Easter Sunrise Sermon: "Why Are You Weeping?"

 

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

Easter Sunrise Service – 3-27-16

John 20:1-18

“Why Are You Weeping?”

We don’t expect to find life in a graveyard.

If you wander through the Old Burying Ground behind the town hall,

or through Meadow View Cemetery just up the road on Foundry St,

you’ll find gravestones dating back to the 1700’s.

You’ll see names like Davis, Brown, Gordon, and Atherton.

Names that were once prominent here in Amherst back in the days when people rode horses and buggies to church, and stealing a neighbor’s chicken would get you tied to the whipping post here on the village green.

In these now silent graveyards you’ll find names of local war heroes –

like Lt. Archelaus Batchelder – 1^st Lt. in the 27^th Continental infantry,

who was born in 1744 and lived to the ripe old age of 80,

but who would always be known as a soldier of the revolution.

And you’ll find names of those who never had a chance to make their mark on the world – like little Sally Bradley, born in 1792 and buried in October 1793; aged 15 months & 4 days.

You’ll also find colorful characters like Col. Nahum Baldwin, buried in 1788. 

He was a church deacon and town selectman who was rumored to have escaped from the grasp of a hatchet wielding Indian by shimmying out of his long underwear and running naked for 12 miles across the countryside.

The epitaph on Baldwin’s gravestone reads:

Blessed is the memory of the just,

Though they be sleeping in the dust.

We don’t expect to find life in a graveyard,

but the names etched on those aging gravestones each carry a story of a life –

a life given, a life lived, and a life taken away.

Today these centuries old graves are still tended and cared for,

and marked on occasion with flowers or American flags,

even though the weeping mourners who once stood around them have long been dead themselves.

It used to be that we buried our dead right in the center of town.

Where life continued on around them. 

Where families would spread picnic lunches across their loved one’s grave and include them in the festivities.

Here in Amherst our dearly departed are given a front row seat to 4^th of July parades, summer concerts, Easter Egg hunts, wedding processions, and town business meetings.

(because even when you’re dead, there’s no escape from the mundane.)

But still - we don’t expect to find life in a graveyard.

Especially in the early days of our grief, when the pain is still fresh.

When the line between life and death is still a blur.

When the person we’ve lost is still very much alive in our mind and we can’t fathom how and why it is that we can no longer reach out and touch them – or hear the sound of their voice –

or see them coming through the door at the end of the day.

The Easter story is about the blurring of that line –

the line between life and death.

The point where, what once was here - and then was not here,

emerges in front of us yet again.

When Mary Magdalene came into the garden where Jesus had been laid to rest she didn’t expect to find life.

The previous 48-hours had been filled with the overwhelming heaviness of death and grief.

Which may be why she came into the garden under the cover of darkness, before the sun had risen.

Her grief wasn’t ready to be exposed to the harshness of the light of day just yet.

I imagine she felt her way along the darkened path, possibly by memory,

or by sheer will, feeling the pull of the one she loved,

whose lifeless body now rested behind a burial stone…

sealed in an earthen tomb, out of her sight, and out of her reach.

Mary was prepared to find death.

She was not prepared for what she found in its place.

We can only imagine how we might react if we came to visit our loved one’s grave only to discover that the dirt has been removed and the coffin has been opened, revealing it to be empty inside.

Our first reaction might be the same as Mary’s.

“Where have they taken our beloved, and why?”

And our second reaction might mirror Mary’s as well.

Mary wept.

She stood outside the tomb and she wept for her loss.  

All over again.

But the Easter story does not end with Mary weeping,

and our stories don’t end there either.

The sunrise reveals the empty tomb.

Standing there as a beacon of hope.

For Mary, hope came in the form of an angel, and a gardener.

Both of whom said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

The gardener of course turned out to be Jesus.

Standing upright and alive right in front of her.

Showing her that death was not the ending she thought it to be.

That death did not have the final word.

The hope that Mary found on that day is there for us as well.

The hope built on the belief – the knowing - that in God’s world every death leads to a resurrection.

Now....if the idea of a literal bodily resurrection in some heavenly realm or on some far off Day of Reckoning is too far-fetched, or too ethereal for you to conceive of, then lets bring the story back down here to earth.

Think about all the little and not so little deaths and resurrections we experience every day.

When we lose something that we’ve built our life around.

Our job, our home, our sense of security, our dream for something better.

When we have to let go of something that is slowly killing us.

Our anger, our addiction, our obsession with having and doing more,

our attachment to whatever or whoever makes us feel hollow and wounded inside.

Whether something is taken from us,

or we courageously let it go –

the loss - the death - we feel in its wake is never final.

Something always grows in its place.

This is where the Easter Story resonates with us.

The Easter story is about the grief of letting go

and the joy of discovering something new.

It is in our grief – in the midst of our loss –

that God leads us into the garden – into the graveyard –

and shows us that life can indeed be found there.

Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love, compassion, mercy, and grace.

The life he lived on this earth was meant to show us that we human beings are capable of being so much better than we are.

And in a world that seems bent on spinning off in the other direction –

prodding us to give in to the lure of fear, ignorance, hatred, and prejudice,

we could do with a resurrection right about now. 

Some hope born anew right before our eyes.

The Resurrection is what drove Mary to risk her reputation and her pride and run and tell the disciples that Jesus still lived.

The Resurrection is what drove the disciples to risk their livelihood and their lives to spread the Good News of God’s unconditional love in the world.

The Resurrection is what has inspired people of faith throughout the centuries to do the same.

It inspired our Congregationalist forbearers – many of whom are buried in these graveyards - to fight against tyranny, oppression, and injustice in all forms, 

to work for the abolition of slavery and to march for civil rights for all,

to speak out about the hypocrisy of a faith that preaches ‘love thy neighbor’ while denying equal access to all at God’s table.

We don’t expect to find life in a graveyard.

But every year the Easter Story reminds us just how possible it is.

Thanks be to God and Amen.

Sermon: "It's Not Fair!"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

March 6, 2016 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

“It’s Not Fair!”

Cain and Abel. Jacob and Esau.

Isaac and Ishmael. Moses and Aaron.

The Hebrew Bible is full of stories of sibling rivalry – brothers who fought over birthright, inheritance, and who was truly the favored one.

Joseph’s brothers threw him in a ditch and sold him into slavery.

And when the prophet Samuel lined up the son’s of Jesse to choose Israel’s next King, he went down the line and rejected every single one of them except for the youngest, a small boy named David who was barely old enough to tend the sheep…leaving David’s brothers incensed because an inexperienced child had been chosen over them.

Often when we read the ancient stories in our Old and New Testaments – with their emphasis on shepherds and Pharisees and obscure religious laws - we have to perform some mental gymnastics to tease out a meaning that we can relate to our own lives, here in our modern world.

But the story of the Prodigal Son is one we can relate to in any time.

It’s a story of rejection, and resentment, and reconciliation.

In this story of a father and his two sons we have the story of our human condition. 

Our desire to love, our desire to be loved,

and our fear that there isn’t enough love to go around.

Those of us who have siblings know first hand what it’s like to compete for love, attention, and favor.

Regardless of where we fall in the birth order, most of us have at one time or another felt like we were not getting our fair share, or that someone else was getting more than they deserved – whether we’re talking about the size of a piece of birthday cake, financial support in times of need, or the praise or approval of our mother or father that we so long to have.

As many of you know, I have nine siblings.

In a family with ten children, it’s almost a given that someone is going to feel slighted in some way or another at any given time.

My younger brother Larry and I just missed out on being “Irish Twins”  - we were born just over a year apart. I was number nine and he was number ten. Which means he had quickly and permanently stolen my thunder as the baby in the family.

We were rivals from the beginning.

When Larry was 2 and I was 3, my mother plopped him down on the living room floor in front of the TV to keep him quiet for 5 minutes while she went to fold the laundry.

And I seized upon the opportunity to grab a large can of cookies off the kitchen table…and sneak up behind Larry and drop it on his head.

In the ensuing years, my poor mother heard a chorus of “It’s not fair!” coming from one or both of us, nearly every waking hour.

We’d scrutinize everything from how much cereal we each had poured in our bowls, to who got control of the TV after school, to who got more of my mother’s very limited attention. 

And like any competitive sibling, I would delight whenever Larry got into trouble. The sight of him running down the driveway with my mother quick on his heels swatting at him with the back of her giant hairbrush brought tears of joy to my eyes.

Of course I rarely took into account that in addition to me, poor Larry had our three older brothers to contend with. Unlike my sisters, my brothers were masters of torment. There was the time they woke Larry up really early on a Sunday morning and convinced him that he was late for school. He had his school uniform on and was half way out the door before he caught on.

When we have siblings we learn at an early age that we are not the center of the universe.

But as children with or without siblings, we’re all taught that it’s in our best interest to share with others, despite the resentment we may feel when someone takes or receives what we think rightfully belongs to us.

Still, it may surprise us to hear that studies of young children have shown that human beings are more naturally inclined to be altruistic than selfish.

Studies of 18-month-old toddlers show that they will almost always try to help someone who is visibly struggling with a task, without being asked to do so: if someone is reaching for something, the toddler will try to hand it to them, or if they see someone drop something accidentally, they will pick it up and hand it back.

Another study found that 3- to 5-year-olds who are rewarded with stickers or candy for performing a task with a partner, tend to give a greater share of the reward to their partner if the partner has done more work — again, without being asked — and even if it means they get to keep less for themselves.

So perhaps our inborn inclination to cry, “It’s not fair!” has less to do with our selfishness, and more to do with our sense of equity.

We don’t want more than our fair share, we just want each of us to be given what we feel is deserved.         Unfortunately, our perception of what is deserved and what is not deserved is not always accurate.

The fear that the resources and rewards of life are out of balance or unfairly distributed is what lies behind most of our human conflicts – both on a personal and communal scale.

And it’s this fear of imbalance that weaves its way through Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son.

One son – the younger son - demands his inheritance be given to him while his father is still alive.           

Jesus doesn’t tell us why.

We might assume that the younger son is just itching to get away, and he needs money to do it.

Perhaps he’s bored with life on the farm, or he has no desire to be a part of the family business, or he’s tired of being compared to his hard-working older brother and being made to feel like a disappointment in life.

Whatever the reason, the younger son takes his inheritance, runs off to a faraway land and squanders it all on dissolute living – which is meant to suggest he spent it all on partying, prostitutes, and other primal pleasures. 

When his money is gone and a famine spreads over the land, the younger son takes a job feeding pigs, and winds up envying not just the pigs for their slop, but the slaves back on his father’s farm.

So he concocts a plan – He will return to his father with his head hung low and spouting a well-rehearsed plea for forgiveness.

What happens next may surprise some -

when the father runs out to meet his Prodigal Son and wraps his arms around him in welcome.

It may not be surprising it you’re a parent of a child who has messed up on occasion – either in small ways or big ways.

We don’t stop loving our children – or stop welcoming them home with open arms– just because they’ve made bad choices in life.

But the father’s exuberant welcome may be surprising if we’ve ever had someone in our life who habitually makes bad choices, and never seems to learn from the consequences.

A child, a sibling, a parent, a spouse, a friend – Someone who always seems to need help out of a jam, mostly of their own making.

Someone who hangs out with the wrong crowd, or runs from responsibility, or who doesn’t have enough self control to stop spending all their money on frivolous things or taking unnecessary risks in life.

Someone who habitually lies, cheats, or never seems to get the message that if they keep putting harmful substances in their body they’re going to destroy their lives, and the lives of those around them.

Even if we understand the trappings of behavior disorders, mental illness, and addiction, when it latches onto someone we love we can’t avoid getting caught up in trail of sorrow and pain that it leaves behind.

We all have our breaking points.

The point where the Prodigal Son returns home pleading for forgiveness, for the umpteenth time, and we’re fresh out of compassion and sympathy.

Those of us who have experienced that breaking point, may identify more with the older brother in the story than the father.

Especially when it’s obvious that the younger brother is not sincere in his show of remorse.

He’s only come home because he’s run out of money and he’s hungry.

Yet the father still insists on greeting him with robes and rings and throwing a party in his honor.

Even as toddlers we seem to innately know, this is not fair.

So what point is Jesus trying to make with this parable?

Traditionally, we’re apt to see the father in this story as representing God, and we are the Prodigal Son.

God loves us and welcomes us home, no matter what we’ve done.

And no matter how many times we come seeking forgiveness, it’s always ours for the taking.

In this interpretation, we are the older brother as well.

When we hold on to judgment and spite.

When we’re overly concerned with getting rewarded for our right behavior, and seeing others punished for wrong behavior.

When we believe that our father’s love – God’s love – is limited and there’s only so much to go around, and we become resentful when that love is given to those we believe are unworthy, because it means there’s less for those of us who have rightfully earned it.

But perhaps this story that Jesus tells us about fathers and sons in not just an allegory about our relationship with God and how we encounter God’s love….perhaps it was also meant to be about the relationships we build with each other – and the love that we feel or withhold from one another - as well.

One might say all three characters in the story have lost something.

The father has lost both his sons – one to rejection, and one to resentment.

The son who walked away has lost his home and sense of belonging.

The son who stayed has lost his trust in the fairness of life and the breadth of his father’s love.

Many of us have been on all sides of this relationship at some point in our lives.

We’ve been the one to turn our back in anger on someone who has hurt us.

We’ve been the one who has done the hurting, and at some point we’ve had to reconcile our wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness.

We’ve been the one who continues to offer forgiveness to those we love, regardless of how many times it has been asked for and offered, and how many times our trust has been betrayed.

We do this because God created us as relational beings.

We long to live in relation to one another – to be connected to one another, but we struggle with those relationships because human love, unlike divine love, is not limitless and it is not unconditional.

We mess up. We reject love and we withhold love in response to pain.

We resent those whom we judge to have not earned the rewards they’ve been given.

We feel compelled to take and hold onto more than our fair share, out of fear that there won’t be enough to go around.

Thus we live in a constant state of reconciliation.

We hurt one another, we seek forgiveness and grace, we offer forgiveness and grace.

We turn away, and we turn back.  We turn away, and we turn back.

This is the dance we do with one another.

As siblings, as parents and children, as spouses, as friends, as members of a community, as citizens of this world.

But reconciliation can’t happen unless both parties participate.  

With each taking a step towards the other.

It involves a willingness to swallow our pride and return home, and a willingness to leave the door open for the one who seeks to return.

This is the challenge that Christ has given us in the story of the Prodigal Son.

The challenge to be as generous with our love and our grace towards one another, as God is with us.

We won’t always get it right – and we’re not expected to.

But amazing Grace, how sweet it sounds, when we do.

Thanks be to God.

Sermon: "Climbing Everest"

The Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

February 7, 2016 – Transfiguration Sunday

Exodus 34:29-35; Luke 9:28-36

“Climbing Everest”

The summit of Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet above sea level.

This majestic peak has long stood as a challenge for us as human beings as we strive to see how far, how fast, and how high we can go. 

But climbing earth’s highest mountain is not a matter of simply starting at the bottom and climbing straight to the top.

The trek to the summit requires arctic climbing gear, oxygen tanks, and multiple ascents and descents to allow the climber’s bodies to adjust to the thinning air.  The entire trek can take six to nine weeks.

The first week is spent hiking to the Base Camp located at 17,000 feet above sea level.

After a few days, climbers then ascend to Camp One at 20,000 feet.

But first they must cross the Ice Fall – a huge expanse of sheer ice cliffs and crevasses some of which can only be crossed by doing a tightrope walk across narrow metal ladders laid precariously over gaping holes in the ice and snow.  

Once the climbers reach Camp One the ordeal is not over, because they must then turn around and descend back down to Base Camp,

crossing the ice falls yet again.

Climbers spend three to four weeks yo-yoing up and down the mountain between Base Camp and Camps One, Two, and Three, which takes them to 22,000 feet, some 7,000 feet below the summit.

This constant ascending and descending is necessary to allow the brain, heart, and lungs to adapt to functioning with less oxygen and to prevent altitude sickness. Pounding headaches, disorientation, blindness, and death can result if a climber pushes himself higher then his body is prepared to go.

Once a climber is acclimated to Camp Three, the push is made to Camp Four, located in the area of Everest known as the Death Zone.

This is where the atmosphere thins to next to nothing. 

It’s only 3,000 feet to the summit, but more climbers die here than on any other place on the mountain.

Here the combination of low oxygen supplies and having the summit within sight can result in poor decision-making.

Climbers have only a small window of time to make it to the summit at this point.

Even in ideal conditions, it typically takes hours to climb only a few hundred feet and wind and severe weather can swoop in and close the window of opportunity at any moment, sometimes for good.  

The summiting season on Everest is only open for two months out of the year, in the spring.  If you don’t make it before the storms move in, you have no choice but to turn around and try again next year.  

With each climber paying $45,000-$100,000 per attempt, it’s understandable why many are reluctant to give up before the goal is reached.

In May of 1996, the yearly window of opportunity was closing fast, when several teams of climbers were approaching the summit.

A storm was moving in and the climbers were told that if they didn’t summit by 2 p.m. that day, they were to turn around and go back.  

Their climb of Everest was over.

At 2:00 the weather was clear, the summit was within sight, and the climbers ignored the warning.  

At 4:00, teams were still summiting when the storm hit.

Hurricane force winds and white out conditions made it nearly impossible for the climbers to find their back down to Camp Four, and rescues at that altitude, even in good weather, are not even attempted.

Twelve climbers lost their lives that day.

And now, twenty years later their bodies remain on the mountain – frozen in time. Serving as ghoulish reminders of our human fragility, to those who dare to risk it all to stand on the top of the world.

The summit of Mount Sinai stands at 7,500 feet above sea level –

only ¼ of the size of Everest.

But for Moses this was highest place that humans could hope to reach – to come face to face with the presence of God. 

On his trek up the mountain, Moses didn’t carry a 40 lb pack and an oxygen tank, like our Everest climbers, but he did carry with him the burden of knowing that he and his people had disappointed God.

His people had built a golden calf, and they worshiped it in place of God, because they had given up hope that they would ever find their way out of the wilderness.

And Moses, in his anger at their lack of faith, had taken the tablets that God had given him and smashed them on the ground.

God’s sacred law written in God’s own hand, now lay in a thousand dusty pieces at the foot of Mount Sinai.

But this God whom the people saw as a punishing God was also a forgiving God.

And Moses returned from the mountaintop with a fresh set of tablets and a brand new covenant – a promise that God would never leave them, if they promised to never leave God.

Moses took another souvenir with him from that encounter – a divine glow that burned his skin and made his face shine – not unlike those of us who have stood on top of snow capped mountains where the wind and the sun redden our cheeks as we move ourselves closer to God.

From Moses, we fast-forward over a thousand years and we find Peter, James, and John following Jesus up yet another mountain.

The burden they carry is the growing fear that they have no idea who this man is that they are following.

Their heads are spinning from all they have witnessed in the previous weeks.

Jesus healed the sick. He brought the dead back to life.

He fed 5000 people with just 5 loaves of bread.

Then he told them that he was NOT the messiah they had expected,

Instead he was destined to endure great suffering and be killed, and on the third day he would rise again.

Who was this man they were following and why were they following him?

Nothing he did or said made sense any more. 

But when they reached the summit Jesus stopped to pray and they saw his face change right before their eyes.

He began to glow with a blinding light….and their eyes grew heavy with sleep.  Suddenly Moses and Elijah were there.

And the voice of God said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

Now when we hear these stories of encounters with God that resulted in glowing faces and Transfigurations we may wonder if Moses and the disciples were not suffering from altitude sickness themselves.

It may be hard for us to read these ancient texts and sift out a meaning that is applicable to our lives today.

But who among us hasn’t wanted to find a way to move closer to God?

Who hasn’t climbed a mountain, or hiked into a forest, or sailed out on the ocean, or looked towards the heavens, hoping to encounter God?

We often talk about finding God in the mountaintop experiences – as if God can only be found in the thin places, in the holy places, in the quiet and faraway places that require physical effort or intense spiritual focus to reach.

We also talk about finding God in the valley experiences –

How it’s all well and good for Peter to want to linger on the mountaintop, building a dwelling to remember the moment, but as Christians we have real work to do down below.

After all, Christ doesn’t want us to be transfixed by the dazzling white of his robes, instead he calls us to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, by doing the work of the church.

The problem we encounter when talking about the Transfiguration in either of these ways is that they both can make us feel pretty inadequate – as Christians and as human beings.

Perhaps because we don’t feel holy enough or focused enough or spiritual enough to have a mountaintop experience – to encounter God in the thin places – the sacred places.

Or conversely, perhaps we’ve grown weary of feeling like we’re not doing enough work to please God, because for as much as we do, we’re always being reminded that we’re not spending enough time in the valley getting our hands dirty in service to others.  

This is the byproduct of the Puritan work ethic and sense of righteousness that we’ve inherited from our Congregationalist forbearers -  the belief that unless we’re toiling away in the trenches during the week and presenting ourselves spit shined and spotless on Sunday morn, we’re not earning God’s favor.

The truth is, God encounters us – and we encounter  God - wherever we are in whatever we’re doing.

In our mountaintop experiences – our joys, our celebrations, our accomplishments, our spiritual awakenings.

In our valley experiences – our suffering, our grief, our illness, our addictions, our fall flat on our face failings.

And every point in between – in the grocery store, when we’re stuck in traffic, when we’re surfing the internet, when we’re having lunch with a friend, when we’re standing in a voting booth.

God is with us, always. 

The high places and the holy places may have fewer of the distractions that keep us from noticing God.

And the low places and the sorrowful places may have more of the emotional upheaval that pushes us to look for God.

But God is all around us - and with us - no matter where we are.

Guiding us, inspiring us, speaking to us, listening to us.

I want to share a mountaintop experience that I once had.

It happened on Watchusett Mountain in MA in July of 1997.

I was in a 50-mile bike race that included 4 laps of the lower hills before the road took a hard left and headed up the mountain in a series of increasingly steep switchbacks. 

As a bike racer, I was a sprinter, not a hill climber.

I grew up on Long Island where the steepest hills I encountered were the overpasses on the Long Island Expressway.

On Watchusett Mountain I was undertrained, overgeared, and out of breath. 

It took every ounce of my strength, my will, my being just to turn the pedals over.  And I knew if I stopped pedaling for even a second, I would tip right over and never get going again. 

Thankfully, there were spectators stationed at every switchback, who clapped their hands and urged me on, “You’re almost there!” they shouted.

“The finish is just around the bend!”

They lied.

Over and over again, I rounded each corner only to find yet another switchback and the road going up and up and up.

So I made a deal with God.

I said, “God, just get me to the top of this mountain and I promise I will go back to church.”

Well, I made it to the top of the mountain and I finished the race.

But I didn’t go back to church.  

I was much too busy for that. 

A year later, in July 1998, in that same race, I crashed my bike while going downhill - and broke my pelvis.

THEN I went back to church.

We don’t have to reach the summit to have a mountaintop experience.

And when we’re gasping for air –

thinking that God will be there if we can only reach the top –

or that God will reward us if we can manage to pick ourselves up off the ground – we need only think of Peter, James, and John

as they watched Jesus be transformed in the presence of God. 

All Jesus did was pray.

He had to take his disciples up the mountain,

and away from all the distractions to get them to take notice,

but all it took was the act of prayer for them to see his face begin to change, and to hear the voice of God say, “This is my son, listen to him.”

Jesus was transformed by God – Moses was transformed by God.

And those of us who stand by as witnesses are transformed as well.

Not through their encounters, but through our own. 

I leave you with this prayer, written by Catholic monk and mystic, Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

Thanks be to God and Amen.

Sermon: "A Star is Born"

Matthew 2:1-12 – Scripture Intro

We have two different stories of Jesus’ birth in our New Testament.

One from the gospel of Luke and one from the gospel of Matthew.

As we listen to this telling of the nativity story and the arrival of the Magi from Matthew’s gospel, we might want to take notice what is not there.

There are no shepherds, no manger scene, no crowded inn, and no angel singing glory to God in the highest – those are all from Luke’s version of the story.

Matthew tells us wise men from the east came to Jerusalem – but he doesn’t say they were Kings, he doesn’t say how many there were, and he doesn’t tell us their names or what country they were from.  All of those details were added later as the story came to be told in Christmas pageants and illustrated storybooks.

And Matthew doesn’t tell us how old Jesus was when these men from the east arrived. He simply says they found the child in a house in Bethlehem.

What Matthew does give us that Luke does not, is this story of visitors from the east – Gentiles – who come to see this Jewish king and were overwhelmed with joy at the sight of him.

And finally, while Matthew lifts up the hope and promise of Jesus’ birth in the same way that Luke does, Matthew also hints at the threat that many found in this birth.  The threat that the coming of God into our world offers to all those who are guided by power and fear rather than compassion and love.

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

January 3, 2016 – Epiphany Sunday

Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

“A Star is Born”

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….

In a cold, dark region of space,

a cloud of interstellar dust and gas begins to collapse in on itself….

dragging in with it tiny debris from ancient exploded stars and anything else that happens to be floating by.

This mass of inrushing gas and debris compresses to a tiny point,

until the heat built up in its core triggers a nuclear reaction.

Hydrogen and helium atoms fuse together, emitting light and heat,

and creating enough inward and outward pressure to hold the spinning mass of gas and debris together for millions or billions of years.

A star is born.

During the star’s creation, blobs of rocky and gaseous debris are thrown out and sent spinning into space, creating asteroids, comets, and planets.

And on those planets, the remnants of the infant star continue to mix and pool together, creating life.

As astronomer, Carl Sagan famously said, “We are children of the stars.”

The oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our genes, was produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star.

We are made of star-stuff.

Which may be why we are so drawn to these celestial bodies.

For hundreds of thousands of years, we human beings have looked up at the sky and searched for our creator.

There we found the sun that warms our bodies and nourishes our crops,

And we found the stars that guide our nomadic wanderings and inspire us to reach beyond our grasp.

Two thousand years ago, wise men from the east who studied and discerned the movements of the stars, noticed one that was burning much brighter than the others as it moved across the night sky.

They set out to follow this star, and along the way caught wind of an ancient story that spoke of a messiah – a King – whose birth would be marked by the appearance of just such a star.

This ancient story was confirmed when they reached the city of Jerusalem.

There they asked the sitting monarch if he knew where they might find this newly born king.

His advisors pointed them towards Bethlehem.

Bethlehem – which means “house of bread” – was one of the small farming communities lying a few miles to the south of Jerusalem.

There these wise men would find their king – the messiah – the savior of the world.

The story of the Magi and the guiding star are very much a part of the Christmas story.

This is Matthew’s story.

And while we tend to fold Matthew’s story into Luke’s story of the nativity – with the shepherds, and manger, and no room at the inn – Matthew’s story is unique… in that it is not so much concerned with what happened on the night of Jesus’ birth as it is with what happened after.

As much as two years after – if we account for the star appearing at the moment of Jesus’ birth and the time it took for the wise men from the east to journey from thousands of miles away.

Our Christian tradition accounts for this space of time by giving us the twelve days of Christmas – and having the magi arrive on January 6^th – twelve days after we celebrate Jesus’ birth.

We call this day the Epiphany  - because it the day that God’s presence in Jesus was revealed or made known to the world outside of Jerusalem – outside of the Jewish people – to the Gentiles, represented by these travelers from the east who would carry the news of the coming of God’s light into the world to those who were longing to hear it.

January 6^th – the Feast of the Epiphany – or Three Kings Day - is celebrated by Christians all over the world, and typically with much more fanfare than we celebrate it here in the United States.

In Spain, parades are held and people dress up as the Kings, named as Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar, representing Arabia, the Orient, and Africa. Before going to bed on the eve of January 6th, children in Spain polish their shoes and leave them out for the Kings to put presents in them.

In Puerto Rico, on Three Kings Day, businesses are closed and the whole country feasts on a meal that would put our Thanksgiving to shame.

Elements of this tradition harken back to the days of slavery when January 6^th was the only day off in the entire year for the Afro-Caribbean people.

The African king, Melchior, is always at the center of their celebration.

In Ireland, January 6^th is known as “Little Christmas” – in recognition that this day marks the end of the Christmas season.  It’s also known as “Women’s Christmas,” because the Irish celebrate this day by honoring the work that women do to prepare for the Christmas holiday. On January 6^th, Irish men take over all the household chores while the women spend the day in the pub with their friends.

While January 6^th typically passes with very little fanfare here in the United States there are a few American traditions worth noting.

In Louisiana, Epiphany marks the beginning of the Carnival season.

King cakes are baked, each containing a tiny doll, representing baby Jesus. Whoever finds the baby has the honor of baking the next King Cake, as they’re often eaten right up until Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent.

And in Manitou Springs, Colorado, Epiphany is marked by the Great Fruitcake Toss. Participants dress as kings or fools, and fruit cakes are thrown or launched across a field.  Competitions are held for the farthest toss and the most creative projectile device.

What all these traditions and celebrations have in common is that they offer us a symbolic leave-taking of the Christmas season.

In the church, the season of Epiphany is the time where we transition from celebrating Jesus’ birth to celebrating his baptism in the river Jordan and the beginning of his adult ministry.

For the writer of our earliest gospel – Mark - this is the moment when a star was born.

Mark doesn’t include a nativity story in his gospel.

He begins his gospel with Jesus rising up out of the Jordan as a full grown man.  For Mark, this is the moment of Epiphany - when God called Jesus out his ordinary life and into one of extraordinary service and sacrifice.

While King Herod feared the baby born in Bethlehem, it is the man who was a threat to him and to all who place their own will above God’s will.

It is the man who commanded us to love our neighbor,

to welcome the foreigner, and to pray for those who persecute us –

three things we all struggle to do.

It is the man who taught us to lift up those below us and to not fawn over those above us, even though we seem compulsively drawn to do the reverse.

It is the man who was nailed up on a cross and yet urged his followers to forgive rather than retaliate,

to show us that redemptive violence is never the answer.

While we are not called to make the same supreme sacrifice that Jesus did, we are called to follow in his footsteps -  or as reasonably close as we can - as hard as that may be.

The light that God sent into the world in Jesus burns infinitively brighter than any one of us – but we too are meant to be dispensers of God’s light in the world.

Whenever we reach out to another in compassion,

Respond to a perceived threat with love rather than fear,

Seek to understand rather than judge,

We are modeling Jesus in the world.

We become the light that others take notice of and hopefully seek to emulate by shining their light as well.

We may think that the mighty sun that shines down on our world dwarfs the tiny stars that twinkle in our night sky….and if one or two or even a hundred of those stars were to cease shining we would even know the difference.

There are 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe,

and each contains about 100 billion stars.

Which means there are roughly 1 billion trillion stars in the visible universe.

And when we look up at the night sky, almost all of the stars we can see are intrinsically more massive and brighter than our sun.

And each of these stars is surrounded by planets that depend on it for light and warmth - and possibly - life.

Every pin prick of light we see in the night sky is so much bigger and so much more important than we imagine.

As are we.   

All of us.

Kings and commoners.

Wisemen and fools.

Model citizens and terminal trouble makers.

Those who always come out on top,

and those who always seem to wind up on the bottom,

no matter how hard they try.

A star is born within each one of us.

We all are made of star stuff,

and we are all created in the image of God,

to be the presence of God in this world.

Amen.

                    The birth of a star as captured by the Hubble Telescope.