What If The Star Is A Question About How We Embody Love?

A star led the Magi to a house; a deeper light leads us to a question: how does faith take a body? We explore Epiphany through the four Gospels and land with John’s bold, beautiful claim that the Word became flesh and lived among us. Instead of lingering at the manger, we trace why Mark starts at baptism, how Luke centers the overlooked with shepherds, and what Matthew signals through seekers from afar. Then we sit with John’s prologue—part poetry, part proclamation—and consider why incarnation is less a scene to admire and more a reality to inhabit.

From there, we turn the lens on our lives. If love is real, it becomes visible. If belief matters, it makes choices. Together we ask practical questions for the new year: Will our growth look like deeper worship and study, a renewed missional heart for neighbors in need, or a braver evangelical posture that invites the unsure and the unseen? We talk about continuity and courage in a long-standing church—how to honor what lasts while welcoming what’s next. The goal isn’t a perfect plan; it’s a faithful presence that moves, serves, invites, and hopes.

This conversation is warm, grounded, and honest—rich with scripture, thoughtful about context, and aimed at action. Whether you’re drawn to the shepherds’ humility, the Magi’s curiosity, or John’s cosmic scope, you’ll find a path to embody grace and truth where you are. Listen, reflect, and then take one concrete step toward a love that can be touched. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find their way to this community.

Transcript

Epiphany And The Magi

Pastor Darren 0:00

So Epiphany Sunday, we're talking about today, part of the liturgical calendar, the day we are acknowledging, maybe celebrating, uh, when uh uh the wise men, the magi, finally get find their way all the way to Jesus, supposedly taking uh twelve days, which is why we celebrate on January the 6th, and that uh Epiphany is supposed to be that uh uh embodying uh or an awareness that comes upon people. In this case, it's with the magi, this awareness that comes upon them uh and their journey guided by a star, right? It's all part of the story that we celebrate at Christmas time. Um so where I ended up starting for today in my own mind was looking at how different parts of the story that we know, the Christmas story that we understand, come from different gospels. No one gospel has all of that story. Right? Our the Gospel of Mark, the earliest one written, uh, actually didn't really talk about the birth at all. Might be surprising to some. Uh for Mark, it seems that the uh the beginning of his real life was with the ministry. And when it starts with his baptism as he gets to doing the work that God sent him down to do. With Luke, you get the shepherds.

unknown 1:33

Right?

Why John Writes Differently

Beat Poetry And The Prologue

The Word Becomes Flesh

From Spirit To Action

A New Year Of Embodied Faith

Our Church’s Next New Thing

Pastor Darren 1:33

And so we extrapolate that uh what was important to Luke was that everybody was included, which is why he made sure the shepherds get included, who would be the kind of the lowest of the low on the economic scale, and so implying that this is a lot of why Jesus came, was to help us to understand that everybody is going to be engaged by God. Everybody is included in the body of Christ. Then with Matthew, this is where we get our magi, our wise men. Clearly to Matthew, what was important about the story in his version was that this was an event, and people were traveling from far away to come and to witness to this thing. Maybe even talking a little bit about how it reaches even beyond uh the Jewish community that it it all happens within. So then we land on John, the Gospel of John. Anybody have that as their favorite gospel? Oh, yeah, a couple, a couple people like John. The more spiritual of the Gospels generally, the birth narrative is fair to say, unique, because you just heard it. That is the birth narrative in the Gospel of John. So we try to pick that apart a little bit as we're trying to understand a little bit of why this gets picked uh as part of the lectionary calendar, why we read it today, partly because of Epiphany. But what is it about this particular scripture coming from the Gospel of John that doesn't even really have a birth narrative in the sense of Jesus, the baby, the shepherd's coming. It's something different, isn't it? So things we know about John. The earthly beginnings, you know, the way he describes his story, the birth narrative, kind of like Mark. What's really important isn't really the baby sitting in the manger. What's really important is the ministry, which starts with the baptism. Which is why you heard a lot about that baptism right there. He was uh, it was probably uh written after the others, the Gospel of John. We can tell by some of the things that are hinted at historically that date it a little bit later. But what that says is that John had already likely read the others, right? And so what is important for us to notice is what does he not include in that, and what does he include in that? He doesn't include key things like we think are key things, like the shepherd and the magi and all that stuff, right? He doesn't include those, even though we're probably sure he did know about those, knew those other stories that Matthew and Luke had written. Reflexively, he must have also felt like something was missing. Otherwise, why write a gospel? There's already three written, and actually probably many more. Why does he feel like he needs to tell his version of what happened? Clearly, he had something to say, an understanding of what was uh important about that story, right? And you might say the star that John would follow, like the wise men, would convey to us what is important to him. The star that he follows is different than the one that Matthew and Luke and Mark are following. So let's take a look at this star. His reason for writing this gospel. What wisdom was he trying to light up and shine onto this world? Right? To me, it sounds just a little bit like beat poetry. Do you remember the beat poets? Right? It's getting back there pretty far. Some of you may not remember, but it's this movement that came actually out of World War II and people feeling really concerned about the future of the world. And so this group of people would gather in these dark coffee houses and they would all wear berets to be different. And they had Van Dyke's maybe a little bit like this, or goatees, what we call them today, right? And and and they would sit and they would do these poems that they would do, spoken poems, right? And somebody was in the background with a bass going dun dun dun dun dun dun dung dun dung, right? I mean I'm not that old. Some y'all were the ones around for all of this. I just see movies. Right? Dun dun dun dun. Listen to this now. Boom, boom, boom. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him, not one thing came into being. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? Are you hearing it? Are you feeling it? A little little little beep pole. And then remember how they would applaud. I'm getting none? I mean, I threw it out there, right? I, you know, I'm I made myself vulnerable. I get none. Anyway. But then get down to verse 14 is where I think the real, oh, I was gonna say the meat of things. Uh, but there's an irony there. And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory. The glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. Probably the main point of what John was trying to get to. This is the birth of Jesus for John. This is what was most important to this gospel writer, the spirit becoming flesh, becoming present. Right? For him, it's this, I'm going to use the word cosmological event. You know, it's not this earthly event, it's something broader than that, with this idea that Jesus was the word, right? And you think about a word, a spoken thing that's out into the air or maybe written down, but that word already existed before the world even existed. This idea that Jesus has always existed, but finally took earthly form here in this one moment. This one moment, the word, the spirit, becomes flesh. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the uh the book of James, but you remember that the famous verse, faith without works is dead. It was that idea that faith, if there were no actions that backed it up, was kind of not alive, you know, maybe even dead. I think John is in that same sphere. He's trying to say there was this spirit thing, and then it took flesh. It became real, at least real in the way that we earthlings could understand real. Right? So it's a it's an interesting concept and an important piece for John, so important that it becomes part of why he even writes a gospel. This piece that Matthew, Mark, Luke, others just didn't quite understand or at least convey that this is something bigger than just what we see in here. It's this massive spiritual reality that took uh body. That took body on this earth. And seeing the wisdom of picking this scripture in the lectionary, which I'll remind people that that's the calendar of scripture readings that we would do over three years. So it was picked by a body with the idea that this was a perfect scripture for this day. I'm start starting to see the wisdom because we're in this place where we're looking to a new year. And we're invited to ask these kinds of questions ourselves. How will our individual ministries, our faith, take shape this year? What will it look like this year? What will we dedicate ourselves to individually? What will be made real by our commitment to God through Christ this year? It's resolution season. It is a good scripture to get us into that mode. There's some key questions we could be asking ourselves. Will this stretching, will this growth, will it be a spiritual depth that we reach with enhanced worship, enhanced study, more commitment to these things? Maybe, maybe it'll be a missional heart, a missional heart that takes body in service to those who are in need, to those who are less advantaged, to those who are needing to know that there is love in this world for them. Maybe, maybe it's an evangelical heart that's gonna grow in some of us. This evangelical peace, reaching out to those who don't know the love of God for this world yet. Don't know that there is a creating presence that made the world around us, but also landed us where we are here, and that creating presence loves this world and loves them. Maybe that's what's going to be birthed in some of our hearts this year. This reaching out of love, this message of love, maybe to those who have never known that love, or maybe to those who've been separated from that love. As we seek God's presence in our lives, these should be our centering questions, our focus questions. What will it be? And for us here in this church, this long-standing as well as developing extension of the body, I think we're still figuring out how we are going to embody Christ going forward. Surely there will be things that we have done in this church for years and years, the heart and the body of community that's been built here for 50 plus years, yes, that's going to be part of what our the body of our ministry is going to look at. But what will be the new thing for us? What will be the new thing that reconnects us with the world around us, the community around us? Maybe 2026 will be a year when this all truly starts taking some real shape. Perhaps the spirit is going to climb into the hearts and the minds in this room and bring us together and inspire us to do some amazing things. Maybe the spirit is going to reach into our hearts and then reach out from that heart into the world, and others will join us on that journey. Others will be inspired by our particular message from God. I don't know about you, but I'm kind of excited to find out. Amen.