We're coming to the end of the Epiphany season, this important theological season which exists between Christmas and Lent. At Christmas we've celebrated the birth of the Incarnate One, Jesus being born of Joseph and Mary into this world. And we have been spending a number of weeks looking at the concept of Epiphany. The word epiphany quite literally translates as manifestation. An epiphany is when something is made manifest to us. Manifest comes from the same word as manual. A manifestation is when something becomes touchable. It becomes real--not necessarily physically touchable, although often so--it becomes real.

Listen to our common language. We will say that the person who's having mental or emotional problems is "out of touch." When something important happens in my life, I say I have been "deeply touched by that." We are people who experience epiphanies throughout our lives, manifestations of spiritual truths about ourselves, our relationships. During this Epiphany Season, we've been meditating upon how it is in and through the life of Jesus Christ we have been touched. We have been made aware of the Divine Presence.

Today's reading makes us aware of a whole new understanding of manifestation--that God is made manifest in change. I suspect most of us find change difficult and don't imagine it as a place where we come to know God. I want to make the point today that God is made known to us in change. As part of the background for today's Gospel, the Old Testament reading today is from Hosea. And it's about Israel and its relationship with Jehovah. And the image is given by the prophet Hosea that Israel is like an unfaithful wife and that God is going to change that relationship and create a new relationship of faithfulness with Israel. There will be a changing of relationship and God will be made known to Israel in that change.

In the Epistle, Paul writes to the Christians at Corinth about how the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. That which is said may often be deadly; the Spirit is alive, is changing. Now in today's Gospel which we read a moment ago, Mark tells the story of Jesus early in his ministry receiving considerable criticism. He's been criticized because he's breaking Sabbath laws, he's healing people on the days when people should only be resting and asking them to pick up their bed and walk. He's eating with unacceptable people, with prostitutes, with tax collectors, with people with whom righteous people would not be seen much less dine. His disciples are being criticized and Jesus as their Master is being criticized because they're not fasting like John the Baptist's disciples and like the good Pharisees. Jesus then responds and says, "Well, you can't expect them to be fasting now. The Bridegroom is present." Saying something about his own identity, "When I am present, the laws must be bent. We must celebrate." As Jesus says elsewhere, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The laws exist to help us. The laws do not exist to enslave us; and, therefore, on occasions the laws will be bent because the Bridegroom is present.

And then he ends today's reading with a powerful image. And Jesus was a great teacher because he used parables and images and metaphors, and you always remember those images. Today's is powerful. "No one," he says, "takes a new piece of cloth which has not been shrunk and sews it on to an old garment. Because if you do, when you wash the garment, this new piece will shrink and it'll tear away from the old garment, and you've destroyed the old garment, not repaired it. Likewise," he said, "you'll never put new wine into old wineskins, because new wine is still fermenting, and it will expand, and it'll burst the wineskins."

You see, what Jesus is really talking about here is the problem we have with change. All of us, all of us have problems with change. How we deal with past, present, and future. Change is never easy. I've observed that whether we are conservative or liberal or whatever label we wear, none of us find change easy. I mean, conservatives, I think, are more honest. They say, "I don't like change." Liberals are a little more devious. They say they are in favor of change, appoint a committee to study it, which guarantees that change will never happen at least for a long, long time. Change is not easy for any human being. And all ages are subject to change. One of the things that modern science has shown us is that everything is changing. We can date things, even rocks, through science. Rocks are in the process of changing.

Our Old Testament lesson, Hosea, shows that the relationship between the people of Israel and God is always changing, hopefully deepening, but sometimes becoming unfaithful. It is not stagnant. In Jesus, in today's Gospel and as we'll see Paul in his writings, are having the difficult task of trying to introduce to people a radical change, a new covenant that will supplant the old covenant, a very, very radical change for a people who have known the old for such a very long period of time. Another point to see in this Gospel: it's not just that the patch is new and the garment is old or that the wine is new and the wineskins are old. The patch and the new wine are themselves changing. It's not just old garment new patch, old wineskins new wine. The patch and the wine are actually changing themselves. The new cloth will shrink. The new wine will ferment. All things are changing.

I often am asked by people, "Well, is this the last change we're going to make in the prayers?" Or, "Are we going to have any new hymns?" We all like the old hymns; we all like the old prayers. And my response to these people is, "We've never stopped changing." The prayers and the hymns have always been changing for the 2,000 year history of the Christian church. And whenever the church stops changing, it will cease to be alive. A church which is not changing is a museum and museums are wonderful places but they are not places of worship.

I suggest that in today's reading that Jesus is challenging us to look for God in the changing world in which we live. The real question, then, underneath this is if the one constant in the world is change, how do we grow spiritually in such a world? First, be aware that the past was not set in stone. The past was always changing. It's just that from our perspective it looks to be set. The past, just like the present, was never set in stone; it was always in the process of change. The Ten Commandments may have come down from the mountain on tablets but they had been developing by the grace of God within the people of Israel for centuries and centuries and centuries before they were codified and put on those tablets. Secondly, God's relationship with us is a living relationship, not a stagnant relationship, and any living relationship, father, son, husband, wife, is always changing. It's for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health. The one thing we know about marriage is that it's going to be changing. The one thing that we know about our relationship with God, it's going to be changing. So, first, we are aware that the past was not set in stone; it was changing. Secondly, our relationship with God always has and always will be changing, hopefully deepening. And, thirdly, God's supreme revelation was not in a set of laws or not even in a book or a collection of books called the Bible but in a person, in the person of Jesus Christ. And Jesus was always changing. He was born, he grew as a young man, he was always in the process of maturation and changing.

So change is not over and against revelation. Change is one of the ways in which God reveals, makes manifest the Divine Presence. Like marriage, faith is a relationship and like marriage, the relationship of faith may have its ups and downs, but it's always, always developing and growing.

To develop a healthy, spiritual life, I would like to suggest that everyone of us needs to be a conservative, a liberal, and a radical. You see, so often we get categorized or we categorize ourselves as one of those things: I'm a conservative, I'm a liberal, I'm a radical. I want to suggest that a healthy spiritual life necessitates all three. A conservative in my mind is one who has great reverence for the past, one who remembers joyfully the stories of the past. The Scriptures are in a sense the stories that have made us who we are. We must relish those, we must remember them, rehearse them, recall them, relive them. That's what it means to be a conservative. A conservative doesn't enshrine the past and make it an idol but deeply reveres the past and remembers it and relishes recalling, reliving the past. A liberal is one who is open to the leading of the Spirit, to the idea that God is a living God and that new things are happening today and tomorrow. Remember the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. In fact, I would suggest that only a person who is a good conservative can really be a good liberal. It's not a matter of one or the other. Only the person who remembers and relishes and reverences the past can be truly open to the possibilities of new things in the future. So, the spiritual life means being truly conservative, truly liberal, and then truly radical. A radical, the word quite simply means "one who seeks the roots, one who goes deep, one who finds the foundation, the rock." A radical is the one who is seeking the root of the Gospel and in a radically changing world, the one root truth is that we are God's and God is love. That is the one constant and in a sense, it's the only constant we need in a changing world, that we are God's and God is love.

Listen to these words that are used in the burial office. "If we live, we live in the Lord. If we die, we die in the Lord. So whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." You can't imagine a greater change than dying. Yet, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. That's the one constant: We are God's and God is love. So change is always going to be difficult. Let's not pretend otherwise. All of us find change difficult, but if we develop a good balance in our spiritual life, we cannot only deal with change, we will find change a major way in which we come to know God and to develop a deeper relationship with God. We must reverence the past as true conservatives, we must be open to the future as true liberals, and we must be seeking the root of the Gospel as a true radical. A living relationship with God in Christ will always be growing, always be changing, always be deepening.

I remember a numbers of years ago, one of my closest friends was dying with cancer. It had been a long, painful struggle, and I saw him almost everyday, and we would chat about things that had to do with the church, things that had to do with his personal life and my personal life, and I remember a day very close to his death, I said to him, "Jim, I know your body is not doing well at all. How are you doing?" "I'm doing fine," he said. "I know I'm in the hands of a loving God." In the midst of a very, very difficult change in his life, in the process of his dying, he knew he was alright. He was with the one constant. He was in the hands of a loving God.

Let us pray.

Holy and gracious God, we are often frightened and unsettled by change. Help us to be aware of your abiding presence in good times and bad so that our relationship with you may be deepening daily and at our last day we may say with confidence, "I know I'm in the hands of a loving God." We offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.