A Baptismal sermon for Epiphany

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Isaiah 60:1-6 and Matthew 2:1-12

“Arise, shine; for your light has come,” sings the prophet Isaiah.

  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.

This is a deeply hopeful text, written to an Israel that had known the complete upheaval of its life under the iron rule of the Babylonian empire. When Babylon had taken the leading citizens of Jerusalem and sent them far away into exile, there would have been some who would have wondered if there would ever be a new day. Recall those lines from Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.

And,

How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?

How could we possibly sing the Lord’s song here, in captivity, with word now coming to us of the smouldering remains of the once glorious city of Jerusalem. How? It is over, we’re finished, God has clearly left us. Of course the brilliant irony is that to give voice to this pain the psalmist sings a song; a song that laments that it just isn’t possible to sing anymore. And yet it must be possible, it is possible.

And all those years later when the time comes to return home to Jerusalem to begin the hard work of rebuilding, Isaiah again raises a song, “Arise, shine; for your light has come.” Your light has come… again!

But you know, the light seems to come and go; to flicker and smoulder, then to burn brightly again, and then go back to smouldering. Israel’s journey as God’s people is not easy, because God asks of them a covenant faithfulness that seems often to elude them. And they stumble forward, often in the dark.

This passage from the Gospel according to Matthew finds them very much in the dark. The Roman Empire is in power, with wily Herod serving the role of a state-sanctioned local king. A bit of a puppet king, is old Herod; his power precariously dependent on the approval of Rome. To hold his power he has to quell anything that looks like a challenge to his rule; it is simply the political reality in which he lives.

And then these Magi arrive, famously inquiring, “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 Herod heard this question, Matthew tells us, “he was frightened.” Frightened, which says something about just how precariously he holds his power. Not only Herod, but “all Jerusalem with him.”

Here Stanley Hauerwas comments,

So ‘all Jerusalem with him’ is fearful, indicating that Herod’s rule is possible because the fear of those he rules makes Herod’s rule seem necessary. And like all who rule by fear, the last thing Herod, or those he rules, wants is to be surprised. It cannot, therefore, be good news that strangers appear believing a king has been born.

Life in that part of the world was not easy, you see, and for all of their wealth the men like Herod know that it might all be lost in a flash. An uprising, a pretender king, a restless rebel group, or whatever, might topple it all, and so he steadies his nerve against his anxious fear and he turns to consult the local scholars. Again from Hauerwas:

“Herod calls to him the chief priests and scribes (not always his natural allies) and inquires where the Messiah is to be born. They are the intellectuals of the day—educated, as intellectuals usually are, to serve those in power.” And isn’t that a statement? That intellectuals are usually educated to serve those in power? But I think Hauerwas is on to something, particularly when it comes to the power of tyrants and dictators. And then he continues, “They—the chief priests and scribes—know their Bible and, like many who know the Bible in our day, know how to read the Bible in a manner most useful to suit their ruler’s desire.” Huh. “Like many who know the Bible in our day (they) know how to read (it) in a manner most useful to suit their ruler’s desire.”

Which is a provocative statement, but if you scan back over the centuries you can see it has been all too often true. The ways in which the Bible and our faith have been used to justify all manner of political and social disasters is stunning, and at the same.

Yet for all that the scribes give to Herod a teaching about Bethlehem, and Herod passes that along to the Magi, adding his own canny little instruction that if they find a newborn king they should come back and tell him, so he too can go to pay his respects. And so off they go to Bethlehem, where they do find Mary and the baby living in a house—not a stable, notice, but in a house, which suggests that in Matthew’s mind this is in the weeks after the birth. “And they knelt down and paid him homage,” after which they presented their regal gifts and then “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

The story continues from there, detailing the desperate acts of the tyrant king Herod, but on this day we stop at the moment of their departure. And here I’d just ask on this evening on which we will baptise a small child, what does all of this have to say to her parents and grandparents and godparents, and to all of us, indeed?

Here in this country, we don’t live in the depths of the darkness of something like the Babylonian Exile or of the iron rule of the Empire and its puppet king Herod. Not that our world doesn’t know some pretty deep darkness, and of course there are many right now who live on the very edge of what feels like a complete collapse, but here in this country what is it that these texts have to say about this baptism?

Raise her to be a seeker. The magi were stargazers, and when they saw this unusual star in the sky they dared to follow. May she always have that courage.

Raise her to hear our deep stories. The magi could get only so far by following a star in the sky. What they needed to complete their journey was the wisdom of the deeper scriptural texts. Remember that.

Raise her to dare to look twice at the various “Herods” she’ll see along the way, sitting in positions of power and privilege and attempting to bend the arc of justice away from those who most need justice and turning it to their own self-serving power. We need people who dare to look twice, and to have the courage to live differently in a world that desperately needs a different path.

Epiphany blessings on you, little one, and on those who love you. Amen.