3/26/2025

Imagine this: the year is 60 AD, and the Emperor is coming to your town. What would you do? You would spruce everything up. You would clean the streets. You would give everything a fresh coat of paint. You would prepare the people to know how to properly greet the emperor. You would make sure your town was a well-ordered slice of “Rome away from Rome” that would please the Emperor. 

The day would finally come and the people, dressed in their finest, would rush out to meet the Emperor and escort him into their town. The Greeks called this an epiphania, and if that looks like the word “epiphany” to you, you’d be right! It’s a Greek word that means “appearance” or “manifestation.” 

In II Timothy 4:1, the return of Jesus is referred to as an “epiphany.” Paul writes, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing [epiphania] and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you . . .” and then Paul goes on to charge his young follower to be faithful to his calling in light of Jesus’ return. 

What are we doing to get ready for Jesus’ epiphania? 

The usual answer is something like “get our hearts, and the hearts of as many others as we can, ready for his return.” And that is right . . . as far as it goes.

We’ve been talking a lot recently about our calling as God’s people to be the “light of the world,” as Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 5, “You are the light of the world . . . No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  

This past Sunday, I quoted Paul in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his poiema, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Poiema is the Greek word that comes to us as “poem,” and it means something like craftsmanship or creation or handiwork, anything that is artfully created. 

If anyone struggles with their calling in life, that’s it. There it is. 

No matter our vocation in life, whether teacher or engineer or barber or student or retiree, we can fulfil our ultimate calling: we were created in Christ Jesus for good works.  This is why God created us and this is why God saves us.

Which brings us back to the issue of what we are doing to prepare for his return. Some get all bent out of shape over the details of Christ’s return or in speculation about when it will occur, and forget the most important issue: what is Jesus expecting to find when he gets here? 

We look forward to the epiphania of the Lord, but we can’t just look at the chaos around us and wish he’d hurry up and get here! No, God created us to be part of the solution.

The Lord is recreating his lost world, and he’s invited us to be part of the rebuilding project! Our world is a mess . . . but not nearly the mess it would have been had Christ not come and sent his church out to be salt and light. 

Yes, our hearts need to be right before the Lord at his epiphania, but that’s just the start of it. When Jesus comes again, we want to be able to welcome him into a world where there’s evidence that we’ve been salt and light. 

I’ve been preaching on the Essentials of our Christian faith — those spiritual disciplines that can help us conform to the image of Christ. Our challenge for this week is to perform one act of kindness, of hesed, of agape, each day. It could be a larger commitment, like volunteering at LCCI or as a tutor at “Learn to Read,” or it could be a host of simple things: leave a larger tip, send a text to someone you miss, write a letter to someone who inspired you years ago.

You might ask, “What difference can I make in the world?” As one person . . . not much. BUT! In his book, The Walk, Adam Hamilton writes that the average congregation in the US has 50 people on any given Sunday. If each of those 50 people did 5 acts of kindness a week, that’s 250 acts of kindness, and 250 x 52 weeks =13,000 acts of kindness a year!  If we all do it, all commit to 1 act of kindness each day — imagine the difference it will make in your life; imagine the difference it will make in your little world, your community, if you will commit to serving God by serving others. 

The song Kim and I sang on Sunday is a beautiful prayer for the people of God: “My life, O Lord, I give to Thee, my talents, time and all. I’ll serve thee, Lord, and faithful be, I’ll hear thy faintest call.” 

That’s it. There it is.

Blessings,
Pastor Terry