Ken Edwards, Senior Pastor

The problem with Jesus is that he does not live up to our expectations. Jesus lives up to God’s expectations. And yet it is Jesus who defines our faith. There are lots of voices out there trying to tell us what defines our faith, and many of them seem completely divorced from the life and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. Maybe we aren’t comfortable with the Jesus who fails to live up to our expectations either.
    
Jesus is truthful and challenges our tendencies toward a narrow worldview and we want him to care about me and mine and no one else. Jesus is telling stories about people outside our circle of race and class and religion, and we want him to talk more about us. Jesus is telling us to refrain from retaliation, and we feel stung by his words because we have cheered the battle “to fight evil” and have called for revenge. Jesus is blessing peacemakers and we have blessed those who have been too quick to make war and called peacemakers “unpatriotic.” Jesus is telling us to love our enemies, and we’re still trying to learn to love the people we hang out with. Jesus is telling us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, and we would rather talk about charity that begins at home. Jesus is defining his identity and his mission to the captives, the blind, the oppressed, and we suspect that he is telling us that this is to be the church’s identity and mission. We would argue for a feel-good mission and one that is more comfortable and more marketable. Jesus is telling us that we are not to get attention for the spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting, and we were thinking of making these into a media event. Jesus is telling us to forgive those who have wronged us, and we like to hold on to our grudges and cling to the past. Jesus is reaching out to the least, the last; and we are drawn to people of power and prestige.
    
We are in the season of Epiphany, which has these bookend stories of the baptism of Jesus and the story of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. These stories are similar because in the stories a voice is heard from God, “This is my Son, listen to him.” Epiphany invites us to listen to Jesus! Jesus defines our faith, our identity, and our mission.
    
This Epiphany we are invited to “listen to him.” Listen to Jesus who has welcomed all of us here this morning. Sometimes he will say things that will make us want to bolt for the door or grab a bottle of white out. But if we listen, he will call us to new life, to a new way of living in the world, and his words will cause us to live in a way that has the possibility of changing the world around us.