I got a taste of what she had experienced the first time I was in France. I got a headache, and suddenly, the lack of drug stores and convenience stores became glaringly obvious. For what seemed like hours, I tried to find some place that sold analgesics—the clerk at the little market around the corner from our hotel had no idea what I wanted. I finally was down to asking strangers in the street—and I really only know menu French and directional French. But I didn’t want escargots at the moment—I wanted Excedrin.
A couple of people would point and tell me that there was a pharmacy just down the street. I stood there, and just couldn’t see it—the shop where he pointed had swanky rows of beauty products. Finally, a sympathetic man pointed up, and I noticed a green neon sign above my head in the shape of a cross. I slunk in, and voila! Yes, they had aspirin (in tubes the diameter of a roll of quarters, but aspirin nonetheless)! Once I realized this, I suddenly saw those green neon signs EVERYWHERE. They had just been part of the landscape and meaningless to me before. I didn’t know what to look for—but once I saw it, I saw it everywhere.
Matthew’s story suggests that Joseph and Mary are living in Bethlehem, because we don’t see a stable or manger anywhere in this scene. The Magi know nothing of this, of course, and set out from their land not knowing what exactly will be their ultimate destination. They stop off in Jerusalem assuming that of course everyone would both also know about this miracle in their own midst. But only the Magi have seen and recognized the sign dancing above their heads.
These strangers, with their gaudy outfits and strange accents, haul themselves all the way across the burning desert to bring impractical gifts to a baby king. Well, gold was practical—but perfume and an embalming spice? Expensive, but certainly not immediately as useful as say a case of diapers.
The Magi approach Herod, asking for help in pinpointing where they are going. Strangely, Herod provides that help, even though their news makes him uneasy, even afraid that he could be violently deposed and his throne, his only through Roman backing, could be overthrown. He’s afraid of that because that is exactly the way he has operated to become powerful himself.
In our readings today, we specifically celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus. The word “epiphany” can mean appearance, unveiling, disclosure, or manifestation. The story we hear is about the disclosure of Jesus as an sign of hope for not just his own people, but for the entire world. We see that these travelers see the baby in the care of his mother and father—and their response is worship and offering. After we’ve spent weeks wondering what we are going to get, the Magi present us with a challenge—what are we going to offer?
It’s funny—most of us have just spent weeks finding and purchasing and wrapping all kinds of gifts for the people in our lives. Yet what gifts do we have left to offer to Jesus? He asks us for our attention, our trust, our love. And the best way we offer those things to Christ is often to offer them to each other.
The encounter the Magi had with the Holy Family undoubtedly left them changed. It also led them to find their way home by a different path than the one they had taken before. And that’s the way it is with epiphanies, isn’t it? They change you, and they change your understanding of the path that you are on. Epiphanies point us to another way home.
After all that we have endured and experienced in these last many months, who here isn’t longing for that? A whole ‘nother year of pandemic and here comes a wave with a strain so virulent that last Thursday, the US set a record of 580,000 NEW cases of COVID reported in a single day—and the previous day’s record was 488,000 cases in a single day, which in itself is mind-bogglingly tragic. Given the loss of people we loved and admired, not to forget that we lost both the great spiritual leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the great American treasure and animal rights champion Betty White in a single week’s time. Given that in a few days it will be a year since the January 6 attack on our capitol and our democracy. In so many of our families, mine included, there has been too much sickness, too much uncertainty, too much stress.
The road we have been on for far too many months and years is one of hatred, division, and self-delusion. It’s not enough to disagree with our political opponents—we are told by too many that we have to hate them, and deny their humanity.
The fact of our lives is this: you really only see what you are looking for. If you are looking for things that make you angry, divided, resentful, bitter, or afraid—things that make you doubt the existence of God, in other words--that is exactly what you will see.
I don;’t know about you, but that sounds like a better road to me. And it’s a road that will give you the strength and endurance to confront the forces of injustice, rancor, division, ignorance, malevolence, violence, and hatred that has too much power. It seems ascendant, dominant, in part because people of good heart do not challenge it in the name of love that Jesus embodies and calls us to embody as well.
The road too many of us have been on has not served humanity well. Perhaps it’s time to look for a different road—because we know they exist. People like Desmond Tutu and Betty White show us that. The Magi remind us of that.
After finding and worshiping the infant Jesus, the Magi become convinced that they must find another way home. And I am convinced we are like that too. After two years in a pandemic, and with another surge on us, what we have been doing is obviously not working. We long to find another way home. And perhaps we can let that star—the star of hope—guide us.
Jesus calls us to enlarge our own horizons, just as the star caused the Magi to enlarge theirs. Specifically, Jesus calls us to worship, and to offering, absolutely—but more importantly, Jesus calls us to be formed and shaped by that worship and that offering to see the world with new eyes. Jesus calls us to renewal, to reconciliation, to discipleship.
Jesus comes as “God with us” to assure us of how very much God seeks relationship with us, fallible humans that we are. And God doesn’t just pull us close—God shows us another way, a better way, home. A way of hope. A way of love. A way of compassion and justice and mercy. Encounters with God are themselves gifts to us. They help us see with new eyes the signs of God’s enduring love and faithfulness all around us. They are doorways into a new understanding of ourselves, and of those around us.
May we worship and lay our offerings before the newborn Prince of Peace, and look with new eyes for the signs of his love all about us and within us so that we too may travel on the road of love and grace. May we be the sign that the hurting world needs.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist, in person and online, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
