Epiphany for the Rest of Us Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12 First Presbyterian Church of Greenlawn The Rev. Frederick Woodward January 6, 2013

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1 Epiphany for the Rest of Us Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12 First Presbyterian Church of Greenlawn The Rev. Frederick Woodward January 6, 2013 Isaiah 60:1-6 (NIV) Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look about you: All assemble and come to you, your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the arm. Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy; the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come. Herds of camel will cover your land, young camels of Midian and Ephah. And all from Sheba will come, bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord. 1

2 Matthew 2:1-12 (NIV) After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east, and have come to worship him. When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. In Bethlehem in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written: But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, God and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him. After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. Epiphany for the Rest of Us At our annual Living Nativity three kings, played variously by Bob Eitel, Rich Heiligenstadt, Roger Kaufmann, Alan Lawrence or others make their way down our center aisle to the manger. Close on the heels of the shepherds, our three kings offer their gifts to our newborn Savior, and then depart the stage. We exercise a tremendous amount of poetic license with this script because the visit of the three kings has been associated since at least the fourth century not with Jesus Nativity on December 25 th, but with the Epiphany on January 6 th. But we Americans are always in a rush, and so we squish these events together, and even take down our Living Nativity set before Epiphany Sunday ever comes around. The Epiphany, for many of us, is totally upstaged by Jesus birthday party. For some of us the Epiphany is only an afterthought, if even a thought at all. Christmas pageants are only loosely based on Scripture. Only two of our Gospels make any mention of Jesus birth or the Epiphany and their respective treatments are quite different. Matthew has nothing at all to say, for example, about any shepherds and Luke makes no mention of the three kings from the Orient. And even Matthew says nothing at all about their being kings. He doesn t call them wise men either, but simply magi, and nowhere says anything about there being only three of them. That s all been added by church tradition, and repeated by the writers of Christmas pageants ever since, 2

3 which might be a challenge to you if you grew up, as I did, believing that we should never add anything to the Bible or fiddle around with its contents. In some parts of the world, Epiphany, which means an appearance or manifestation (of God) is actually a much bigger deal than Christmas. For those in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, for example, Epiphany is strongly associated with the Baptism of our Lord which we don t celebrate until next week. In Ethiopia where there were Christian communities a good thirteen or fourteen hundred years before Christians ever came to these shores, the celebration of Epiphany includes a ritual enactment of the Baptism of Jesus along with a procession of the Tabot, a model of the Ark of the Covenant, wrapped in rich cloth. There are also many other distinctive national and local customs that have grown up and around the Feast of Epiphany, and many of them would no doubt seem strange to us. The point is that all of us import a great deal more of our culture to the biblical text than ever we are aware. It s just that when we are the ones doing the importing it all seems to obvious and unproblematic, as when we, for example, put shepherds on the same stage with kings, rather than magi, without ever giving it a second thought. Today though I d like to share four brief reflections with you concerning our Bible s account of the Epiphany. First, that the magi s arrival from the east is a witness to both the threat and the promise of the Christ child in a religious and political context that was highly charged. Second, that their coming from outside Israel tells us how wide our Gospel s distribution list has always been and still is. In a word, it reaches beyond all borders and boundaries. Third, that the Epiphany teaches us something about evangelism in an age when more people than ever regard themselves as religiously unaffiliated, nones as they are now known, or spiritual, but not religious as they increasingly describe themselves. Finally, I would like to suggest what the epiphany might mean not only to the magi from the east, but also to the rest of us. First, the magi discovered themselves in a highly charged religious and political context. Herod didn t consult the magi out of polite curiosity or reverence. He wanted to get a bead on Jesus whereabouts not so as to worship him or bring him gifts, but to kill him. And, as Matthew tells us only a few verses later, when Herod realized that the magi had outwitted him, he enacted a policy of infant genocide (2:16), a plot similar to the one Pharaoh devised in order to kill the male children of the Israelite slaves in Egypt (Ex. 1:16). What I am suggesting is that while we recognize promise in the birth of the Christ child, indeed, the fulfillment of ancient prophecy, Herod saw in it a threat to his own power, and he was right to see it that way and right to be troubled. His was a power that favored some of the people, but not all of them, and in ways decidedly arrayed against the purposes of God. And every power that is established against God s intentions is a false power, and every false power is imperiled by the coming of Christ, whether it be the power of a government, a culture, an institution or a society. And as the Bible makes plain, the shining of the true power, the power we discover clothed in humility in the baby Christ child, constitutes perhaps the most serious threat of all to those holding the reins of religious authority and who wield it against the widow, the orphan and the alien, and those who are other than us and whom we therefore declare to be enemies of God. The second point about the Epiphany is that it teaches us how wide the Gospel s distribution list was from the very beginning, and how it drives all of us, not just magi, out from the comfort of our own borders and boundaries in search of God s shining light. 3

4 The good news of the Christ child was never just good news for the people of Israel, but for people everywhere. We are not really sure where the magi from the east actually came from. Early Christian tradition held that they came from Arabia or Persia, but recent scholarly opinion holds it as more likely that they came from Babylon, which was the site of early astronomical studies. And if the magi did make their way to Jerusalem from Babylon, that would suggest that God s intention for the gospel was originally intended even for the historical enemies of the people of Israel, which hints still further again at the astounding breadth of our good news, good news also for us. Because remember, we too, in our sin, alienation, and rebellion, were once enemies of God, though we are now reconciled to him in Jesus Christ. The third thing I would say about the Epiphany is that it teaches us something about evangelism in an age in which increasing numbers of people identify themselves as without any religious affiliation, the so-called nones, those who report they are spiritual, but not religious. But first a disclaimer: I admit that the arrogance of the selfdescription spiritual, not religious sometimes brings out an Andy Rooney sneer in me, especially when those who so describe themselves seek to put down all the good and faithful people of the church who I have come to know, trust, and love. Oh I know- we all know- that there are still a lot of Pharisees in the church, people who are religious in the worst sense of the term- full of judgment and hypocrisy- and those of us who have experienced God s embrace love them anyway, and pray that God s love will finally break through to them, even as it did to us, because we know that there is a Pharisee lurking inside every one of us too. But there are also a lot of Pharisees outside the church as well, religious types in the pejorative sense, who maybe don t go to church, but who are Pharisees all the same. They may teach yoga, maybe they are politicos, maybe they are the insistent promoters of the latest fads in exercise or diet, or maybe they are the ones who relentlessly rally the troops under the flag of political correctness, or who are subtly intolerant but are always trying to get everybody to bow down to the great god tolerance. And the good news of our Gospel is that God loves them too, not less than us. My suggestion, of course, is that we don t drive a wedge between religion and spirituality that doesn t need to be there, but to let religion and spirituality mutually inform each other as they always have in the best versions of our Christian faith down through the ages. For in its best expression, Christian faith is both deeply spiritual and profoundly connected, which is what the Latin root of the word religion (relig-are) means- connect, tie, or fasten, the same word from which we get our word ligament. But to get back on point, I think that the Epiphany is teaching us that we should not fear but welcome those who are drawn to the light of Christ, even if they begin to follow that light from outside our particular boundaries of religion, culture, or social context. The magi sought to find Jesus, after all, by the way of astrology, and it was God s mysterious will that they did indeed find him. And so the lesson for me, at least, is that if Jesus Christ really is the truth as he himself claimed in John s Gospel, then every road to truth leads ultimately toward Him. And if that is the case, we need never adopt a defensive posture regarding anyone who earnestly seeks the truth. Because if that it is the truth they are seeking, and if it is God s will that all should be saved by the one called the Truth, if our God sent his Son to search 4

5 out the lost who are themselves in search of him, then they will make their way to Bethlehem over time just as we did. For we too were considered outsiders to the Gospel. As Gentiles, we were outside the covenant, and only by God s grace have we also been grafted into it. And so it shouldn t perhaps matter so much to us that earnest seekers don t package the faith the same way we do, don t seem to us to use the correct names for God, or our preferred religious vocabulary, or don t always give reliable expression to the consensus doctrines of our faith. If they are seeking the truth, we should welcome them, and yes, even learn from them, even if they sometimes talk funny, and even if it sometimes happens that their karma runs over our dogma. And that, I think, is part of the wisdom of the various 12-step traditions, some of which we host in this church. Because of their desperate urgency for healing from the addictions that threaten their very lives, members of 12-step groups don t waste much time in doctrinal arguments about who or what their Higher Power is. It is enough for them to agree at least on this: that there is a Higher Power, and it is not them. That seems to me a really good place to begin the conversation of faith. Because until we come to terms with the fact that we are not God, that we are powerless over that which stands opposed to God and to which we nonetheless find ourselves enthralled, and that our lives shall remain forever unmanageable until we surrender those lives over to him, we ll continue to make a regular mess of our God-given lives, the lives of those we love, and the life of our world into which we have been sent as disciples of Jesus Christ. And if those various seekers who have joined us on our journey can say that they have come to recognize Jesus as the truth they have been seeking and have some sense that this one for whom they were searching has all along been in search of them, and if they, like us, can call him Lord and Savior, then we should welcome them into our membership without constraining them into some narrow subscription of faith, bound by a list of what we claim to be essential tenets, contested orthodoxy that we allege all must believe to be citizens of heaven or worthy of God s grace and love. And the last thing I want to touch upon is what the Epiphany might mean to the rest of us. We have some sense of what it meant to the magi- good news, and what it meant to Herod and all who wield power unjustly- bad news, and what it means to all those who seek the truth from outside our Christian boundaries, even those who may want to come home to it by a different way. But what about us? And what I want to ask is whether we believe that the days of the Epiphany are over, whether we think that God s light shined for the world on the occasion of Christ s birth or his baptism, but that Epiphany is now effectively over and done with? And what I want to say is, I sure hope that s not what we believe. I mentioned earlier that the word Epiphany means literally an appearance, a showing forth, but of what or of whom? Of God. As Christians we say that God did that most powerfully and definitively in Jesus Christ at his birth, in the star that helped the magi locate him, at his baptism, at his transfiguration, at his crucifixion and yes, at his resurrection. But is that all she wrote? Are all epiphanies over and done with? Once when Pope John Paul II was greeting his adoring crowds he was asked at whom or what he seemed to be so intently gazing. He replied that he was looking in each face for the face of Jesus Christ. Pope John Paul II was looking for an epiphany, and I 5

6 think he was right to look for that epiphany in the faces of everyday people, warts, wrinkles and all. And I believe that God who manifests himself in Jesus Christ, still manifests himself in the faces of human beings like us, if only we had eyes to see. Why do I believe that? Because the Bible tells me so. Toward the end of Matthew s Gospel, in the famous sheep and goats narrative, we learn that Jesus returns to us before the end of time. Before he shall come again to judge the world in righteousness and mercy, he returns daily in persons who are hungry, thirsty, naked and in prison, but he makes his appearance to us in them incognito. So look for epiphanies in the least among us. On Friday, I did the funeral for Emily Osborne, who had a disabling stroke in mid-august of I remember my visits to her at Good Sam, St. Charles, and Huntington Hills where the limitations of her recovery were made painfully clear. And I recall the difficult visits I made to her in Lindenhurst, not enough of them, when the most intimate conversation was that communication that took place between two sets of eyes, misted all of them by tears for all the words that could be heard and understood, but no longer clearly spoken. In those eyes too, I saw Jesus Christ, an epiphany of God. You see, we do sometimes still catch glimpses of Jesus Christ, we get our own epiphanies, and it has happened to me here among you on many occasions. I will observe one of you showing special care to someone in or outside our church, making some small but significant selfless gesture, or I will see holy tears streaming down your faces as the light of Christ breaks through to you, and I know with a certainty that it is Epiphany Sunday all over again. I see you and I know in my heart that our God has again come near. For a clear and lucid moment, God has become transparent. There is a rabbi who has suggested that the miracle of the burning bush was not so much that the bush was burning, but that Moses took note of it. To take up his point, let me close by saying that that in God s world every bush and every human face is alive with the fire of God s divine presence if only we would open our eyes, take off our shoes and dare to approach our God who is dying to make himself known to us in Jesus Christ. So live into the Epiphany hope of our Gospel, and each morning as you come to waking consciousness, the awareness that you are again taking in the breath of life, and that the breath you are taking in is pure gift, celebrate the Epiphany. Because God has made another appearance, for your sake and for mine. Halleluiah and amen. 6