Acts 10:34-38

Epiphany celebrates the Revelation of God to the Gentiles. It starts with the visit of the magi from the East – from Iran and Iraq. Epiphany means manifestation – the manifestation of God, the God who is Invisible, who is Other than creation, Other than us, becoming visible by becoming human, becoming us. Today the Gospel reading focuses on Jesus’ baptism, the beginning of his public ministry. But the Acts passage helps us to see the full significance of this time of God’s manifestation to us in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary. We find here the good news that God has revealed God’s Own Self in Jesus. When we hear this, we find that the confession of this revelation of God in Jesus Christ sets us off from those around us, forces that have deeply formed us by living within land called the United States today, but more deeply, a land shaped by a European culture that has become profoundly secular.

We have to come to terms that we live in a world that has denied even the possibility of Revelation, a denial that has even subtly shaped our experience within the church.
We live in a society that tells us that history encompasses all life. There is no depth dimension; all we can do is endlessly remake the new and improved. You don’t believe me? How many “reality TV” shows can there be? Can anything ever be really new? “Dancing with Stars?” “Skating with the Stars” – hey, that’s innovative!?! And what in the world is meant by “reality” in these series? We’re taught that change is endless and meaningless because that is all that history is. We therefore have to try to make our own individuality, make our own experience. We get quickly pulled into a common interest demographic group recorded by the cookies on our internet, the bar codes when we purchase something, our conversations recorded by the NSA. There is no escape, we’re told. There is nothing Other. There is no Transcendence; there is no Mystery; there is no God that exists outside the history that we find ourselves trapped within. There is just a brutal struggle within history for us to assert our own will, to project our values upon others in history, to create and prove our own significance.
Even when we talk of God in the church, we talk of God only within what is already known, what is supposedly already given. In response to radical closure of the world, we open up a little place within our selves, psychological impulses from within, maybe a spot buried deep in the brain, and we can call that God. God does not really reveal God’s own self as Other to us. No, we have to discover god, and therefore god becomes the same as ourselves. We don’t need revelation, a gift that stands outside ourselves which calls us to God. We instead speak of spirituality, self-discovery, community, the assurance of our own subjective meaning as we struggle through the blandness that is the repetition of sameness that we experience. Nothing lies outside the system. God chased from the world finds residence in deepest self.
Revelation is not allowed; we live in a world that denies revelation by definition. Our talk of God has succumbed to the loss – often without even realizing it and we end up with an idol, a big projection of our own selves, our own culture.

We’re stuck. We have this desire for God that God has given us as a gift. We are from God; we are for God. It is God in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Yet because of the secularism in which we’ve been immersed, our desire for God gets twisted into an idol, especially the idol of our own will, or we struggle to keep out of the swirling nothingness that seeks to suck us into its whirlpool. The European culture in which we’ve been formed seals us off from even the possibility of God, the One who is Absolutely Other. Why try to fill the void by a quest for more and more experience. We demand affirmation of our significance from others because we can’t find our meaning, our life, our significance in God. Giving this up, we slip into a banal materialism, or its mirror reflection, a superficial Oprah spirituality. I remember eves dropping in line at Comic Con, listening to the conversations around me as we waited to get previews of this fall and winters movies. Two young men, in their mid-twenties, talked about life. “Man, you have a good life. You get to do what you want. You have your apartment, a decent job. Look at all your video system and movies that you have and watch.” Is this a good life, sealed from the Mystery that is God, the endless repetition of the new and improved? In light of our situation, we need the good news of today. We don’t have to go on a quest to find God in the given, for God has revealed God’s Very Life as a Gift. Revelation has happened! This is what we find when we turn to Acts 10.

Peter proclaims to Cornelius: God sent a message to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ-- he is Lord of all!
Peter begins his message to Cornelius with God. God is not the end of his argument, but the presupposition of all that follows. The God mentioned by Peter is not an idea, or an abstraction, or a power within history, but One who Communicates, One who Reveals God’s Own Self as Other than History – the Beginning and End of history. The Mystery, Transcendence, that which is Wholly Other has smashed into the world, to Israel, to the Jews in the person of Jesus Christ – He is Lord of All. The Revelation of God begins in Israel and reaches its culmination, its completion, its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the meaning of all things. We see in Jesus that what is truly Good, True, and Beautiful are really One and the Same in God, and therefore, radically Other than what we’ve been socialized into thinking. God has ripped asunder the continuity of history, the closed horizons of what lies at hand, and revealed behind all things is the Peace, the Love, the Gift that is God. Peter does not live within a closed universe. The Mystery transcends what we see and experience in the history around us. God sends! God reveals!
In Jesus, we see that revelation has become public, the only way true revelation can be. What was secret, hidden except to Mary and the Shepherds and the Magi in the baby of Bethlehem has now become visible, evident in Israel in the man Jesus. The Love that is God became flesh in this baby, and becomes known publicly amidst Israel in the livfe and ministry of Jesus. In Jesus we find that history finds its meaning in God, not vice versa. God’s revelation is no private, subjective revelation within each individual soul, no secret insight for those who are wise, who have leisure to meditate, to project their will upon others and name themselves god. God preached peace by Jesus Christ – He is Lord of All.
The yearning of our hearts is found in Jesus. Jesus is the Revelation of God – God has found us by becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Hear the good news: God preached peace by Jesus. The restless desire in the deepest parts of our lives for that which is Other, for Mystery, for God finds its completion, its end in a way that the our desire could not predict, could not shape, could not expect. The revelation comes as a gift, not as what is given. Jesus is God preaching peace, the revelation of God made public. God preaches peace in Jesus. Having found rest for our restless hearts in God’s gift of God’s Self in Jesus by the Holy Spirit, we live the Peace that is God through non-retaliation in our present lives, not returning evil for evil, nor participating in mortal violence amidst God’s creation. In Jesus, we see the revelation of God – God preached peace by Jesus Christ.
He is Lord of all! God has revealed that which is beyond the sameness of the new and improved to us – God sent a message in Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see the public, objective, visible revelation of God!

Well, what now? Should we nod our heads and turn the channel to the newest reality TV show? NFL playoffs? No! To participate in this Peace, to participate in God’s Revelation in Jesus requires faith – a deep, undivided allegiance, loyalty, devotion, even adoration of this revelation – in God through Jesus.
It is one thing to say that God has revealed God’s own Self in Jesus, to think this thought; it is another thing to believe it. It is different to rationally assent to a proposition about Jesus, and another to have the Mystery that is God’s revelation in Jesus sink into the depths of our being. It is different to call some inner experience or inner light Jesus than to have a living faith in Jesus as the Revelation of God. Faith is more than assent; faith is more than self-discovery. Faith requires an object, requires something outside its own self. Faith requires the Other, Revelation itself, if it is genuinely faith. You can’t just say, “I have faith” – that’s meaningless. Faith must have an object, something outside one’s own self to attach to, to participate with. Faith is not opposite rationality – if you have faith that Harry Potter will deliver us from the dangers of Lord Voldemort, well, we probably need to have a little talk about the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Faith is the beginning of rationality, of thought, of desire that ends in love that is true knowledge. Faith is not wholly other than thought, than rationality.
We have to understand that faith in God can only be understood as loyalty, allegiance, devotion to, even adoration of Jesus. Faith in God is attachment to Jesus for Jesus is the revelation of God. Faith is the confession that Jesus is Lord of all. Faith is ordering our whole life around the Lord of All, the revelation of God, Jesus, for in Jesus we find our beginning and end, the beginning and end of all things.
God’s revelation in Jesus is real no matter what. Jesus doesn’t become revelation only when you believe. If it so, then revelation in not found in Jesus, but in you. Revelation would not be a gift, but what is already given if revelation is not outside of you. That’s the reason faith can only be fulfilled by an object in creation – Jesus. By allegiance to Jesus, since Jesus is the revelation of God, you are also showing your loyalty to true and living God, not an idol. You can only participate in this revelation through faith in the very particular body of Jesus, the one who roamed Israel, in whom God preached peace. You can only discover revelation in Jesus through faith, when Peace begins to pull you into the life of God. God, not an idol, can only become real for you through this personal allegiance, attachment, desire for the body, the blood of Jesus, revealed as God within creation. Faith allows one to see Jesus who he really is – the revelation of God, and thus participate in the peace that God preached in Jesus.
Faith in Jesus allows the Mystery that is Revelation , the Epiphany of peace that is God to become open to us.

God the Father sent Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit preaching peace. This is the revelation of God, the Transcendent revealing God’s Otherness within the realm of history. It is also what takes place at this Table. We pray to the Father to send the Spirit upon these elements so that Christ might be really present in these common elements, the bread and the wine. God reveals God’s self in the peace of this Table, the Peace that is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is to participate in this feast by faith with Thanksgiving. In loyalty to Jesus, made present by the calling upon the Spirit to descend upon these elements and upon us, we come in allegiance and even adoration, to participate in the peace that is God. Come, friends. Come in faith. Come to participate in the very revelation of God in Christ’s real presence at this Table.