Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

It seems like we have been a part for a long time and perhaps it feels even more so to me because of all that has happened in my life since the end of the fall semester.  Since we were together last, I’ve traveled to Turkey on a ten day trip to foster interfaith dialogue and build relationships between Muslims and Christians.  I’ve been to Dallas three times, Houston once.  I’ve traveled to central Mexico to visit family and officiate a wedding for two good friends.  And, between trips, I stopped in Austin several times to do laundry, repack…oh… and, how could I forget, to catch a pretty good football game.  As exciting as most of these travels have been, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be home and once again with this community of faith. 

For the most part the experiences I have had over the past month or so have all been wonderful and life giving.  However, there has been some sadness as well.  You see all these excursions were planned well before the holiday that is all but the trips to Dallas.  I learned the day that I returned from Turkey, December 21st, that my father had terminal cancer.  On January 11th around 2:00 AM, my father died, and I am grateful to say that my brother and I were at his bedside.  Two days later this past Friday, I officiated at my father’s memorial service.  And so it is…my dad has passed into that greater light which is the object of our heart’s desire—life forever bathed in God’s light and love—and for that I say thanks be to God. 

We find ourselves today on the church’s calendar in the season of Epiphany.  The season of Epiphany is all about light beginning with the light that shined from the star that led the magi to the Christ Child.  In the season of Epiphany, we are reminded that Jesus is the light of the world and that his light shines brightest even in our darkest moments.

While reflecting on Epiphany, I was reminded of a moment when the group we traveled with in Turkey was standing on top of an ancient castle in the town of Harran.  Harran is the town, as the book of Genesis tells us, in which Abraham met and married Sarah roughly six thousand years ago.  The group was staring out into Syria whose boarder with Turkey was just several miles south of us.  The scene was quite lovely really.  It was sunset and it was about to rain.  It was as if the clouds could not make up there minds whether to open up and poor out their contents or hold fast and quickly move on.  The fast moving clouds with the sun shinning below them on the horizon looked much like an upside down ocean.  The sun reflected off the clouds from below much like it might reflect off of waves in a sea causing the refraction of many dazzling colors—the hues one expects at sunset pink, yellow, orange, and red.  I remember it was very quiet and the artificial boarder that separates Turkey from Syria was totally indistinguishable—where one nation ended and the other began was anyone’s guess.  Under the sky, there was only a semi-arid landscape—no buildings and no people for as far as the eye could see. 

In that moment, the feeling I experienced was melancholy.  I was neither overwhelmed by the natural rugged beauty of the area nor the 7000 years of history that had taken place in the very spot I was standing.  I was just kind of sad.  My thoughts were dominated by the reality that Syria the country I was looking at with my own eyes is a place where it would not be safe for me to go and that just several hundred miles further east of where I was standing perhaps the distance from Austin to Dallas was Iraq a place in which 25,000 plus people from many nations have died in the last several years.  Here I stood in the cradle of civilization somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in the 21st century and all I could do was ask the question how far have we really come in the past 7000 years?  Nations are still painfully divided and violence is still our primary means for achieving peace.  I hope you see the irony in picture I am trying to paint.

Regardless of my feelings, in that moment, if I am honest with myself, there was a great light shinning.  And it wasn’t the sun or at least the sun that is a star that warms the earth.  Instead, the light shone from the gathering of people with whom I stood on top of that ancient castle that borders Syria.  You see I stood with Christians and Muslims.  I stood with Middle Easterners and Americans.  I stood with young and old.  I stood with people who spoke Turkish, English, Spanish, and Arabic.  I even stood with Longhorns and Aggies.  And I call them all friends.  You see I traveled to that distant place with those particular people to build bonds of mutuality and love.  I was standing at what felt like the edge of the world in response to the promise of Christ in my own life.  The promise that light does shine in the darkness, that life does come out of death, that, as the rainbow people of God, our similarities are greater than our differences, and most of all Christ’s promise that when we reach the end of all that we know and all that we fear and all that we are light and love rule forever. 

The light of Jesus’ glorious resurrection gives us a hope undimmed by the darkness of human sin and death.  The world may, at times, feel like we are stuck on Good Friday the day that pure love was nailed to a cross and the world was temporarily shrouded in darkness.  But guess what—Sunday’s coming.  Our story does not end on a cross but with an empty tomb. 

After ten minutes or so of staring out into the sunset, our band of brothers and sisters with whom we traveled in Turkey climbed down off the top of that ancient castle and continued on our travels because there were many more people to meet and to love—to see Christ’s light in and share Christ’s light with—the dialogue which is the beginning of relationship continues.  You see Christ’s light shines with great brilliance when we willingly share our life and love with the people we meet along the way.

I had a seminary professor who said once that the primary “job”, if you will, of any minister, which includes all baptized people lay or ordained (so you and me), is to help others fall more and more in love with God—to help others fall more and more in love with God.  Perhaps Philip’s invitation, in today’s gospel lesson, to Nathanial, who is my father’s name sake, can be for us an example of how we go about the task of helping other’s fall more and more in love with God in Christ.  It’s quite simple really.  You see after Philip has seen the light of the world, Jesus, for himself and chosen to follow him, he goes to his friend Nathaniel and says, “Come and see…Come and See”  When Nathaniel does go and see Jesus he responds, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!  You are the king of Israel!” 

Jesus may not be with us materially as he was with his followers two thousand years ago, but his light is shinning all around us.  Do you see it?  Do you perceive it?  Do you know it…in your heart?  Perhaps it’s time for us to invite others to come and see Christ’s light as it shines in our lives and in their own and in the world around us.  You see I had a decision to make as I stood on top of that castle in Harran on the Syrian boarder.  I could either see only the darkness that is war and the sad division between nations.  Or…or I could see Christ’s light of hope and new possibility among the people who had come to that place with me to build relationships of mutuality and love.  I hope you will choose to see the light and invite other to see it with you.  My experience is that, like Nathaniel, when people accept our invitation to come and see Christ’s light, they will fall more and more in love with God.

My father is no longer with me in this life and although his loss weighs heavily upon me, in his last days, I saw Christ’s light shine brightly in him even as he stood at the gate of death.  I saw Christ’s light shine bright in a moment of great strength and clarity as he said to me that he was so proud of me and will be with me always just as Jesus promises that he will be with us all always.  I saw Christ’s light shine bright when we heard him have quiet and joy filled conversations with his father and best friend who are both already living in light perpetual.  They were sweetly calling my dad from beyond the grave to come to his heavenly home.  I saw Christ’s light shine bright in my father when he took my hand a kissed it to say I love you because he had no words left in him. 

Come and see…be witnesses and evangelists of the great truth that even at our darkest moment including the end of life itself, Christ’s light shines brightest of all.  Amen.               

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