THE EPIPHANY

SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2002

A sermon given at the Church of the Redeemer

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.  That most materialistic of Christmas songs, the one that calculates the number of gifts given to one by his or her true love, reaches its pinnacle today, and by my calculations, a total with repetitions of 78 gifts would have been given by today.  Of such is mathematical trivia comprised, I should say.  Today by tradition means that the Christmas decorations are taken down, discarded, or stored away for another year.  Today also heralds the return to the routine of church, school and work.  Life free of Christmas cheer and calendar madness begins in earnest.

If we were Orthodox Christians, we would today with great ceremony and gift-giving be celebrating Epiphany or Theophany, their traditional observance of the birth of Christ.  Twelfth Night has long been a happy conclusion to our weeks of the winter holidays.  The Gospel always read on this day is the story of the visitation to the Bethlehem manger of those rather quirky people, named the wise men in the Bible, or kings or magi in other lore.  We hear the story of the brightest and best star of the morning mystically leading these visitors to the baby Jesus.  Not only does the star appear, but so do Christ and these wise men as well.  The Feast of the Epiphany is about appearances and manifestations.

Much has been written about the wise men, who they were, and why they had come an enormous distance (far longer than twelve days) to see the special child.  “We have come to expect and even welcome the presence of these Magi, or wise men, or three kings of the Orient.  They add a dash of color to [Christmas pageants] with their royal blue garments embroidered with gold foil.  They provide a whiff of the exotic through their Persians ways as hints of spices fill the air.  Above all, perhaps, they sound just the right note of royalty for the child-king in the manger.” (Scott Hoezee) 

As with so many Biblical figures, we know precious little of these three visitors with their storied gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  They are a blend of the mystical, the astrological, and the inquisitive.  Absent much factual information about these people (and we do not really know that there were actually three of them), various scholars and visionaries have added details not found in the Scriptures.  The Venerable Bede offered in the eighth century three names for the wise men: Melchior, Gaspar, and Baltasar.  Later in the twelfth century a Holy Roman empress named Helen claimed to have a vision of the burial place of the three kings.  The remains were dug up and transferred to Cologne Cathedral where they are still on display.   

Again, I quote from a commentary on the Epiphany Gospel.  “Biblical evidence is rather slim.  What can be said with some certainty is that these magi were the ancient equivalent of ‘magicians’ – they were astrologers and stargazers who tried to get the hang of present and future events by what was in the stars.  The Magi were what many today would call quacks and maybe even charlatans.” (Scott Hoezee)   Clearly the Gospel according to Matthew wants us to understand that the birth of Jesus was a monumental, even cosmic event, the singular star testifying to the extraordinary.  These people came a vast distance in a time when convenience and travel had nothing in common.  They make their mistakes, talking to Herod who ordered the infamous slaughter of the innocents in his paranoia.  And they were foreigners whose obvious difference would not have gone unnoticed among the faithful Jews who gathered in Bethlehem at census time.  Surely, there must be some serious message for the followers of Jesus Christ in this story, something more than color and the exotic. 

One thing that the Gospel makes clear is that these pilgrims were from the East.  And further, they were overjoyed and humbled by the reality of the child in that manger.  What had begun as some kind of amazement with the movement of a strange star now was a spiritual event, and an event whose magnitude changed the hearts of these visitors and somehow converted them from what they had been to something new.  Once they headed back home, we lose them forever.  What would they have told their colleagues back in the vague “East”?  They are forever silent, save in the imaginations of those who are wont to fill in the blank spaces of Biblical tradition. 

What possible purpose do these wise men serve for us today?  The curiosity and devotion of local shepherds and other Jewish Messiah watchers is one thing, but the wise men are a kind of aberration in the familiar stories of the birth.  No evangelist but Matthew even acknowledges them.  Matthew is always at pains to show the life of Jesus to be a fulfilling of prophetic visions.  We find references in the Hebrew Scriptures to the coming of kings: Psalm 72:10 declares “The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall pay tribute, and the kings of Arabia and Saba offer gifts.”   “Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn” comes from among Isaiah’s frequent Messianic prophecies.  The scene was set years before Matthew’s writing, and we find that the picture of kings from exotic places present at the manger seems to work. 

I would suggest something more basic to us in the universal Church, or locally here at the Redeemer.  These wise men, like other Gentiles in the Gospels, Acts, and epistles, remind us that Christ is not limited to a certain few people.  He is for the entire world, the child of the Creator-God we faithful seekers all worship.  The wise men are different; they bring to the manger scene a certain degree of diversity, something foreign and unknown.  They are strangers, outsiders, a new kind of people, men whose appearance and inner characteristics set them apart from Mary and Joseph and the shepherds.  They are not Jews.  We in fact do not know what they believe or if they believe.  Yet there exists no enmity between them and the Holy Family or those who received them as they drew near to Bethlehem. 

The wise men remind us of the importance of being open to those who are different, the outsiders, the mysterious.  Christian hospitality is a virtue to which we all are called to conform.  One of the painful lessons we have learned in the past few months, particularly since September, is that we as a people, we as a Church, we as very West-centered in our education and exposure to the world, know all too little about the rest of humankind.  We need to learn more about other people, other religions, other ways of living so that we might be better able to understand why people think and act as they do.  Nowhere is it written that all people must be like you and me, even if such likeness might smooth the way for peace.  Few of us who live in families would be able to say that all our children or all our parents, for that matter, are alike.  We share much, but in order to understand one another in peace we have to listen, to ask, and to learn to love others as we love ourselves.  While we do not need to become like others, we must make room for them in our outlook. 

To that end I would recommend to all of us in this parish church that we gather here at this time next Sunday to hear from an expert in the realities of diversity, religious and otherwise.  Professor Diana Eck of Harvard has graciously agreed to take time from her very busy schedule to come to us, to help us learn, and to encourage us to ask questions.  We must try to get a sense of the greater world out there, a world that increasingly has a great impact on our own country.  A professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Diana Eck will speak to us about Islam, that growing and important religion from the East.  She will also meet us in a Forum in the Parish Hall after the service.  Her latest and wonderful book A New Religious America will be available at Coffee Hour this week and next. 

Further to our understanding of the wise men from the East, in their modern appearances, we shall look at Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism at the first four Lent Series Wednesdays beginning on February 20.  In the fifth week we shall attempt to see those religions in the light of our own experience of the Christian religion.  We have lined up a fine series of visiting speakers, and I shall soon make available to you the details of this year’s Lent Series and for that matter all the Lent, Holy Week, and Easter plans to help with your own calendars.  Our Book Table already has some useful reading for our knowing, and we shall continue to stock titles that come well recommended.  Anything by Diana Eck or Karin Armstrong will feed our minds and spirits superbly. 

This year, as we celebrate the Epiphany, the star in the East calls us to understanding, embracing, and celebrating diversity.  Our celebration always occurs against the solid background of our own Christian faith.  In fact, I am convinced that the more we share the experience of other believers around our shrinking globe, the better we will articulate and practice our own religion.  We will learn that as not all Christians are uniform in their practice, neither are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or others.  Where we do find common ground is in our commitment to tolerance, knowledge, and respect.  Our New Year’s Resolution for 2002?  Not a new one, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and strength AND to love our neighbors as ourselves.  AMEN. 

                                                                        The Rev. Richard H. Downes 

Note:  Scott Hoezee is a contributor to Volume III of The Lectionary Commentary, Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts, Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids.

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