Representing Jesus

REPRESENTING JESUS
Notes from www.billbrucewords.com
Sunday, January 20, 2008

Texts: Isaiah 49:1-7, John 1:29-34

My friend Bert is a United Church minister on Vancouver Island. We went to school together, and he always makes sense to me. He tells me that when he goes to a school concert for his kids, or a party where he doesn’t know everybody, and people inevitably ask what he does for a living, he’s not sure he wants to tell them. It really ends a conversation with most people – and worse, some people think you must agree with them that God will smite all the sinners around us! So my friend Bert on Vancouver Island has taken to saying:

“I’m a local sales representative for a large eastern firm.”

Enough of you laughed on Sunday that I know you ‘get it’. When you get on a plane this week, or pause for coffee at work, and somebody says ‘what did you do on Sunday’, you’ll remember my friend Bert. Are you really ready to admit your religious identity, and risk the response? Most people will stop telling you good jokes – and the rest will think you agree with them about all kinds of crazy Jesus stuff. Perhaps you’ll find your version of being a local representative of a large multinational concern. That’s what we talked about this Sunday, anyhow.

Now some of you want to leave it up to Bert and me to bear this burden of being the local sales representative of the big thing. But if I’m a local representative of Christianity, so are you. Mostly, we don’t choose this identity. We get it by birth, born into a faith tradition, baptized before we were able to consent or object, doomed to be a representative of our demographic.
Most of us here - not all - are WASP, ‘white anglo-saxon protestants’, Some are even SWM, ‘straight white male’. We are representatives of our ethnicity, gender – and our religious group.

You’re known by the company you keep, so the saying goes. That is, people associate you with those you run with – and also, those you run with know you best. You’re known by the company you keep – and what company is that? Is it all your choice, or is a lot of it given, presented to you unbidden, then just up to you to re-present in the best way you can?

The Lord called me before I was born,
While I was in my mother’s womb God named me.

So says Isaiah, in the second ‘servant song’ today. I said last week that Israel had known heroes, warriors and kings, but once Israel was scattered by Assyria, and Judah exiled to Babylon, a captive people in slavery had to find other ways to name their heroics. They may have wanted to be among the rich and powerful, but they were no longer. It was not the fault of their individual choices - it was given in their birth.

For the powerless exile to say this is different than for we who are privileged. I reminded you of Monty Python’s knight guarding the ford in the Holy Grail, who loses all four limbs, and yells at his opponent ‘come back and fight like a man’! But we do know exile, from former days when we were the mainline church, and not the sideline church. My generation and older are still grieving our exile - though younger folks never knew it, and wish we’d lighten up.

God says,
It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob And to restore the survivors of Israel
I will give you as a light to the nations,
That my salvation may reach to the end of the earth

It’s too small at thing for you to only take care of your own family and country club crowd. It’s too easy, too light a load, to ‘bring back Judah and Israel’, to regather the clan, ‘our people’, or ‘the good old days. Nope, your job is to be a ‘light to the nations’, to re-present the good news to the ends of the earth. And you thought it was going to be hard to balance the budget here!

Sure, we have messed this mission up. So did the rich in Israel before the Assyrians. So did those who refused Josiah’s reforms in Judah before the Babylonians. Our missionary movement, our pride and disrespect for other peoples, demands confession and repentance. Who names their child Ahab or Jezebel anymore – let lone Zerubabbel?

Isaiah the prophet challenges you beyond your self pity and grief, and beyond your liberal guilt and repentance: what’s your plan to live as a representative next week, in the world? It’s not my job, God knows, to act as your agent, to represent you in your stead to sell the gospel. It’s not our job, God knows, to only take care of us and ours. It is too light a thing. You owe more.

John the Baptist sees Jesus the day after the baptism, and says:

Behold, the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world.

We looked at the ‘Lamb of God’ window in church this Sunday morning, and I said that in our culture, that’s a ‘brand’. It’s followed by the slogan, the USP or ‘unique selling point’: ‘who takes away the sin of the world’. It’s not a lot of explication and reasoned argument. It’s about a symbol, and our interpretation. Remember, this is the last of three sermons on hermeneutics and semiotics, the theories of interpretation and signs.

For John’s generation, Jesus had been killed – but also, the temple in Jerusalem had been leveled by the Romans. In the old days, when you wanted to put things right with God, there was a ritual act we could do, by bringing a lamb to the temple at Passover and sacrificing it. Not any more. Now what? We now we are not at one with ourselves, with each other, or with God. What’s the brand in response? ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’.

For our generation, the temple we have lost, and the way we used to ‘get right with God’, or centre ourselves, varies. For some of us it was the Lord’s Day and good works of WASP tradition. For others, it was mass and confession. But if it’s lost to us or not working for us, the human condition remains, and our religious need to get right from time to time. How do we do it, and what to we teach our children? What do we offer testimonials to, confess as our faith?

John is perfectly clear: I am not the lamb of God. My job is not to ask ‘what would Jesus do’, but to give testimonials to Jesus, and to be a representative of Jesus. He invites others, who in turn invite others – and before you know it, there’s a movement of people, a new religion from the old one, fulfilling and continuing the good news of God that was from the beginning.

It’s not your job to save the world. Let Jesus be Jesus – he’s doing his job fine. What’s yours? God knew you before you were born, named you in the womb, and gave you a job to do. What? Not just to care for the club, or the family, or the church, but to be a light to the world, to declare God to the ends of the earth. How’s that going for you? Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Why not represent that, and point toward Jesus?

There are lots of folks who don’t ‘get it’ when I speak. Those who want a message from me, to repeat or to refer people to me to repeat, are frustrated. A confession that ‘I am a SWM WASP’ won’t work for the majority of the folks in our congregation! But if I represent who I am in my particularity, and try to be a better partner to Jesus, and to women, and to non-WASPs, then your job is to imagine your own version of an analogous confession and re-presentation of the faith.

Harold Percy, Anglican church growth guru in Toronto, makes fun of the ‘anonymous gospel, our ‘live love’ program of tastefully presenting ourselves as ‘sales representatives for a large eastern firm’. We hope that if we simply live well, people will ask about it, and then we can confess our faith. Percy asks ‘how’s that going for you’? He says people come to our churches looking for godtalk, tools for their own getting right with god and each other and themselves. What if you went to a hardware store asking for tools, and the staff said ‘we don’t talk about that here – but let me introduce you to our cashier, who’s a really nice lady’? What’s our business?

John Dominic Crossan, speaking on the DVD session of our Living the Questions study this week, frames four questions for Christians today:
1. What is the character of your God?
2. What is the content of your faith?
3. What is the function of your church?
4. What is the purpose of your worship?

I offered quick responses for myself, since I shouldn’t ask you to do what I won’t do:
1. My God knows us better than we know ourselves, and loves us better than we love ourselves anyhow – now that’s a merciful God!
2. My faith is trusting the faithfulness God doing God’s part, and each of you doing your part, in a partnership of trying to make real the promise of creation, acting as if the reign of God were near, but not claiming it has arrived, or confusing me with God
3. My church’s function is to equip people to celebrate passionately joy and grief (doxology), to build relationships and community (koinonia), to inform our thinking and perceptions (didache), and to serve and care for people and creation (diakonia).
4. My worship is to practice, to express and inform and develop all of those functions, involving feelings as only music can do, involving public communal activity together, giving time to preaching and teaching, and moving us to act in service.

We each contribute what we can to this whole process. When I told my father 30 years ago that I would study for ministry, he said ‘You believe that stuff? I go for the music!’ Each of you has your own answer to your own reason for coming, and your own contribution to this whole thing. I may be a sales representative for this multinational concern – but so are you. My particular job here is something more like training and providing marketing support for you to be better representatives, and not to do your job for you. We’re all representing Jesus, not just me!

What if tomorrow we were all ‘outed’? What if we all woke up tomorrow morning with a big mark on each of our foreheads, of a cross? What if others around us had crucifixes, or orthodox crosses with the extra crossbar, or stars of David, or Islamic crescents? What if we couldn’t duck the question politely of our religious identity? Would you be ready to give an account of your faith? Neither would it – I would definitely wear a toque over my forehead on the plane!

Would you be ready to be named by God, as God has named you from the womb? Who would bear the same sign as you? Now if you get serious about learning your name, as God knew you from the beginning, in the womb, and not as the world names you, or as you wish to be known, by your clothes or your status or appearances – you’re going to need this church.

If you begin to wonder what your vocation is, beyond caring for your own family and club, to be a light to the nations, proclaim to the ends of the earth. If you try to bear witness and testify, not ‘what would Jesus do’, but what should you do as a representative of Jesus, then my job is secure, and our church’s work is cut out for us, in training and support for your vocations.

We won’t have room for all the activity: Praise (doxology), fellowship (koinonia), teaching (didache), service (diakonia). How do we get from what is, toward what might be? On this Sunday when we were covenanting with me as your new minister, we point beyond us, remembering our origins, and claiming our branding and slogans as Christians:

The Lord called me before I was born,
While I was in my mother’s womb God named me.

Behold, the Lamb of God
Who takes away the sin of the world

God, who called us before we were born, who named us when we were in our mothers’ wombs –
Assure us again that you know us, and love us – you who knit us together in the womb.
Who shaped us from the beginning, name us again, as you know us. Teach us our true names.

For you have given us such gifts – such opportunities, and resources –
And yet we cry that our work is in vain, that we are so tired, our strength sapped
Our progress seems futile and vain –
So remind us, challenge – if we have set our sights to low – If we have drawn the circle to small,
To care for our own families and our community and club …

What would it mean to be a light to the nations –
To share your salvation to the ends of the earth?
Are we hiding our light under a bushel, failing to reflect your light in our lives…

What would Jesus do? – God, you know – but don’t tell us that now –
Help us instead to imagine what we should do – what we should declare, and testify,
And how we should say and show – in representing Jesus

God, who called us before we were born,Who named us when we were in our mothers’ wombs –
Assure us again that you know us, and love us – You who knit us together in the womb
Who knew and shaped us from the beginning Name us again, as you know us….
Teach us our names For we pray in the name of Jesus whom we claim, as yours and ours – Amen
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The Things Which I Have Seen

THE THINGS WHICH I HAVE SEEN
Notes from www.billbrucewords.com
Baptism of Jesus, January 13, 2008

Texts: Isaiah 42:1-7, Matthew 3:13-17

There was a time
when meadow, grove, and stream,
the earth, and every common sight,
to me did seem
apparell'd in celestial light,
the glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen
I now can see no more…..

“The things which I have seen I now can see no more” that’s William Wordsworth, Romantic poet, starting “Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood”

Are there things which you have seen that you now can see no more? Have you lost a childlike awe and openness to wonder and surprise, deep passions and great loves? Are there people and moments that remind you, that choke you up, between memory and hope, that inspire you, that move you? Perhaps it’s Celine Dion, or country and western ballads, or national anthems, but puppy eyes, or children’s laughter. What have we lost, and denied?

The American presidential primaries heated up this week....
Hilary Clinton nearly cried, while Barack Obama channeled Martin Luther King, and John Edwards tried to outflank them both as they carry the burdens of being potentially ‘the first’, as a woman and a black candidate? Meanwhile, McCain reminded us of war, Giuliani of 9-11, Huckabee of Baptists and Romney of Mormons. It’s more identifications and associations, spin and symbolism, than policy choices.

Sure, they are each smarter than any of us, and more attractive and socially able – but there is something more going in with our appetite for this news. They stand for things we have seen, or recognize, or want to point our children toward, or commit ourselves to support. They represent something greater than themselves, visible signs of invisible things. Even though we don’t vote for them ourselves, they have an impact on our lives, and show something that matters to us.

Last week, we introduced hermeneutics and semiotics, the theories of interpretation and signs. This week, we did more of the same, in terms of persons, or characters. ‘Semiotic awareness’ is when you get a new car and see that model everywhere. You learn a character, and place people in relation to it. Who’s ‘Kennedyesque’: Clinton or Obama? Who claims Martin Luther King?

Have you seen the movie Ratatouille? A cartoon rat named Remy wants to be a chef, and is encouraged by the ghost of a great chef, Auguste Gusteau. At one point the rat turns to the ghost and says ‘you’re just a figment of my imagination’. That requires a suspension of disbelief greater than watching the Matrix movies, in which Neo, Trinity, Morpheus discover that their conscious reality is all an illusion. Which reality is real, in our head or outside?

This business of hermeneutics and semiotics, of interpretations and signs, is not limited to 21st century culture and critics like Gadamer or Ricouer calling us to ‘re=-enchant the universe’. We’ve been struggling with it since modernity flattened and democratized the world into individualistic utilitarian calculus to serve industrial modes of production:

The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
Mine has a snub nose like to mine….
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white….

That’s William Blake’s poem “The Everlasting Gospel” and it’s 200 years old!

Thomas Carlyle wrote Heroes and Hero Worship in 1840, to mourn what we lost in modernity. He writes that we used to have warriors and kings, and prophets, priests, and poets, not role models for us to aspire to be, but for us to shape our place and purpose in relation to something beyond ourselves. He weeps at a disenchanted worldview

Northrop Frye wrote The Great Code in 1983 about how the bible worked as a code for our culture. Language can’t simply map reality referentially, with one word for each thing – we require myth, metaphor, metonymic language to shape our experience. The Bible sets a code, a typology in language. Frye begins with Vico’s theory of ages and cycles of expression:
➢ a mythical age, an age of gods, expressed in poetic words, hieroglyphic signs, ancient talk
➢ an aristocratic age, an age of heroes, expressed in noble words, allegorical signs, archaic talk
➢ an age of the people, a democratic age, leads to denoting words, descriptive modern talk

Frye was a United Church minister and literary critic at Victoria College, who taught how codes and patterns of the bible shared typology with literature, coining the phrase ‘secular scripture’. Marshall McLuhan was the Roman Catholic cultural critic at St Michaels at the same time, whose ‘medium is the message’ emphasis on popular culture in varied media is better known. Our denomination was founded on the dogmatic assurance that the bible is not the Word. Rather the bible contains the Word. “The things you have seen, but see no more”? Look again, and see!

So the bible story today was about the baptism of Jesus. All 4 gospels have a story of Jesus being baptized by John, each with its own spin on the tale. We projected a couple of artists’ renderings of the baptism, as I spoke: a colourful stylized Latin American version, and an African image. After all, nobody remembered to bring their video camera, or even their cell phone to record the event – if indeed it happened. Your image might not be the same as mine!

There was a Baptist movement in Jesus’ century, groups remembering leaders, especially John, who preached and enacted a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin. There were also variations of Jesus people movements, people spirit-filled, uplifted by laying on of hands. Rabbis in Jamnia were reinventing synagogue Judaism and writing Talmud. It was like primaries.

Out of the complex mix of movements and groups, there emerged over the next century one movement including both, and telling stories that honoured the key figures from each one, John the Baptist and Jesus and Paul and Peter and others. Think of it like parties after the primaries, rallying to include all the candidates on the podium and on the hustings, as signs of unity.

So if you’re trying to paint a picture of the relationship between John the Baptizer and Jesus, what do you do? Mark is briefest, of course, but has John says Jesus is more powerful. Luke tells how their mothers were related, and visited while the boys were still in the womb, but just says ‘when Jesus was baptized’ and not by whom. John’s version has the Baptizer labeling Jesus ‘Lamb of God’ and saying the signs at the baptism will prove his status. Matthew elaborates most on the event with dialogue between the Baptizer demurring and declining, and asking Jesus to baptize him instead, and Jesus assuring him that it’s OK to go ahead for now, for form’s sake.

What’s at stake for the spin doctors? It’s not the factual accuracy. Even if somebody had been filming, the way they framed the shot and edited the tape would interpret it. The baptizer and Jesus were contemporaries, and their relationship could be summed up at the Jordan – who would be in charge, and what would it signify? See, if John is baptizing sinners who repent, then why would Jesus need baptizing? Wouldn’t it be Jesus who could wash the baptizer’s sins? Especially in an ancient culture of patriarchy and hierarchy, this stuff matters – as in primaries!

What’s at stake for us? What does our baptism mean – of our infant children, or ourselves? Sure, it’s about repenting – but do infants such sinners, any more than Jesus? It’s also about belonging and identifying, about a sign of standing in relation to something greater than any of us, and doing it together with others. It’s now also about membership in an organization, but Jesus had no church, and did not believe in himself or get baptized in the name of himself! Nor is it only about symbolic dying and rising – since he still had to die and rise –and so do we.
But Jesus no church, and not believer in self

Jesus says it’s right, for now, to fulfill righteousness, for John to baptize him. It was a sign, not a lecture, that he was baptized with us, like us, for us. Was Jesus just a guy? Is Hilary just woman, or Obama just a black? This is a focal point for reflecting on the person and work of Jesus, just as the Christmas stories of his birth were. People trying to interpret the signs, doing their own hermeneutics and semiotics, added the elements of the voice and the dove. Was there a voice and a dove in fact at the moment – who heard or saw them? The gospels differ.

Matthew says as Jesus came out of the water, the heavens opened, and the spirit of God descended on Jesus like a dove. So as I spoke, we projected images again, one Australian artist’s vision of clouds above red earth, taking the shape of a dove, with one feather falling – and another famous photographic image of a bird taking off, backlit and diffusing light beams. The dove as a sign of spirit and hope go back to Noah’s ark, and ahead to temple sacrifices. It’s a sign for what can’t be seen: a spirit which like water, wind, or fire is seen in its effect on other things.

Matthew reports a voice from heaven. We aren’t told if it’s a deep voice, a masculine voice, what language it spoke or who heard it. The important thing is what it says, and how it echoes a familiar text from the prophet Isaiah, which we also heard:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, with whom I am well pleased

How are we to understand this Jesus? How can you describe a sign? There was water, and there was a dove, and there was a voice. It was like the end of the flood. It was like Isaiah said about God’s servant. You know, those songs about the suffering servants? If I say Hilary or Obama are ‘Kennedyesque’ or either of them says ‘I have a dream’, you know we are evoking martyrs of their political tradition. That’s what’s going on with what the voice says at Jesus’ baptism.

The people of Israel knew the traditions of heroes and hero worship, as Carlyle would call it. They had their own warriors and kings, like the other nations: Joshua and David, Solomon in all his glory. They had prophets and priests: Samuel and Eli and Elijah. These were figures larger than life, not role models to match, but heroes that were signs of the people’s identity. But then came exile to Babylon, and humiliation. This was more than a literary tragedy – it was cathartic, testing what was ultimately true about our identity and our faith. In the midst of it, the Isaiah tradition of prophecy developed the image and figure of ‘the suffering servant’.

We sing these songs in the church this month, from Isaiah 42 and next week from Isaiah 49, to remember this image and shape of a different kind of hero. Who has empathy, and won’t break a bent reed, or snuff a smoldering candle? The exiles, the underdogs, have seen the ugly side of warriors and kings – and need another image to express the inexpressible, to offer intimations of what is truly human, and truly divine. Isaiah gives us words. We hear them echoed about Jesus.

Was there a dove, or a voice? I doubt you could have caught it on camera. I don’t even know if the event was actually staged, of the baptizer and Jesus at the Jordan – but the story is true. It tells us what we need to know about Jesus, and about John. It resonates with the dove flying to the ark, and the suffering servant sung by Isaiah the prophet. These are the things that I have seen, and now can see no more – until I pause, to remember, and to hope, to shape my seeing.

These are the things that you have seen too. If you see them no more, then look again. We are not a stupid people. We are not a naïve people. We are not a childish people. But we may aspire to be childlike, reminded of full humanity by our children in Kids Worship Centres, or by those who gather for the Handicapable program, or by those who are aging as we will age. They demand that we re-enchant our universe, with doves and voices. Look again, and see: God with us, God in us, God for us. Thanks be to God, Amen.

God of grace – Spirit taking flesh and form - For those with eyes to see, or ears to hear –
Where is your servant, whom you uphold – Your chosen, in whom your soul delights?
For we keep watching and waiting – Looking and listening – for your servant
For kings and warriors, Or Politicians and sports stars….
For prophets, poets and priests – Or Protesters, performers and pundits –
But our heroes let us down - And our leaders don’t lift us up –
What and whom do they serve? What and whom do they invite us to be?

We’re after something more than a good example – Much more than a role model to try to match
Show us the shape of your glory in full humanity - Human being, fully alive
Give us a glimpse of your glory in all divinity - Spirit moving like wind and flame and water,
seen in its effect on all that it touches
You know we’re bent, but not broken - You know our own light flickers and dims
So show us some grace and mercy now - Give us the courage to be
Assure us of the ground of our being - For you know we need it….
So we’re waiting on you, watching for you - Training ourselves to recognize you
In a suffering servant, - In a dove descending - In a voice that speaks –
For those with eyes to see, or ears to hear - Give us a glimpse now, an echo again
What word do you have for our hearts - Open those hearts of ours now. Amen

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Reframing a Picture

Have you got your pictures back from Christmas holidays yet? Do you still use cameras with film, and forget to get them developed, like me? Most folks seem to have adopted digital cameras, and print them, if at all, at home. Lots of people use their cell phones as cameras, I see. The day after our pageant, there were great pictures up on a ‘Flickr’ site. Do you take pictures? We tend to pull out cameras for special events, occasional family gatherings, and holiday trips. There are conventions and patterns in how we construct these images and frame these memories. Who has shots of their offices, or the places we shop, or the regular paths we follow? In fancy academic talk, these are issues of hermeneutics and semiotics, of interpretation and signification.


Have you edited your pictures? You shaped and edited your pictures when you pulled out your camera, or when you put it away. You edited them when you chose them, choosing when to shoot, framing and posing – and when you deleted the bad shots from memory chips. But now, we can also ‘photoshop’, or ‘iphoto’, cropping and adding images. Remember how the Stalinists used to remove people from the record? We can all be our own KGB airbrush department now! The inlaws, outlaws, ex-laws, and next-laws provide a procession of changing extended family, and we can reframe our holiday albums next year in light of this year.

Have you sorted your pictures? When we moved, earlier this year, we discovered how many albums and collections, boxes and envelopes we had – not to mention framed art from the walls. We purged a lot, especially when we couldn’t name the people in the pictures any more – and it was exhausting to relive our lives in images of Christmases past, events, holidays, trips, and remembering now what we expected, what we did not foresee, who we met and who we lost. Sometimes you look at a happy gathering, and realize that they did not know what the next year would bring – or at a giddy child, and recognize that they are now a sober adult professional.

Art galleries and museums are all about framing and reframing imagery, interpreting the signs. There’s a wall in the Walker court in the Art Gallery of Ontario which has for a number of years just displayed a lot of empty frames. It’s not just an homage to those who get rich in the framing business – it’s alluding to how frames shape our vision, and our art. The new Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum, in their ‘O Canada’ exhibition, is projecting a collection of images from Charles Pachter’s work, and we projected some of his images from www.cpachter.com while I spoke this Sunday: Davenport and Bay, Inner Harbour, Eyes See, and others showing how we frame our vision of the ‘north’ through our urban windows and car windshields.

Framing and reframing matters. Editing and collecting images and reminders, signs and signals, shapes our experience, not just expressing it. The fancy academic words for these issues of interpretation and construction of knowledge and language and signs and meaning are, as we all recited aloud today, “hermeneutics” and “semiotics”. They have everything to do with epiphany, the season of revelation and recognition, of ‘aha’ moments of illumination.


Study of interpretation and of signification over the past century was led by Gadamer re-enchanting the universe, Foucault describing our social construction of truth, Derrida deconstructing language, Eco seeking the ultimate language, and Habermas and his discourse ethics emphasizing speaker, hearer as integral to the performative impact of language. But it’s not just an esoteric European academic indulgence. It show up in popular culture in the diction of ‘deconstruction’ and ‘postmodernism’, in art and music and films that seem to break all the rules.

I tried to make this more accessible by retelling a feeble joke about hermeneutics and semiotics. Imagine a series of stereotypical people approaching the stop sign at our corner here:
➢ The postmodernist radical academic, who has read all of Gadamer, Foucault, Derrida, Eco, and Habermas, deconstructs the sign. It’s an oppressive semiotic expression of government control in our lives. He runs the sign over to end the tyranny of order.
➢ The traditional Catholic approaches the stop sign, remembering and revering the community of interpretation expressed through the hierarchy over ages. He takes the stop sign with a grain of salt, as a modern innovation which will pass in time.
➢ The fundamentalist comes to the stop sign, and stops, and stays at the corner. After all, the sign says ‘stop’ and she is obedient to the literal meaning. She is still waiting for a ‘go’ sign, and furious at all the scofflaws that won’t stay with her.
➢ United Church folks cruise past the sign all the time. They suspect that in its current context in this changing neighbourhood, it’s probably misspelled, and was meant to say ‘shop’. Seeing what others do, we deal with the sign by slowing through a rolling stop.

The reading from Isaiah today began by announcing a sign – interpreting and reframing the world around the prophet in their generation:

“Arise, shine, for your light has come!”

Isaiah responds to the exile, when Israel was conquered by Babylon, the temple destroyed, the leaders exiled to Iraq. Generations of prophets in the tradition and spirit of Isaiah kept preaching. Scholars group chapters 40 on as ‘second Isaiah’, a later generation seeing the signs of restoration when the Persians let people return and rebuild. Many carve off the last 10 chapters of our bible book as ‘third Isaiah’ even later. So we heard today, in the tradition of Isaiah, that the exile is not all there is, and there is another future to be seen.

Imagine the exiles remembering the old country. ‘Remember the good old days, when David and Solomon built the temple?’ ‘Remember when the Queen of Sheba came, and the cedars of Lebanon were sent to us?’ Imagine Isaiah challenging them: ‘Are we just a memorial society of grieving refugees? Reframe! Arise, your light has come! Imagine the nations flooding to you, instead of you melting away among them. Imagine another chapter, that the story is not over at the exile. Reframe a wider picture - reshuffle your picture collections.’

‘They’ll bring you gold, and frankincense’, said Isaiah. Hey – that was a sign we all recognized! Did it mean predictions of actual gold and frankincense? I don’t think so – it was an image, a sign, the shape of things to come. It signaled a reversal of fortune, already anticipated.


So when Matthew was writing, 500 years later than Isaiah, the second temple had been leveled by the Romans. Exile and disaster was overwhelming another generation. Matthew knows Isaiah and assumes that you do too. Matthew wants to remind you of the signs: arise, shine, your light has come, and nations will be coming to us, bringing gold and frankincense, signs of power, and influence. So Matthew tells the story of the star and of the magi. Did it happen? I don’t think so. Had some new light shone in the sky? I don’t think so – it was an image, a vision, a metaphor for hope. But I know it’s profoundly true, that it offers interpretation and signs of hope.

Matthew also tells the story of Herod in relation to the signs of star and magi. Just because there’s a sign, even if we both recognize it, we may interpret it differently, and respond to it differently. Remember my stop sign! Defensive driving is a good idea, lest you get run over. You might meet somebody who won’t play by your rules, or wants to control and manage, not celebrate and share gifts like the magi!

So, imagine you and yours, in this New Year, seeking a sign. Are we just a memorial society, an institution in decline? Are some projects stalled? Reframe! We are about to begin a new chapter. Rise and shine – expect the light, and the company, and the gifts to flow. Expect to see the signs, and to be the signs. You remember the old saying ‘I’ll believe that when I see it’? Hermeneutics and semiotics counters with another truth: ‘You’ll see that when you believe it’!

Have you got your pictures back from Christmas holidays yet? Do you still use cameras with film, and forget to get them developed, like me? Most folks seem to have adopted digital cameras, and print them, if at all, at home. Lots of people use their cell phones as cameras, I see. The day after our pageant, there were great pictures up on a ‘Flickr’ site. Do you take pictures? We tend to pull out cameras for special events, occasional family gatherings, and holiday trips. There are conventions and patterns in how we construct these images and frame these memories. Who has shots of their offices, or the places we shop, or the regular paths we follow? In fancy academic talk, these are issues of hermeneutics and semiotics, of interpretation and signification.

Reframe your pictures – reshuffle your collections – rewrite your story with room for another leg in the journey this year. Expect to see signs, and prepare to be the signs. Don’t chase this like Herod to control the revelation, but like the Magi, take the journey to celebrate and share gifts. If hermeneutics and semiotics help you do it – use them, too! Saint Francis told us: ‘Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words!’

“Arise, shine, for your light has come!”










God of Epiphany,
God of signs and wonders
Whose light shines
Even over dark and shadows
Even through fog and gloom

Were back
Back from our holidays, holy days
Back in the face of a New Year
And watching and waiting
For signs of you

But we hardly know what to look for
Can’t imagine what others see
The visions of old days seem passé
The emerging visions still unfocused

How wide should we cast our gaze?
How closely should we inspect our hearts?
You who shine over the world in justice
You who know and love each one of us
Reframe our pictures of your world

For we’ve been editing
We’ve been airbrushing
We’ve been closing our collections too soon
Knowing whom we’ve loved and lost,
Not recognizing new friends we haven’t met yet

God of Epiphany
God of signs and wonders
Give us a glimpse now
To see signs
To be signs –
To arise, shine, for our light has come

Amen

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