Message 1-2-22

Message given at Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal in Covington, GA

 https://www.youtube.com/live/rsmHMNx7LvY?feature=share&t=990

1/2/22 Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal

Good Morning!!

This is one of my favorite times of the Christmas Season – we are past the rush of Christmas Day, fresh into the New Year – both the liturgical and the calendar year, and our next big feast is “Epiphany.” Epiphany, the celebration of the Good News coming to the Gentiles. The Gentiles who sought out Jesus via a star. The Magi, priests from Persia, who brought expensive gifts out of their abundance to the Messiah, a king they recognize from their own prophecies. The Gentil connection to Jesus. This is our connection to Jesus. We are the modern Gentiles, so Epiphany is our Feast.

Epiphany is also that “aha” moment in which we finally get or understand a thing that has alluded us. I’m hoping to bring an epiphany this morning in a way of thinking that will bring you joy for this new year.

The beginning of the New Year is for many a time to reflect on the past and prepare for the future. Some of us may try to set New Year’s resolutions. I like the term intensions. Setting an intension for a way of being, or an intension of what is most important in my life, or what is going to take precedence. This is what Karl Barth (actually Paul Tillich - corrected in the January 23, 2022 message) would call an “ultimate concern.” It’s a new phrase for me, a fancy way of saying “top priority” in a very theological kind of way. An Ultimate Concern is that thing that drives you to do and be who and what you are. It’s what is most important to you in your life, that leads you to do what you do day in and day out. And this is a good day to think about what drives us to do and be who and what we are.

The scripture is rich this morning. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, is finally giving a message of hope to the people of Israel. He wasn’t known for giving good news, that’s why he wept a lot. He wept because his prophetic word was usually harsh and foreboding and not well received. His Ultimate Concern was to turn the hearts and minds of the people of Israel back to their God whom they had forsaken for a period. And he wept that Israel was such a mess, the people had gone astray, away from God in that their Ultimate Concern was not their God. The God of Israel was no longer their focus. They were caught up in their daily lives, no longer needing deliverance out of the land of the Egyptians, they thought; they had a level of comfort in their society being an independent nation with a King, no longer under the hardship of slavery under a foreign power. They were for their time “modern.”

It reminds me of our modern society. We mostly have all that we need even in the midst of a pandemic. Even though we see and know there is hardship around us and especially in some areas of the country that have experienced floods and fires and tornadoes and other harsh weather, the majority of people of this country do not suffer. Not the type of suffering that people in war torn countries suffer, refugees fleeing for their lives with their children, or third world countries with people who suffer because some places still lack running water, adequate plumbing, medicine, or the simple safety of life, a roof over their head, food on the table, and clothes that keep them warm and dry. Where genocide still occurs, and hunger and severe poverty are still the norm.

No. Here we are modern. We have grocery stores that have plenty to choose from even with a shortage of some items. We have Amazon and strip malls with goods and services available to those with money to spend, and hospitals, and medicine, and homes with heat in the wintertime. We have the gift of abundance to share with others as we have done this holiday season from Church of the Good Shepherd to families in need.

Jeremiah had been warning of impending doom for most of his life. He warned of disasters befalling the people of Israel if they did not return to God as their focus, as their Ultimate Concern. Disaster upon disaster began to fall upon Israel just as he had been warning.

It’s not popular in this country, in our Christian thinking as people of the Enlightenment, as people of science and post-modern Christianity to think that disasters follow a people when they turn away from God. They even teach us in seminary that these stories were created in retrospect to help explain why certain things happened, and that the prophets wrote in retrospect. God, a good and loving God would never send disaster. It’s not his nature. I agree, mostly.

God does not have to “send” disaster. The absence of God as an Ultimate Concern is already a disaster. What keeps our equilibrium equal is God in and through Christ Jesus. What keeps the balance in our lives or the good that we receive is the presence and communion with the living God. That is why you come here each Sunday to receive communion and renew that fellowship. Somewhere deep in your soul from the time of your baptismal vows you know that this relationship is what keeps your world from falling apart. Even in your darkest times, even in the valley of the shadow of death, you know that you are never alone. We are not without hardship or disaster, but we have the balance, the equilibrium, in God, with God, through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that keeps us from being completely devastated in the midst of disaster, or crises, or difficulty. When God, when Jesus is your Ultimate Concern, that thing that drives you to do what you do and be who you are, you have that covenant relationship that sustains you when the world around you may be tragedy. It’s the rock that keeps us steady, from falling over the cliff when we feel we might otherwise give up.

So, Jeremiah tells us what to do and gives us good news. “Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations; proclaim, give praise, and say, “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel. See I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together, a great company, they shall return here. Here he does not exclude even those who might otherwise be rejected in Israel – the blind, the lame, those with child and those in labor. The sick, the frail, and the mothers. Those who have made God their Ultimate Concern receive comfort even if society rejects them.

Jeremiah was not preaching or prophesying from a place of comfort. Israel was in a mess. They were being conquered by foreign nations, their modern way of life had collapsed, they were being taken into exile and were no longer free. Their Ultimate Concern was not God. They had given their concerns over to a way of life where God was no longer their focus. Disaster struck and they didn’t know what to do. So Jeremiah was telling them what to do and giving a good word in the midst of their disaster. He was giving a remnant hope. He was reminding them who and what should remain their focus in the midst of their disaster, and telling them what to do. “Sing aloud with gladness … raise shouts for the chief of the nations … proclaim, give praise, and say, “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant…”

The remnant, what remains of a people after the disaster. It was a remnant that survived the flood, a remnant that was saved out of Sodom and Gomorrah, a remnant that finally made it out of the wilderness into the promised land. It is the remnant that does not lose sight of who God is as their Ultimate Concern in their lives. That thing that drives them to do what they do and to be who they are. There was a remnant that survived the disasters that Israel encountered. It is the reason we still have Old Testament Scripture. It was the remnant that was left to continue the story of the relationship of God to the people of Israel.

This season of Epiphany, the celebration of the recognition of the Messiah by the Gentiles, will you have your “aha” moment in knowing, like the Magi, that Jesus is the Ultimate Concern worth traveling months and miles to see and receive and present gifs to out of your abundance? Will you set your intentions to keep Jesus Christ as your focus to be that thing, that person that drives you to do and be who and what you are? Will Jesus be what is your rock? Who you turn to to praise, and worship, give thanks to even in the midst of disaster?

We have what Barth (Tillich) calls preliminary concerns that may appear to be ultimate concerns. This looks like our jobs, our families, our wants and our desires. When things don’t go “right” in these areas of our lives, and we have made them our ultimate concerns rather than recognizing them as our preliminary concerns with Jesus as the Ultimate, our relationship with God as the Ultimate, then when disaster hits, our world may in fact fall apart. We might not feel like we can make it. This might even look like making the church our ultimate concern and being angry when the church disappoints us as it has for so many during the pandemic by having to close its doors or limit communion. Not even the church can be our ultimate concern over God, over Jesus. They are not the same. Church is our place to meet and worship. But God is over and above any dwelling place. Your relationship with Jesus will sustain you even if this building were to be lost through natural disaster.

So this Epiphany, I pray that you examine your Ultimate Concern, that you set your intention to make Jesus Christ your Ultimate Concern that will sustain you through all of life’s challenges, and praise God and celebrate this new year of promise where you know that God sees you, and sustains you, and loves you in the midst of even the worst of times that may surround you. Happy New Year.