Which End is Up?
Celebrating Epiphany
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12
Pastor Paul Swartz - January 9 & 10, 2010

I suppose with this past week’s brutalizing Artic air that has gripped the nation and the snow that has been dumped on so many regions of the country, many are ready to cancel the rest of winter. [Think you have seen snow? How about these pictures?] Of course, there are others who rejoice since enough snow has been dumped on the mountains that ski resorts are open full tilt for business. Boarders and skiers crowd the roads and then crowd the downhill runs.

It is in trying to escape those crowds that bolder riders get into trouble. “Back country” boarding and skiing are becoming more popular every year. But it is these off-the-beaten-track excursions where the most serious danger of avalanches looms. When tons of snow start to slide nothing can stop its breakneck blast down a mountainside. You cannot outrun an avalanche.

For those lucky few who have survived being buried in a snowy tomb, the biggest problem every survivor recounts is not knowing which way to dig out. After tumbling end-over-end, round-and-round, you literally cannot tell “WHICH END IS UP?”

To start frantically digging “down” could be a disaster, worsening an already dire situation. One survivor remembers moving his head back and forth until he had hollowed out a breathing space. Rather than waste precious breath melting some snow, he spit in the hole, knowing that saliva should head downhill, which gave him an idea of which way is up. What his own senses could not tell him the force of gravity could. Even under several feet of snow, water does NOT drip up. Re-oriented to which way was up, the buried boarder was able to dig himself out. It seems a strange survival skill, but if you’re buried in an avalanche, the first thing you need to do is spit so you can determine “WHICH END IS UP.”

This same not knowing “WHICH END IS UP” is what killed John F. Kennedy, Jr. more than 10 years ago (1999). In the midst of fog and haze, you lose sight of the horizon. And when that happens the distinction between sky and sea became a murky blur. Convinced he was heading into the clouds, John plunged his plane into the ocean instead.

You can get killed if you don’t know “WHICH END IS UP.”

How easy it can be for us to lose our way, burn out our bearings, and become hopelessly, even fatally, disoriented. Sometimes it seems as though the whole world is determined to knock us out of whack. We are only one week into 2010 and already events seem to be conspiring to spread spiraling, spinning dizziness.

Terrorists who feed on chaos and carnage succeeded in creating chaos at our airports. Once again our perspective of travel has escalated from “I hope I don’t loose my luggage”, to “I hope I don’t lose my life!” One of the major issues is the role of “profiling.” How do we know if we are talking to a friend or foe? In the murky world of Middle Eastern politics, how can we know “WHICH END IS UP?”

A St. Louis manufacturing company becomes the site of a disgruntled employee shooting, killing and wounding other employees. Headlines tell us of a family murdered in their home by one of their own. How do we live with the possibility of murderers in our midst? If such evil can be nurtured around our own dinner tables, within our own communities, and throughout the world, how can we know “WHICH END IS UP?”

Christmastide, the twelve days of Christmas leading up to Epiphany, celebrates three different divine revelations. You might call them God-bearing, gift-bearing, grace-bearing. Get a fix on those three revelations of God-bearing, gift-bearing and grace-bearing, and you will know “WHICH END IS UP?”

And when we know “WHICH END IS UP” we can find our way out of every crisis and every challenge.

First, with Jesus’ birth the world itself becomes “God-bearing.” Mary might have given birth to the baby, but with the arrival of the Christ-Child the whole Earth has an “Emmanuel” experience, and knows “God-with-us” and “God-among-us” as never before. This God-bearing experience changed reality. The heavens sang! The earth grew silent! The stars moved! The shepherds listened! The wise-men worshiped! And humanity learned “WHICH END IS UP.”

Second, in response to the God-bearing the Magi came Gift-bearing. Today we celebrate Epiphany Day, the precise moment the Wise Men finally found their destination and knelt before the Child, offering their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But how puny were these gifts when compared to the Gift of the Christ-Child Himself? The greatest gift given at Christmas is the Gift OF Christmas. In kneeling and offering their gifts, the Magi received a gift: They are redirected! And the Gift of Christmas—the One who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”—teaches us all “WHICH END IS UP?”

Third, after Epiphany, the Magi left. Being re-directed, they went home a different way. But it was not the end of the story, only the beginning. The coming of the Christ introduces the age of Grace-bearing. Not just any grace, but God’s grace, most fully realized as Christ among us, who is manifest to all who experience and enter into relationship with the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. To follow and to walk the way of Jesus is to kneel before the Holy, not with the words, “give me,” but with the humble prayer that begins “make me” – make me a servant. At that moment Christ sets us on re-directed paths, paths we would have chosen in the first place, had we known. The gift of Grace-bearing teaches us all “WHICH END IS UP.”

The gift-bearing, grace-bearing, God-bearing Baby is how we learn “WHICH END IS UP?”

The Apostle Paul had no doubt “WHICH END IS UP?” He accepted his God-bearing, gift-bearing, grace-bearing commission to reveal the “mystery” of God’s love for the world. This “mystery” is the “divine conspiracy,” as Dallas Willard calls it, to re-create the world, one person at a time. The covenant, that special promissory relationship between God and the Jews, is now opened up to everyone. Jew and Gentile, all who trust in Christ, are transformed into something new and can enter into a God-bearing, Gift-bearing, and Grace-bearing life. We can become the Body of Christ, the Christ-body community, a new creation on a new earth. Jesus doesn’t lead you so much to a place beyond the clouds as to a place beyond your fears, your pains, your griefs, and your shame.

It was Bible Sunday. Bible’s were being passed out to the kids, and one long-standing member went up to a little girl and said, “My goodness, what is that you have in your hand?” She said proudly, “A Bible.”
He said, “Can I look at it?”
“Okay, but don’t open it.”
“Why can’t I open it,” he asked.
“Because if you open it you’ll let God out.”

I challenge you in 2010 to open your Bibles, open your hearts and minds and bodies, to let God out and help people know “WHICH END IS UP?”

I guarantee you that in 2010 you will sometimes feel buried in avalanches of anger, pain, injustice, grief and shame. You will wonder “WHICH END IS UP?”

I guarantee you that in 2010 the fog of fear, loss, depression, despair will descend on you, and you will question “WHICH END IS UP?”

That’s when the gravity of a Grace-bearing, Gift-bearing, God-bearing Epiphany will give you the levity you need to be “more than conquerors,” and to turn the world upside down. Or more accurately, turn the world… …right-side up.

Back in 1970 Bill Libby wrote a biography of Minnesota Vikings quarter-back Fran Tarkenton, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He titled the book Fran Tarkenton: The Scrambler. A year later Tarkenton himself wrote an autobiography of his life called Broken Patterns (1971).

What made Tarkenton such a famous and formidable quarterback was that he knew what to do when the best-planned offensive plays broke down. The “plays” could “break” either because someone missed an assignment, made a mistake, or a defensive player broke through the offensive line.

Rather than panic, Tarkenton looked at the entire field for new ways to move forward. And while he was improvising new strategies he scrambled from sideline to sideline, turning broken patterns into big plays that won games for the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants.

God can turn the broken patterns of our lives into huge gains and forward progress, if we will only remember “WHICH END IS UP.” God redeems the broken patterns of our lives and makes us strongest precisely where we broke down the most and worst.

It is a challenge, after having knelt at the manger to make the decision to follow the re-directing voice to live out our faith in the shove and pull of ordinary parish life, in the give and take of the struggle to be the people we are to be in the midst of all the issues, lively and grave, facing our church, our world during this new decade and the 50th year of our journey of faith as a congregation. There’s only one way to let God out of the Bible, and that is for you and me, having knelt at the manger—having “Beheld His Glory”—allow ourselves in full devotion to be re-directed in our daily lives by being the Heart, Hands, and Voice of Christ.

The Magi made that very decision of devotion. They fell on their knees, offered their gifts—the symbols of their lives—in worship before the Christ. They placed themselves at God’s pleasure, allowing themselves to be re-directed now that they knew WHICH END IS UP! Rather than using God to fulfill our ambitions, devotion to Christ consists of making ourselves available to God to fulfill His ambitions through us. AMEN!