Friday after Epiphany
In this year of being "church at home and home at church", Joel and I have decided to do saints' dinners once a month. One weekend day a month, we choose a saint and we and our daughters do a bit of research on that saint and pick special foods and do special decorations. This month's saint is going to be St. Paul's conversion. His feast day is later this month (on Friday, January 25, so you'll be seeing me do some more reflection on him in this space in a couple weeks) and we'll be making food having to do with eyes - black-eyed peas, maybe some things with olives. (Get it? Because Paul was blinded by the glory of God on the road to Damascus and then converted.... ;-))
Maybe it's a little hokey, but it is also a way to celebrate God's saints and think about our own participation in this life to which God has called us. It's an opportunity to have epiphanies about God's presence in our lives. One thing that's struck all of us is the real and contagious joy the saints have - Paul included. No matter the century, the saints tend to be joyfully withstanding floods, torture, jail time, death and more, all because of their belief in God. "How can this be?" I keep wondering, time and time again.
I have to continually keep in front of me that God's view of "normal" is utterly different than our world's view of normal is, exactly because God is not us.
Today's first reading (1 John 5:5-13) speaks to us of this. "Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" The victor is not the one who makes the most money or wins the most wars or political skirmishes - but simply the one who believes in Jesus.
John knows that belief in Jesus as the Son of God can be a tough thing to believe in. He argues, however, that we all believe in mere human testimony. For example, I believe that George Washington was a general in the Revolutionary War and the first president of the United States of America - not because I saw this with my own eyes but because of other peoples' testimony - even other people who are long since dead and gone.
How much more should we believe in God's testimony then? God witnesses that Jesus is his Son in at least three ways: Spirit, water, and Blood. The water might be the water of Jesus' baptism when God says "This is my beloved Son." There were people there who heard God say that. The Blood might be Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross. The Spirit might be any number of events - but in John's first letter, he always makes reference to the Spirit in relation to truth, love and peace, even and especially when others who don't believe are spreading discord and anger. Wherever love and truth are present, God is testifying to Jesus as the Son of God.
So if we believe that long-dead humans can tell us that people who are long-dead, like Aristotle and George Washington, exist - how much more should we believe that God's way of being the world through love and truth should tell us that Jesus is the Son of God?
Joyful things happen to those who believe - just as happens with the man cured of leprosy in the gospel (Luke 5:12-16).
Today, let us pray to see God's epiphany to us in his truth and love.
- Jana M. Bennett