Epiphany 2013 (Luke 3:15-17, 21-22)

“You are my Son, The Beloved.”

God wants to make Himself known to people.

From time to time I hear people say: where is God? If God is real then why does He not make Himself known? Where is the proof?

Moses and the prophets suggest to us that a better question to ask is: why am I not able to perceive God? What is the problem? Where is the solution?

John the Baptist, the last of the prophets, understood the second set of questions. As with all of the prophets he identified the root of the problem then offered the means to discern the solution.

The problem is the choice our species made to separate from God. In that separation we are lost. We are not only lost we are willfully and spitefully lost.

The record of Moses and the prophets is that most people most of the time don’t want to be found by God. Most people most of the time want God to be defined by our own intellect, emotions and will. When that God fails to give us what we want when we want it we become fearful, angry and spiteful. We reject the God of our own creation and assert that there is no God.

The prophets call this process idolatry. Their solution is the dual call to repentance and preparation. The basis of repentance is humility. It is the humility to stop, look and listen to the world, other people and our life as they are not as we might want and demand they be.

The basis for preparation is patience. The Psalmist sings: For God alone my soul in silence waits. If we fill our lives with distractions we miss the very clear, obvious and real Presence of the Divine in our midst.

The great problem confronting our species is not that God hides from us but that we hide from God. As we cchoose to hide from God in the categories of intellectual pride, emotional demands and the individual will to power we fall into a wide spectrum of sin.

Sin is the distortion of original virtue. The virtues facilitate relationships. Those relationships are with God, other people, our own souls. Sin is the outward and visible evidence of a deeper problem. That deeper problem is separation. Separation breaks and shatters relationships.

The solution to separation is organic. God the Father sends God the Holy Spirit to the Blessed Virgin Mary to facilitate the union of God the Son with humanity. As the problem confronting our species is separation so the solution is reunification.

Lest we miss it, God the Father introduces His Son to us at the incarnation within the context of the human community by naming Him Jesus, savior. He is the savior of humanity at the moment of his conception because salvation is reunification and that reunification is organic.

Lest we miss it, God the Father reintroduces His Son to as at his baptism by revealing his name within the context of the eternal community of the Trinity as “The Beloved.”

Very simply and directly: we do not find God; God finds us. He finds us in the incarnation when The Beloved embraces our humanity and becomes the Savior of humanity.

Salvation is not about Law, religion, or human will. Salvation is the organic union of God and Humanity in Jesus, The Beloved.

Lest we miss it, our Heavenly Father sends the Holy Spirit into the world and into each of our lives to proclaim: God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ. God is love. Love is the eternal relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit- the three persons of the One God who is love. Love is the organic union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ. Love is the invitation into the relationship God initiates in Christ. If you really want to know God then come to the person God has sent to introduce Himself to you. Come to Jesus. Cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus. It is in that relationship that God makes himself known.