In Its Rich Variety Isaiah 60:1-5, Matt. 2:1-12, Eph. 3:1-12

Every now and then a story comes along
about someone’s dramatic, miraculous, life-changing recovery of the ability to see.
Back last February the online English edition of the Russian newspaper Pravda
ran the story of a Russian boy named Vanya who suffered severe trauma at birth
and who, along with other problems, was diagnosed with “optic atrophy.”1
In other words, he was blind.
His mother resisted the doctor’s advice to abandon her son to the state
and embarked on a program of intensive care.
In many ways Vanya thrived under his mother’s care, but he still couldn’t see.

A Russian Orthodox priest in a small church next to their home
invited Vanya’s mother to be baptized along with her son.
Seeking spiritual comfort, the mother did just that.
Vanya’s mother recounts that she went to the church every day after the baptism
to pray that Vanya’s sight would be restored.
It didn’t’ happen immediately, but one day the mother heard Vanya laughing.
She went in the other room to investigate and found him sitting in a sunbeam
grasping at dust particles floating in the light.
The next day, doctors confirmed that Vanya had limited vision
and in several months Vanya had gained what the article calls “absolute eyesight.”
While acknowledging that doctors may have misdiagnosed Vanya’s condition
from the beginning, the Russian reporter concludes,
“it is wonderful that this incredible miracle has given a better life to the boy.’

Every now and then a story comes along about someone’s dramatic, miraculous,
life-changing recovery of the ability to see.
What may not be as dramatic or miraculous
but what can be nearly as life-changing
is a recovery, not of one’s ability to SEE but of one’s ability to PERCEIVE.

There is a difference between seeing and perceiving.
I would hazard to guess even those among us with near perfect vision
have some area of life where our perception is skewed,
some aspect of the way we interpret events in our life that is a tad out of whack.
Maybe stereotypes developed from past experiences or learned from a role model
unfairly darken or blur my perception of certain people or places in my life now.
Maybe I resist perceiving a person or event differently
because to do so would mean I have to change something about myself
and I’m just too lazy to do so.
Maybe I’m just so accustomed to viewing the world from the perspective
a white, middle-class male from the Southeastern United States
that it never occurs to me someone else might see things differently.

Everyone of us here is, in some area of our life, as blind as little Vanya
if not because of optic ATROPHY,
then at least because of optic APATHY.
We get in a rut and it’s easy to stay there.
We take shortcuts, make assumptions that may not be accurate.
We succumb to pressure to maintain the status quo
rather than to do the work required to put ourselves in another person’s shoes,
try on a different perspective.

But sometimes a change in perspective happens even when I’m not trying.
Sometimes a change in perspective surprises me,
turns on a light bulb,
grabs me by the lapels and gives a good hard shake so that my eyes are opened,
so that I am able to finally perceive what has been there all along.
We call that an EPIPHANY – the word literally means “light out of darkness.”

Another word we use for this phenomenon of a sudden new perception is “revelation.”
The whole point of celebrating Christmas is to acknowledge that God chose
to reveal God’s self in a very specific, very tangible, very accessible way.
The whole point of celebrating Christmas is to give thanks
that God’s people are no longer required to infer from vague signs in nature
that there is a God.
God’s people are no longer left to guess from ambiguous experiences
what God is like.
God’s people are no longer at the mercy of fortune-teller and seers
to imagine how God would have God’s people live.
The whole point of celebrating Christmas
is to rejoice that, in the person of Jesus, God has provided a tutorial for God’s people;
an unambiguous object lesson,
a clear model of humility, and vulnerability,
coupled with deep integrity and great strength.
That’s the “Good News” about which the angels sang to the shepherds.
That’s the “Good News” Mary pondered in her heart.

And the whole point of telling the story of the “ wise men from the East”
is to underscore the additional revelation that the people of God to whom Jesus came
are not just Jews.
The story of those men we call “Wise” is told to us by Matthew to underscore
that the revelation of God through Jesus is for every single person on earth.

This concept that God’s salvation through Jesus is not just for the Jews but for all people
Is the “mystery” to which the author of Ephesians writing in Paul’s name alludes.
It’s no big secret.
It’s one of those notions of faith that has been hiding in plain sight,
only it’s been neglected and forgotten over time.
All the way back in Isaiah, there was the message that God’s purpose for the Jews
was not to be an elite nation, alone in God’s blessing and favor.
Instead, God’s plan was to use the Jews as a means of reaching everyone else.
“Nations shall come to your light,” Isaiah writes,
“And kings to the brightness of your dawn.

But this understanding of God’s purpose for the Jews was overshadowed
by a competing notion, the notion of national and religious purity,
the notion of self-preservation through the exclusion
of anyone or anything considered foreign.
By focusing only on the fact that God had CHOSEN them
and forgetting what God had chosen them FOR
the scribes and Pharisees, the Herodians and the Sadducees,
the Chief priests and all the elite of the Jerusalem religious cult
failed to comprehend what the visit of the wise men from the East really meant.
Herod alone seems to be the one who grasped the significance of their inquiry.
He rightly perceived in their arrival a threat,
a threat to his oppressive exercise of power,
a threat to his corruption, a threat to his exclusivity.

Today we give thanks for the epiphany, the revelation
of this mystery that is no secret;
that, in the words of the letter to the Ephesians,
God’s wisdom comes to us through Christ in “its rich variety”
and is not meant to be available only to an exclusive few.

To me, this means that I am not responsible for controlling God’s epiphany.
God has not put me in charge of guarding God’s revelation.
I do believe that God has given us the Bible as the most reliable means we have
of accessing God’s revelation through Jesus.
I do believe that the church, at it’s best,
is the place where the content of this revelation is made visible and tangible.
But that doesn’t mean my perception of God’s purpose is without blind spots.
It doesn’t’ mean I can say with confidence that MY way of seeing
is the ONLY way of seeing what God intends.

In a few minutes we will ordain and install new elders of this church,
women and men whom you have elected to this office
and have entrusted to be your representatives under guidance of the Holy Spirit.
They will be asked a series of questions to which we hope they’ll say “yes.”
One question will be:
Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?

But they’ll also be asked this question:
Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them,
subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit?
God’s epiphany, God’s revelation does not come to us in isolation;
it comes in the context of humility and friendship.
It does not come to us as a single scarf made to keep the chill off of one lone neck,
it comes as a king-sized quilt big enough for any who seek warmth in it.

We all have our blind spots;
tender places we zealously guard and tough places, hard and impervious.
But as we come to this table of the Lord spread before us,
I invite you to join me in making this New Year’s resolution:
We resolve that we will seek to live in the coming year
as those who have seen the light of Christ -
choosing to live as he lived, in humility and with vulnerability
coupled with deep integrity and great strength.
It’s not as dramatic as the return of a child’s eyesight,
but if we were to KEEP that resolution it might count as at least a minor miracle.
It certainly would make for a better life for THIS boy!

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1 http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/02-11-2007/100086-blind_boy-0