Epiphany Jan 8th 2017
Grace to you and peace from God our father and from our
lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, amen.
One of my favorite Christmas movies is the Muppet
Christmas Carol. It’s an adaptation of Charles Dickens original Christmas Carol,
with Jim Henson’s famous Muppets. Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchet, Gonzo is
Charles Dickens telling the story, and Michael Kane is the “regular human”
playing a wonderfully grumpy Ebenezer Scrooge.
Naturally, it IS a musical, and in one of the songs the Ghost of
Christmas Present sings these words: “[Christmas] is the season of the spirit.
The message, if we hear it, is make it last all year.” And at the end of the
story, when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning and realizes he gest another
chance to right a lifetime of grouchiness, he exclaims, “I WILL honor
Christmas, and try to keep it all the year!”
And Scrooge is right, Christmas is not just one day on the calendar. Long after the 70% off sales are over and the
rest of the world has moved on, we
are still celebrating Christmas, all twelve days, to be exact. And, following
the example of Ebenezer Scrooge, we too honor Christmas during the rest of the
year, by living our lives as if every
day were Christmas Day. And that
means, though our trees may be put away and normal life may be in its full,
hectic swing, it means the work of Christmas is never done.
Canadian Catholic theologian Michael Dougherty writes, “When
the carols have been stilled, when the star-topped tree is taken down, when
family and friends are gone home, when we are back to our schedules – The work of Christmas begins: To welcome
the refugee, to heal a broken planet, to feed the hungry, to build bridges of
trust, not walls of fear, to share our gifts, to seek justice and peace for all
people, to bring Christ’s light to the world.”
We, who are fellow bringers of this light of Christ, celebrate
12 days of the season of Christmas, ending on the day of Epiphany, Jan 6th,
which was Friday this year. Epiphany celebrates the light of Christ coming INTO
the world in order to be given TO the rest of the world. Epiphany reminds us
that Jesus was born for US too. It is the day when our familiar manger scenes are
finally complete, with the addition of our three “king” figurines joining Mary,
Jesus, Joseph, shepherds, and various animals.
A favorite youtube channel of mine, “Adam Ruins
Everything” is a short show that does exactly what it sounds like…. Ruins
things that you thought you knew all about. I apologize in advance doing my own
little segment called “Pastor Lydia Ruins Epiphany.”
So, our familiar crowned
figures didn’t actually show up one the night of Jesus’s birth… or even 12 days
later. They didn’t arrive on the scene until … MONTHS or even YEARS later. And by
the way, they even weren’t actually kings.
“We Three Kings of Orient Are,” while a great song, is not entirely true (though the choir sang it beautifully just a moment ago!).
The men we think of as kings are
actually astrologers from an unknown eastern country. There might have been
three, two, six, twelve or fifty. We don’t know. But we DO know that there ARE three
gifts, all fit for royalty - gold
for obvious reasons, frankincense and myrrh, both those used for both anointing and embalming.
But there are
KINGS here in today’s Epiphany story. However, there are not THREE, but TWO
kings. One of them is a false ruler set up to be a puppet king of by the
absentee power of Rome – and he is certainly NOT the fun kind of puppet like in
A Muppet Christmas Carol. The other king
is the true king of the universe, the Lord of Lords, with a star to herald his
birth. And no two kings could be more different.
First, though, we have to go back into our time machine
of choice – TARDIS, Scooby Doo Time Machine, DeLorean – to last week’s reading from
the Gospel of Matthew, which actually happens AFTER today’s reading Did you
catch that? It is a little confusing.
Anyway, AFTER the wise men fade from
sight, Herod finds out how wise they actually are by giving him the slip. This
sets off Herod into a rage, and because he felt
so threatened by this toddler
king that he ordered the mass murder of all the children under two years
old in and around Bethlehem. This is what the dream that Joseph had warned him
about, and he took Jesus and Mary to safety to live as refugees in Egypt until
Herod died.
Herod is a king that you want to avoid, rather than seek
after. Herod is a childish king, a
manipulative, power-hungry, insecure baby-murderer. Instead, the wise men were
led to the child King, who was God in
the flesh and the light to all the nations. This child king would later grow up
to keep making powerful people – like Herod – tremble in their boots, by
turning the “world order” on its head. This child king grew up to bless the
poor, make the last first, and grant his people life by way of an instrument of
death that we invented. In the Jesus
regime, as described in Psalm 72, Mary’s song, and many other places - the
needy are delivered, the poor are given justice, and their oppressors are crushed.
The light of this king shines forth in
the darkness of the world, and we will be able to arise follow this light where
it is leading us.
The road that the wise men were led on took them far from
home, through a strange country, and into the path of some scary people. But
they were always guided by the constant light of the star. And, after finding
Jesus, they were still guided out of harm’s way by taking a different road.
They took a path that was unknown to them, but they knew the one who was
leading them on their way.
A prayer I have prayed often, which is found in our
hymnal, is known as “The Servant’s Prayer." It goes: “O God, you have called
your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet
untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage,
not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love
supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
What roads led you here today? All of us in the middle of
this venture we call life, where sometimes the path ahead of us is hard to see
and full of unknown challenges. Sometimes this road feels long. Sometimes this
road takes us past all kinds of people, some of whom may be “Herods” in disguise.
Sometimes the path takes us to new places, away from the familiar, in order to do a new things and
start new adventures. Sometimes our path takes a new turn, and we go by a
different road than we had imagined ourselves following.
None of us really have any idea where this road will take us, but we know to WHOM this road is
talking us, and who is guiding us
along the way. Along the way, we find Jesus. And we are always guided by his
light and love.
When the wise men found Jesus, they did not END their journey there, just as
Christmas does not end on December 25th. Finding Jesus only caused
them to get back out on the road. Like many of the wise men and women who have
gone before us, we too are called to keep putting one foot
in front of the other, continuing to do the work of Christmas by living the
Jesus regime –“welcoming the refugee, healing our planet, feeding the hungry,
building bridges, not walls, sharing gifts, seeking justice and peace for all
people, bringing Christ’s light to the world.”
 |
| By Chinese artist He Qi |
Hopefully we do go out “with good courage, not knowing WHERE we go,” but knowing that the hand of God is leading the way, like a bright
beacon of hope, and the love of God is keeping us going, like an ever present companion.
The path twists and turns, it goes through scary and beautiful places. But no
matter where it may take us, we are
going to be ok.
I have been taking down the wall art I’d hung up to get
ready for moving to the next venture
that God has called me to. One is a
picture that hung in my office, a gift from another goodbye, of baby Moses in
his basket of reeds, rescued by the princess of Egypt, after having been sent
forth by his sister Miriam in the hope
that God would make his journey a safe one.
Another is a cross made out of broken ceramics put together
with wise women, as we embraced our brokenness together and made something new
and beautiful out of the broken pieces.
Another is a quote from C. S. Lewis, painted on wood
reclaimed from the scrap pile, which says, “Courage, dear heart.” It’s a quote
from one of his Narnia books, The Voyage
of the Dawn Treader. The crew of the ship The Dawn Treader are lost in a
magical cloud of darkness, and all despair of ever getting out. Then a white albatross
flies overhead, whispers something to them, and then leads the way out into the
light. What did albatross whisper? “Courage, dear heart.”
Take courage, dear heart, on all the paths the God takes
you. Courage, dear heart, when the Herods of the world seem to loom large.
Courage, dear heart, when traveling out on a road different than the one you
arrived. Courage, dear heart, and keep walking. Amen.
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