The Feast of the Epiphany | a sermon
A sermon by Jamie Howison on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12
Tonight in our liturgy we are marking the Feast of the Epiphany. Now, on the calendar this feast day was this past Thursday, January 6, which also marked the end of Christmastide and the beginning of the period leading us up toward Lent. I’m persuaded, though, that this story brings a kind of poetic grip that we don’t want to simply skip past, and particularly not in a year like this one with its increasing restrictions and shutdowns.
The story is, on the one hand, quite beautiful and poignant. The child has been born in Bethlehem of Judea, and wise men or magi have seen a sign of a significant birth in the stars. They set out from their home “from the East”, which points to the fact that Matthew probably had astrologers from Persia in view, as they were the ones most attuned to the movement of the stars. Matthew makes no mention of how long after the birth they arrived, but as he pictures things the young family is not in a stable but rather in a house in Bethlehem.
On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
That’s the sort of picture that we have preserved in those Christmas cards and nativity sets, right? These noble travelers arrive with these extraordinary gifts, and lay them before the child, kneeling before him and paying him homage. But then there is that other material in the story, that casts a shadow over it all.
In seeking him, they have understandably gone to the Jerusalem, to seek out the royal household. After all, where else might you find a child born to be king? But instead of the child they find King Herod, who is vassal king under the rule of the Roman Empire, and a deeply paranoid man. Herod had already had one of his own wives and several of his sons murdered, because he was afraid they were conspiring against him. This is not someone who takes any suggestion of a threat to his power lightly.
Herod goes into gear, consulting the local biblical scholars as to where a promised king might be born, and they answer “Bethlehem.” He summons the magi back into his presence, “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 word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’” As Frederick Buechner puts it, “It did not even strike them as suspicious when Herod asked them to be sure to let him know when they found him so he could hurry on down to pay his respects.”
They are, in that sense, quite unaware of the politics of this region, and of Herod’s reputation for desperate, fear-driven violence. Well, off they go, and you know what happens next. They find the house where the family is staying, enter and offer their gifts, bend their knees in a symbol of respect and even adoration. As Matthew tells his story, it does not seem to be a long visit, simply noting, “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”
Now think for a minute about those gifts that Matthew says the magi left with the family: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold is a royal gift, which held its value much as it does in our own day. Perfect for a new king! Frankincense and myrrh, on the other hand, were commonly used as perfumes and in the making of incense for use in worship. Regal, sure, but far more loaded with symbolism in Matthew’s telling.
Noting that Mark specifically says that Jesus was offered a mixture of wine and myrrh at his crucifixion, Elizabeth Johnson offers these words:
Their gift foreshadows what is to come. Myrrh is a bittersweet gift, but it is a fitting gift for King Jesus born into the world of King Herod; for an infant king born into a world where evil tyrants plot the deaths of innocents. It is a fitting gift for this humble king who will be put to death as a threat against the empire. It is a fitting gift for the shepherd-king who comes to lay down his life for the sheep.
In Matthew’s hands, you see, this story is much more than an origin or birth story. As he casts things, the heart of the gospel is contained in this treasured story. Watch.
First of all there is the matter of who it is that is led to meet and honour the child Jesus. It is Gentiles, true outsiders from a whole other part of the known world, coming with a knowledge and understanding informed by their own tradition of stargazing. There is an ancient tradition of understanding the Feast of the Epiphany as being the dawn of the sharing of the great good news far beyond the boundaries of Judea or Galilee; far beyond the boundaries of Judaism. They follow their own intellectual skills and craft as far as it will take them, and in the end can do little more than fall to their knees and leave their precious gifts in the hands of a peasant family. I like to imagine that they never forgot that journey, and that in their return home they continued to walk with a knowledge that somehow this child was going to change the world. For them, perhaps that was the height of faithfulness, and it was accepted by the God they had never really known before.
Then there is the desperate madness of King Herod. The magi don’t go back to tell him where the child lies, and in the verses that follow where we left off today, Herod moves into an incredible and desperate rage.
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the male children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.
So desperate is he to protect the power he has on his throne, he simply throws his troops at that little town, massacring all these children, prepared to do anything to shore up his thin claims on power. That same rage that had caused him to kill a wife and several sons is again enacted, and who cares about those deaths? Not Herod. The machinations of power and politics dictate a kind of ruthlessness in his very soul, leaving him only to care about his throne, his security, his power. As Frederick Buechner puts it,
Herod was fit to be tied when he realized he'd been had, and ordered the murder of every male child two years old and under in the district. For all his enormous power, he knew there was somebody in diapers more powerful still.
Indeed. And where is that little child in diapers? That, too, is told in the verses following where we left off:
Now after the magi had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’
And as Matthew tells the story, off they go to Egypt as refugees, where they remain until Herod has died. That too is a very poignant picture. A small group of us has begun to work on helping a Syrian Christian family make their way here to Winnipeg to join others from their extended family, and I find it hard to not see connections to this story. Sure, we have an enormous government bureaucracy that monitors and counts and permits (or not) people to make a move, and that bureaucracy needs to know that a church community like ours will be here to help that new family get settled. Mary and Joseph had none of that, but they did share that need to flee from the familiar and enter an utterly unfamiliar country. In their case it was only for a time before they could return home, which is something most modern refugees will never be able to do, even for a visit.
But I do think that in the telling of this story, we must also remember those who are in our own time in that state of upheaval, needing to flee for the sake of their very lives. And I am grateful that Matthew has told this story, in all of its toughness, for he is saying that Jesus himself knows what it means to be homeless in this way. He knew it then, and he knows it now, and he calls us to care, and to care deeply.
That too, is a kind of epiphany, isn’t it?
