2nd After Epiphany 2026

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, feel all hearts are open, all sides are open, and from you no spirits are hidden.

Let us be made perfectly loved here.

And worthy we magnify in your holy name.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, whose Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, is the light of the world.

Grant that your people, illumined by your word and sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns one God now and forever.

Amen.

As you're being seated, our children in fifth grade and below are invited to godly play.

With Miss Laurel there in the back.

The first lesson, a reading from Isaiah.

The people, women, children, and men who walked bleakness have seen a great light.

Those who lived in the land of the shadow of death, on them light has shined.

You have multiplied the nation.

You have magnified its joy.

They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest.

As people, women, children, and men, exult when dividing plunder.

For the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For all the boots of the trampling warriors, and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burnt as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born to us, a son given to us.

Authority rests upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called a wonder, a counselor, a mighty God, perpetual parent, prince of peace.

His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be peace without end for the throne of David and his monarchy.

God will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of God, the commander of heaven's vanguard, will do this.

The word of the Lord.

Your righteousness is like the eternal mountains.

Your judgments are like the mighty deep.

How precious is your faithful love, O God.

And you give them a drink from the river of your delight.

For with you is the fountain of life.

And in order that the Gentiles might glorify God on account of God's mercy, as it is written.

Therefore, I will confess you among the Gentiles and sing praises to your name.

And again it says, Rejoice, O Gentil Gentiles and the God's people.

And again, praise the Most High, O you Gentiles, and let all the people praise God.

And again, Isaiah says, The root of Jesse shall come, and the one who rises to rule the Gentiles, in whom the Gentiles shall hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The word of the Lord.

Glory to thee for Christ.

And when Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been arrested, he went back to Galilee.

So that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

Land of Zebulun, land of Mauphtali, on the sea road across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.

People who sat in bleakness have seen a great light.

For those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.

From that time, Jesus began to preach and say, Repent, for the realm of the heavens has come near.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

And it seems to me like a place to start here is how this story, or what in this story, is not an epiphany for us.

The starting place seems to be what was an epiphany for Jesus, and then I want to talk about maybe what was an epiphany for Matthew, the gospel writer, and then I'll get to us at the end if that's okay.

What would be an epiphany for Jesus?

Well, um, it's just kind of hard to imagine a government arresting somebody because they didn't like what they had to say and eventually killing them.

This may not be within our realm of imagination, but it's the story.

So just clear, John the Baptist is arrested by the Roman government not because he's a religious weirdo, but because they don't like his politics.

Any other version of the story is a lie.

John the Baptist is identified as a political nonconformist and is put in jail, and in about 10 more chapters, he's going to have his head cut off.

Why would this be an epiphany for Jesus?

Well, quite honestly, it is certainly a catastrophe for Jesus.

Most scholars that I've read say Jesus spent some time studying under John the Baptist.

That is to say, he was a disciple of John.

He was not only baptized by him, but he learned from him as he would have learned from a rabbi.

So here is Jesus' teacher.

But even if you don't want to go there, the guy who just baptized him has now been put in prison.

He was doing this thing that was supposed to be right and goodly and restorative, and instead of him getting rewarded, he's been imprisoned by a government.

And not, can we be clear?

Not a religious government, a government.

And what's Jesus' message?

It seems like Jesus might be thinking, I mean, I know I'm doing some projecting, but it seems like in the middle of these politics, he was not appreciating.

He had to decide between whether this was the end of the world or the end of the world as he knew it.

And ultimately, what he decides is that what we're supposed to do is repent.

Oh, that's interesting.

I'm going to get there in a second.

What about the epiphany for Matthew?

Well, let's just be really clear.

Matthew is a Jewish author writing to Judeans who believed that the Messiah was going to be from the physical lineage of David a king who is going to stand about war with the sword.

Is Jesus related biologically to David?

No.

David's not his dad.

He has no DNA related to David.

Sorry.

Joseph was not his dad.

Joseph's the relative of David.

You read the Gospels before?

The lineages from David all the way down to Joseph, and what we know is Joseph is not his dad.

So what do you know?

Matthew has to have his own epiphany.

Jesus is not who we were thinking he was going to be.

He is not the biological relative of David.

He didn't come to make a government to save Jewish people from the rest of the world that's going to hell in a handbasket.

That's an epiphany.

So what does Matthew have to do?

He has to reread the Bible.

And he says, Ah, look, there's these alternate sources, like in Isaiah, that says, Oh, I'm going to say it a different way than Matthew does.

We used to think about the first world and the third world, come to realize we live in one.

Did you know that, by the way?

We live in one world.

We don't live in three.

Haiti is not part of the third world.

We live in the same one.

It's almost like Matthew is saying that because he had to have an epiphany that what he wanted was not exactly what God intended.

So I don't want to shock you, but I do want to say some of us have found ourselves shocked lately politically, and let me just share with you some news that could be the end of your world or the end of the world as you know it.

Rome is not going to save you.

It's very distressing to know that the government is not going to accomplish salvation for us.

But let me say it in a different way.

Neither Donald Trump nor the Democratic Party is going to save you.

But gosh, Mike, wouldn't it be nice if they could?

They can't.

Which is why, by the way, Jesus didn't become an emperor or a king himself.

In fact, he didn't start any real form of government.

Did you notice that?

Jesus didn't write a constitution.

Instead, what he talked about is the realm of heaven being at hand.

Now that's really interesting because that involves well some cognitive discipline.

It's almost as if Jesus is saying that God is not interested in subjugating us to do what is right.

Well, that's true, isn't it?

Otherwise, we would have already been subjugated.

Don't you think?

No, instead, Jesus' epiphany, it seems like, is that in the middle of tragedy, it could be the end of the world, or frankly, it could be the end of the world as we know it.

And the opportunity hinges for him on this word repent.

Now I don't want to bore you, and this is not necessarily new content, but I do want to share with you that I don't think the church gets repentance right when we talk about it.

So I want to tell you that repentance in the Bible comes from four different roots.

The first one is the primary one that human beings do, and that's the word shoove.

That's the word Hebrew, and it just means to turn.

Like I'm not being silly, but to park in our lot, you had to shoove.

Because the only way to get here from a straight shot is to ride through somebody's backyard.

Which you didn't do.

Right?

So shoove just means take a turn.

You don't have to be ashamed, you don't have to beat your breast.

It actually could just be you learned, or hey, there was an obstacle, so I made a shoove.

I repented, I turned the wheel.

The second one is the Greek word metanoia, which means adopting a new way of thinking.

So your noose is your worldview, and if you know the difference between physics and metaphysics, right, then metanoia is the difference between your worldview and one that is above and beyond one that is meta bigger, greater, integrative.

It's not that we just change an opinion when we repent metanoiety, it is that we change our entire mind.

Like all of it has to be rewoven.

You may say, well, the Bible wasn't written in Latin, so why are you going to talk about it?

Well, because in the Gulgate translation, repentance is the word poena, from which we get the word penance, which means when the scales are put off balance by something we do or say, penance, poena means writing the scales.

So it is a redistribution, and of course, we know this when we try to raise our children.

We say it's one thing to say you're sorry, the way you repent is by changing your behavior and making restitution.

Right?

That's repentance.

I see that I've done a thing, and I may not be able to undo or say it, but I sure would like to put Things back in a balance.

The very last word for repentance in the Bible, it's interesting because Hebrew only has 10,000 words, but it has two words for repentance is the word nicham.

And if you've read the Bible before, this is the only kind of repenting that God does in the Bible.

God doesn't shoot.

God nichams.

And you see it in Genesis chapter 6 to tell you the context, God looks at the heart of human beings made in God's image and likeness and sees that their every inclination is towards violence.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

And God nichams from making human beings.

God repents.

Now it doesn't mean, it does not mean I wish I'd never done it.

It does not mean that.

This is really strange what I'm saying.

Repentance is grief.

But again, I want to go back to kids and then I want to talk about microplastics.

So for kids.

Once upon a time, one of my kids did a really heinous thing that they should not have done, and the person decided that they were going to try to get me to pay them hush money.

This is true.

Like tried to blackmail me.

And came to my home and said, Well, I know you're embarrassed by your son.

And of course, my reply, this was not in my head, this was the Holy Spirit, thank God, is I will never be embarrassed by my son.

I'm disappointed in what he did.

But I'm not disappointed in him, and my son is not an embarrassment to me.

Now please don't come on my property again.

So it is true that my son did a heinous thing.

I didn't do it.

I didn't cause it, and I can't control it.

And I sure know the consequences of what he did better than he did.

And I didn't raise him to do that thing, and my heart hurt.

This I think is this fourth kind of repentance.

What about microplastics?

Well, look, the truth is many of us know that there's like a plastic island in the Pacific that is killing fish and wildlife.

Hey, if you didn't, it's huge.

Like it's bigger than the UK times five.

I can reuse my Ziploc bags.

I do.

By the way, if I give you something in a Ziploc bag, it's a new one, but I reuse mine.

Okay?

And look, there's this lie that we were told in the 80s that that stuff's recyclable.

It's a lie.

Some of it is, most of it's not.

Maybe this is the first time you've heard that.

It was an intentional lie.

Good luck buying something that's not made with plastics.

I just good luck.

We as individuals, individuals are powerless to do it.

Now we could say, well, since there's nothing I can do about it, then I will do nothing.

I'd like to suggest to you there is an alternative, and that's the repentance of grief.

I'm enmeshed in a system of microplastics that I can't individually escape, and it doesn't mean I'm not sad about it.

And it doesn't mean it's not a problem that we don't need to build awareness around, but me as an individual can't do it.

I could say the same thing about racism and ageism and heterosexism.

I hope you don't mind me giving those as examples.

I can't change racism by myself.

And to be honest, I sure benefit from it most places I go in this country.

I benefit from it.

Doesn't mean it's not my problem.

It means it's a problem for me to grieve.

I hope this makes sense.

Now, what you didn't hear me say is that Jesus decides to go off on social media on people who aren't doing the right thing.

That's not repentance.

What you didn't hear me say is Jesus decides to blame people for being evil.

I didn't hear that.

What I heard is repent, for the realm of heaven is near.

What you didn't hear me say about repentance is that anger that makes you feel better is somehow godly.

Because it isn't.

No, instead, I just want to suggest to you that we as Christian people might need to repent because we don't know how to repent.

What Jesus suggests is radically different.

It is, frankly, that salvation doesn't lie in the hands of our government or our schemes.

It lies in God's realm, which is at hand, even in the midst of us thinking, well, the world's going to hell in a handbasket.

What does Jesus do?

In that moment of crisis, he turns and says, Actually, God cares right now.

God cares, and I'm going to make turns toward that.

I don't know if you find yourself stressed about international politics, but I'm just going to say for myself, and frankly, well, everybody, every human being I've talked to, that there's kind of like an app running on my phone that's not like showing up but is draining my battery, especially the last three weeks.

Like draining it at a rate that is inconceivable.

I have lots of opinions about what people should do.

And I have a lot of anger, and just keep in mind that anger is really just when things don't come out the way we thought they would.

That's just what anger is, right?

Which I have anger about a lot of things.

Like I broke my shoelace about a week ago.

I was really angry about that because I expected that lace to not break.

Right?

Just keep in mind.

Anger just means things aren't the way I want it.

So look, there's what's natural to me, and boy, when things start to really ratchet up on a global scale, I start to think, well, it's the end of the world.

But Jesus suggests, why don't we just end the world as we know it?

So why don't we just make some turns?

Now, what are some turns?

Look, maybe we get this, and maybe I should just sort of say to you, I was talking to somebody this week who said, you know, um, I wasn't a kid in the 60s or 70s.

Some of you were.

I think those were pretty turbulent times socially.

Am I right?

I mean, I wasn't around.

I'm just gonna say, I wasn't around.

And, you know, in the 60s, people like my mom who survived the 60s, they said, well, you know, it just felt like the world was ending.

And then there was this reasoning that, like, hey, maybe this is the death throes of all we've held precious.

But then the counterpoint was like, oh, but maybe these are just the birth pangs.

Maybe this is the discomfort of something that's really great being born.

And hey, what do you know that seems to happen like every couple of months?

And so the question is like, when are the definitive birth pangs gonna happen?

And when are the definitive death throes of all those isms that separate us from the love of God?

Like, when is that definitely gonna happen?

And I don't know the answer to that.

What I know that's contingent upon me is frankly whether or not I repent.

So, again, let's talk about some repentance in the current political world.

What can I turn to?

Well, I'm not a therapist, I'm not, but I just want to suggest to you that there is this very helpful therapeutic device called cognitive behavioral therapy.

Now, I'm not gonna get this completely right, and you might want to do this with a practitioner, but I will say in the last couple of weeks, if you found yourselves with thoughts about the world is ending, uh, cognitive behavioral therapy, like the scriptures, which say, take every thought captive.

I don't know if you're if you're if you're familiar with this context, take every thought captive, ask us to take every thought captive and ask the following questions.

Is that true?

Is it true?

Number two, is there evidence definitively that it's true?

Well, no, but it feels like it's true.

I mean, how do you hear that we live a lot on it feels like, which by the way doesn't feel like anything?

Those are thoughts that we're having.

Feelings exist in our bodies, thoughts exist in our heads.

So, in general, when we say something feels true, it's because we think it is.

Which, by the way, how do we do that?

We take that thought captive and we say, is it true?

Can I prove it?

What happens in my body in my life when I believe it's true?

When you believe the world is ending, usually what happens is despair.

Am I wrong about this?

Shame and blame?

Are you at your best morally when you're in a place of despair?

Me not.

Me not.

Usually with me in despair, me at my worst.

That is to say, I've become part of what I perceived to be a problem in the first place.

I'm not talking about the power of positive thinking.

I'm just talking about reality.

What would it be like if I let that thought go?

That's the fourth question.

Cognitive behavioral therapy.

See a real practitioner for help, but you can do that now with thoughts like, I'm ugly.

Anybody ever had that thought?

That's a really long sermon.

I'm having that thought right now.

So then we have this invitation when we have these thoughts to say, is there evidence?

Can I prove it?

What would it be like if I let that go?

What would it be like if I let that go?

That's the turn actually we can make.

Here's another turn we can make.

I don't know how to solve problems in UK, Ukraine.

I've said this before.

I can donate blood.

Mike, that won't solve the problem in Ukraine.

But it sure can help.

Sure can help.

So the question is, I can turn from a problem I can't solve to something I am able to do.

Repent.

Turn.

Because the realm of heaven is at hand.

What about metanoia?

What about a way of looking at the world that is different from the way I'm looking at the world?

Well, I'm pretty sure that's what discipleship asks us to do.

Just give you an example.

I know it looks weird.

At the end of the service, you're going to see me do this thing.

I am not taking about.

Reminder, my mind got changed about six months ago when I read that another priest at the end of the service used to genuflect toward either the cross or to the reserve sacrament, the body of Christ in the ombre.

But here I see the body of Christ.

And so I genuflect to the body of Christ in front of me.

That is a way of thinking that is different from what I used to have and it informs how I do.

And boy, if you could see the body of Christ in the neighbor that's driving you nuts and genuflect to them, I guarantee you would treat them differently.

I often refuse to bow to the body of Christ in my enemy because I just don't want to.

And what does Jesus say?

Metanoia, have a different mind because the realm of heaven is at hand if you will hold it.

If you will hold it.

One more example, because tomorrow, of course, is not his saints' day, but it is his birthday, and it bears hearing that when Martin Luther King Jr.

told people to sit at the counter in Woolworths, even knowing that we're going to get beaten and mocked and harassed.

Do we know this?

Is this okay to say?

He said, if you do it as a stratagem, I don't want you to do it.

Yes, it will prevail, it will work, and I don't want you to do it if you're just doing it to win.

If you're gonna sit in that chair and get beat up by the cops, you better love them.

You talk about a need for repentance.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

I could do it to win.

I don't know if I could do it out of love for the person hitting me.

That's why we have prophets.

Right?

They tell us things we don't want to hear.

It's not about winning, it's about loving.

Hey, what about Poena?

What's penance look like?

Well, I don't know on a global scale, but I sure know what penance looks like here.

I can tell you I go to 13 different residential uh homes here to visit parishioners and family members.

And I can tell you what memory care that costs$8,500 a month looks like.

It looks like sitting in front of a TV most of the day.

Then I can tell you what we do for five hours a week, which is actually love people and talk to them and play with them.

Is it going to fix the problem of dementia in the world?

No, but for five hours it does.

For 15 people, it does.

Can we adjust the whole scale?

I don't know, but we push a little bit.

Sounds like penance to me.

Not because we made the problem, but because there is one.

Penance.

For the realm of heaven is at hand if you'd hold it.

And then what about grief?

And listen, I don't know if this holds traction for women, but I'm just going to say in my home, I sure was taught that men aren't supposed to be sad, and we're sure not supposed to mourn.

We're supposed to take action and fix stuff.

And I'm not necessarily going to say that's toxic masculinity, but I'll tell you one thing I'm not good at is just grieving.

I'm really good at coming up with solutions on how to fix your problems.

I'll even help sometimes.

Which is why I tell you, I'm not sure I know how to repent, because true repentance probably starts in the heart, where God's repentance starts with grief.

Not because I'm disappointed in you, but because I just know we're in this together.

We saw a video this morning, and you know there's this teaching in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

At the end of creation, God looks at everything God has made, and God says in Hebrew, it is Tov Ma'od, which we say, it is very good.

And very few of us realize linguistically that the Hebrew language is not saying, well, Jem is good, and Sylvia is good, and Mike is good.

No, Tov Ma'od means everything is inherently good in relationship.

We'd like to think that we are rocks and islands unto ourselves, and we are not.

We are not.

I don't care whether you think they deserved it.

Who deserves being killed?

If you figure that out, I need you to mentor me.

Because I really can't figure out for what you deserve to be killed.

On the street, in a prison, or in a court.

If we don't start with grief, it's really easy for humans to be cheap meat that is expendable.

Which is probably why Jesus never picks up the sword himself.

Why?

Because he's chosen to the hunt.

For the realm of heaven is at hand.

He'd like to take it.

And I don't have 12 easy steps for how are we going to do this?

I have one easy step.

Do some of it.

Just do some of it.

I'm grateful for parishioners who have made this their mantra.

Mike, I'll never come to you with a problem in a church unless I have a solution that I'm willing to put some skin on.

There are people here that are like that.

That sounds like turning to me.

That sounds like penance to me.

I didn't cause that problem, but I see it and I'll help push.

Now the truth is, hey, there's like 300 people going to watch this this week.

Did you know that?

There's 300 people that watch this thing, which is mind-boggling to me.

And then there's like another 200 that come here.

There's 500 of us, and hey, we're probably not going to fundamentally change the structures of the world, but we sure can change where we live.

We sure can change where we live.

Maybe the end of the world could just be the end of the world as we know it.

Maybe instead of us being broken into bits, the question is, will we choose and actually turn to and put energy into breaking open as God?