What are we doing here?

The First Sunday After the Epiphany

Mark 1:4-11

What Are We Doing Here?

            So Russell Brand, the outrageous and irreverent comic, the actor, political activist, and podcaster, is……..someone I certainly never thought I’d find making their way into one of my sermons.  However, Russell the author, who has written such works as Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions, is also someone who has been on a very serious spiritual journey throughout his life and particularly on his road to recovery.  So I randomly stumbled across a quote from Russell, who is not a Christian, speaking about Jesus of all things, and it kind of stuck with me (actually this has been sort of a theme and a kind of gift for me recently, hearing God speak to me in the most random and unexpected places).  Anyway, so Russell says, “ If Christ consciousness is not accessible to us, then what is the point of the story of Jesus?”  “Unless Christ is right here, right now, in your heart, in your consciousness, then what is Christ?”  It’s a really great question, right?  In other words, if Christ isn’t alive for you, alive in your life, then what the heck are we doing?  What the heck are we doing?

            Sometimes I think that it is harder for us folks who have grown up in the church, or who have grown up in the South where all are basically churched, or have grown up in a largely Christian nation.  Sometimes I think it can be harder for folks who were born into or who grew up already on the inside of the fold.  I think that it can often be harder, harder to recognize, to realize, to live into Christ.  Epiphany.  At least I know that was the case for me.  It was harder. 

Though I’ve always known the Creator God, though I was a cradle Episcopalian, involved in church liturgy and service, though I was a deeply or oddly spiritual kid, though I was already accepted and on my path to priesthood in the Church, I had never really known Christ.  Known Christ.  Even then, I had never really experienced, seen, felt, awoken to, realized that indescribable intimacy, that inseparable closeness that is the message of and indeed is The Christ.  Now, though I do believe that I’ve had a taste, that I’ve glimpsed that peace which passes all understanding and that indeed only comes from the Christ, I am still discovering and rediscovering, daily, if I’m lucky, if I am blessed.  Epiphany.

            You know the Epiphany is celebrated differently around the Church world.  In the Western world, during Epiphany we focus on the arrival of the wise men, the revealing of the Christ to the gentiles and therefore symbolically to the whole world.  In the Eastern world, the focus is shifted more to the baptism of Jesus, like in our readings today, where the voice of God and a dove descends again proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ to the world.  Regardless, both are about revealing the Christ.  Regardless, we are saying and indeed celebrating the very same thing. 

            Actually, this is not unlike our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ in the larger Church.  You see, we think that we are so different.  We pick on each other and point fingers and poke fun, but we are all really saying the same thing.  Yes, I am talking about our friends from other denominations.  Yes, even Baptists. 

Baptists say it by teaching a personal relationship with Jesus.  Pentecostals say it by teaching living with the Holy Spirit.  Catholics say it by teaching God’s real presence in the form of the Church and in the sacrament of Communion.  Episcopalians say it by doing our best at somehow teaching a hodge podge balance of all of this.  Our own Presiding Bishop says it by teaching the Jesus Movement.   Russell Brand, much like Richard Rohr, says it by teaching an all present Christ consciousness.  We are all saying it, and yet, at the same time, somehow it seems, at least for the majority of us who are looking out from within the Church structure, the church belief system, the church walls, our routines and our church politics and drama, somehow we are all also missing the point.  Missing Epiphany and Missing the Christ.

Check out how Rumi the Sufi or Islamic mystic poet says it:

“I tried to find Him on the Christian cross, but He was not there; I went to the temple of the Hindu and the old pagodas, but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere…...I searched on the mountains and in the valleys but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him.  I went to the Ka’bah in Mecca, but He was not there either…..I questioned the scholars and the philosophers but He was beyond their understanding…….Then I looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him, He was nowhere else to be found.”

            You see my friends, what they are all actually saying, what not just Epiphany but each liturgical season is saying, what, by my best estimation, is being taught not only at the heart of Christianity, but also at the heart of every religious system I’ve ever known, is that YOU are the next chapter.  In an evolution from understanding Gods as many entities, to One God above Gods, to God in the flesh, to God in and around each of you, you are the next step, the next revolution.  You are IN Christ - consciousness, and if we don’t get that, and if we aren’t living into that reality, then what in the world are we doing here?  Epiphany.

                                                                                    Amen.