Epiphany

There’s a well-known story about a famous violinist who took his $3.5 million Stradivarius onto a platform of a Washington DC subway and started playing music. He was dressed in a T-shirt and a ball cap. Joshua Bell was accustomed to playing for packed concert halls and getting paid $1,000 a minute. During his 43-minute solo concert in the subway a total of 1097 people passed by. But only seven people stopped to listen. He earned $32 in change.

J.T. Tillman, a computer specialist, was one of the people who walked by. He said, “I didn’t think nothing of it, just a guy trying to make a couple of bucks.” Tillman would’ve given him some cash, but he spent all his money on the lotto. When he was told that he stiffed one of the best musicians in the world, he asked, “Is he ever going to play around here again?” The reporter said, “Yeah, but you’re going to have to pay a lot to hear him.”

Exactly one person recognized Joshua Bell. Her name was Stacy. She positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. She said, “It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington. Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush-hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some more flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?’”

In his book With, author Skye Jethani describes the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Italy:

Fifteen hundred years ago, the emperor of Rome built a tomb for his beloved sister. The small building was designed in the shape of a cross with a vaulted ceiling covered with mosaics of swirling stars in an indigo sky. The focal point of the mosaic ceiling was a depiction of Jesus the Good Shepherd surrounded by sheep in an emerald paradise.

The mausoleum of Galla Placidia still stands in Ravenna, Italy, and has been called “the earliest and best preserved of all mosaic monuments” and one of the “most artistically perfect.” But visitors who have admired its mosaics in travel books will be disappointed when they enter the mausoleum. The structure has only tiny windows, and what light does enter is usually blocked by a mass of tourists. The “most artistically perfect” mosaic monument, the inspiring vision of the Good Shepherd in a starry paradise, is hidden behind a veil of darkness.

But the impatient who leave the chapel will miss a stunning unveiling. With no advance notice, spotlights near the ceiling are turned on when a tourist finally manages to drop a coin into the small metal box along the wall. The lights illuminate the iridescent tiles of the mosaic but only for a few seconds. One visitor described the experience: “The lights come on. For a brief moment, the briefest of moments—the eye doesn’t have time to take it all in, the eye casts about—the dull, hot darkness overhead becomes a starry sky, a dark-blue cupola with huge, shimmering stars that seem startlingly close. ‘Ahhhhh!’ comes the sound from below, and then the light goes out, and again there’s darkness, darker even than before.”

The bright burst of illumination is repeated over and over again, divided by darkness of unpredictable length. Each time the lights come on, the visitors are given another glimpse of the world behind the shadows, and their eyes capture another element previously unseen—deer drinking from springs, Jesus gently reaching out to his sheep that look lovingly at their Shepherd. After seeing the mosaic, one visitor wrote: “I have never seen anything so sublime in my life! Makes you want to cry!”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is difficult to experience the glory of God in our daily lives and when we do, it is only for brief moments. Yet, there are time when God breaks through the darkness of this world and reveals himself for a brief moment. Like Isaiah’s experience (Isa. 6:1-5), these moments should be life changing.

What's it like to walk free again after years behind bars? Lee Horton and his brother Dennis know the feeling. They were convicted of robbery and murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They always maintained their innocence. Earlier this year, after being locked up for a quarter of a century, they were granted clemency and released.

Here's Lee Horton’s story:

I'm going to tell you honestly. The first thing that I was aware of when I walked out of the doors and sat in the car and realized that I wasn't handcuffed. And for all the time I've been in prison, every time I was transported anywhere, I always had handcuffs on. And that moment right there was … the most emotional moment that I had. Even when they told me that the governor had signed the papers … it didn't set in until I was in that car and I didn't have those handcuffs on.

And I don't think people understand that the punishment is being in prison. When you take away everything, everything becomes beautiful to you. ... When we got out … we went to the DMV to get our licenses back. My brother and I stood in line for two and a half hours. And we heard all the bad things about the DMV. We had the most beautiful time. And all the people were looking at us because we were smiling and we were laughing, and they couldn't understand why we were so happy. And it just was that - just being in that line was a beautiful thing.

I was in awe of everything around me. It's like my mind was just heightened to every small nuance. Just to be able to just look out of a window, just to walk down a street and just inhale the fresh air, just to see people interacting. ... It woke something up in me, something that I don't know if it died or if it went to sleep. I've been having epiphanies every single day since I've been released.

One of my morning rituals every morning is I send a message of ‘good morning, good morning, good morning, have a nice day’ to every one of my 42 contacts. And they're like, ‘how long can (he) keep doing this?’ But they don't understand that I was deprived. And now, it's like I have been released, and I've been reborn into a better day, into a new day. Like, the person I was no longer exists. I've stepped through the looking glass onto the other side, and everything is beautiful.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This enthusiastic testimony is an exact parallel to that of a person set free from a lifetime of captivity to Satan (2 Tim. 2:26). The experience of God’s glorious freedom and new life in Christ results in a joyful expression of gratitude and amazement (Acts 3:8).

Elvis Presley used to frequent Lil Thompson’s Steakhouse in Tennessee. He was good friends with the owner who used to give him free food before he was famous. One night when he was at the height of his fame, the Steakhouse held the ultimate Elvis Presley impersonator contest. A large crowd arrived, including Elvis Presley himself. Elvis decided to take part and sat quietly at the back.

Elvis said confidently, “I’m going to mash this.” Lil was worried the place would go crazy when everyone realized it was Elvis. There was no need. He sang “Love Me Tender” to polite applause and came third place in the contest!

Possible Preaching Angle:

The judges missed the real thing when he was standing in front of them. So can we. We may think Jesus is a prophet, teacher, miracle worker, and dismiss him. He is the "real thing." The Son of God, and Savior.

Pastor Kevin Miller writes:

One year when I was working in publishing, we had our annual staff Christmas Party. There were about 150 people in the room seated around tables that held six or eight people. The CEO came in right before the program was about to start, so there weren’t many seats left.

He spied an empty seat at our table and came over. Very politely he said to the woman sitting by the empty seat, “May I sit here?”

She was waiting for someone from her department to come, and so she kind of scowled at him and said, “No, that’s taken.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, and walked away.

Once he got a few feet out of range, we burst out laughing and said to the woman: “You just dissed the CEO!” She said, “I did? What?” She had worked there for only two weeks, and she’d never seen his photo.

And that’s what happens when Jesus enters the world he’s created. Most people say, “Sorry, don’t recognize you. No seat for you. That one’s taken.”

Professor Mary Poplin from Claremont Graduate School says she met Jesus in a dream. At the time, she was teaching radical feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. As a devotee of New Age spirituality, she claims she was the poster child for "spiritual but not religious." She writes:

A central image in my life was the [New Age] actress Shirley MacLaine, dancing on the beach in free-spirited fashion. I was seeking happiness, self-fulfillment, and freedom from restraint, all the while deluding myself about my own "goodness." We were children of the 60s, products of the "I'm okay, you're okay" culture.

And yet in certain moments, she said, "I could see glimpses of who I really was. I was not growing freer. My heart was growing harder, my emotions darker, and my mind more confused." Then in 1992, she had an unshakable dream in which she saw Jesus at the Last Supper. "When I got to Jesus," she wrote, "and looked into his eyes, I grasped immediately that every cell in my body was filled with filth. Weeping, I fell at his feet. But when he reached over and touched my shoulders, I suddenly felt perfect peace!"

She reached out to a friend who suggested that she needed to read the Bible. Then in January 1993, she was sitting in a small church and received an invitation to come forward. She prayed, "If you are real, please come and get me. Suddenly I felt the same peace I had known in the dream."

"To clean up my soul," she said, "God taught me what a good friend of mine calls the 'bar of soap' passage—1 John 1:9 … But forgiveness wasn't always easy to accept. I had undergone two abortions, and over three long years of prayer, I doubted whether God had truly forgiven me. Some counselors and fellow Christians had encouraged me to 'forgive myself,' but the more I searched Scripture the more confident I was that forgiveness could only come as God's gift. Like Paul, I had to learn to '[forget] what is behind and [strain] toward what is ahead' (Phil. 3:13-14)."

Editorial Comment: Here's more on Poplin's story in her words: "Coming to Christ changed not only my personal life but my intellectual life as well. My scholarly work has always focused on the best ways to educate the poor. So in 1996 … I spent two months [in Kolkata with Mother Teresa] tending to sick infants, performing some cleaning tasks, and running supplies to the mother house … One day, as I was sitting on a bench ... Mother Teresa herself walked straight up to me. She shook her finger and instructed, 'God does not call everyone to serve the poor like he calls us, but God does call everyone to a Calcutta—you have to find yours!'

"When I resumed teaching later that year, I experienced a profound intellectual crisis—my Kolkata, then and now. I would weep before entering class. Midway through the semester, I realized I was still teaching the same things I had always taught, even though I knew they were untrue. I was allowing secularism to define my intellectual boundaries. But the more I read the Bible, the more I could see how Christ's wisdom reaches beyond secular thinking, even where it poses no contradiction … [I began to see that] there is physical water, and there is spiritual living water. In Christ, there is always a higher rationality."

God often hides his greatest gifts in ordinary packages. Perhaps, knowing our heart, he doesn't want us to become enamored with the mode of delivery. And all so that we might better appreciate the gift being offered.

So we must be careful about presumptuously prejudging the appearance of ordinary circumstances, ordinary days, or even ordinary people.

In his biography simply titled Grant, Ron Chernow tells the story of Ulysses S Grant's meteoric rise from store clerk to Civil War hero and beyond. By the fall of 1863, Grant had overseen successful campaigns in Vicksburg and Chattanooga. Suddenly, national leaders and politicians who just months before would have hardly recognized his name now sought to rub shoulders with the Union's hope of victory. In October of that year, on his way to a meeting in Louisville, Grant was approached by Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and Ohio Governor, John Brough. Chernow describes the encounter:

While Grant and Stanton had communicated via telegraph, they had never set eyes on each other. Short of breath, asthmatic, snuffling with a heavy cold, the short, stout Stanton barged brusquely into Grant's car, eyed the officers present, and then began to pump the hand of a bearded man with an army hat whom he assumed was Grant. "How do you do General Grant?" he cried. "I recognize you from your pictures." Stanton was embarrassed to learn he was shaking hands with Grant's medical director, Dr. Edward Kittoe.

Chernow explained: "Stanton later admitted that in guessing which officer was Grant, he had eliminated the real Grant because he looked much too ordinary and wasn't the prepossessing figure he had imagined."

Born in an insignificant town, to unknown parents, in humble surroundings, Jesus was missed by many. He was overlooked because "he looked much too ordinary and wasn't the prepossessing figure" some had imagined.

Today Jesus can still be missed. We can extend our hand to something that looks like joy; while real joy sets humbly by. We can pointlessly pump the hand of what we think will deliver peace; within reach of the Prince of Peace.

In March 2002, the former ruler of Afghanistan, the 87-year-old Mohammed Zahir Shah, returned to his homeland after 30 years of exile. Here's how an article in the Chicago Tribune described his grand and glorious welcome:

On Thursday, thousands of invited guests lined up for hours at the airport and people gathered on the streets leading to a refurbished seven-bedroom villa to see the former ruler. Delegations arrived from across Afghanistan's 32 provinces. Governors and their advisers, members of women's groups carrying posters of the king, most of the interim administration, royalists, warlords, men in turbans and others in suits all converged on the pockmarked runway where shells of bombed airplanes lay. Two red carpets were laid out. The newly trained honor guard was on hand, and young women and children in traditional embroidered dress greeted Zahir Shah with flowers and poems.

I hope you're thinking of the contrast when Israel's Messiah was born, when he came to his own people.

We've all been asked the question: "If you had the chance to talk to your hero, who would it be and what would you say?" Washington, D.C. cab driver Sam Snow didn't have much of a chance to prepare for a conversation with his hero, though, because it took him by surprise.

While driving his taxi , Snow mentioned to his passengers that even though he was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, his all-time favorite player was Broncos legend John Elway. The passengers then asked him if he thought he could recognize Elway if he ever met him. Snow then turned around to realize that the famous former quarterback, who was in Washington, D.C. for the presidential inauguration, was in fact riding in his own backseat. The two snapped a quick picture, but only after Snow chastised Elway for beating his Steelers so many times in the playoffs.

Potential Preaching Angles: (1) Hospitality—we are sometimes entertaining angels unawares as Hebrews 13 reminds us. (2) God, presence of—it's possible for God to be near and at work in our lives but we don't recognize his presence.

Chris Armstrong writes in an article titled: "Advent—Close Encounters of a Liturgical Kind":

I confess: when my parents tried to impress on my two brothers and me the importance and the intricacies of Advent observance, I could hardly keep from rolling my eyes. In a country that spends its cold Decembers in hot pursuit of food, presents, and parties, the historical niceties of an ancient liturgical season seemed … well … irrelevant.

These days, on the other side of an evangelical conversion and nearly a decade of graduate study in church history, I've begun to see what excited my parents about Advent. I'm even entertaining the possibility that my own young family might benefit from an informed observance of Advent. …

In fact, Advent season presents a unique opportunity to many Protestants. It's like the once-a-year conjunction of two planets: It brings a great mass of Bible-loving, praise-and-worshipping, extemporaneously praying born-again Protestant Christians into close contact with a big chunk of the historic church's liturgy. Even many non-liturgical Protestants don't think twice about joining in the season's rituals, old as well as new. They pull out and count off advent calendars, listen to lectionary sermon themes and Bible readings, and recite set prayers at the dinner table around candles in meaningful hues of purple and rose….

What is this thing called Advent?

Once upon a time, in 4th- and 5th-century Gaul and Spain, Advent was a preparation not for Christmas but for Epiphany. That's the early-January celebration of such diverse events in Jesus' life as his Baptism, the miracle at Cana, and the visit of the Magi. In those days, Epiphany was set aside as an opportunity for new Christians to be baptized and welcomed into the church. So believers spent Advent's 40 days examining their hearts and doing penance.

It was not until the 6th century that Christians in Rome began linking this season explicitly to the coming of Christ. But at that time, and for centuries after, the "coming" that was celebrated was not the birth of Jesus, but his Second Coming. It was not until the Middle Ages that the church began using the Advent season to prepare to celebrate Christ's birth. And even then, this newer sense of the Lord's advent or coming did not supplant the older sense—the Second Coming. And the muted, Lent-like mood of penitential preparation remained alongside the joyous anticipation of Jesus' birthday.

So, the modern liturgy divides Advent into a period, through December 16th, during which the focus is Christ's Second Coming, and a period, from December 17th to the 24th, focusing on his birth. It starts with sobering passages and prayers about the apocalyptic return of the Lord in judgment. Then it moves to Old Testament passages foretelling the birth of a messiah and New Testament passages trumpeting John the Baptist's exhortations and the angels' announcements.

Every year these rich Scriptural reminders and the traditional prayers that accompany them set my blood rushing a little faster and bring a rising excitement: Christ came with plenty of prior notice! Prophets and angels joined to proclaim his coming! And now I can join too, with the cloud of witnesses stretching back to apostolic times, in the same proclamation!

And in the protected, quiet times of meditation, I can respond as I imagine believers have done on every Advent since the tradition began: I can bow my head and prepare my heart to receive the One who is always present, but who seems distant in the busyness of the season. I can mourn for my hardness of heart. I can hope in his grace. And I can rejoice that in answer to the cry, "O come, O come, Emmanuel," he came. Would I really be able to do this—in the midst of December's commercial rush of lights, decorations, present-buying, and piped-in carols—without a gently insistent, weekly liturgical pattern? Maybe. But I'm not rolling my eyes any more.

Disney's animated movie The Lion King, portrays the struggle between good and evil through the adventures of a lion named Simba. Son of the lion king, Simba faces several challenges as he comes to terms with his royal heritage.

In the opening scene, the long-awaited announcement of Simba's birth is carried throughout the valleys and plateaus of Africa. Tribal drums and African chants herald the cub's arrival. Elephants, gazelles, antelopes, vultures, zebras, giraffes, gulls, even tiny ants journey to receive the new royalty. They climb hills, descend sloping canyons, forge streams, and hike jungle paths.

Once all the animals arrive in adoring reverence and praise, the infant cub is presented to the gathered subjects. Rafiki, the monkey elder, lifts the newborn high above his head to symbolize Simba's exalted calling.

Symbolically, this is a grand picture of the Son of God, who came into the world as an infant and was exalted as king.

Elapsed time: Measured from the beginning of the opening credit, this scene begins at 00:00:00 and lasts approximately four minutes.

Content: Rated G

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.