The Rev. Victoria Kempf II after Epiphany B 1/15/06 St Paul’s, Ft Collins

My husband isn't very alert in the mornings.

And sometimes it just makes my day

to hear what words he might mangle

or what he might pour on his cereal,

before he's quite awake.

One day, I caught him putting on his sweatshirt backwards.

Now that's not a big deal ...

except that it was a hooded sweatshirt.

Kind of hard to see where you're going that way.

Epiphany is all about seeing.

Epiphany is an "aha!" season.

Where we learn through the Gospel readings

each Sunday who the Gospel writers say Jesus is.

We see him begin to gather disciples

and to teach them about the God he sees.

The God he knows.

Epiphany started with a star:

And three seekers from a land far away

journey to see something unexpected.

Epiphany continues with John the Baptist.

He probably knew Jesus all his life.

But in last week’s Gospel,

John somehow "sees" Jesus in another light.

as something other than

that younger cousin, son of Mary.

It takes courage and boldness to say what you see.

Remember the story of the Emperor

and his set of magic new clothes?

It takes courage to see what really is.

It's so much easier to live in some imagined reality

which is handed down to you,

or which you choose without thought, without seeing.

I hope you’ve seen the movie

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

Better yet, read the book.

It begins, of course, with little Lucy

entering the wardrobe to hide,

and finding instead a wondrous land called Narnia.

It’s a land under the spell of an evil witch,

and it’s a place where it is always winter

and never Christmas.

Lucy goes back

and tells her brothers and sister what happened.

And of course they don’t believe her.

Come and see, she says, but,

perhaps because of their unbelief,

they find nothing in the wardrobe

but coats and a hard wooden back wall.

Eventually, her brother Edmund,

a rather difficult child,

follows Lucy thru the wardrobe and finds Narnia.

On return, however, he denies it.

Lucy begs him to corroborate her story,

but he refuses, claiming it’s just a game.

Come and see! Lucy cries.

And of course, they all eventually do.

Philip, a new disciple of Jesus,

found his friend Nathanael

and urged him to ‘come and see’

this Jesus of Nazareth.

Nathanael (maybe a little like Edmund, at first) said

‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’

Nathanael’s eyes were clouded by his assumptions

or prejudices about people who lived in Nazareth,

and so couldn’t see clearly.

Nathanael is not the only one who suffers from

close-mindedness.

We all have biases that keep us from seeing

how God might be at work

in the places we least expect.

Take suffering, for example:

When a loved one suffers we rarely ask,

How is God involved for good here?

More likely we ask, Why doesn’t God fix it?

As much as Nathanael couldn't believe

that Nazareth could produce anything good,

so our unbelieving minds have a hard time grasping

that God could possibly accomplish anything good

through suffering or death.

"Can anything good come out of suffering?" we ask;

and our own cynical tone answers the question for us.

We are unbelieving.

Seeing and hearing too,

like Samuel in the Old Testament lesson today,

sometimes needs a little help.

We need people to point out things to us

that we might miss,

or we need people to tell us to listen again,

listen harder,

listen closely.

Epiphany calls us to listen harder,

see deeper.

Not just see and hear what we want, or expect,

But what might surprise us.

See through to the reality of things

see beyond the surface

listen intensely into meaning

listen in spite of our preconceived notions

or assumptions

to what might have been in front of us

all along.

It's like looking at one of those optical illusion pictures.

Once you've seen the picture within,

You never lose it.

And you want others to see it too.

When we see, we want others to see.

This week we honor the life and witness

of Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man who had a special way of seeing

which ignited a people to do

and to dare great things.

He was not just a dreamer,

but one who helped others see the reality of life.

In his , "Letter from Birmingham Jail" he wrote:

…, we who engage in nonviolent direct action

are not the creators of tension.

We merely bring to the surface

the hidden tension that is already alive.

We bring it out in the open,

where it can be seen and dealt with.

Like a boil that can never be cured

so long as it is covered up

but must be opened up with all its ugliness

to the natural medicines of air and light,

injustice must be exposed,

with all the tension its exposure creates,

to the light of human conscience

and the air of national opinion

before it can be cured.

His courage to say what he saw

enabled others to see and to follow.

And the more we see,

the more we are capable of seeing.

Seeing the reality of the community here

knit together as one

in the Body of Christ,

we see Christ in one another,

and that truth sets us free

from false images and

unreal expectations.

God is all around us if we would but see and hear.

The heart of Christ is in the souls we meet,

if we would but recognize him.

Faith means that good things

can come from all kinds of unexpected places;

and, it means that just when we think

we've seen the best,

we will see "greater things that these"

with the vision of God within us.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning said it best,

about seeing.

About knowing the truth

or missing the point altogether:

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush

afire with God;

But only he who sees,

takes off his shoes -

The rest sit round it

and pluck blackberries.

Epiphany is a season of Aha!

Of recognition.

Of dawning understanding.

of light and wonder.

Light we are called to reflect to the world.

That others may see.

A Parish For All People!