Sermon: Epiphany

I am a fan of Christmas cards. I seem to get my fair share around this time of year, and I am always interested to see what will be portrayed on the front cover. Will it be fuzzy little lambs looking lovingly at a manger holding the Christ child? Will it be a more artistic expression of Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus? Will it show pictures of their journey to Bethlehem, or just a star shining in the heavens? Will it say peace, joy or love? Will there be off in the distance those three camels pulled by three men coming to visit that tiny stable?

Christmas cards don’t really portray what happened after that holy, silent night. Because things are starting to heat up, and it certainly doesn’t feel like Christmas to see the darkness on the covers of those cards holding our annual Christmas letters. Traveling from the east, following a star, are wise men, the magi, sometimes called kings, coming to worship this greatest of Kings and bring him gifts. We really don’t know how many there are, we assume three, we don’t really know where they have come from, or what they might do in their spare time in some far off land. We don’t know much about them really, but we do know that they are coming to find a baby that has been proclaimed to them in the stars. And yet, it isn’t as simple as the Christmas cards would have you believe, because something terrible is happening. We can feel it in the words of the gospel, in the secret meetings between Herod and his priests, and meetings under the cloak of darkness with these wise men. We can hear that darkness sneaking in as the gospel tells us that Herod is afraid, and all of Jerusalem with him. When Herod is afraid, the people quake with fear, because Herod always reacts to his fear with death.

Herod calls these wise men into a secret meeting, and he tells them, go search diligently for this child, the child seen in the stars and then come back, and tell me where to find him. It seems like such a good plan. He will let these travelers do the work, find this child king, that he can’t really be sure of anyway, and then, without hesitation, he can find this child, he can kill this child, and all that he is sure of, all his power, will still be his. No one can take that away from this crafty, wily Herod.

Not really the stuff of Christmas cards, is it? A little too cloak and dagger to make it into our annual Christmas letters, but it serves as an important reminder. The birth of Jesus Christ shook the world from its moorings, the birth of Jesus Christ, the son of God, was meant to change everything, to redeem us, to enliven us, to teach us how to live, it was meant to be the stuff of thousands of Christmas cards, to proclaim a new era, a reign of peace and love and justice and mercy. The birth of Jesus Christ was meant to turn everything upside down, and when the world gets shaken, there are people on the top who end up on the bottom. When the world gets shaken, the pieces do not fall as they always have, and that can cause some painful reminders of the power of sin. Because the journey of these wise men is just the beginning. Joseph will be warned in a dream, and he and Mary will flee to Egypt, because Herod is on a murderous bend. All the baby boys will be killed by Herod’s hand. The cries of lament and loss will be heard in that town and everywhere. It isn’t the stuff of woolly lambs and bright shining stars, is it?

Those wise men, those travelers from the east, they finally find the son of God, nine miles away from their first stop. They find him in that manger, not in the palace of Herod. And, when they do find him, when they do discover him with his mother in that stable, it is the stuff of epiphanies, because they fall down and worship him, filled with the greatest of joys. They are so filled with joy that our text can barely do their emotions justice. Everything changes. They encounter the living, breathing God, wrapped in swaddling cloths. And that joy, it is enough, that encounter, it is enough to lead them home in a new way. To see that child is king is enough to erase the secret meetings, to foil the plans of King Herod, to lead these wise men in an entirely new direction. When the world gets shaken, things don’t end up where they have always been, and sometimes that road home, that road back to the life you have led, it goes in an entirely different direction.

Life sometimes feels a bit like the journey of those wise men. We feel that pull, that desire within us to search for something beyond ourselves, to find God in the midst of this confusing and sometimes treacherous world. That search often leads us on journeys we never imagined, finding us in places where we never dreamed we would be. But, when we encounter the living God, we have no response but to fall down in worship, because what we find is so big, so glorious and so utterly beyond our imagining that there is nothing but praise for the One with whom it all began. But that journey is often fraught with missteps, with finding ourselves in places we don’t want to be, not sure about where to go. It can find us wrapped up in our own sin and the systematic sin of a world that is being shaken, even now, by what God has done.

But, we also remember that sometimes our journey can seem more like the journey of Herod. We don’t want to be moved, we don’t want to risk losing all our comforts for what this new birth might mean. We don’t want to imagine a different world, because it seems too big and too scary and too risky. We don’t know how to live in a world that is changing, a world that is being upended, a world that is ruled by a king who is the embodiment of justice and love and peace.

I have found myself in both of these characters. Seeking God, and being afraid to find God. But, no matter where we are, we hear the prophets words for this feast of Epiphany, “Arise, Shine, your Light has come!” What God has done can’t be undone. Whether we are afraid of what it might mean, or whether we are ready to lay all we have an all we are at the feet of this child king, God has already done all the work, broken through the veil between heaven and earth, and come for us. Journeyed to us, because we keep losing our way.

The feast of epiphany brings to us one of the most familiar stories of our gospel. It is the feast of light, when we celebrate that God’s light has come. God’s light has already begun shining, setting us on fire. God’s light has a way of illuminating even the darkness of what happened after our Christmas story. It has a way of illuminating the parts of ourselves that can be found in all these characters. So, no matter where you are, arise and shine, for your light has come! Amen, and thanks be to God.