Let us pray together.
Holy One, present in our midst.
As we hear your word proclaimed and spoken,
help us in our ongoing discovery
of who Jesus is meant to be for each one of us today.
Help us to be open to your self-revelation
in the unique form that you present to us every day
so that we appreciate the fullness
of who Jesus is for us all days.
And in this season of epiphany,
may we come to know how you intend for us
to help make manifest your plan of salvation for all people.
Amen.
Our Gospel lesson this morning comes from the Gospel of Matthew,
the second chapter, the first twelve verses.
Hear now God's word for you.
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born
in Bethlehem of Judea,
wise men from the east came to Jerusalem asking,
Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?
For we observed his star at its rising
and have come to pay him homage.
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened
and all Jerusalem with him,
and calling together all the chief priests
and scribes of the people,
he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.
They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea,
for so it has been written by the prophet,
and you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah,
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men
and learned from them the exact time
when the star had appeared.
Then he sent them to Bethlehem saying,
Go and search diligently for the child,
and when you have found him bring me words
so that I may also go and pay him homage.
When they had heard the king, they set out,
and there, ahead of them,
went the star they had seen at its rising
until it stopped over the place where the child was.
When they saw that the star had stopped,
they were overwhelmed with joy.
On entering the house, they saw the child
with Mary his mother, and knelt down and paid him homage.
Then, opening their treasure chests,
they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
and having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod,
they left for their own country by another road.
The word of the Lord.
Well, today is the Sunday that we celebrate epiphany.
The pyramids are white, the flowers are white.
We sang we three kings as expectedly
as we sing a mighty fortress at Reformation Sunday.
In the liturgical calendar, epiphany is the 12th day
of Christmas, or January 6th, tomorrow.
Twelve is the number of days the Magi were supposed to have
walked or expected to have walked across to find Jesus.
Given that their trek was over a thousand miles,
they must have had some very, very fast camels.
Epiphany is translated from the Greek to mean revelation.
It's the day we celebrate God's self-revelation to us
through the Christ child named Jesus.
Jesus, coming from the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning to save.
At the time when Jesus was born,
so many people were waiting for a savior.
Pagans and Jews alike were searching for a sign of the one
who would heal the world from its pain, its deep brokenness.
Historians record that they believed that the savior would
be sent from an other worldly place, if not from God, God's self.
Enter a priestly pagan caste in Persia, Iran,
men who studied the stars in a highly regarded mainstream
science. The astrologist's caste was
called Magus, from which we get the plural Magi.
At a certain point, the Magi saw something new.
It was a brilliant new light, an astrological experience.
It could have been a flash of a comet only ten years before
they had first recognized what we now call Haley's Comet.
It could have been a new star.
It could have been an old one bursting.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be pointing the
astrologers, the Magi, to something, someone grand.
They gathered the gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh that
we discussed during Advent, the gifts that the prophet
Isaiah had talked about would be offered to the one who was
coming to save the people. Gold was the prerogative of the
monarchs, who would gather up, hoard, steal, all that they
could find. Incense, in this case,
frankincense, indicated the presence of deity since the
smoke of the incense would rise up to their gods.
Myrrh, mixed with oil, was used in the anointing of priests,
and again at burials. The Magi gathered these gifts and
followed the stars through what is now Iraq, crossing Jordan,
crossing through Israel. Once there, they identified that the
light seemed to be coming from Bethlehem.
Conversations with or over Bethlehem, conversations with
Jewish scholars they encountered told them that this was
consistent with what the ancient Jewish prophets and Micah
foretold. A king was to be born in Bethlehem under a certain
star, a king who would bring them out of their slavery.
Now, this is a jam-packed scripture reading that is way too
familiar. A lot of you probably have it more
memorized than I. So, we're going to take a minute to
get those things in and really settle into our souls.
The first part. God chose to reveal God's self to the
Magi, pagans. Isn't that a stunning statement about the
expansiveness and inclusivity of who Jesus is meant to save?
By the gifts they brought, the Magi identified Jesus as the
supreme ruler and savior of the world, God's anointed high
priest. That Jesus was born in an impoverished community called
Bethlehem, in a manger no less, indicates that Jesus came to
save the poorest of the poor. Luke calls the poor those who
are without financial resources. Matthew calls the poor those
poor in spirit. Jesus came to save us with all
of our poverties. Jesus came to save us all.
To the people of Matthew's community, all of these words and
wonder were supremely good news. It helped them come to
decisive terms of who Jesus was for the world, both human and
divine, a suffering servant, a fragrant, beautiful offering
for us all. Poetic images of verifiable facts that become
the foundational confessions of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Tom Wright, in the meaning of Jesus, two visions, reminds us
that this confession is the most basic entry point in the
community of Christian believers. Marcus Borg writes,
and co-author of the book Two Visions, from the near opposite
end of the Christological spectrum, tells us that as
confessions they contain certain conviction and commitment that
are even richer than whatever the literal or actual events of the
day might be. What Borg and Wright seem to be
telling us together is that decisive doesn't mean only.
That Jesus was the decisive revelation of God doesn't mean
only one way that God revealed God's self, symbolically,
metaphorically, literally, or in any other way true.
For our Star Words search, we went through hundreds and
hundreds of words that we'll share with you after worship,
and the kids might share with you at a different point.
These were a range of words that put us in conversation about
who God has been revealed to be and who God continues to be
revealed every day. The word that I'm carrying with
me into 2025 is zeal. This is a word that I plucked
from the bunch when we were doing an Advent lesson a couple of
weeks ago, sitting around in small groups talking about the many
ways that God reveals God's self, the many ways that we can
carry God's revelation through the new year.
The word zeal didn't sit as easily with all people,
and so we took a moment to look it up. Here's what we found, zeal,
great enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective, fervor,
devotedness, vigor, the opposite of apathy or indifference.
That Jesus speaks really clearly to me.
Coincidentally, there's a book called Zealot.
It was published several years ago by a former Christian
scholar named Rizah Eslan. In Zealot, Eslan speaks to what he
calls the riddle of Jesus, who is a revolutionary political
and social figure rather than purely a spiritual and theological
one. Like Eslan, many of us conflate the practical with the
possible, the historical and scriptural accounts, the
theological with political interpretations to attend to the
many possibilities of God come down.
Divinity among us. Jesus as Savior, royalty, a king.
What I've come to conclude from my exploration of all of these
insights on the greatest revelation the world has ever
known, the epiphany of the Christ, is that it matters little
that God revealed God's self ambiguously or unambiguously to
the historical community. What matters, even now in the
context of these last 12 days of the celebration of Jesus'
birth, is how Emmanuel, God with us, has revealed God's
self to you. Maybe God has revealed God's
self to you as royalty, and you honor God with your best
dress, your kindest words, your best language, the ultimate
service. Maybe you reveal yourself in this way on special
days of the year, if not day in and day out.
Maybe for you God has revealed God's self as an historical
leader, a great prophet, a peacemaker, a healer even,
and you attempt to emulate this in your earthly walk.
Maybe God has revealed God's self to you as your friend.
God sits beside you when you're sick, God holds your hand
when you're lonely, God takes walks with you and allows you
to talk with God, completing your circle of faith.
Maybe God has revealed to you as an eagle.
God has revealed God's self to you as an eagle that's perched
way too high, too high to see that you're in need of a
Savior. I pray that this is not your Jesus.
The reality of our day is that too many of us believe that
since the world can't confess a particular revelation that
God has given to others that maybe Jesus hasn't been real
for us after all, leading us to dismiss this truth that there
is a Savior in any form or name who is intent upon healing
the poverties, the painfulness, the brokenness of our world
today. If for this reason alone I believe
that what matters more than anything is that we share with
our words and our actions the countless ways that God reveals
God's self and continues to reveal God's self every single
day. This reveals the power of epiphany,
that God continues to reveal God's self in various unique,
important ways that God intends when we need God most and when
God needs us most to tend to what's happening at hand.
In Paul's letters, which we did not read today,
but I would ask you to indulge in Ephesians when you have the
chance, Paul uses the word oikonomia,
which is more accurately translated from plan to
administration of household. What we can infer for this more
precise and exciting translation of plan is that God's
household, when properly administered, will be inclusive
of all people, widened by the visions of God's infinite ways
of revealing God's self to each one of us. How we open ourselves
to and through these epiphanies, how we might respond to God's
immediacy and how the world becomes impacted by the
intersection of God revealing God's self and us responding to
God's revelations affects the household on earth that God
needs for us to realize. This indeed is what creates the
beloved household on earth. This household is what
transforms the beloved kingdom of God, joy from heaven to
earth come down. This is what Howard Thurman speaks of in his
poem, The Work of Christmas. Craig brought this up a few weeks
ago in one of our staff meetings and I wondered aloud if he was
going to use it in something he was doing last week and since he
didn't, I'll share it with you now. The Work of Christmas.
When the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and the
princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their
flocks, the work of Christmas begins to find the lost, to heal
the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to
teach the nations, to bring Christ to all, to make music in
the heart. Dear ones, there are a lot of complicated words
flying through the cosmos this day. There are a lot of
complicated words and conversations that lead us to believe
that there is too much heaviness for God even to bear.
We need to rely on the epiphanies that we experience from
one another, the sightings that we have of Jesus within each
one that we cross. We have to reveal ourselves to other
people as the ones God has planned to help save the world
from its suffering. There is so much heaviness in this
world and God did not send God's Son into the world to be a
darkness, but to shed light to us all. As we move through this
liturgical season of epiphany, these weeks between now and the
season of Lent, this season of discovery of who Jesus was when
he walked this earth over 2,000 years ago, please open your
senses to the possibilities of epiphany in as many ways as there
are people passing by. Please be wide-eyed and ears open to
the God's self-revelation in the unique form that God presents
to you. May you please come to know the fullness of who Jesus
is for you and for all people. And as you come to know who
Jesus is for you today, may you come to know how God intends
for this epiphany to help make manifest God's plan of salvation,
God's household properly administered here on the beloved
kingdom for all people. Thanks be to God. Amen.