In 1977, George Burns, then 81, played the role of God in the Carl Reiner-directed film Oh God! It’s a classic movie with a star-studded cast: John Denver, Teri Garr, Dinah Shore to name a few.  And it’s funny, God, portrayed by Burns, doesn’t seem as old to me now as he did when I was a kid. God’s even young enough to run for president!

So…we don’t just read stories and sing songs and say prayers during our preschool chapel. Sometimes, we go on adventures, and this past week, we went on a bear hunt. And if you’ve ever been on a bear hunt, you know it’s full of tall grass, and swift waters, and muddy bogs, and even dark caves. You can’t go over them. And you can’t go under them. And you can’t go around them. You’ve gotta go through them.

The passage from Mark that we read a moment ago is one that we’ve heard in one form or another, probably at least once a year for our whole churchgoing lives. I know we’ve read this text twice already this year alone. And, as is human tendency, we get used to things we’re in frequent contact with - and we are apt to miss them, because they’re so familiar. So let's interact with this text today, rather than just reading or hearing it.

Yes, throughout Mark’s gospel and the others as well, Jesus may dazzle. Jesus may rise. Jesus may ascend. Jesus may walk on water. Jesus may do three dozen things we’ll never be able to fully explain or understand. But that’s not what’s important. Here’s what is: This morning, God tells us Jesus is a source worth listening to.

I’m grateful for Gladys, because I needed to hear from her today. Gladys reminds us that when we find grace in difficult seasons; such grace is not a ticket to disengage from a wounded world, but is instead an invitation to be an extension of that very same grace to, for, and alongside our neighbors.

We don’t all have to be the same perfect people under the steeple. We don’t even have to be the people under the steeple. We simply have to be the people. God’s beautiful, credentialed, created people.

It’s been two thousand years, but I think Jesus is still walking that shoreline. And I think he’s still asking us to put more emphasis on that noun people. We’re all called to do different jobs or activities. Some of us may fish, some may build, some may write, some may teach, some may design, some may heal, some may protect, some may march, some may love, some may provoke and evoke…the list goes on.

What today’s text tells us is that God isn’t revealed in pageants and presentations. God is revealed in ordinary people, in ordinary places, in ordinary events. In other words, God is revealed in the messiness and unexpectedness of life.

It wasn’t a pretty day, nor even a pretty place. It was rugged. And raw. And blemished by the dirt, and noise, and commotion of a people going about their day. And yet it was beautiful. Here, in a world two thousand years removed from the first Epiphany, no less violent or imperfect than other times, strangers from afar, steeped in every imaginable tradition, gazed upon, and worshiped in God’s presence. They saw a star that Herod will never see.