Pastor Hector Garfias-Toledo + January 5, 2025
Epiphany - Words for the Beginning: The Road Isn't Straight
The journey of the Magi to meet Jesus wasn’t straightforward, and neither are our lives. Pastor Hector shares a personal story of navigating a treacherous road to illuminate how God’s grace guides us through life’s challenges. Epiphany reminds us that faith is not about certainty but about trust and transformation. Through unexpected encounters and detours, God shapes us and calls us to embody Christ’s love in the world. The winding road becomes a sacred journey of discovery.
Sermon Transcript
From automatically generated captions, and lightly edited for readability by AI chatbots
Grace to you and peace from Abba God: Father, mother and creator, and the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Lord, our sibling, our friend, the baby who was born in Bethlehem. The baby who was visited by these travelers. This a new one I learned today. And we say and well. Blessings to you in this new year.
To all of you, my siblings in Christ, those who are participate online. It's my prayer. My hope that each one of you had the opportunity to be with loved ones or in contact with your loved ones, and if you didn't have any one of your loved ones around you. It is my prayer that with friends or others that God put around you, you found and heard the promise that God is with you always.
We begin every new year with the idea of how the end of the new year is going to look like the. You already have figured it out. Do you know exactly how your life is going to be in December 2025? We tend to think that in order for us to have a life that is successful every single year that we start, we will see, just a linear progression of our lives that things will be falling one after another.
And by the end of the year, we know exactly where we are. But the question perhaps for us today is how did you how did we get to where we are today? How was your life in 2024? Yeah, it's like that. Just just linear. Everything just fell in place. And and we are here today successful and happy and ready for a new year.
Right? This silence is making me nervous now.
Well, in my last trip, as you know, a few weeks ago, my family and I, we went to Taiwan to visit our family, and we went to, a small town, very famous town in the northern part of Taiwan. And in the name of this town is Joe Fenn. And in this town is, a town that is on the mountains.
I used to be a miner's, I mean, town, and I'm going to go through some, pictures that I want to show you a sequence. So I, we need to coordinate with our tech team. Well, how we are going to do this. So all this started that when we arrived in Taiwan, we said, let's go to this place is our first stop.
We are going to stay there for a night and we want to explore. So do your friend. And the first picture. We of course set our hours and we are going up. It's cloudy, is dark, is rainy just like Seattle. Okay, let's put it that way. Just to give you an idea, we keep going up sake on the slide, we keep going up.
And then the road that starts getting swirly. And then is this pure and now is narrowing and is still going, going up. Jade, my wife is trying to find the the place where we are going to stay and we cannot see anything that seems similar or looks like. So she calls and she's asking for directions on the phone.
So the person is saying just keep going and keep going. And then the, the, the, the and the road it starts getting. And the next slide, as you can see, very narrow. And you can we are in a car so we are driving a car there. So it is like we get to this point where we knew that we couldn't keep going and the person on the phone says, oh, we are just very close.
Just look up and you can see us. Well, with the weather and the rain and where we where we cannot see anything. So the only option that we have because we couldn't go through that is let's go back. Well, we look back in the next slide and the road looks like this. No way to make a U-turn.
All right. So this is how it looks like in the back. And then the next slide and looks like these. And the next slide and it looks like these. And then we keep going and then it start looking like this. Do we get to a point where in the next slide as you can see that little red car, that point the hotel person is telling us just make a U-turn.
That's the place when you make a U-turn or yes, there was only like one fit on each side of the car to make, but to to to make a U-turn, no way to make a U-turn. So we got to start getting a little kind of that joy, that kind of start making you almost like feeling like crying. Like, we're so happy to you here.
Why we do it here. How did we get here? And then out of nowhere, where that little red car is parked, there was a truck. And we knew that there is a way to make a U-turn, because that little truck that was parking in that spot was facing the other way. So how in the world a little truck make a U-turn in this place?
Out of nowhere, a person comes out from one, I don't know, he just appeared and goes into that little truck. So Jay, my wife, goes and goes to ask the person and the person said, yeah, you can make a U-turn here. I say, yeah, how? And said, let me show you. And he gets on the truck, moves her truck, makes a U-turn on his face in the same way that we are facing.
And then he makes another U-turn and then he passes by us. I said, you can make it. So by that time, my son in law Paul and, And my daughter, my son, my, my son in law is outside giving me directions, going backwards. My daughter's in the backseat repeating the directions that my son in law is telling.
So I can I can know what to do because I cannot see anything behind me. So by that time we are all frustrated. And then finally this person leaves. Jade goes to say, do the U-turn here. Well, I had to remember the training that I had in Taiwan 20 years ago in How to Go Backwards in a swirly road.
The memories of the stories that are in the back inform us and help us, and reminds us that there is a way to get out where we are stuck sometimes in our lives. So we make a U-turn and then we go down the road. So there you go. There is no way to get backwards. And yet that day when this man came out from nowhere where he appeared and told us how to do it, how to make a U-turn, there was true joy in us because we can we could get out of that place.
It felt like a new beginning, a sense of freedom and liberation. And I remind that that life can make turn turns that are very difficult in our lives. That day, as I said, there was joy, mystery, and a little cry.
The story of the of the Magi, the Wise Men is a story of mystery and joy, first of all, and I am going to divert here from from David with those three names. The Bible doesn't really give us the names. We don't know who they really were, and there is no evidence that there were three. Probably there were more.
So, but we are going to go with a tradition. If you want that there were these three. But the other thing that we need to remember is that the Magi, the word that is translated in the New Testament, is actually a word that in Greek is translated as magicians, sorcerers, and or in any case, as illusionists or fortune tellers.
The Magi follow the star. They embarked in a long journey in a foreign land in order to honor the new Messiah that was born. The road that they walk was not a straight, but we are reminded by the prophet Isaiah that God makes a way in the wilderness to make sure that God's purpose is accomplished. The good news that we hear today is that this is in this, a story that we read today and heard the gain of the coming Messiah.
This story was initially confined to Israel. The covenant people. But that day, suddenly and mysteriously, these three Gentiles, these pagans, have realized that the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation, was for them to see these for us today. Still. Sometimes I wonder what the Magi told the people when they were embarking that journey, and what people were asking them about this journey.
The people knew that the Magi went to look for a child.
What were these Magi looking for in Jesus? What did they find? Actually, when they found him? And I think that the most important question for us today, as we are gathering this place, is as we go and embark in our daily journey to have an encounter with Jesus, what does he, Jesus finds in us and where does he find us in our journey?
The faith journey of epiphany. The epiphany people is not astray. The step by step path that leads us to succeed to success. It is an intricate path of ups and downs, turns and narrow paths. Is a, is a, is a, is a, a journey of transformation in which you and I have a deep and intimate encounter with Jesus.
Because Jesus birth ushers us into new ways of living and loving. Because Jesus didn't came, didn't come to be born, to do ministry and to die on the cross for things to stay the same and for us to be the same. Our life and faith journeys are not the straight roads. Jesus faced it and we know when he was tested in the desert right after his baptism.
We also have encounters in our lives with others and in general in our lives. Encounters that edify us, but also encounters that lead us to wondering that the shatters us. Because there are forces that are making us believe in ideologies and make us surrender to behavioral patterns that beget violence, despair, and death. Herod that tried to do it.
Herod tried to stop the good news. He wanted to bring this good news. And this proclamation to an end when he said, and when you have found him, bring the bring me word where he is. In other words, tell me where he is so I can go to get him.
But we cannot be part of that narrative. We can't go back in the same way the message is. The new beginning was unstoppable. And you and I are part of that new beginning. We started. We began this journey together in the season of epiphany with the serious words for the beginning. And if you remember, we started with the story of Mary, of this young girl who said, who am I for you, God, to consider me even to bring the Savior?
And today we close with the epiphany where these magi, this illusionist, this sorcerers, these travelers from far away come. Into and to become part of this story to to reminds us that in God's grace, nobody and nothing is away from God, separated from God, a stranger from God. God makes a way in the wilderness. And when the Magi heard Herod's intentions, they diverged from their diverge.
They emerge from their expected path. That day in Taiwan, we diverged also from the expectation of going back through the same road. We found another road, and we were able to get out of that place without problem. And guess what?
The road was swirly and narrow. It was rainy and dark, but we left with a memory. We left with something that teaches us that life is not easy and is difficult, but we have a God. That is, God is always with us to include us in the story of love that God continues to write in our lives and through our lives.
Today we witness an epiphany again when these two girls, Phoebe and Freya, once again can hear the good news. Oh God, yes, for them and for all creation. This epiphany is an event that transforms us and reground us. It's a reminder of the promise that we have, and a reminder of the call that has been given to us.
And today, got parents, congregation, parents, companions in faith. We are here.
As the way that God is, is speaking to them and to God at the way that God is speaking to us. To help us realize that we have experienced the presence of God in our lives in many different ways, and that we can move forward, finding the other alternative paths to lead a life of healing and wholeness. As the prophet Isaiah reminds us that God says, I am about to do something brand new.
It is bursting out. Do you see it? And today we can say we see it. Lord, thanks be to God. Amen.
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