised them in their own lives. We got more than we were bargaining for, I tell you that. We campers had been there for almost three days. We had already covered Adam and Eve and Moses. It was all a lot of fun, what with the usual games and activities of camp and the skits going along with our theme. And there would be other figures, but the day that stood out most for me then as it does even now was the day we considered Noah. There we were in the dining hall, singing about God's surprises in human life, and especially Noah's life -- Noah who was obedient to God's directive to build the ark even when those around him did not believe, Noah whose family received the sign in the sky of God's everlasting covenant, Noah to whom God broke through into this world doing something new. And there we were in the midst of it all, when all of a sudden a rain shower moved in, ever so lightly dropping water from the heavens on camp for what was certainly no more than two or three minutes on that otherwise bright, sunny and cloudless day. There we were, singing about Noah, the sign-seer, amazed at the sight of own double-arched rainbow, spanning from the craft shack to the Chapel and over the chapel to the road by the softball field -- two rainbows fully contained within the camp … And we were dumbfounded -- dumbfounded because it was more than coincidence for so many of us, dumbfounded because camp is that place where so many of us expect to see God in the other, yet were so surprised to see what we understood to be God bursting forth so brilliantly with no subtlety at all. Tonight we, in our own way, celebrate humankind's beholding of the glory of the radiance of Christ, moving out into the world from that dimly lit stable to a brightness bursting over every horizon -- not just a sign in the heavens but God manifest here on earth, amongst us. Tonight we celebrate the visitation of the Magi to the infant Jesus, bearing precious and costly gifts, each of whom at the sight of Jesus fell down and worshipped him, enthroning him in their hearts -- their "pagan," "unworthy," "stranger" hearts. We have come to know the Wise Ones in various ways: as Melchoir, Caspar and Balthazar; stargazers and astrologers; scholars and thinkers; dreamers; kings. And they came bearing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, representing royalty and God-offering and sacrifice. Yet their very presence is, perhaps, more important than their symbolic gifts. How profound a thing for the coursers and plotters of the heavens to be led to their destiny here on earth, not far away and in distant, hypothetical, unreachable places, but grounded, solid, and tangible before their very eyes and within their reach -- representing the manifestation of the Christ to all the peoples of the earth, all the children of God -- no longer a promise of salvation and relationship for a chosen people but for all. Tonight we, too, are called to look for and to see the brightness of Jesus' Light shining in this world, to heed God's invitation, and to become moved in adoration of the Beloved as God's beloved. Tonight we celebrate Epiphany -- the Feast of Lights, the Feast of the True Light, broken into this world, piercing darkness once and for all and shining into the midst of the darknesses of our several and many lives -- those places perhaps into which only God may see. And tonight we celebrate ourselves -- not vainly but joyously -- as being the invited, the beloved of God and not strangers at all, rather called to new relationship -- relationship not just for us, or the chosen, but a celebration of the whole of creation being of a God who loved and loves us so much that God came, God's self, into this world. And this revelation may be for us as profound as a camp-time double rainbow or as personal as receiving the glimpse of the Kingdom in the eye of a passerby or an old friend, or coworker, or dare I say someone sitting the next pew over. Tonight we again celebrate Immanuel: God with us -- all of us -- and not once but for always. May we ever be led by that brightness on the horizon. May we ever be guided to those places of encounter. May we ever be guided through the darkness, not alone after all. May we always give thanks and rejoice that God loves us that much. May we ever be surprised. Amen.