Being Normal: A sermon for Epiphany
The Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas
January 4, 2009

I have a particular love for stories about great Dorotheas. I’ll share with you one of my favorites, a tale from the hobo storyteller Utah Phillips. Utah traveled around telling his stories, stopping at coffeehouses and concert halls around the country. One trip back East, Phillips brought his eleven-year-old daughter Morrigan on the road with him just so she could meet her godmother, Miss Dorothea Brownell, a wonderful lady of eighty-three who had befriended him years before. He got to see Morrigan sitting on the porch of her godmother’s house in Connecticut, hearing Dorothea’s stories and learning how to make lace.

Morrigan’s time with Dorothea was certainly educational. Utah points out that we
may think older people are conservative, but they’ve got nothing on kids in early adolescence. During their visit, Utah and Morrigan and Miss Dorothea went out to
the supermarket. There was a little kid stuck in a basket in the check-out, fussing and screaming. His parents were all rattled, snapping at him to just be quiet. Utah said to himself, “The lights in here just drive kids crazy. We’ve got to make him laugh so he’ll snap out of it.” So he starts clowning around. He surprises the kid, who gets quiet as he watches. But Morrigan is so embarrassed that she punches her Dad in
the side, yelling, “Why can’t you be normal?” And old Dorothea Brownell rapped Morrigan rudely in the shins with her cane and said, “He is normal. What you meant
to say was average.”

We routinely use the word normal as if it only means conforming to the regular, expected pattern, just the same as being average. That’s the second definition in the dictionary. The first definition for normal, the one Dorothea was using, is according to the norm, the principle, the standard by which all things should be judged. Your dad may be unusual, she says, but he uses his talents to bring people joy – he’s the way people ought to be.

In his Gospel, Matthew gives us the story of the wise men of the East. These brave and holy astronomers were certainly not average. Other people in their country, possibly Persia, went about their business, ignoring the small Roman vassal state of Palestine. They watched the sky for signs that a new king of the Jews had been
born. Ordinary people would notice an unexpected star on the western horizon, say “That’s interesting,” and then move on. They packed up and set out to see what
was going on. Very few people would open their treasure chests and offer up their most expensive possessions – gold and incense and costly spices, gifts fit for a temple or a royal palace – to an unremarkable peasant baby they found in stable behind a small-town inn. And even fewer would risk the anger of the local ruler to protect the child, just from a few words in a dream.

The wise men are not average. But Matthew lifts them up as normal, as the sort of people we all should be. Their coming important to his story because they show that Jesus does not just belong to rural Judea or the greater family of Jews, but to the whole world. They are the first of millions around the globe who will drop the ordinary business of their lives and follow him. God gives them a strange, risky, almost nonsensical mission – follow that star to a baby, give him extravagant gifts, and
go home by another way – but they do it, with determination and enthusiasm.
When times get tough, it is tempting to be average. We go back to basics, putting aside everything that is not essential and focusing just on what has to be done.
We play it safe, losing our spirit of adventure.

The wise men remind us that creativity is not a luxury. Our unique visions and our odd ideas are all gifts from our creator. They are essential parts of who we are now and who we are meant to be. God does not create us to be average, all following the same cookie-cutter pattern, but to be fully ourselves, using all our talents. God uses us to make the world surprising and beautiful and fun, to grab someone’s attention and open their eyes to the movement of the Spirit, a gift more precious than incense or gold. God needs all of our creativity – the knitters’ shawls in rich, many-colored yarns, Mary Hauck’s dancing and Phoebe Holz’s ice-skating moves and Jennifer Havens’ horseback riding, Gail Arnold and Dick O’Neill’s creations in wood, John Woods’ photographs, Sean Crosley’s voice and Amy Sabean’s tuba, June Connolly and Marge Cacciola’s paintings, Sally Symmes’ intricate appliqué and Mary Matt’s dollclothes and Barbara French’s soup, Fran Weil’s compositions and Diane Kessler’s poems, and all the unexpected and wonderful things that you do.

God needs all of our gifts, so let us give them, with open and joyful hearts. Let us take our own unexpected roads, and follow the visions that come in our dreams. Let us refuse to be average and be truly normal, the wise men and women God created us to be.