Entangled States

[…] How does the sacrifice of one, the offering of the Lamb, create a community, a movement, a new world?

I think a glimpse of an answer comes from one of America’s great philosophers of the early twentieth century: Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (1855–1916) was an American philosopher associated with absolute idealism, best known for his work on loyalty, community, and the moral meaning of shared life. He wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period marked by rapid industrialization, social fragmentation, and the crisis of modernity, seeking a philosophical account of truth and ethics that could sustain genuine community amid cultural and religious change.

Royce saw the heart of Christianity as the creation of what he called the Beloved Community — a community bound together by shared loyalty and love, greater than any individual member. It is a community where betrayal can be forgiven, where wounds can be healed, because its bond is rooted in something beyond itself.

Royce believed that such a community is both created and its members transformed, by a singular, shared event — an event so formative that by remembering it, by re-living it, the members are knit together into something far greater than the sum of its parts. He saw this as the end game of humanity – a vision for what our future could and should become.

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It seems clear to me that for us as Christians, that singular, formative event that Royce references and from which Thurman and King start, is the Triduum — the Cross, the Tomb, and the Resurrection of Jesus. The Church relives that event every Holy Week and remembers it every Sunday in the Eucharist. In that remembrance we are not only bound to Jesus, but to one another. That is how the Beloved Community is born.

So here is the challenge for this MLK weekend: How do we become the Beloved Community in our own time? How do we live God’s dream for the world while our nation is riven by violence, division, and despair?

I believe it begins the same way it began for those first disciples. When they asked Jesus, “Where are you staying?” — or more literally, “Where are you abiding?” (using the same word that John had used for the Spirit’s presence with Jesus.) he did not give them a lecture or a doctrine. He said: “Come and see.” And the disciples followed him, saw where he was abiding (staying) and they abided there with him that day. Abide is doing a lot of theological work in this Gospel reading, and it’s not an accident.

We cannot explain the Kingdom of God into existence. We must invite people to experience it. We must bring others into the fellowship where Christ abides, into the worship where his death and resurrection are remembered, into the spaces where love and mercy are practiced. In that abiding, hearts are changed, and lives are bound together.

You can view the full sermon at this link.

Epiphany is a season that calls us to notice those moments when God breaks through into our lives. Scripture is full of such theophanies, little theophanies — moments when we catch a glimpse of God’s presence. Think, for instance, of Moses before the burning bush, a shepherd in the wilderness encountering flame that does not consume. Or Jacob, exhausted and frightened, laying his head on a stone while fleeing from his brother and dreaming of a ladder stretching up into heaven. Or the prophet Elijah, shivering in a cave, fleeing the king who wants to take his life, expecting God in the wind or the earthquake or the fire — but instead meeting the Lord in the sound of sheer silence. Even the disciples, straining at the oars in the rough waters of the Sea of Galilee, see Jesus walking toward them across the waves, and He says, “Do not be afraid. I am here.”

These are moments of divine self-revelation. But here’s the thing: theophanies are not always dramatic. They are not always pillars of fire or thundering voices from heaven. More often than not, they come quietly, in moments so ordinary that many will pass them by without recognition. That’s why Epiphany is not just about the event or events themselves — it is also about the transformation of our perception. It is about our capacity to recognize that God is at work in both the extraordinary and the everyday, in the events that make headlines and in the quiet rhythms of our own lives.

Last week in my sermon, I pointed out the parallels between the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt and the story of Moses fleeing to Midian. Both are stories of danger, of exile, of God’s people caught in the often violent currents of history. And, they remind us that God speaks not only through miracles but also through the events of human life—even through suffering and uncertainty. Now, let me take this one more step; if God can speak through the patterns of Scripture, then God can speak through our world today. In that sense, history and our current events can be seen as a series of theophanies—if we have the eyes to see.

But let us be clear and add a caveat to that statement: not everything that happens in history is God’s will. Sin and suffering, cruelty and disaster—these are not of God. A theophany is not God causing evil to happen, but God making God’s self known even in the midst of what happens. God works within history, not always to explain, and not always to prevent, but always to redeem.

This is why discernment matters – especially when we reflect on moments of epiphany. We may yearn for theophanies to be spectacular, easy to identify. But Scripture shows us that God’s presence is often subtle. We may only recognize it in hindsight, after we have trained our hearts and our vision to see. Contrary to that, Jesus’ baptism is a rare moment of clarity. The voice from heaven affirms His belovedness before He is driven into the wilderness — note that the voice comes before the trial, not instead of it. So often, God’s revelation does not remove us from history. It sends us more deeply into it.

More of this in the sermon this week…

You can access the sermon directly at this link.

Once we see how Matthew reads history, we are forced to ask a more uncomfortable question:
If God’s saving work repeats and deepens across time, where is it happening now?

Where is the Christ Child today?

Not sentimentally – but concretely.

Where is new life appearing that unsettles old power?
Where is hope being born in places that seem too small, too ordinary, or too marginal to matter?
Where are children – and others – whose vulnerability exposes the violence and fear that still shape our world?

And if there is a Christ Child, then there will also be Magi.

So where are they?

Who are the ones paying attention, reading the signs of the times, willing to travel far, willing to risk misunderstanding, willing to kneel before a truth that does not flatter their own power or certainty?

And where, if we are honest, does Herod still show up?

Where does empire still strike out against the innocent?
Where does fear disguise itself as order?
Where does control mask itself as security?

Matthew does not let us keep these characters safely locked in the past. He writes in such a way that they step out of the story and into the present.

You can view the sermon directly at this link.