When Clarity Comes | 1/11/26
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When you hear the phrase “everyday epiphany,” what moments from your own life come to mind, large or small?
Looking back, can you recall a time when you sensed God inviting you toward something new or surprising? How did you respond?
The sermon speaks of clarity and peace accompanying epiphany. When have you experienced that kind of peace in decision-making?
How have past moments of discernment or obedience shaped who you are today?
In what ways do you see yourself as a “clay jar”—limited, imperfect, yet carrying something precious?
Transcript:
We’re going to turn our attention to a passage from the second letter to Corinthians in the New Testament, and I’ll read just these few verses that you’ll be able to follow along with on the screens:
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves, for Jesus’ sake.
For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
This is the Word of God for the people of God. And God’s people say, thanks be to God.
Would you pray with me?
Come, Holy Spirit, and breathe life into the words that I speak, that they might carry a word from you into our hearts and lives on this day. Amen.
Last week, Marisa launched us into our winter series, Everyday Epiphanies, on Epiphany Sunday—a good time to start a series like that—when we looked at the story of the wise men making their journey to the Christ Child. In introducing the series, she offered a couple of definitions from folks for epiphany. One of those definitions comes from the Reverend Jim Harnish, author of a book by the same title, Everyday Epiphanies, and his definition goes like this: “Epiphany happens for people who are prepared to see, willing to follow, and open to surprises along the way.”
As I listened to that definition last week, it occurred to me that in offering a definition of when and how epiphany does happen, you can begin to infer what it looks like when epiphany doesn’t happen as well. And so I came up with this—epiphany doesn’t happen (just using the inverses of the things that he mentions); Epiphany doesn’t happen when we choose to remain blind to what’s right in front of us, when we insist on our own way, and when we get stuck in our assumptions and resist new insight or possibilities.
Over the course of the past week, I’ve also been reflecting on some other things that I find to be true about epiphanies. Some of those include that epiphanies can come in both big and small ways. Epiphanies can feel monumental in our lives, and epiphanies can just be a quick new realization, a new insight. Epiphanies don’t necessarily require following a star on a long and arduous journey to a foreign land, although epiphanies will often require us to step out of our comfort zones.
Epiphanies are almost always connected, I believe, to the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is within our cooperation that the Holy Spirit is able to foster within us those traits that are needed—that Harnish talks about—of preparedness, willingness, and openness. They become the gifts that the Holy Spirit unlocks within us when we cooperate.
And lastly, epiphanies, I believe, are invitations to both exercise and expand our faith.
So this past week, I’ve been reflecting on my own journey of life and faith and thinking about some of the epiphanies that have come along the way. And this morning, I want to share a few of those with you as a means of encouragement for you to do some of that reflection of your own—thinking back on times when perhaps there were epiphanies that you had, where you encountered God in new or surprising ways and had a willingness to step into what it was asking of you.
Because there’s something about looking back and remembering that helps us also look ahead with trust and assurance and confidence for how God will be present in the future. And as we do that, we find comfort, and we find grace.
Now let me say this at the outset: I am quite certain that there have been many times when I have missed epiphanies that God was putting in front of me—many times when I am sure that either I just neglected them, or I was too busy to pay attention, or sometimes very willfully ignored them because I didn’t want any part of it. But I am grateful for the times that I did notice and the ones to which I have been receptive.
And it’s a few of those that I lift up today as key markers for me along the way, along the journey of life and faith.
The first one that I can recall being of real significance for me, in terms of a trajectory for my life that it prepared me for, happened when I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. I was looking at colleges, and a key part of my decision-making was where I would play collegiate tennis. And so I was making visits to some different schools around—mostly the Southeast, but a little bit in other parts of the country as well.
And I vividly remember being on my way back home to Louisville, Kentucky, from the University of Illinois. And as I was driving my car back home from that visit, I remember thinking to myself, “On Monday, I am going to call Coach Louderback and give him my verbal commitment,” because that was just a fantastic visit.
And I got home that night, and on my dresser in my room was an envelope that my mother had placed there that included a letter from Coach Paul Scarpa of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Now, Coach Scarpa had known me practically my entire life. My father was on the faculty at Furman for most of my years growing up, and my mother was the secretary of the religion department.
And this letter that showed up at that particular point, on that particular weekend, was Coach Scarpa saying to me, “Steve, I know you’re looking at a lot of different schools, thinking about where you want to go. I just want to ask you, before you make a final decision, to come and visit us.”
And because of the long relationship with Coach Scarpa and some nudge inside me, I said yes to that. And the very next weekend, I was down in Greenville on this campus that I had known so well as a kid but had always been the place where my parents worked. And that weekend, I had an epiphany. It was my school suddenly, and it was clear to me that it was, in fact, the place that I was being called to go for college.
Thank goodness—because it is there that I met the Reverend Catherine Fluck Price, because she went to Furman as well. And had I not had that epiphany or responded to it, that wouldn’t have happened.
Which leads to the next epiphany.
The fall of 1984. We are both juniors in college. We’ve known each other from a distance, but as we are both moving into apartments in a student housing section just off of campus, I am standing on my balcony, and I see her walking into the courtyard from the parking lot, and something starts to flutter inside me. And I want to get to know this person better.
And long story short, after asking her out on a date, we began to date. And within a few weeks of us dating, I had an epiphany that this was the woman that God had in mind for me and was the woman that I would ask to marry me.
Now let me tell you at this point in the story that I was, at the time—or had been—on what Catherine likes to refer to as the “one-year plan”: a girlfriend each year. So I had one that I dated my whole freshman year, I had another that I dated my whole sophomore year, and now I’m in my junior year.
And within a few months of having begun to date Catherine, on the weekend of her 21st birthday, I asked her to marry me. Imagine the surprise—not only for the two of us, but for all the campus around us, who were accustomed to Steve’s one-year plan. And thank goodness again that I paid attention to that epiphany.
Here’s a photo of us on the day we got engaged. Yep, that’s us—airbrushed, and it’s not AI. It’s for real. We were kids.
How do you make a decision like that as kids at 21? But I knew. And somehow, 40-plus years later, here we are—with all the blessings and all the stories to share of the life that we have shared together. So grateful that I was willing to see and willing to be surprised.
So fast forward some years, and it is the fall of 1994. We are living in Tallahassee, Florida. Catherine is now an ordained United Methodist minister and serving her first appointment. And I am confident that I have come up with a compromise that God is willing to accept—that I, as the perfect accompaniment to an ordained clergy person, will be a teacher and a coach. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Portable. Transferable.
And so during that time, when I am preparing for that vocation, I end up on staff doing youth ministry at the church where Catherine is under appointment. And I start having conversations with high schoolers and with college students. And as I’m listening to them and their stories, I begin to think that some of them might have a call into ordained ministry.
And it just so happens that the United Methodist Church, at that time—two years earlier—had started this wonderful national gathering for people who were between the ages of 16 and 24. Now, I was past the 30 line at this point. I was taking the 16- to 24-year-olds so that they could have an opportunity to listen for a call into ministry.
So we loaded up a van, went to Richmond, Virginia, and it was on the first night that we were there, as I was praying for them and supporting them, that I heard again the scripture from the sixth chapter of Isaiah—the story of Isaiah’s call as a prophet. And then I heard Bishop Leontine Kelly preaching on that passage. And then the piano started up, and we all sang together in response to the message, “Here I am, Lord.”
And I knew it was an epiphany—that it was time for me to say yes, to surrender to the call that had been there, and to step into a life in ordained ministry. That was 1994, a little over 30 years ago.
And so the next spring, we began to prepare. And that summer, we moved to Durham, North Carolina, so that I could go back to seminary for around two years and finish my degree, so that then I could, alongside Catherine, serve in ordained ministry.
It was while we were there, in the summer of ’96, that Catherine was invited to be a delegate to the World Methodist Conference, which on that occasion was going to be held in Brazil. And so she and I went to Brazil, to the Rio de Janeiro area. We got to spend a day there at the base of the Cristo Redentor statue.
And then on another day while we were there, we had the opportunity to go to the Ana Gonzaga Methodist Orphanage. It was there at the orphanage that we met a young teenage girl whose name was Iris—or Iris in English. And there was something about Iris that was unmistakable for both of us.
When we got on the bus to go back to our hotel at the end of that visit, we looked at each other, and there was a shared moment of epiphany. We just knew that we were supposed to do something. We didn’t know what. We didn’t know how. But we were supposed to do something—to be a part of this girl’s life—that we were being invited to open up our hearts and, ultimately, our home to her.
And boy, are we glad that we were prepared and willing and open to a surprise in that moment, which began a long journey of relationship with Iris.
It found us several months later, and remember, mind you, that at this moment in time, I am in seminary, unemployed. Catherine is employed as an associate pastor at a church in Durham, North Carolina, which in the mid-1990s was not exactly at the top of the pay scale. But we just felt compelled.
And so Iris came and lived with us for a time. Here’s a photo of her with our daughter, Shelby, in that first season of being together, which then led to another season many years later of her coming back and living with us again as a young adult, when Shelby was a young teenager, and Sid was in elementary school. And then years later, having the opportunity to baptize Iris’s daughter when she was born, and then that same daughter being the flower girl in Shelby’s wedding when she got married.
And the story just kept going on—the blessings that unfolded when we thought we were going to have an opportunity to bless her, the ways in which she also blessed our lives—because somehow, someway, we managed to say yes to an epiphany that couldn’t have possibly made sense at that time.
A year later—1997—I’m about to finish seminary, and we know that we are coming back to Florida to both serve under appointment in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. And one of the things that we are clear about at that point in our lives is that we feel called to serve together, that our gifts complement each other, and that we would best serve the conference by being in a setting where we could work alongside each other in ministry.
And so, surprise—summer of 1997—we end up being appointed to do exactly that: to serve together as co-pastors of a brand-new church that wasn’t even started yet. Two pastors appointed to zero people—go calculate that one.
Nineteen years of so many moments and an abundant number of everyday epiphanies along the way that we got to be a part of in the journey with that congregation. And you can imagine that after 19 years, we were deeply invested in that community. It was where we had raised our kids. We had wonderful, deep friendships with people and felt like there was still so much more on the horizon for us to do in that space.
And some of you know the story—that about 16 to 17 years into that journey is when we first received a phone call from the bishop at the time, asking us to begin considering an appointment here. And there was a season of time when I was kicking and screaming. I loved my people. I loved where I was. I loved what we were doing. And I didn’t need to go anywhere. I could be perfectly content right there.
And then one night in December of 2014, we were passing through Gainesville on our way to Macon, Georgia, for our son to have a college visit of his own to Mercer University. And the night we stopped here, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep. Those are dangerous moments for me.
And I know that if I wake up and pay attention, there might be something risky coming up. Or I can simply choose to put my head under the pillow and ignore whatever might be coming and go back to sleep. But I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I was restless. And I felt something pulling me out of bed, putting on clothes, and putting on shoes.
And there was something deep within me that was saying, “Just go walk the property.” Which was this property.
And so that December 2014, I got up out of the bed, quietly slipped out of our bedroom, got in the car, drove over here to this property, and walked this campus for about an hour. And at the end of that hour, I ended up over by the chapel, and I was leaning against one of the corner columns of that chapel. And I closed my eyes, and I said, “God, I don’t know what it is you want from me, but I do know that I want to be open. And so whatever it is, let me trust you. Let me be obedient. Let me be faithful.”
When I ended that prayer and opened my eyes, the first thing that I saw that was right in front of me was this—one of those clay pots that sits right outside the chapel. Do you see that crack running down that pot?
Now, in that moment—and this is actually the picture that I took that morning, by the way—as I was standing there looking at it, I didn’t know at that moment that those pots were made that way. There are two of them, and they look exactly alike on either side of the walkway. I thought it had fallen sometime, that it was broken.
But when I saw that pot, my mind went immediately to the passage that I read earlier about clay jars and about the way God chooses to invest God’s purposes in us when we are willing to say yes, and when we are willing to realize that it is not about us, but it is about what God might want to accomplish through us.
It was an epiphany. It was the epiphany that prepared me to surrender and say yes to the possibility of coming here.
And so in the summer of 2016, we did—Catherine and I—alongside each other, serve here, which we thought we would do until the end of the story. Y’all know this part of the story, right? Until another bishop came calling and asked Catherine to serve on the cabinet beginning summer a year ago.
You know, each of these epiphanies that I’ve described for you all this morning—each of these markers along the way of my journey—as I look back on them, what I see is that they have each been accompanied by a sense of clarity and a sense of peace, like it was good and right and as it should be.
Which brings me to one more epiphany to share with you all today—one that also has come with a deep sense of clarity and peace.
You see, this past year I entered into a season of discernment. I don’t know if you all know this or not, but I turned 62 back in December. I’m not a young chick. And I began thinking about what the future would look like, and when would be the right, good, and appropriate time for me to retire.
And in my mind at the time, I thought two to three years. We had begun to think about me potentially retiring a year or so before Catherine, and beginning to pave the way for what retirement looked like. And so I stepped away last summer for a few days at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, so that I could really pray and think about that.
And then in the fall, we went to a place that has been such an important space for discernment for us—the Green Bough House of Prayer in Georgia—for a silent retreat. And it was near the end of that silent retreat that the moment of clarity and the moment of surprise came for me—that that moment would not be two or three years down the road, but that it would be at the end of this appointment year, which in the Methodist world is on June 30th every year.
And so part of what I have to share—an important part of what I have to share with you all today—is the discernment that has led me to a decision to retire from active service under appointment in the United Methodist Church on June 30th.
It has been an incredible gift to serve this congregation. I’m so glad that I saw that clay jar ten-plus years ago. I’m so glad that by the grace of God, I was willing to say yes. I’m so glad for the work that we’ve gotten to do together—and we still will do for another six months, by the way.
As I shared with our lead staff team this past week when I told the news to them, I am not the kind of guy to just coast for a while. You all probably know that about me as well. We’re going to invest in these next few months and continue to move forward in this journey of life and faith together.
And Trinity is a beautiful, healthy, and vibrant church right now. We have made it through some tough times together, my friends. This last decade has brought a lot of turmoil. And here we are—and we are growing again. And people are invested and coming.
And so today, as this time of message comes to a close, I want to invite you to be thinking about how God can use each one of you in whatever the next season looks like—because you, just like I, are a bunch of cracked pots.
But God is in the business of using cracked pots. In fact, God loves to use cracked pots because, as Paul says, it helps assure that we will not seek to claim credit for ourselves, but we will put the credit where credit is due and give thanks to the God who is at work among us.
So I say thank you. And I say, keep leaning in, keep trusting, keep believing. God has great things in mind.
Will you pray with me?
I’m so grateful for this community of people, for the ways in which you have revealed yourself to us time and time again, and for all that is still in store for a people called Trinity. I’m also so grateful that you choose to use us clay jars as a part of your plan for the redemption of all creation, to bring your kingdom on earth, looking more like the kingdom of heaven.
So help us to keep trusting, keep believing, keep seeking to be prepared, willing, and open to the blessings that will unfold—and even to the surprises along the way. Amen.
