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Second Sunday in Epiphany
January 16, 2005 Sermon
by Rev. Sue Deetz, Deacon
When I was teaching school
in Milwaukee, occasionally a student would pretty excitedly tell me that
their birthday was coming up and they were going to have saffron cake! I
thought it was just the kind they picked out, like chocolate or lemon or
something. I didn’t see the attraction myself, saffron cakes are a
bright orangey-yellow color, with a pretty strong taste. It wasn’t until
years later that I learned that saffron is a very expensive and
treasured spice. The children I worked with came from families that
sometimes had to choose between heating the house or eating, not a lot
of spare money to be had. So a saffron cake was much more than a cake,
it was a message that they were loved, loved enough to purchase the
precious saffron, to celebrate their birthday .To be that special. How
many of those illuminations do we pass by without seeing?
In today’s Gospel, the disciples asked Jesus where he was staying, and
they then “came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him
that day.” It was right after that, they followed him. From the synoptic
Gospels, I always thought they dropped everything and followed Jesus, no
questions asked, no looking back. But there seems to be a different
story here. No snap judgments , they wanted to spend some time getting
to know him a bit. It was only after that time spent together they
recognized him as the Messiah. I think that’s the point in this whole
story. Taking the time to understand, to get to know each other. If we
took the time to sit down with someone, or listen to someone and ask
questions, would we be less likely to make snap judgements? Even the
lion sitting down with the lamb could maybe find some common ground.
It’s a quiet kind of discipleship, a very human discipleship that brings
out the incarnate God among us. It illuminates us much like a saffron
birthday cake.
Now, about that lamb. Twice in this Gospel Jesus is referred to as the
‘Lamb of God’. My Christian upbringing leads me to guess the lamb, which
at face value is rather benign, is in reference to the Passover lamb or
possibly the lamb in Isaiah. Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh present
another more cosmic possibility in their Social Commentary. They suggest
that most everyone of the time would be familiar with the constellation
Aries( which was named later). Originally Aries was considered a male
lamb, and was symbolized with it’s head facing backward, indicating that
it was strong even though it’s neck had been broken. They state that,
“It was common ancient lore that when the vault of the sky returns to
the position it had at the very time of creation, it will be with the
lamb at the point of preeminence, the head of the cosmos. And such
return to beginnings was expected. By ushering in a new created order,
with a new sky and a new land, the cosmic lamb of God does away with
everything that preceded.” Whether one chooses to believe this or not,
it certainly blurs some lines.
At first glance, Isaiah’s loud words of the all powerful God, to the
ends of the earth speak more to what’s happening in the world at the
moment. They are shouting out to us, like the gnashing of teeth in the
Psalms of lament. With the unfathomable number of people dead or
homeless from the tsunami, the mudslides in California, the rising
number of casualties civilian and military in Iraq. Add to that the
great mounds of snow out front,and the frigid temperatures, its almost
too much to comprehend. Isaiah speaks of shedding human institutions,
freeing us from the “slaves of rulers”. All this talk of the ‘far
corners of the earth’, and ‘light to the nations’, gives me pause to
ponder and revel in the divine being of God.
Imagine Isaiah, and John’s Gospel switched around. If those massive
numbers of casualties from the tsunami were broken down to the
individual level where their stories are quietly told, (actually much
like the media is attempting to do), could our common humanity pierce
through the numbness or helplessness that comes with so many victims?
And imagine, sitting down with someone of another race, asking what it
is like to consider their skin color in every interaction every day,
could the powerful light of the world shine through, enough for us to
shout about and break down destructive institutions? These two lessons
together surely give us cause to break bread together.