Towards the Center

We’re grateful for you and the gifts of God that you bring with you into this space.

As a church, we want to live in God's unfolding story, being transformed by Jesus, learning to belong to each other across our differences, as God invites us into freedom, joy, and boundless generosity.

We pray that whether this is your first time with us this morning, or you've been a part of our community for a while, that you will feel the invitation of the Holy Spirit to join in with our vision.

If you are looking for a church home, we would love to become your church home, and I in particular, would love to become one of your pastors.

Last week, we talked about Epiphany as an invitation—not to certainty, not to control, but to attentiveness. We talked about the Magi, who did not begin their journey with answers, but with curiosity. They noticed a light. They trusted that God was already at work. And they moved toward what they were given, even without knowing exactly where the road would lead.

Today, we take the next step. Because if last week was about noticing that God’s story is already moving, this week is about what holds that story together. It’s about the center that gives the movement its meaning.

So let’s listen again to the Gospel—this time from John, chapter 12.

Operator, please start the audio.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

That single sentence carries more weight than we often allow it to.

Jesus does not say, “I will sort all people.” He does not say, “I will filter all people.” He does not say, “I will force all people.” He says, “I will draw.” Which tells us something essential about how God works. God does not organize the world primarily through exclusion, but through attraction. God does not coerce faith; God awakens desire. God does not begin with boundaries; God begins with presence.

John places this moment late in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has already taught, healed, confronted power, and unsettled religious certainty. And now something remarkable happens. Some Greeks—outsiders—come looking for him. They are not part of the covenant people. They are not insiders. They are God-fearers at best, standing at the edge of Israel’s faith. And John wants us to notice that this is the moment when Jesus says, “The hour has come.”

They don’t arrive with credentials. They don’t arrive with perfect theology. They don’t arrive with certainty. What they arrive with is a desire that they don’t yet know how to name. “Sir,” they say, “we wish to see Jesus.” It is a simple request, but it is a deeply honest one. They are not asking for explanations or arguments. They are not asking to be let in or told where they belong. They are asking to see.

And it matters that they are Greeks. John could have told this story without naming them, but he doesn’t. He wants us to notice that these are people who stand just outside the story as it has been told so far. They are close enough to be curious, close enough to be drawn, but not close enough to feel secure. They represent anyone who feels a pull toward Jesus without yet knowing what that pull will cost or where it might lead.

In other words, they represent many of us.

They come during a festival meant to remember liberation, yet they themselves live at the edges of the promise. They are seekers who sense that something is happening, that something in Jesus matters, even if they cannot yet articulate why. And instead of treating their seeking as a problem to be solved, Jesus treats it as a sign. Their desire becomes the moment when he names what his life is truly about.

Jesus does not answer their request directly. He doesn’t say, “Here I am.” Instead, he speaks about his lifting up, his death, and his promise to draw all people to himself. Which tells us that to truly see Jesus is not first to understand him, but to be drawn into the shape of his love. The Greeks come seeking sight, and Jesus offers them orientation. Not answers, but a center.

This is the center. Not an idea. Not a rule set. Not a culture. Not even a church. The center is a crucified and lifted-up person. Jesus himself, giving his life in love.

And this matters deeply for how we understand faith.

Many of us were formed—often unintentionally—in a version of Christianity where faith was measured by proximity to boundaries. Who’s in. Who’s out. Who’s right. Who’s suspect. Over time, faith became something like a map of lines you were supposed to stay inside. And the closer you stayed to the center of those lines, the safer you felt. The farther you drifted, the more anxious you became. For some of us, faith turned into constant self-monitoring. Am I believing the right things? Am I doing enough? Am I crossing a line without realizing it?

And the problem with that way of imagining faith is not that boundaries never matter, but that they slowly replace the living center. When boundaries become primary, fear takes over. Fear of being wrong. Fear of being excluded. Fear of asking the wrong questions. Fear of becoming the wrong kind of person. And instead of being drawn toward God, we end up managing ourselves.

But Jesus describes something different. He describes a life oriented toward a center that is strong enough, beautiful enough, and true enough to draw people toward it over time. Not a system that needs constant guarding, but a person who can be trusted. Not a faith sustained by fear, but a faith sustained by love.

In this vision, faith is no longer about how close you are to the edges or how well you are performing. It is about direction. About what has your heart. About what your life is slowly, sometimes imperfectly, leaning toward. Not everyone arrives at the same pace. Not everyone approaches from the same direction. Some move confidently, others cautiously. Some take long detours. But the movement matters—because what matters most is not just that we are moving, but what is drawing us.

This is what we mean by a centered faith. Not a faith defined by how close you are to the edges, but a faith defined by whether your life is moving—however imperfectly—toward Christ.

And here is the good news. You don’t have to be finished to be faithful. You don’t have to be certain to be sincere. You don’t have to have it all together to be drawn toward Jesus. You simply have to be willing to move.

That’s what we see in the Gospels again and again. Fishermen who barely understand what they’re being called into. Tax collectors who bring their mess with them. Religious leaders who struggle to let go of control. Outsiders who recognize Jesus before insiders do. All of them are somewhere on the road. And Jesus keeps drawing.

What’s striking is that even here, Jesus himself is not untroubled. Just a few verses later he says, “Now my soul is troubled.” Which is a surprising thing to hear at this moment in the story. This is the same Jesus who has just spoken with clarity about his mission, the same Jesus who knows what is coming, the same Jesus who trusts the Father completely. And still, his soul is troubled.

John doesn’t hide that from us. He doesn’t rush past it. He lets us see that the one who draws us toward himself does not do so from emotional distance or spiritual detachment, but from within struggle. Jesus does not move toward the cross with ease or false confidence. He moves toward it honestly, carrying fear, weight, and cost in his own body.

And that matters, because many of us assume that faith only counts when it feels calm, resolved, or clear. We tell ourselves that if we were really faithful, we wouldn’t feel so conflicted, so unsure, so tired. But Jesus shows us something else. He shows us that faithfulness is not the absence of trouble, but the direction we choose in the midst of it.

Jesus does not resolve his troubled soul before moving forward. He doesn’t wait for perfect emotional alignment. He prays, “Father, glorify your name,” and keeps walking. Which means that being drawn toward God does not require emotional certainty or spiritual composure. It requires trust expressed in motion.

That tells us something about the kind of drawing Jesus is talking about. It is patient enough to hold our fear. It is strong enough to carry our hesitation. And it is honest enough to meet us where faith and doubt coexist, without shaming us for either.

This changes how we understand the church.

The church is not a checkpoint. It is not a border crossing. It is not a holding pen for the already convinced. The church is a community of people being drawn—sometimes confidently, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes with real resistance—toward the living Christ. Which means our job is not to police the edges. Our job is to keep the center clear.

To lift Jesus up—not ourselves, not our preferences, not our fears—and to trust that he will do what he promised to do. To draw.

So here is the question worth sitting with this week. Not, “Am I good enough?” Not, “Am I doing this right?” But simply, “In what direction is my life moving?

Because Jesus is not asking for perfection. He is asking for orientation. And if you find yourself—even slowly, even haltingly—being drawn toward love, toward truth, toward mercy, toward justice, toward humility, then you are already responding to the center.

And that is grace.

Amen.

Epiphany • God’s Story Is Already Moving — Follow the Light • Matthew 2:1–12

We’re grateful for you and the gifts of God that you bring with you into this space.

As a church, we want to live in God's unfolding story, being transformed by Jesus, learning to belong to each other across our differences, as God invites us into freedom, joy, and boundless generosity.

We pray that whether this is your first time with us this morning, or you've been a part of our community for a while, that you will feel the invitation of the Holy Spirit to join in with our vision.

If you are looking for a church home, we would love to become your church home, and I in particular, would love to become one of your pastors.

This morning, as we begin a new year together, we also begin a new series—one that is not primarily about programs or plans, but about orientation. About how we understand what God is doing in the world, and how we understand our place within that work.

So let’s listen together to Matthew 2:1–12.

Matthew tells us that after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem asking a question that immediately unsettled the city.

Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.

That question alone tells us something essential about how God so often works.

The first people to notice that something new was happening were not the religious experts. They were not the temple authorities. They were not the ones with institutional responsibility for interpreting Scripture and watching for the Messiah.

They were outsiders.

Foreigners.

Travelers.

People who paid attention to the world with curiosity and expectation.

Somehow, from far away, they had noticed a sign—a light breaking into the ordinary pattern of things—and they trusted that this sign, a light, was worth following, even though they could not yet explain it fully or control where it might lead.

God is often already at work before institutions are ready to notice what God is doing.

And Matthew wants us to feel the tension their arrival creates.

“When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.” — Matthew 2:3

That reaction makes sense, because Herod represents a way of being in the world that depends on certainty, control, and power. Herod understands the world in terms of boundaries and threats, insiders and outsiders, stability and danger. Anything that disrupts that system feels dangerous.

We have to talk about power here, because fear is doing a lot of work beneath the surface of this story.

Herod is afraid because power, in his imagination, is always a zero-sum game. If there is a new king, then someone has to lose. If someone else rises, he must fall. And so his instinct is preemptive: take them out before they take you out. That is how his world works.

But what if Herod is mistaken about the nature of power altogether? What if God is not threatened by Herod in the first place? What if Herod poses no real danger to God’s purposes at all?

Still, Herod responds the way people in power so often do when they feel their grip slipping. He gathers information. He consults the experts. He quotes Scripture. He asks where the Messiah is supposed to be born. And once he has the answer, he sends the Magi on their way—asking them to report back to him.

Not because he wants to worship.

But because he wants to remain in control.

What Matthew places before us, very gently but very clearly, is a contrast between two ways of responding to God’s activity in the world.

On one side, we see Herod—close to the center of religious knowledge, armed with certainty, surrounded by experts, and yet deeply resistant to actually moving toward God.

On the other side, we see the Magi—people who are far from the center, who do not have certainty, but who are willing to move in the direction of the light they have been given.

The Magi do not receive a detailed plan. They are not handed a map. They are not told how long the journey will take or what it will cost them. What they are given is direction. And that turns out to be enough.

After leaving Herod, they set out again, and Matthew tells us that the star they had seen when it rose goes ahead of them until it stops over the place where the child is.

And when they see the star, Matthew says, they are overwhelmed with joy. That detail matters.

Their joy does not come from having all their questions answered. It does not come from certainty or control. It comes from recognizing that they are participating in something real—that the light they trusted has not misled them.

When they enter the house, they see the child with Mary his mother, and they fall down and worship him. They open their treasures and offer gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

These are not practical gifts. They are symbolic gifts. They are gifts that say, “We may not yet understand the full story, but we recognize that this child belongs to a story much larger than our own.”

Gold for a king.

Frankincense for worship.

Myrrh, foreshadowing suffering and death.

Even here, at the beginning, Matthew is telling us that God’s unfolding story will not move in a straight line toward comfort and ease, but toward love that is willing to give itself fully.

Then Matthew adds one final, easily overlooked detail.

After being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi go home by another road.

An encounter with Jesus does that. It reorients us. It changes the way we move through the world, even when our destination remains the same.

The Magi return to their own country, but they do not return unchanged. They have seen something. They have trusted the light. And they have learned that God’s work cannot be contained or controlled by the powers of the world.

This is why Epiphany matters for us at the beginning of a new year.

Because Epiphany reminds us that God’s story is already moving, often ahead of our plans, often outside our expectations, and frequently beyond the boundaries we would prefer.

Some of us are entering this year with excitement and hope. Some of us are carrying uncertainty, fatigue, or anxiety about what lies ahead. Some of us feel the ground shifting beneath us, and we would very much like a clear roadmap before taking another step.

But the story of the Magi tells us that faith does not begin with clarity. It begins with attentiveness. With noticing where the light is showing up. With trusting that God is already at work, even when we cannot yet see the whole picture.

As a church, we are committing ourselves this year to paying attention—to watching for where God is moving, to lifting up Jesus clearly and faithfully, and to trusting that when he is lifted up, he will draw people to himself.

In the weeks ahead, we will talk together about what it means to follow Jesus in a complex world, about how transformation actually happens, about what belonging looks like when we are honest about our differences, and about how freedom, joy, and generosity grow in us over time.

But today, we begin here.

With a star.

With a journey.

With a reminder that God does not wait for everything to be settled before inviting us forward.

The Magi did not know the whole road. They knew enough to take the next step.

So as we stand at the beginning of this year, the invitation is simple, and it is demanding.

Lift your eyes.

Pay attention.

Notice where God is already at work.

And when you see the light—

Follow it.

Amen.