Sermon for Epiphany
I must admit that of all the “special” days of the year - Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday - the one that has me the most homesick is Epiphany. For the past ten years, I have celebrated every Epiphany at my church in Baltimore, Epiphany Lutheran Church. Since my church chose Epiphany as a name one hundred years ago, the day has been the cause for much celebration.
Each year, a special evening service is planned, but before that is the dinner, cooked by one of our members who is a caterer - always pork and sauerkraut with all the trimmings - and trifle, with and without sherry, for dessert. The traditional “King’s cake” is a must, too, and those who are lucky enough to receive the surprise in their piece of cake dress up as King Herod and the wise men (or women, if that is how the surprises go).
I look forward to this celebration every year, and in recent years, I’ve even got some of my classmates as excited about it as I am. It’s something comfortable and familiar - as familiar as the story that inspires it all.
Or is it? We hear the story of the wise men’s visit to the child Jesus, but just how well do we know it?
Pop quiz: how many wise men were there? If you said “three”, you’re right…or maybe you’re wrong. We don’t know how many there were. Tradition says three, because the listed gifts they bring - gold, frankincense and myrrh - are three, but there is no definite number of how many people actually came to see Jesus. Perhaps there were three; perhaps there were thirty. We just don’t know.
Pop quiz number 2: True or false - the wise men were kings. A popular Epiphany hymn is “We Three Kings”, so surely they were kings. Wrong. The actual word used to describe the men is “magi”, who were a lot of different things, but they were definitely not kings.
Okay, so if the magi weren’t kings, what exactly were they? The word “magi” is usually translated as “wise men” in most English translations, with at least one having the footnote “or astrologers”. But “wise men” is not a good definition of what they were. In fact, “wise men” is too neat and clean of a term for what the magi really were.
Magi “were not models of religious piety. They were magicians, astronomers, stargazers, pseudo-scientists, fortune tellers, horoscope fanatics.” In today’s world, they could be compared to people on the so-called “psychic hotlines”. In short, they are heretics; they do not worship God, they worship the false gods of their fortune telling. They give Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh - gifts that were fit for a king and used in worship and burial, true - but they were also elements that the magi used in their magic. These are men that have no reason - or seemingly, no right - to be there, witnessing to the Christ child, paying homage to him. These are men who are better models of unbelief and false trust, rather than models of faith, trust and worship.
Yet these are the men whom God chose to come and pay homage to the child Jesus. God uses the very things that make them outsiders to bring them to there. And really, this shouldn’t seem to strange to us, because this isn’t the first time that God uses outsiders - those who seem to have no right - to serve as witnesses to the Christ child. Anyone remember the shepherds on that first Christmas night?
Stars were something that the magi understood. They looked for signs in the stars. Special stars were familiar to them, and made sense to them - and this star was no different. God got their attention in a way that they could understand.
The magi use their pseudo-science, and they end up in Jerusalem, looking for the one who was born “king of the Jews”. The star doesn’t lead them to Jerusalem; most likely, the star “told” them that a king was born, and they (incorrectly) assumed that if a king was born, he must have been born in the capital city. So they end up in Jerusalem, where they find out that their assumption is wrong - the king isn’t there at all.
But what corrects their false assumptions? How do they end up in Bethlehem? By the guidance of the religious leaders, the chief priests and scribes - experts in the law and word of scriptures.
God met the magi where they were, and gave them something they could understand - a sign in the form of a star. But that sign is not enough. They must also rely on the guidance of religious leaders - the chief priests and scribes - to find the king they are looking for. They can’t get there on their own; they need the guidance that the leaders - the “insiders” - can give.
God met the magi where they were, just as God meets us where we are. At times, we are no better than the magi - putting our trust and faith in false things, rather than the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We put our faith in the things of this world, rather than focusing on the things that God wants us to focus on - the Good News that Jesus Christ is Lord. But God does not write us off for that. God continues to find ways to come to us and meet us where we are. We see God coming to us in the faces of the people we meet everyday - in our neighborhoods, at work, on the street, even those who live thousands of miles away. God comes to us and makes God’s self known to us, and reminds us of the promise God has made to us in our baptism, while also reminding us of the promise we make in our baptism.
“Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Sound familiar? We say it every time there is a baptism. Jesus Christ is the light of the world, and in our baptism, we receive that light and are charged with taking that light into the whole world.
There is a whole group of people whom we call “unchurched”, those who don’t have a church home, those who don’t know the Good News of Jesus Christ. They are everywhere we look - in our families, in our neighborhoods, at work, at school, at any of the numerous local establishments, even those we meet just walking down the street. But we cannot spread our lights throughout the world by using words and actions that only those of us on the “inside” understand. We must meet these people where they are, because they are God’s children, too.
Meeting people where they are can sometimes mean stepping out of our comfort zones, out of the things that make us comfortable, out of our own little boxes. That can be a scary thought, can’t it?
But that’s exactly what God did in meeting the magi where they were. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that God is in a box somewhere, with only one way of doing things. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. God’s arms are always open to all of God’s children, and God is always finding new - and sometimes dramatic - ways to welcome God’s children into God’s family.
We have received the gift of the Good News of Jesus Christ because God first came to the magi - outsiders, outcasts, heretics - men who were considered to be among the biggest sinners that there were, and revealed the Good News to them. Sound familiar? It should - because we are all the biggest sinners there are, yet God continually comes to us, and meets us where we are. If there was nothing that could stop God from coming to those big sinners - the magi - and there is nothing that can stop God from coming to today’s big sinners - us - there is nothing that can stop God from coming to those other big sinners - the so-called “unchurched”, today’s outsiders. What is keeping us from welcoming them into God’s family? How do we let our own love of familiarity and fear of something new prevent us from welcoming them? What boxes and comfort zones have we placed ourselves in, and now need to break out of ourselves?
We are not called to rest in our comfort zones; we are not called to stay, content, in our own little boxes, in our own comfortable places. We are called to be Christ’s light in the world, and we cannot do that by staying closed off in the world of the “insiders”. We must step beyond that which is familiar, and take the (sometimes) scary step into the unknown. When we do that, God may turn up in places that we never thought would be possible.
Familiarity can be comforting; it can be a good thing. But when familiarity makes us afraid, or worse, lazy, it is time to break away from that familiarity. When that happens, it is time to revisit our baptismal promise of being Christ’s light in the world. It is time to examine our selves, and see what it is that is keeping us from welcoming all of God’s children into this place. Now is that time - so let us go forth into the world as Christ’s light, shining through the darkness of this world with all the glory of the world to come.