I had a bit of trouble getting started with my sermon for this Sunday - The Third Sunday of Epiphany.  What did the message of the lessons and Gospel have to do with Epiphany? We hear of Jonah's being sent to Nineveh, warning them of an impending disaster due to their lack of faith.  Then we hear of Jesus' call to make four fishermen "fishers of men."

And then it hit me.  We are all called to be a part of Epiphany - "How can they hear without someone to spread the news?" The word spreads, that life-giving word, by those who have heard it, believed it, and now must pass it on.  I say "must" because, as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, "The only way to keep it is to give it away."  Pass it on.

So yes, I am a piece of epiphany; and so are you!  If what you hear makes sense, if it speaks to your heart, if you return here each Sunday to hear more . . . PASS IT ON!  You too, like me, like Jonah, Peter, Andrew, James and John - you are to be an epiphany.

Some have said to me, "you have saved my Life!"  I have no recall, whatsoever, of doing so.  Yet God must have used me. What wonder and joy that brings to me – a gratitude to be alive and to be an instrument of God's peace.

Yes, I have trouble accepting that, yet I must do so for someone's life, another's salvation, another's healing all stand in the balance.  Modesty is not called for.  Humility is!  And humility acknowledges that we exist to be instruments of God . . . Epiphanies!

I take no credit, for I was not particularly seeking to save those persons.  God used me!  It was God speaking, acting, loving through me not in some spectacular way, but in that still small voice of God's love.

Would you believe that a bunch of ex-drunks and druggies are now changing the world? I've seen it.  I've seen great religious writers like Henri Nouwen, Gerald May, and Richard Rohr being inspired by the likes of those men and women who meet in church basements.  The spirituality is creeping upstairs. Watch out!  And I was changed in my ministry in those same church basements!

We in the Episcopal Diocese have hit a bottom, just as have those in recovery from addiction.  We have changed.  Our life together is an epiphany of how, when all seems lost, God is ready to radically enter in to bring healing, community, and the Word of Love.  There might well be a miracle in the Advent Jeannette parish ready to come forth. We may well be an epiphany that will convince the many who seem to be like sheep without a shepherd.  Oh, they are out there all right!

I didn't know what I was going to preach today.  I hope it was God using me as He once used Jonah to save the people of Nineveh.  God's "Help Wanted" ad is out there in today's paper.  I just read it to you.  Rethink possible!  Thanks AT&T!