Epiphany Sunday 2023

 

Epiphany Sunday 2023

 

Eph 3.1-12. Matt 2.1-12

 

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, when the Magi, the Wise Men, arrive in Bethlehem with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Epiphany is really on January 6, of course, but we celebrate it on the nearest Sunday. It’s the start of a whole season – Epiphanytide - when we take time to think about what the birth of that baby in Bethlehem means to us. It lasts right through until Candlemas on February 2, which is why the crib in church, and in my home, stays up until then, as we ponder this story of the child in the manger, God with us in vulnerability and littleness.

 

It’s good that we give this story time. Anyone who has had a baby themselves, or been close to new parents and children, will know that the birth isn’t the end of the story. Of course not. It’s just the beginning. However well prepared parents think they are for the new arrival, they don’t begin to know what their child will be like, and how he or she will change them until they arrive, and even then it’s a gradual process, as that child’s unique personality starts to reveal itself.

 

The word Epiphany means “revelation” - literally “shining out” - and I think that’s what happens when any child comes into the world. They gradually reveal themselves as they grow up. Their light begins to shine on those around them.

 

If it is true for all of us, it was certainly true of Jesus, and the stories we hear during Epiphanytide explore how people gradually came to understand who he was, and what he meant to them.   

 

Epiphanytide begins with the “shining out” of a new star in the sky. It catches the attention of the Magi – philosophers and astrologers probably from Babylon. But what does it mean? For them, the answer was obvious. It was a common ancient belief that a significant birth – a king, a leader - would be signalled by the appearance of a star.  So they set off in its general direction.  

 

But that’s where the story gets complicated, because despite the apparent clarity of this revelation – a stonking great star in the sky - the Magi struggle to find the child. They head for Jerusalem, and for Herod’s palace. It’s a disastrous decision, not at all wise. Herod was a megalomaniac, paranoid dictator, who’d had quite a few of his own family killed, so he was hardly going to take kindly to people suggesting that a new king had been born. Their visit triggered the massacre of the children in Bethlehem. Why did they get it so wrong? Well, to be fair, the star wasn’t very specific. It didn’t go before them in the first part of the story. It just indicated the general direction. But more to the point, they assumed a king would be born in a palace, that God would be at work, first and foremost, among the rich and powerful, the movers and shakers of the world as it was. They don’t expect to find God in an ordinary home, among ordinary people.

 

When they do find the Christ child, in a back street in Bethlehem, it changes them completely. They go home, “by another road”, not just literally, to avoid Herod, but spiritually too, different people to those they were when they set out.

 

It's an extraordinary story, and there’s no evidence that we are meant to take it as literal history, and we usually end up heading down lots of blind alleys if we do – what did Mary and Joseph do with the gold, frankincense and myrrh? Was the star a comet? It doesn’t fit with Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, either, with shepherds, and a manger and “no room at the inn”, but that doesn’t seem to have bothered those who drew together the books of the Bible as we now have them. They knew that the real importance of these stories was as a sort of overture, a prologue, introducing the themes of Jesus’ adult ministry, hinting at the person Jesus would grow up to be.

 

Matthew writes about the visit of Gentile Magi – foreigners from far away – because he knew that Jesus had grown up to welcome people from all sorts of backgrounds later. He emphasized his ordinariness because he knew that the adult Jesus hadn’t sought status or the affirmation of the rich and powerful. He was no more to be found in a palace as a grown man than he had been as a baby.

 

This story invites us to ponder where we are looking for Jesus today, where we expect to find God at work. Do we expect to find him only, or mainly, in a church building? Do we expect to find him only in lives which are neat and tidy, respectable and sorted out? Do we expect to find him only in times when all is well, or can we imagine he might be sitting with us in the darkness? Do we expect to find him somewhere else, rather than where we are? When Covid struck two years ago, and we couldn’t meet together in the church building, although it was a terrible time, it also meant that many people began to reimagine their homes, and the other places they spent their time, in new ways, as places where they could meet God, as they joined in virtual worship, or prayed and reflected where they happened to be. Maybe you’re listening to this worship podcast now at home, or on the way to work, or while walking the dog. In doing so, you’re proclaiming that wherever you happen to be at this moment is holy ground. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” says Psalm 24. It’s not a “second best” to pray at home. In fact, if we want a faith that’s firmly rooted and can sustain us through the tough times, we need one which has literally “come home” to us, which is where we are, not dependent on being in a special place.

 

That’s why, at Seal Church, we practice the ancient Epiphany tradition, of blessing chalk. It’s common across Northern Europe, but happily developing here in the UK too. The chalk is used to mark the doorways of churches and – most importantly – of homes, with the numbers of the year – 2023 – and the letters C, M and B. You can pick up some chalk from the church porch, or use some of your own. The letters, depending on your viewpoint, either stand for Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, the traditional names of the Magi, or for the Latin words “Christus Mansionem Benedicat” – Christ bless this house. Either way it is a statement of faith that the places over which it is chalked will be places where God is, where love is, where there is a welcome for wandering wise men and women, or foolish ones for that matter.

 

It's a bold proclamation, and a scary one. Are we telling the truth? Do we believe that God could be at work in us, that we can find him right where we are, that his light can “shine out” in our lives? That’s the challenge of Epiphany. Like the Magi, we may not always know where we are going, or what we are doing, but in the end, if our eyes and our hearts are open to God, we will find him, and be welcomed. Amen