From the Pulpit: Epiphanies

What have you learned recently? There must be something, if you aren’t continuing to learn then I would ask how well are you living?

Full disclosure, I come from a household of educators so the idea that a person should be learning everyday was one that was modeled, talked about, and engrained in me since birth. But after college and grad school, I must admit I became a bit education weary. 

Now I love classes, lectures, discussion groups, writing, reading, etc. but once you do that for the first three decades of your life you start to miss those experiences that God gives you that teach you things in a more organic way. Those instances when an experience strikes you and you understand who you are, what you are doing (or should be doing), who God is, something foundational about life, in a new way. Those moments of epiphany.

We in the church calendar are now in the season of Epiphany. This past Sunday many of you heard the story of Jesus being baptized and the crowds receiving an epiphany of who this is: God’s Son, the Beloved, in whom God is well pleased. 

The question for us as people living in the year 2020 is what do these events of Jesus’ life continue to reveal to us about who we are, what do we learn and what sort of epiphanies will take place in our life through the work of the Holy Spirit?

Pastors look for these epiphanies, too. We are often reading and study about new ways to engage congregation members, a new Bible study, a sermon series, a stewardship plan, church governance, etc. but in my experience while these things are necessary and good, it is rarely through those avenues that the epiphanies come.

Epiphany happens when you run yourself ragged chasing all those things that you think will make you more spiritual, a better Christian, a more effective minister, a better preacher and then Jesus says to you follow me.

Stop chasing the self-help and self-improvement that you think you need and follow me. Love God and love your neighbor. May we keep getting called back to that powerful truth and may it be the epiphany for us every day.