Sermon Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sunday, January 16, 2022, at 8:00 & 10 a.m.
By the Rev. Stephen C. Galleher
It’s Always About the Light IV
“Jesus Christ is the light of the world.”
(Collect for Second Epiphany)
“You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of God.”
(Isaiah 62:3)
“How priceless is your love, O God!…You give them drink from the river of your delights.” (Psalm 36:8)
“Jesus [turned the water into wine], the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.”
(John 2:11)
Here we are once again at home, meeting and worshiping together via Zoom. I bet you’re as tired as I am of this seemingly endless COVID pandemic and want to be shoulder to shoulder with your friends and fellow parishioners. But it is very dangerous out there, and safety should be our motto until things ease up. In the meantime, greetings and let’s make the best of this less than ideal situation.
Epiphany, as we have seen, is about light. It’s always about the light. The light that was coming into the world. The light that came into the world through the remarkable and dazzling light of one named Jesus, and the light that shines in our hearts as we see how transforming this light really is—a light that is reflected from God, that wells up from within and radiates out into the world around us. Let our light so shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
Epiphany means an uncovering, a revelation, a manifestation of something that we may not have seen, that may have eluded us. It’s not that something was not there and is suddenly there. It may have been there all along, but we just neglected noticing. Of course, if we don’t notice something, it’s as good as not being there. How many times have we said, do we say, “Oh, wow, I never noticed that before”?
Like when we look in a mirror [photo #1]. Or like when water becomes wine [photo #2].
We are told, or we have heard, that we are created in God’s image. Now, that’s a lovely phrase, but do we believe it? Do we really, really believe that we reflect, that we emanate the light of God? Remember, it is always about the light. It can be challenge, especially as Father Time gets the better of us, when we look in a mirror. Some of us have never been pleased when we brush our teeth in the morning and get a glance at the face staring back at us [photo #3]. One smart aleck wrote that when he sees really attractive people, he laughs because he knows if we lived in the Aztec culture, they’d be sacrificed to the gods for their beauty. It may seem a strange way of coping with not being really attractive… but it works for him.
What a shame really. Most of us aren’t Sophia Loren [photo #4] or Marilyn Monroe or Brad Pitt or Bradley Cooper [photo #5]. And if we get really, really serious, I think most of us want to remain exactly as we were created. The light we are given is sufficient for us. In fact, this image of God in us is not confined to the human race. Caterpillars have it [photo #6]; crocodiles have it; chimpanzees have it. And, can you believe: ostriches, elephants, platypuses, kangaroos. What in heaven’s name? This place right here is more bizarre than the bar scene in “Star Wars” [photo #7]. In fact, the mountains, the oceans, the forest, all manifest this light, this image of God [photo #8]. Coming to understand this is to step into heaven itself. It is to see that water is wine, already [photo #9]. Jesus just calls this to our attention. The miracle at the wedding in Cana supposedly reveals the glory of Christ. “Glory” is a wonderful word with many surprising meanings. One of these meanings is “beauty,” Next time you hear the term “glory,” substitute the word “beauty” for it, and see how it can help us see something in a new light. Like an epiphany. The beautiful chorus from Handel’s Messiah sings, “And the glory of, glory of the Lord, shall be re-vealed!” That is epiphany. The curtain lifts, the penny drops, the eyes see, as if for the first time, the unimaginable bright light that shines from and in and around everything we see. Light, light, light. It’s always about the light.
And perhaps, just perhaps we underestimate our own glory, our own beauty, because the God we worship is too small. This God is not an old crabby guy with no sense of humor. God every minute is bursting out of the little tin boxes we try to put him in, through God’s wonderful creations. When I was musing about light the other Sunday and wondering if light traveled in a straight line or could go around corners, I was informed that the light we see around corners is reflected and that colors are that reflected light. That’s what colors are: reflected light! Isn’t that great? We are the colors of God, reflecting what comes directly at us as pure white. And white light contains all the colors unrefracted and unreflected, and we cannot see those colors until they are reflected in you and me and the trees and mountains.
I close with a favorite poem of mine, one that I had to memorize when I was in the fifth grade, when doing such things was a lot easier than it would be now. It is called “Rhodora” by Ralph Waldo Emerson [photo #10].
On being asked, whence is the flower.
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask; I never knew;
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The self-same power that brought me there, brought you.
It’s always about the light. Before I could not see what was right before me. Now I see.
Amen.