The twelve days of Christmas end Tuesday with Epiphany. Tomorrow night is the "Twelfth Night." Epiphany ends our celebration of Jesus' birth and points us toward the future. In many Hispanic communities Epiphany is a bigger occasion than Christmas. It usually goes by the name The Feast of the Three Kings.
In all three years of the Lectionary cycle the readings for Epiphany are the same: Isaiah 60 (Arise, shine for your light has come....) with a reference to gold and frankincense; Ephesians 3 (...the Gentiles have become fellow heirs and members of the same body....); and, of course, Matthew 2:1-12, which is often combined with Luke 2:1-20 and read as part of the Christmas story. There's nothing wrong with combining the two accounts of Jesus' birth, the one from Luke and the other from Matthew. But they are very different.
In Luke's story, shepherds go to a manger or feed trough, which would have been in a barn or stable to see the new-born Jesus, who is called a "baby" or BREPHOS in the Greek. In Matthew's story the Magi, or astrologers, go to a house to see Jesus, who is called a "child" or PAIDION in the Greek. The visit of the Magi could have occurred days, weeks, or even months after the visit of the shepherds. Then there is the matter of how many Magi, or astrologers, there were. How many were there? An early tradition says there were twelve. The assumption of three probably comes from the three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. No number is given in Matthew's text.
Central to the story of Jesus' birth as we have it from Matthew is the arrival of Gentiles to worship the child. In all likelihood the Magi were people who studied the sky, looking to the stars for an understanding of life's meaning. We would call them astrologers. They may have come from Persia, or what is now Iran, southeast of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. They knelt in homage or adoration before the Hebrew child, whom they understood to be the King of the Jews. And they gave him gifts.
The gift-giving of the Magi is often held up as the centerpiece of the story. The entire phenomenon of gift—giving at Christmas goes back to what the Magi did. Preachers sometimes use the story as an opportunity for exhorting Christian congregations to be more generous in their giving to the Church and to be more generous in general—not a bad use of the story. But Christian preaching begins with gospel, good news, and then exhortation can follow. The gospel in Matthew's story is God's gift-giving, not that of the Magi.
The focus of the book Matthew wrote, The Gospel According to Matthew, is that Jesus is the savior of his people, and the story of the Magi broadens his people to include the gentiles, or all people. This is a story about God's astounding gift of love to the world, a love that works its miracle of hope and healing in the heart of anyone open to it—Jew, Gentile, Black, Brown, Yellow, White, young, old, married, single, divorced, gay, straight, rich, or poor.
Often we are so interested in what the Magi did, that we miss what they felt in the story. I suspect that the magi were not ordinary people. They studied the stars. They were into mystery, as we would say. They knew that much of life's meaning is connected to what we feel rather than to what we do. We are feeling creatures, we men and women; and when we are out of touch with our feelings, we pay a heavy price emotionally and spiritually.
Matthew tells us the Magi "were overwhelmed with joy." That gets my attention. You and I live in a culture that until very recently has placed high value on being cool, that is, on not showing too much of any emotion. Some of that has changed since 9/11, when many Americans were overwhelmed with rage and fear. Matthew tells us the Magi were overwhelmed with joy.
The Magi were people—men and women perhaps—who undertook a long journey in search of life's meaning. They understood that life's meaning partakes of mystery. They "followed a star." And they were not disappointed. The star led them, and then it stopped, according to Matthew. It didn't stop at a diamond mine, at a new car showroom, or at a royal palace. It stopped at a house, inside of which was a child, whose life as an adult was marked by firm but gentle love, by anger at injustice of every kind, and by a desire to draw all men and women into a fellowship of people who would try to live by his teachings and example. At the prospect of all that, the Magi felt overwhelming joy.
That was God's great gift two thousand years ago, and it is a gift God keeps on giving. Our primary function as a church is to offer that gift to a world that keeps losing its way, looking for meaning in all the wrong places. One of the challenges facing Rutgers Presbyterian Church is discovering how best to offer the gift of God's love and justice to the community around us and draw people into a fellowship that is genuinely loving and inclusive. What we cannot do is buy into our culture's belief that we find our deepest meaning in what we own—in our material possessions, or even in what we accomplish—in what we do. Instead, we can be faithful to the Biblical vision of a world where people are valued for who they are, simply for existing as human beings made in the image of God, without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic status.
In the story of the Magi there is something more significant than their giving their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the child Jesus. They were prepared to do that; they had brought gifts from their starting point. There is that wonderful sentence describing the change in the Magi after they worshiped Jesus: "...they left for their own country by another road."
Having seen Jesus, and having heard from God in a dream, they changed direction. They became willing to defy the established powers, symbolized by King Herod, in order to be faithful to their new awareness. They acted with integrity. And that counts for a lot.
At this point in my long ministry, I'm very much aware of the limitations of social action preaching. Obviously I believe the church is called to work for justice, especially for people experiencing injustice. I believe the Church is called to work for peace, peace among nations and cultures, and peace within people's souls. But I also know that preaching about justice and peace rarely if ever changes people's hearts and re-orders their priorities. James Loder, a theologian who wrote about transformation, says people need safe space, that is, safe emotional and spiritual space, if they are to change the direction of their lives. (The Biblical word repentance means changing the direction of one's life.)
Over the holidays I heard two stories of transformation. I heard the first one on Christmas morning as I was listening to National Public Radio. The program was about talented young musicians, their career aims, and what motivated them to explore music as a profession. A young woman who was a proficient instrumentalist, and I wish I had written down her name, said she remembered being taken to church when she was a child. She recalled one particular December Sunday morning, when her family sat in the last pew for the worship service. She said she didn't really want to be there, and it was hot and stuffy in that sanctuary. But then the choir and congregation sang "Angels we have heard on high... ." And her life changed. There was something in that moment, indefinable, inexplicable, that changed the direction of her life. She knew, as she hadn't known before, that music would be at the center of her life.
The second story came to me as I drank coffee (not at Starbucks) with a woman who is a hospital chaplain in a mid-western city. She told me that in the hospital where she works there was a chaplain who believed that pets could be useful in the process of healing human pain and sickness. The medical staff was not convinced. One day a young man twenty-one years old was admitted to the emergency room after being in a serious accident. His vital signs were fading and he was hooked up to machines. The chaplain with the dog let go of the leash outside the young man's room. The dog, whose name was Mack, made its way into the room and climbed up onto the young man's bed. The dog, without any human command or instruction, placed its nuzzle under one of the young man's hands and lay there. After a few hours, the chaplain tried to coax the dog off the bed, but the dog growled and refused to move. Still more hours later, the patient's vital signs strengthened considerably. Only then would the dog leave the young man, who made a full recovery. The doctors no longer resist the presence of certain pets in the hospital.
I love stories like those two, because they help me remember that the world is filled with mystery, with processes and realities we cannot understand fully but cannot deny either. People and institutions change because something touches them deep inside. It is as though a star appears to them, and they follow it. They choose to travel by another way like the Magi in Matthew's Epiphany story.
What are your dreams this year as we prepare to leave Christmas? What kind of change are you experiencing on your life's journey, on your pilgrimage of faith? Are you open to the mystery of God's presence? Are you in touch with your feelings, with that part of you that is angry at injustice, that yearns for deep satisfaction, that can get excited about hope like the Magi two thousand years ago?
Leaving Christmas has never been a favorite thing for me. I don't like taking down the tree and packing away decorations accumulated over a long time. It has been especially difficult these last ten years. But Epiphany is more than the end of celebrating Christmas; it is the beginning of the journey toward Good Friday and Easter, when the power of God's love comes to triumphant fulfillment.
We have worshiped the child Jesus together. Let us see how our life as a church, and as individuals, can be different because of what God has given us in the Child worshiped by wise people in every age.