Epiphany of our Lord

Today we are celebrating the Epiphany of our Lord, a feast that follows the twelve days of Christmas and remembers that the Christ child came for all people and nations. These verses from Matthew are the Epiphany gospel no matter where we are in the three-year lectionary cycle of readings, but whenever we encounter a familiar story, we are invited to hear something new in it. Sometimes we are drawn to the star that led the magi to Bethlehem, to ponder what reveals Christ in our lives, or we look at the visitors themselves and the gifts they brought to the infant Jesus, and ask ourselves what worship is, but this year what caught my attention was how the magi responded after they met the infant King.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy, and his story mirrors the history of Israel. In the opening chapters of the book of Exodus, Pharaoh ordered that all the male children of the Hebrews, or Israelites, be killed by the midwives; the child who escapes death in Egypt is Moses who goes on to lead God’s people through the wilderness and into freedom. In the verses that follow the magi’s visit here, the emperor Herod similarly orders the slaughter of all the children under two years old after learning about the birth of the Christ child. Warned by an angel, the holy family takes the infant Jesus and flees to escape the tyrant, only to return later in safety.

But the magi did not seek out Jesus because they had learned the prophets’ words about the long-awaited Messiah or the branch of David. They were responding to the revelation of something they did not yet understand, to a foreign phenomenon that was, nonetheless, clearly sacred and holy. And after their visit, the magi chose to “return to their own country by another road.”  The revelation of Jesus that they experienced caused them to choose a different course or route through life.

The magi knew the way back home, and they could have retraced their steps, following their previous route back to their country, but they chose differently. We, too, can follow the familiar worn ways that we have followed before, or we can choose to live differently, in response to the holy gift God has given us in Jesus. That is what discipleship – knowing God and being in relationship with God – is. It’s not an intellectual exercise, but it is about changing course, repenting from the ways that we turn inward and focus on ourselves, and choosing a different course that follows Jesus into the world.

A few years ago, a Benedictine abbot named Father Christopher Jamison invited five volunteers to explore silence with him. His belief is that silence is a wellspring for the soul, providing much-needed respite from a world infected by busy-ness. BBC filmed the participants as they experienced silence first on a weekend retreat at Worth Abbey in Sussex and then over eight days at a Jesuit retreat center in Wales. Like the magi in the gospel, these were not priests or people with formal religious training or even people who had spent their lifetimes in churches or synagogues. They weren’t familiar with the language or traditions of faith; all of that was foreign and strange to them. And yet, they discovered sacred spaces and ways to connect with the holy as they entered and stayed in the silence. And preparing to return home, they committed to choosing to live differently in the world to preserve those sacred spaces and practices.

On Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation of the glory of God — the holy — in the infant Jesus, recognizing, gratefully, that God sent his Son not only for the high priests and Pharisees, the Sadducees and religious leaders, but for every one of us, too. As we marvel at this child and offer our gifts, I wonder if we can offer ourselves, like the magi and those volunteers at the abbey, by choosing to live differently in response to sacred and wondrous miracle that God chooses to love us more than righteousness and judgment and enter into our lives in the Incarnation.

Let us pray…

Holy God of mystery,

Thank you for revealing your love in your infant Son Jesus

And for the faithful witness of the magi who recognized the sacred wonder of his birth.

Draw us to you and teach us to bear your light into the world.

Amen.