Rev. Tom Lenhart
Sermon January 6, 2008
“An Epiphany for All?”
Ephesians 3: 1-12, and Matthew 2: 1-12

Let us pray.

O God you are behind us and before us. Lay your hands upon us as I utter these words. And may we all feel your presence in our souls. Amen

            “He has had an epiphany.” I have   heard that expression with   increasing frequency in recent years.  What I think people are trying to convey by use of the word “epiphany” is a sudden experience of illumination –a “light bulb going on” moment. Certain famous experiences of this type come to mind:  Archimedes the Greek mathematician lowered himself into a pool and saw the water flow over the edges and instantly recognized the principle of buoyancy and displacement – now famously associated with his cry “eureka”. Or that moment -- apocryphal perhaps -- when Sir Isaac Newton lying in a field observed an apple fall to earth and discovered “gravity”.

            Today is Epiphany in the church’s liturgical year. For the early church this Sunday was a more significant time than Christmas and is, even today, for our brothers and sisters in the Eastern Orthodox Church.  The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary describes “Epiphany” as “the manifestation of Christ to the world, a Christian observance ...  commemorating   ... the visit of the Magi….”[1] In what way, you might ask, is the visit of the Magi -- the wise men -- a eureka moment? The journey of the Magi is a quaint story – one we all know well.  Indeed, at Christmas children dress up in splendid costumes and bring gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus at the church pageant.  To help us hear the story anew I want to share with you an elaboration of it penned by the wonderful preacher and writer Frederick Buechner. He writes

                        “Beware of beautiful strangers,” said one of the magi –astrologers, the wise men, “and on Friday avoid travel by water. The sun is moving into the house of Venus, so affairs   of the heart will prosper.” We said this to Herod, or             something along those lines, and of course it meant next to nothing. To have told him anything of real value, we would have had to spend weeks of study, months calculating the conjunction of the planets at the precise moment of his birth     and at the births of his parents and their parents back to the fourth generation. But Herod knew nothing of this, and he jumped at the nonsense we threw him like a hungry dog and thanked us for it. A lost man, you see, even though he was a king. Neither really a Jew nor really a Roman, he was at home nowhere. And he believed in nothing, neither Olympian Zeus nor the Holy One of Israel, who cannot be named. So he was ready to jump at anything, he swallowed our little jingle whole. But it could hardly have been more obvious that jingles were the least of what he wanted from             us.

                        “Go and find me the child,” the king told us, and as he spoke his fingers trembled so that the emeralds rattled             together like teeth. “Because I want to come and worship him,” he said, and when he said that, his hands were still as death. Death. I ask you, does a man need stars to tell him that             no king has ever yet bowed down to another king? He took us for children, that sly, lost old fox, and so it was like       children that we answered him. “Yes, of course,” we said,     and went our way. ...

                        “Why did we travel so far to be there when it happened? Why was it not enough just to know the secret without having to be there ourselves to behold it? To this, not even the stars had an answer. The star said simply that he would be born. It was another voice altogether that said to go  -- a voice as deep within ourselves as the stars are deep     within the sky.

                        “But why did we go? I could not tell you now, and I could not have told you then, not even as we were in the very process of going. Not that we had no motive, but that we had so many. Curiosity, I suppose: to be wise is to be eternally curious, and we were very wise. We wanted to see for ourselves this One before whom even the stars are said to             bow down – to see perhaps if it was really true because even the wise have their doubts. And longing. Longing. Why will a man who is dying of thirst crawl miles across sands as hot as fire at simply the possibility of water? But if we longed to receive, we longed also to give. Why will a man labor and struggle all the days of his life so that in the end he has             something to give the one he loves?

                        So finally we got to the place where the star pointed us. It was at night. Very cold. The Innkeeper showed us the way that we did not need to be shown. A harebrained, busy man.             The odor of the hay was sweet, and the cattle breath came out in little puffs of mist. The man and the woman. Between them the king. We did not stay long. Only a few minutes as             the clock goes, ten thousand, thousand years. We set our foolish gifts down on the straw and left.

            It is a strange little story. There are the odd men coming from the East -- likely astrologers and priests from Persia and Babylon who spent their lives divining the future from the stars and dreams. And they traveled hundreds of miles following a star to Jerusalem and then on to Bethlehem. No modern effort to identify a comet or meteor or other celestial event – at that time and place-- has proven satisfactorily to explain the star. And then there are the gifts. We can understand gold but frankincense and myrrh – materials used as perfumes and preservatives.  And the story doesn’t tell us a thing about Jesus that we don’t already know. As the angel has told Mary he is the Messiah -- the One whose coming was foretold.

            The early Rabbis who spent their lives analyzing the Torah developed an approach to interpreting scripture called Midrash. One of the assumptions of Midrash is that every word, every passage and every story in scripture has a purpose and a meaning.  What is the point of this story? Why is it here in Matthew’s gospel? 

            The key to understanding it is to think about the principal characters in the passage -- Herod and the wise men. Who is Herod? Herod  is neither ethnic Jew nor Roman but a native of Idumea.  Idumeans were believers in the God of Israel having been converted by force decades earlier.  Their faith was, however, more a matter of convenience than of deep of feeling. Herod -- though nominally a believer -- had no religious interest in the babe. Jesus was a rival -- a threat to the establishment -- and needed to be eliminated. The wise men were certainly not Jews but Gentiles -- for they did not know of the scriptural prophesy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Hence their question to all those encountered:

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.

It took the Pharisees and scribes, experts on the Torah, to tell Herod and the wise men where they should go to look for the King.

            The crux of our passage is in the manifestation of the Messiah to these Gentiles – those seemingly least likely to accept him. The church celebrates this day as the Epiphany because it is the first time that the Son of God is manifested to and accepted by representatives of the Gentile community.  To our modern minds this point seems   unimportant -- no big deal.

            But it was and is a big deal. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians you hear a little of why it is a big deal. In the world prior to the coming of Jesus, there were the chosen people -- the Israelites who had persevered against enormous odds. God had entered into covenants with them through Abraham and Moses, promising to love them and to walk with them   whether during the Exodus or in the Promised Land. God had promised to Abraham that his offspring shall be as numerous as the stars. This promise of God was open to all but understood to require that one must follow in faith the religious laws of Israel.

            Then comes Jesus who proclaims himself Son of David and Son of God -- the fulfillment of the promises of God and the divine prophesies made in the Hebrew Bible of the One to come.  But what does Jesus preach?  He preaches that the commandment to love God and ones neighbor is the essence of faith rather than slavish adherence to all of the religious rituals and rules. One can heal on the Sabbath and eat with those who are ritually unclean if they truly love God. It is not that the religious laws are wrong by no means – simply that the great commandment is the key – the one essential. One need not be a Jew to receive God’s love and in turn to love God with all ones heart, mind and strength.

            Jesus coming into the world demonstrates the universality of God’s love. When ever anyone follows the star to Jesus they find a way to God. That is what Matthew is telling us in the Story of the Magi. And that is what Paul is telling the Gentiles in the church in Ephesus when he wrote: 

In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, shares in the promise [by] Jesus Christ through the gospel.

It is a remarkable gift – God’s love is universal. It is open to the Magi and also to the Jews such as Peter, James and John who follow Jesus. That is truly a “eureka” moment.

            Even at the very beginning of Jesus’ life we see the walls of division between race, ethnic group, and religion breaking down. The story of The Magi is a message not simply of God’s love of all and accessibility to all.  But equally it tells us that these divisions between people whatever their origins are not ultimately important. If God loves Jew and Gentile alike who are we to erect barriers against others or to allow such barriers to stand? The universality of God’s love is to be matched by the universality of our love for all our neighbors. God’s universal love reveals that what we share is more important than our differences.

            Our text today from Ephesians was written from prison – “I Paul am a prisoner for Christ”. More recently Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter during the height of the civil rights movement while he was in prison.  Like Paul, he had been jailed for his beliefs and actions. In that letter from a Birmingham jail he too made this point about our interrelatedness

Injustice any where is threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What ever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. ... Anyone who loves inside the United States can never be considered an outsider any where within its bounds.[2]

Of course the lesson of more recent times captured by Tom Friedman in his book The World Is Flat is that no one any where can be considered an outsider in the global village. God’s love embraces them all and our love must be no less broad. If you think about it the Magi are not so weird after all but wonderful role models. Let us too take a risk (be curious –listen to that inner voice) and follow that star to God’s love of us and then let us share that universal love with the whole world. Amen