The Epiphany of the Lord, Year A
Previous Years: 2022 || 2021 || 2020 || 2019 || 2018
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/invited-into-the-family-of-god/
Transcript
I only have one sister, but my mother is one of five siblings and my grandmother is one of 7 or 8 sisters. My grandmother’s father is again, one of 7 or 8 siblings. So moderately sized Catholic families. But I remember growing up having second or third cousins that I got to meet at family reunions. Because my great grandfather’s generation was still alive, they would, as siblings, get together each year with their kids and their grandkids and great grandkids. That was the Riley family reunion. Well, that generation is almost all passed away. I have one great, great aunt who is 100 years old, but everybody else in that generation is gone, and the Riley reunion has lost much of its steam. It’s not a regular occurrence as it’s hard to find somebody willing to plan it. It’s sort of dying away. Well, in place of that, for years we’ve tried to do the John Riley reunion, which is my great grandfather’s family and his kids. So that would be my grandmother and all of her sisters and that’s had more steam, more energy, for sure. All of that generation except one is still living so there’s still a motivation to do that. But as they begin to die off, I don’t expect that reunion to last very long either. So we’re now we’re to the place where generally, the only annual family gathering we have is my grandmother and my mom, her siblings and my cousins.
This is sort of as we would expect. We see this with many families. While a generation is living, they are the source of unity in a family and they bring people together. The idea of seeing each other is a powerful motivation, but as that generation dies off, then the next generation is less invested in the wider family and more invested in their more immediate family. So on and so forth down the generations.
Well, this is what it’s like with humanity. We share a common father, a common creator. God made all of us. But the further we get away from Adam and Eve, the further we get away from Eden, the more separated and divided humanity becomes. To the point that today we live in separate nations with separate languages and different cultures and different races and different ways of being. Humanity does not have a unity amongst itself, but instead lives in general division because we are invested in our immediate families. I share things with other Americans because we have a common cultural background, in a sense a common creator. I share things with other members of Washington state because my family’s been here for, I guess, six generations now, and other people will have that same culture and background and history. But I don’t necessarily have a lot in common with somebody who lives in Japan because I’m not invested in their family or their culture. The conclusion of this is that if humanity ever wants to have unity, that unity will only ever come from God the Father. It will only ever come from all of us being invested in our common Creator. He is the source of unity for all humanity, and he is the only source of unity for all humanity.
When we tried to unify around other things, it just doesn’t work. The world is not unified around democracy. We are not unified around a common understanding of humanity. Talking about our shared humanity is what unites us. We can’t agree what humanity is. We’re not united, therefore, around human dignity because we can’t agree with human dignity is or requires. Our source of unity has to be something outside of ourselves. Just like in a family, the source of unity is somebody outside of ourselves. It is the grandparent or the great grandparent that unites all of us. God the father is the only possible source of unity for humanity. A return to our common creator is the only way we will ever be one family again. Well, this is what happened with the Jews and the Gentiles. Humanity, originally, one family fallen into division and needed to come back to God. And so God raised up one branch of his family, the Jewish branch. Abraham and his descendants raised up these people to be the light, showing what it’s like to be part of a family again. Teaching them the rules of the family, the culture of the family, the history of the family. The entire Old Testament is God explaining what it is like to be part of the family of God, a covenant.
We have these covenants in the Old Testament that are so important. A covenant is making somebody part of your family. So God covenanted with Abraham. He covenanted with Moses. He covenanted with David. He brought them all into his family. And the role of the Jewish people was then to bring the rest of humanity back to God, to bring the rest of humanity into the common family. That was their job. This is what Isaiah is talking about. He says, rise up in splendor, Jerusalem ,your light has come. The glory of the Lord shines upon you. The Lord chose Israel, chose Jerusalem to be this image of the family of God. And at the end of the reading, then you shall be radiant at what you see. Your heart shall throb and overflow, for the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you. The wealth of nations shall be brought to you. Caravans of camels shall fill you. Dromedaries from Midian and Ephah all from Sheba shall come, bearing gold and frankincense, and proclaiming the praises of the Lord. If Israel was faithful to its covenant, if it did its job, then all of the nations of the world, and some of these are far away. The sea represents all of the Mediterranean peoples. Sheba represents Africa. All of these people are going to come to Israel because they know that in Israel they will find their family, the family of the one God, the family of the creator.
But Israel forgot the purpose of its mission. It’s given these laws in order to learn how to live in accord with God. It failed to follow these laws to be in covenant with the Lord, so they experienced exile in Babylon. And after that exile they came back and were doubly dedicated to the laws of God, but they forgot why. They thought that the laws of God were to keep them separate from the other nations forever, rather than for those laws to be a light shining to the nations as an invitation. So by the time that Jesus comes, the separation between Jew and Gentile is absolute. There is no mixing. The Gentiles are not part of the inheritance of the Jews. In fact, when Jesus clears out the temple, he’s clearing it out partly because of the commercial nature of what was going on there. But many scholars today will say, because the merchants were in the court of the Gentiles. They were supposed to be a part of the temple set apart for Gentiles to worship God as a way for them to begin to approach God in the light of Israel. But the Jews cared little about inviting the Gentiles in. They had forgotten entirely about that mission, they just filled the court of the Gentiles with merchants because why would we let the Gentiles worship here, let’s just put our merchants here. Jesus clears that out as a sign that salvation is for all people, including the Gentiles. Which is why when Saint Paul writes to the Ephesians, he says it was not made known to people in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the spirit, that the Gentiles are co heirs, members of the same body, and copartners in the promise of Christ Jesus through the gospel. The idea that the Gentiles would be co heirs is scandalous. The Jews have the inheritance of God. They are the family of God. To bring the Gentiles into it is horrific, why would we ever do that? We’re supposed to be apart from them forever, that’s the purpose of the law. Saint Paul says no, the Gentiles are co heirs. They also have an inheritance with God because they are also part of the family of God and we are to bring them into unity with the father so that we can restore the family of humanity. When Jesus came, he made this happen through the church. The church is the new Israel. It is the new body calling everybody into the family of God. The church is the family of God. And it is not accidental or incidental that we are universal, that our church encompasses every language and every culture and every country. Because if we are the family of God, you should see in the church unity amongst every corner of humanity. You should see invited into the church, every single person in the world. This is why we are the Catholic Church.
Catholicas in Greek means universal. We are not the church for a specific country. We are not the church for a specific culture. We are the church for all people and you can name the true church. You can spot the true church because it is the church for all people, because it encompasses all nations and cultures and languages. When the wise men came, they represented the first approach of the Gentile nations to this new family of God. They came from the East, a Gentile country, to worship Jesus. In order to bring them in, in order to invite them, the Lord used a symbol that they would understand. Many ancient peoples were astrologers. We see that at Stonehenge. We see that in the Americas and a lot of the structures that were created by the cultures here. We see that in the East; these wise men were looking at the stars as so many ancient people did. And so the Lord knew that’s what would get their attention. So he sent them a star, something that they would notice and be curious about. And they followed that star to Israel. They had no idea that Israel was where God revealed himself. They had no idea about Israel’s long standing relationship with the Lord and the covenants and the prophets and the Davidic kings. They knew nothing about that. They just knew we’ve seen this star, that’s important, we need to follow it. And they followed it into Israel. And they didn’t know who to ask, or they figured, well, we’ll ask the king, right? The king of the area will know what we’re supposed to do. And so they say, hey, there’s this star. That means that there’s a new king (probably not a great idea to tell the current king that there’s a new king, a little naive of the Magi) but that means there’s a new king. What are we supposed to do? And Israel does its job. They tell these men where the Messiah is to be found. They tell them that he will be born in Bethlehem. They reveal God to the nations as they are supposed to do. And so the Magi go, and they worship Jesus Christ, the source of unity, the one who invites us all back to the father. They are the first fruits of the Gentile nations. We are the daily, the contemporary fruits of the Gentile nations. As far as I know, we don’t have any Jewish converts to Catholicism in our church, which means all of us inherit from the Magi.
We have a lesson to learn here. As the family of God. It is our job to invite people back into unity with God. It is our job to invite people back into the family of the One Creator. This is our mission when we talk about evangelization, when we talk about preaching the gospel, it means inviting people back into the one family of humanity united by their creator. In order to do so, we will act like God acted by giving people a symbol that they will understand.
The Magi needed a star. We have to ask, what do people today need? What are they looking for? What will catch their attention? What is something that will fill them with such curiosity that they will make their way to a foreign land that they know nothing about; the church.
I have two answers to offer today in talking with converts, and this mass particularly has many converts in it, I hear two things. One is I hear they’re attracted to truth today. Society and everything else feels like it’s on shifting sands all the time. There’s nothing we can hold on to. And in fact, we’re told that we have to sever ourselves from our history. That the existence of any sin in past generations means that past generations have nothing to offer us. And so we are unmoored. We are unanchored from any source of wisdom, from any source of knowledge, from anyone who can tell us what it means to be a human being. And when somebody speaks out, as the church does, with authority, with definitive words about the will of God and the nature of humanity, people finally find in that an anchor something they can hold on to, something they can go to and say this at last is solid. I don’t feel lost anymore. The storms of the world aren’t tossing me about. It’s a star that they will follow wherever it goes. Out of curiosity, until it puts them in a foreign land. And then they’ll start asking questions of people who might know answers. And then they will follow the star even more until they end up in the family of God.
The second thing that I rely a lot on is happiness. The world today is looking for happiness because they have been sold a bill of goods that doesn’t work. They’ve been told that happiness comes from hedonism, from seeking pleasure at all times and every way. And the different side of that same coin, they’ve been told that happiness comes from absolute liberty. Being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, with no rules and no impositions. And everybody who knows the mental health space will tell you none of that is working. People are more anxious, more depressed, more unmoored than they have ever been, because nobody can tell them what it’s like to be a human being. The rules that we talk about in religion, and religion is a word that comes from a Latin word meaning to bind, it is what you bind your life to. The binding of religion is helpful. It brings happiness because it gives us the structures that make our humanity thrive, that make it shine. Being in relationship with God is not a burden, but a help. Being saved by Jesus Christ and hearing that sin has no power over you is the desire of every human heart. But nobody knows where to look. They know not to look at Christianity, Christianity is horrible and evil and nobody wants that. So of course they can’t find happiness because this is the only place that it exists truly and fully. Our responsibility as the church is to invite people back into the family that they long for. Invite them back into a relationship with God, their Creator, and the family that follows him, to give them the message of truth and happiness. We have to be those stars, not just in our example, but in our words and our invitations. We have to be the thing that troubles people, that rises in the West, that they see and that they say, this is important, somehow I need to follow this. I don’t know where it’s going to lead me, I don’t know how I feel about this, but I can’t ignore it. Giving them the message of truth and happiness is something that people today cannot ignore, and they will follow it. The journey is not easy. Getting over the biases against Christianity, getting over the sins of the church, getting over all these things that keep people from faith is hard. But if your star shines brightly enough, they will continue to follow it. If you help them know how happy you are when you’re in relationship with Jesus Christ, how wonderful it is to have something like the faith to rely on. They will follow that star into a foreign land that they don’t understand. They will ask questions and in so doing they will receive salvation.
Fr. Moore 