This week’s Sacred Story comes from Mark 1. Jesus heals, cleanses, preaches and teaches in the name of love. Jesus chooses people on the margins and calls them into the wholeness and fullness of life they deserve. That good news is for you too - you are chosen and loved and worthy of all things good. There is nothing you can ever do to make yourself less worthy of God’s love, and there is no mess too much for God’s grace.

Today is a mix of things. It’s the 12th day of the season of Christmas - a mystery so great that it can not fit into one single day, but it already seems as dry as the pine needles our glittering tree has left behind. We are still singing songs to to announce the arrival of the Prince of Peace, while we commit acts of War and witness entire continents on fire. It’s a new year with new possibilities and new life, but the old ways still cling to us...even if we’ve resolved not to let them.

Today in worship we’re celebrating the feast of Epiphany, technically a day early to celebrate the Magi who arrived late to the birth of God - the wise ones who followed a wild star to find a grandiose God in a fragile baby. They came from the east - somewhere near Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, or...Iran - from places that are home to holiness and horror. They had a different expression of faith than the Holy Family, but found a way to worship together anyway. The baby shows us how God’s salvation and restoration is tied to human bodies, but we are intimately aware of human bodies that are scarred, incurable, gone. It is a day when we proclaim, “look! God is here!” but perhaps we also wonder where God could possibly be.

Today is a threshold moment, that thin place where multiple things meet and dwell together. Perhaps that is why we mark the thresholds of our dwelling places with something as fragile as chalk on this day. Today is a mix of things and honestly I’m still not quite sure what all is in the mix, but...I feel a pull to be in it. I wonder if that’s how the Magi felt, if that’s how those seeking divine and practical healing felt as they approached this mystery called Jesus, God who comes into the mix.

Epiphany means revelation - SOMETHING is being unveiled and made known. In this scripture we see God making Godself known through simple but powerful word and action, and it’s making the people feel some kinda way. We’re only in chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark, who doesn’t even bother to tell a story about the BIRTH of Jesus, but quickly gets into the WAY of Jesus. Jesus speaks with astounding authority and acts with gentle but disruptive justice. Jesus shows authority to teach, to proclaim, to point to God’s truth in scripture, throughout time and in the world of here and now. Jesus generously heals and restores.

Often generosity and authority are placed on opposite poles. We have seen authority abused too many times that it is difficult to imagine redemptive authority. And we’ve seen generosity trampled or co-opted so often that it seems too risky to attempt. And yet, God embodies both and brings them together. In being made flesh, becoming fragile and finite, God fuses together vulnerability and divine power.

I wonder about your own sense of authority. Sometimes we shy away from it because we associate it with harm, but scripture tells us that GOD gives us authority and so there MUST be such a thing as life-giving authority. Have you ever asserted your own authority for healing and wholeness? to establish your own boundaries or to proclaim your abilities with confidence? To take ownership of your own voice? Have you seen someone do this?

How did it make you feel? How did others react? What keeps you from doing this more often?

Jesus is beginning to find his authority even as he practices it, it will continue to unfold and develop over time. But what is clear from the beginning is that his authority is for the work of wholeness. Jesus uses that holy mix of generosity and power for healing, restorative healing. Jesus does this morning, noon, and night, from beginning to the end, one person and cities full of people, fevers and diseases that were otherwise incurable at the time. Jesus speaks to those whose condition is considered unspeakable. Jesus takes old sick women by the hand, touches those whose touch put his own reputation and his place in society and religion at risk.

God CHOOSES healing. Sometimes it feels daunting to reach out to God, to ask for help, to ask for affirmation. We are afraid that if we ask God to choose us, the answer will be no. Sometimes we are intrigued when we hear the stories of others who have found wholeness... in this teacher and preacher from a backwater town, in a community of faith, in this movement of followers that’s messy and unpolished. Sometimes we are able to loosen our pride or our fear in order to seek God’s will and sometimes it happens when we have nothing else to lose. But God CHOOSES to make each and every one of us clean. God cares about our bodies AND our soul. God CHOOSES to take on a body so that we can experience that care more closely, more fully. God CHOOSES you, every time, even and especially when you think you’re beyond choosing.

It’s news so good it can’t be contained. Even when Jesus tells those he has healed to keep things quiet, they can’t help themselves, they HAVE to shout it from the roof tops that they’ve encountered something incredible, that they’ve seen life restored in overflowing abundant ways, that they’ve felt this goodness in their own body, in their bones. Jesus asks the leper not to tell anyone - not because he wants to keep the good news secret or among a select few, but because wants to be able to move freely enough that he can bring the good news to lots more people by traveling farther. But the arrival of God is too fast, too furious.

Epiphany is about recognizing God in the world. Where have you seen God this week? Today? Where have you felt God’s nearness, in your body and your bones, new life stirring awake? Where in your relationships have you sensed connection that lights a spark in you? When did you feel liberated? Take a minute to reflect.

If it fills you up with light and life, those are things that others need too. You are made in God’s image God gives YOU authority and ability to heal too. You are a sign of God’s love that beckons to those who see your wild star and wonder...You have a story of God’s goodness in everyday hopes and blessings and this world desperately needs to hear and experience that Good News. Share it. You don’t have to memorize the Gospel of Mark and recite it, but simply share what you’ve seen, what you’ve felt, and how it reveals a glimpse of God in our world. It may seem either too small or too prideful to share the ways in which God has come close to you, even just as an inkling of a glimpse, but I promise you it’s not. Evil wins by making us think we’re alone. We’re not alone. Sin tries to make us think we are powerless, but we’re not powerless. It makes us think we’re too broken to be made whole by love, but we’re not. Go and tell the others. Amen.

Chosen and Loved: God's Promise to You, Forever