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Epiphany of our Lord, 01/06/2016
Becoming the Magi
Sermon on Matthew 25:1-12, by David Zersen
Here you find this sermon as audio file
I love this annual celebration of the Epiphany despite the fact that it asks a great deal from Christians. On the one hand there are so many traditions connected with Epiphany, not to mention substantial literary and artistic allusions. The tradition of eating the King’s Cake and finding the three jelly beans (for the three magi) is still popular in many settings. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night relates to the day, as does Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors and O’Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. A mystical etching by Richard Root called Three Kings is one of my favorite artistic expressions, as is the haunting melody of “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” And who has not noticed the popularity of the enduring bumper sticker “Wise Men Still Seek Him?” On the other hand, the gifts given in this ancient story summon us to supreme expressions of sacrifice, never very popular for Christians after they’ve emptied their pockets in the annual commercial frenzy of Christmas shopping. What is there here for us in Matthew’s story that can both capture our interest today as well as challenge our resolve to move more boldly into a new year of discipleship?
Epiphany often gets lost in the Church calendar primarily because it falls on a Sunday only every seven years, and because the government didn’t make it a national holiday like Christmas Day to allow it to be celebrated regardless of when it falls during the week. However, it was once, along with Christmas and Easter, one of the three major feasts of the Christian year. As early as the late second century in Egypt, Epiphany remembered the birth and baptism of Jesus for Eastern Christians. It was placed on the winter solstice, Jan. 6, to discourage the pagan remembrance of the birth of Osiris from his mother, Kore, goddess of the Nile. When two hundred years later western Christians did something similar by remembering Jesus’ birth in place of the rebirth of the unconquerable sun, the Sol Invictus, on Dec. 25, Eastern Christians joined them, pressing January 6 to search for new meanings. Thus it happened that the ancient Eastern celebration on Jan. 6 came to inaugurate a post-Christmas season of the ways in which God shared the incarnation with the world, beginning with the story of the revelation to the sages from the East. It is a story about giving which presses us to understand God’s gift as well our own need to give.
THE GIFT OF GOD
Matthew’s story is cherished by us, first of all, because only he relates it. It fits well in Matthew’s context of concern for the alien and outsider, it being a revelation of the Savior not only to the Jew, but now also to the gentile. Furthermore, this Savior’s role is established by the story’s revelation that Jesus is no ordinary child, but one who will assume a role of leadership in the world. The story therefore has his arrival, his “epiphany,” recognized by people of significance, by travelers from afar.
It is commonplace to say that the world was waiting for this Gift. Matthew remembers the words of the prophet Micah (5:2) who had foretold that the ruler in Israel, one whose origins were from ancient days, was to come from Bethlehem. Roman historian Suetonius related that “there had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judea to rule the world (Life of Vespasian 4:5). (See also Tacitus, Histories 5:13).
Into this anticipation caused by the unsettlement of the times, Matthew tells his readers that God enters to give not what humans want, but what they need. Kings, sages and common shepherds all sought the meaning which governmental stability and affluence cannot bring. What humans need most is the knowledge that in this vast cosmos of ambiguous meanings there is a heart that beats for them, a purpose which claims them, and a love which embraces them. This gift of understanding is intended for everyone and through it all people find the personal meaning in life which God has been seeking to provide.
GIFTS OF THE MAGI
It is fascinating to readers that among those to whom God reveals this greatest of gifts are seekers, people like us, who are waiting to be sure they have embraced that which life seeks more than anything else. In our story, they are magi, wise men, astrologers, people who want more than daily bread. Interestingly, historians like Herodotus (1: 101, 132) place them right in the heart of contemporary Iraq. They were Medes of Babylon/Baghdad who had come to provide wise counsel for Persian rulers. With skills in medicine, philosophy and science, they also interpreted dreams and foretold human destiny by studying the stars. Although we have little appreciation for this primitive science today, such people were the true wise men of the near East in ancient times. What they were seeking is precisely what bumpers stickers today tell us wise men still seek: A meaning which transforms life and assures us that in the midst of starry galaxies there is purpose for our life when the God of all creation claims us for himself.
The Venerable Bede, England’s great church historian of the 730s, gave names to these men and meanings to their gifts. Melchior brought gold as for a king, Gaspar brought incense for one who would serve as priest to his people and Balthazar, of swarthy skin, myrrh, typically used to embalm one for burial. They were grand gifts for the whole of life from men of significance. They were the best gifts that could be provided for one who could change the course of the world and the direction of one’s life. The magi become models for us as the first bearers of Christmas gifts. Their gifts gave meaning not only to the recipient who could be Lord and Ruler of their lives, but their gifts also gave meaning to themselves as they sought to kneel in homage before the only One who could give meaning even greater than they sought.
GIFTS OF GOD’S PEOPLE
Matthew’s story both charms and challenges us. Wise seekers from distant lands bow in homage before an infant whose mysterious potential is as yet untested. Gifts as always seek to embrace the real meanings of the givers and the recipients. What can this mean for us today?
Here in Austin, Texas, we have a special claim to understanding this story because here William Sydney Porter ( O’Henry) lived before writing the great short story, The Gift of the Magi. In it, a young couple in their twenties, Jim and Della, struggle to find the right Christmas gift for each other. Each has treasures, Della’s long, beautiful hair, and Jim’s father’s and grandfather’s gold watch. More than that, less than two dollars in cash, each! Both do the unthinkable. Della sells her hair for $20 to buy Jim a platinum watch fob for his gold watch. Jim sells the gold watch to buy a set of oyster-shell combs for her long flowing hair. When each discovers what the other has done, there is a sense of epiphany, a discovery about who each really is and what their partner means to them. The author concludes with these words which have entered the annals of the world’s greatest literature:
“Here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children
in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their
house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give
gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the
wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are magi!”
Here O’Henry is telling us that the deepest meanings in gift giving arise from an understanding of and a love for the recipient, not to mention an even more profound understanding of who one is and what one has to give. Epiphany begins a season for us in which we learn of God’s profound love for people of every race and clime, every station and evil. The incarnate gift of that love, appearing for us in the life and sacrificial death of Jesus, transforms us. As we enter this transformation, as true magi, knowing that we are among those who were lost but now are loved, we are touched to give gifts in new and different ways.
One wonders what magi there may be among today’s travelers and wayfarers, wanderers and refugees. We note how easily our contemporaries wave off those who seek to enter our midst from afar. Yet all of us are strangers and pilgrims seeking to be magi, longing to be givers along with Jim and Della. All of us, touched again by God’s love in Christ this Christmas, whoever we are, know that as we seek to claim and pass on the real gift in Matthew’s story, “everywhere we are the wisest. We are the magi.”
Hymns: “As with Gladness, Men of Old,” “Brightest and Best are the Sons of the Morning,” “We Three Kings of Orient are”