Epiphany-ish

Merry Christmas! Christ is born! Hallelujah! Today is the ninth day of Christmas, but I do not believe the liturgy calls for nine ladies dancing. Instead, we have heard the story of the magi, astrologer priests from Persia, who have seen in the skies the arrival of a newborn king.

This occasion is known in the Church calendar as the Epiphany. It follows the 12th day of Christmas, so if you are keeping score at home that will be Thursday, January 6, 2022. We won’t be here that day, and next Sunday will be the first Sunday after the Epiphany, so today is…Epiphany lite. We aren’t fully feasting—as it’s too early—but we’re not skipping this story, either.

Like many things in the Christmas tradition, we are stretching a bit when we place these “wise men” in the creche with the newborn Jesus and his parents, as it was not 12 days but more like two years after the birth of Jesus that they arrived.

What a delight, the toddler Jesus must have been. I just spent the holidays with my beloved two-year-old niece and it was mostly her shouting “puppy!” every time my dog came into view and then insisting that we watch either Frozen or Frozen 2 every day. Jesus didn’t have Disney Plus, so there was at least that difference.

Why do you think it is so important that we mark this particular occasion? Why, of all the milestones in the life of Jesus, of everyone who probably came to meet him—grandparents, neighbors, other kids, various farm animals—what’s the significance of these Persian astrologer priests? And why, of all the babies born, did they travel across the known world to meet him?

As an aunt, separated from that niece by a pandemic and about 700 miles, I can understand the impulse to move heaven and earth to pinch a baby’s cheeks. But I do not think that is the reason. Let’s investigate, shall we?

The magi, as we’ve said, are from Persia—now formally called the Islamic Republic of Iran—and they are Zoroastrian astrologer priests. They study the skies and try to piece together the mysteries of the universe. I bet they were very interesting people, and I would love to have watched them work. One night, or perhaps over the course of several nights, they saw an unusually bright star. This star’s appearance provided them an epiphany, signaling the birth of a child in Judea who was God, come to life on earth.

Being wise men, as the story tells us, the magi knew they had to make the trek to see this baby for themselves. To see if what they had read in the stars could really be the truth.

Persia is a significant distance from Judea, especially in the first century, traveling by nothing faster than a camel. Their route to Jesus takes them through Jerusalem, where they meet Herod, tetrarch of Judea. I will forgive each and everyone one of you for not knowing what a tetrarch is. This title means that Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was the ruler of one quarter of his father’s kingdom, and was not, in fact, a king. But we hear him called King Herod in our scripture, so we don’t learn the word “tetrarch” in Sunday School. But we learned it today!

Okay, so, these Persian astrologer priests are not Jews, and as such are not under Herod’s rule or the rule of this child they are calling King. But they tell Herod what they know, and that they are going to witness it firsthand.

King Herod does not have the same wide-eyed wonder that I imagine the magi had. He does not drop everything to travel a long distance to fall to his knees in awe of the embodiment of God—the Word made flesh—in the baby, Jesus.

King Herod, like many rulers, stepped on a lot of people to get to his throne. He had a poor example in his father, Herod the Great, who had 10 wives and had several people assassinated, including some of his other sons, as a preventive measure so they could not assume his throne. A legacy of paranoid warmongering. Charming.

It is not hard to imagine how this Herod would take the news that there was a new King of the Jews out there. “When King Herod heard this,” the text says, “he was frightened.” We should not be surprised by this. Powerful men do not like to become less powerful men, and a new King is seen as a direct threat to the current one.

Calling together his most reliable sources, Herod learns that—in accordance with the prophets—the child has been born in Bethlehem. The wise Persians go on their way, with fairly dubious instructions to come back through Jerusalem and inform him about where, exactly, they find the child.

The star leads them to the town of Bethlehem. By this time, as we have noted, Jesus is not a newborn in the manger like in our nativity scenes. He’s a toddler, probably noisy and messy and learning to walk and talk and all of those beautifully human things. The wise men are overwhelmed with joy to arrive at the home of the Holy Family after this long journey. Their first instinct is to kneel down and acknowledge the greatness of the Christ child.

They open their treasure chests and give him gifts. We have heard about these gifts and will even sing about them later this morning: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I don’t think that any of you brought these gifts to the most recent baby shower you attended, so you may wonder why these are the gifts the magi bring to the newborn king.

They bring gold to signify that Jesus the Christ is truly a king. You may recall that several weeks ago we commemorated the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe—also known as Christ the King Sunday. We know that Jesus will be an altogether different kind of king than any of the Herods, but he is a king nonetheless. The second gift is frankincense, which signifies that Jesus is our Great High Priest, like those priests who light incense in the temple. The last gift is myrrh, which is an embalming spice, and foreshadows his death.

Have you noticed, this year or in previous years, as we sing the Christmas hymns, how many of them have a verse about Jesus’ death? It’s usually further down the page, somewhere like verse five, which we don’t often get to during the service. But so many of our favorite celebratory songs about the birth of God are also about his death.

Personally, I am squarely on the side that we should have this one day of Jesus’ life where we are not also talking about his torture and execution.

But as people who know the whole story, we cannot ignore that the birth of Jesus starts the countdown toward the death of Jesus. We’re in Matthew chapter 2 here, and just 24 chapters later, he’ll be arrested. The author of this Gospel wanted us to keep our eyes on the road.

It seems that the magi may have also known more of the story than their contemporaries did. The last line of this morning’s Gospel text is significant. These Persian astrologers, after meeting the Christ child, went home. They did not go back through Jerusalem, to tell Herod what they had seen and what they knew about what was to come. No, they were wise enough to see that there was another way home. They were wise enough to know that this tiny child, Jesus the Christ, would not be the same kind of King that Herod was, but that his power was far greater. They were wise enough to know that Jesus is Lord, and that Herod is not.

This is where our centuries of Christendom are a disadvantage. We hear this story, and we say, “yeah, of course Jesus is the King of the Kings and Lord of Lords, we know. What’s the big deal?” At the time of his birth, these terms—king, Lord, Son of God, savior—were reserved for people like Herod and Caesar. Political leaders, emperors, warriors. Not Jewish children born into poverty. The absolutely radical nature of the Word made flesh is staggering.

If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then Herod is not.

If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then Caesar is not.

If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then the President is not.

If Jesus of Nazareth is Lord, then no earthly ruler has ever been or will ever be.

Often, we reduce the Christmas story to quaint carols—though, it’s worth mentioning that the verse in “We Three Kings” about myrrh does not sugarcoat it’s meaning. We forget, or we don’t learn in the first place, that the incarnation, God-with-us, the Word made flesh, is a radical and political declaration about power.

True power is not to be found in the waging of wars; in the oppression of those marginalized and minoritized; in terror and fear; in self-glorification and self-aggrandizement. That death-dealing is not what we worship. Those warmongers are not the type of King that Jesus is; his reign is not of terror.

We have been given the gift, as Christians, to find our identity in Jesus, not in our nation.

So what are we to do?

Follow the star. See, by its light, what is real and true and good.

True power, true leadership, true salvation comes to us from the lowliest of circumstances, and leads us all to liberation. Liberates us all from the power of sin and death; liberates us all from fear; liberates us all.

Yes, the world around us is dark, and there are powers and principalities waging wars and wielding terror. There are pandemics and wildfires and massacres. Fear was real at the time of Jesus’ birth, throughout his life, and in the centuries since. But the reason we are gathered here this morning is—in no small part—because a star shined in the East, and guided some wise men to see the world in a new way.

We are gathered here this week and every week because a light has shined in that darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Amen.

Arise! Shine!—A Sermon on Epiphany Wednesday

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

There’s a little song that I picked up somewhere along the way—at camp, in college, who knows—that always gets stuck in my head. It’s not very complicated, but it has a few different parts that you layer on top of one another until it sounds very cool. The part I always get stuck in my head goes like this: “Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the lord has dawned upon you.” I don’t think I knew this at the time that I learned it,  but it’s an Epiphany song. Those words come straight out of the Isaiah text for the feast of the Epiphany.

“Arise! Shine! For your light has come, and the glory of the lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you. Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn” (Isaiah 60:1-6).

This well-lit season of Epiphany is a funny little time in our church year. Setting aside the big chunk of ordinary time—the whole majority of the year that happens all summer—for just a second, let’s look at the structure of the beginning of year. There are 5 pieces. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter. In Advent, we anticipate the birth of Jesus. At Christmas, we celebrate it—yay! In Lent, we anticipate the death of Jesus. At Easter, we celebrate the resurrection—yay! Those are similarly structured times, though totally different vibes.

So, what’s up with Epiphany? It’s just sitting there in the middle of those other seasons. The scripture we read focuses on Jesus’ childhood and ministry. Squeezed into these weeks—up to eight of them, depending on when Lent begins—Jesus has been born, is alive, we are celebrating, we are learning, we are living, we are walking, and we are not preoccupied by the idea that—spoiler alert—there’s anything to be worried about.

Epiphany is the time when we are 100% reveling in the life of Jesus the Christ. We are all in on the radical, world-altering, life-changing awesomeness of Jesus’ very existence. This is where I’d put the praise hands emojis, because Epiphany is rad.

Our story begins as it did over the last couple of weeks—with the baby. Jesus is born, Merry Christmas, Hallelujah! He and Mary and Joseph are in the stable, smelly and dirty, with the animals. Meanwhile, far away, some Persian astrologers are perplexed by what they have seen in the night sky. They saw an unusually bright star and had an epiphany—this star signaled the birth of a child in Judea who was God, come to life on earth.

Being wise men, as the story tells us, they knew they had to make the trek to see him for themselves. To see if what they had read in the stars could really be the truth. Persia is what we now call Iran, a significant distance from Judea in the first century, traveling by nothing faster than a camel. Their route to Jesus takes them through Jerusalem, where they meet Herod, King of Judea. These Persian astrologers are not Jews, and are not under Herod’s rule or the rule of this child they are calling King. But they tell this other king what they know, and that they are going to witness it firsthand.

King Herod does not have the same wide-eyed wonder that I imagine the wise men had. He does not drop everything to travel a long distance to fall to his knees in awe of the embodiment of God—the Word made flesh—in the baby, Jesus.

King Herod, like many rulers, stepped on a lot of people to get to his throne. He was first a Governor, and then a tetrarch, and then, finally, the King. Along the way, he had 10 wives and had several people assassinated, including some of his own sons, as a preventive measure so they could not assume his throne. [link]  A fairly paranoid man, it seems.

It is not hard to imagine how he would take the news that there was a new King of the Jews out there. “When King Herod heard this,” the text says, “he was frightened.” We should not be surprised by this. Powerful men do not like to become less powerful men, and a new King is direct threat to the current one, it would seem.

Calling together his most reliable sources, King Herod learns that—in accordance with the prophets—the child has been born in Bethlehem. The wise Persians go on their way, with fairly dubious instructions to come back through Jerusalem and inform the King about where, exactly, they find the child.

The star leads them, once again, to the town of Bethlehem. By this time, Jesus is not a newborn in the manger like in our nativity scenes. He’s a toddler, probably noisy and messy and learning to walk and talk and all of those beautifully human things. The wise men are overwhelmed with joy to arrive at the home of the holy family after this long journey. Their first instinct is to kneel down and acknowledge the greatness of the Christ child.

They open their treasure chests and give him gifts. Gold, to signify that he is truly a king; frankincense, to signify that he is a priest, like those who light incense in the temple; and myrrh, an embalming spice, to foreshadow his death. These are unusual gifts for a toddler; but Jesus was a fairly unusual toddler.

The last line of the Gospel text is significant. These Persian astrologers, after meeting the Christ child, went home. They did not go back through Jerusalem, to tell Herod what they had seen and what they knew about what was to come. No, they were wise enough to see that there was another way home. They were wise enough to know that this tiny child, Jesus the Christ, would not be the same kind of King that Herod was, but that his power was far greater. They were wise enough to know that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that Herod is not.

This is where our centuries of Christendom are a disadvantage. We hear this story, and we say, “yeah, of course Jesus is the King of the Kings and Lord of Lords, we know. What’s the big deal?” At the time of his birth, these terms—king, Lord, Son of God, savior—were reserved for people like Herod and Caesar. Political leaders, emperors, warriors. Not Jewish children born into poverty. The absolutely radical nature of this epiphany is staggering.

If Jesus the Christ is Lord, then Herod is not. If Jesus the Christ is Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus the Christ is Lord, then the President is not; the pastor is not; we are not.

True power is not to be found in the waging of wars; in the oppression of those marginalized and minoritized; in terror and fear; in self-glorification and self-aggrandizement.

True power, true leadership, true salvation comes to us from the lowliest of circumstances, and leads us all to liberation. Liberates us all from the power of sin and death; liberates us all from fear; liberates us all.

In this season after the Epiphany, we will begin again at the beginning. Jesus will travel the countryside, gathering disciples and telling the truth about who God is and who we are. Spend this season bathed in the light of Christ, knowing that the truth has made you free. Arise! Shine! For your light has come!

Yes, the world around us is dark and dreary, and there are powers and principalities waging wars and wielding terror. This was the case at the time of Jesus’ birth, throughout his life, and in the centuries since. But the reason we are gathered here tonight is because a star shined in the East, and guided wise men to see the world in a new way. We are gathered here this week and every week because a light has shined in that darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Thanks be to God.

Fear/Hope -- Matthew 2:1-12


Grace and peace from God our creator, hope in our redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

Today, the eleventh day of Christmas, is the Sunday on which we celebrate the holy day that teeechnically takes place tomorrow—the Epiphany of our Lord! Epiphany is about two things. Two small words with big consequences.

First, let’s talk about fear. Your fear can take you a lot of places you don’t want to go—or hold you back from great things. In the Christmas story, a few people are afraid—Mary, Joseph, the shepherds—but the story goes that angels come to them, proclaiming, “do not fear!” Wouldn’t that be helpful, if you got into a serious predicament and an angel would just hop in and remind you not to fear? Although, I’d probably be a little more like the shepherds and be afraid of the angels, on top of the fear I already had. So much for that.

King Herod, in our story this morning, is squarely in the fear category. He has heard through the grape vine that a baby has been born that may or may not be a king of some kind. This is confusing and surprising, so Herod called his favorite wise men for some assistance. They told him when and where this child had been born; Herod sent them to see this baby king and report back. Out of fear, Herod feels that his kingship, his power, his glory, is going to be usurped, some day, by a child who has just been born.

I’m not totally sure what the minimum age was for the King of Judea, but even if we wager conservatively that it’s 15 years old, Herod has about 14 years and 364 days to figure out how to keep his crown, and, frankly, he’ll probably die by some other force in that amount of time anyway, since he was almost 70 years old when Jesus was born. Spoiler alert: he dies of kidney failure like five years later.

But! When the wise men do not return—influenced by yet another angel in a dream, who tells them to go home by a different road, luckily—Herod is debilitated by fear, again. So afraid of his power being usurped a generation later, he has every child around Jesus’ age murdered, just to be safe.

I don’t think that you’ve ever decided, out of fear, to have your nation’s children murdered—I don’t think any of us in this room have Herod’s authority on that kind of thing. But what have we allowed ourselves to do out of fear? What rash decisions have we made that, upon further reflection, were far outside the scope of what was necessary? What accusations have we wildly thrown? When have we come to not even recognize ourselves? Fear is very real.

There’s a Presbyterian preacher named John Buchanan who deeply inspires me. My favorite thing he ever wrote has a lot to say about fear. He says that the reason the Bible talks so much about fear (the shepherds fear the angels; the disciples fear the consequences of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem; and in this morning’s Isaiah text, the prophet speaks of weak hands and feeble knees—his people are afraid) is because “fear is such an enemy of life. It’s hard to love when you’re afraid. It’s hard to care passionately about anything when you’re afraid. It’s impossible to be joyful about anything when you’re afraid. Fear limits life, constrains life, pollutes life.”

In last week’s Gospel, from the story according to John, we heard it proclaimed that a light has shined in the darkness! It hearkened back to when God’s voice moved over the waters, over the chaos of the deep, and when there, too, a light shined. But just before that light, and surrounding that light, there is, of course, darkness. We do not turn on a light in an already well-lit space. The light of Christ does not come into a world already saturated by brightness, but instead comes into an immeasurable darkness.

There is plenty to fear in the world around us, and we do a good job of living in fear, scarcity, and hopelessness. But the other small world with big consequences that shows up on this the Epiphany of our Lord is hope. We might think of hope as being passive—we say that we hope something for someone when the situation is beyond our control: hope you do well on that math test! Hope you like your new haircut! Hope it doesn’t rain on your beach day! But hope is not passive. Hope is living and breathing and working hard. Hope is what carries us through. This story of the hope of the life of a child is what carries us through.

There’s a movie out right now called Saving Mr. Banks—it’s the story of the complications that surrounded making of the film Mary Poppins. I won’t spoil anything for you, I don’t think, by mentioning this beautiful line said by Tom Hanks, who plays Walt Disney. He’s talking to PL Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, explaining what’s so important about telling her story. He says that his job is to create hope with imagination because, “That’s what we storytellers do. We instill hope again and again and again.” That’s why we tell this same story year after year—the story never gets old because our need for hope in the midst of our despair never ends.

Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are seasons that pay particular attention to the relationship between darkness and light, despair and hope. Christmas proclaimed the presence of the light. Epiphany calls us to spread the light on the journey.

And how? The best way I have heard it said is through the words of the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, one of my favorite civil rights activists. He wrote a short, powerful poem called the Work of Christmas, and I’d just like to read it to you.

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

That’s where we go from here. There’s something in this call for everyone. You have the gifts and skills required to either find the lost, or heal the broken, or feed the hungry, or release the prisoner, or rebuild the nations, or bring peace among brothers, or make music in the heart.

If you thought about it long enough, you probably already work toward more than one of those things. It is because you have been filled with the light of the Christ that you can go forward, hopeful, into a world full of people who feel defeated. Our ability to hold on to hope actually, physically, literally, deeply, fully shapes the options we have for the future.

If we do not have hope that our participation in the life of this world has any bearing on its improvement, why would we ever act? Why would we ever consider the consequences of our actions? It is our call to live in the hope of the birth of the child, the life of the man, Jesus, the death and resurrection and ascension of the Christ. “The future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for living and hoping.”

John Buchanan writes that, “to live hopefully is to work hard; to hope relentlessly is to throw yourself into the struggle for the realization of hope. To hope for justice and peace is to work for it. To hope for a time when all the children are fed is to do more than complain about the irony of hungry children in this land of abundance, it is to find some children to feed. Peace, we are regularly reminded, is hard work. Hope lives in the midst of darkness in every age. It will not be defeated, silenced, or extinguished. The light that is coming into the world shines in the darkness, after all, and the darkness has not and will not overcome it.”

Thanks be to God! Amen.