Epiphany 2020

Matthew 2:1-12

The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly

When I was about 6 years old, my family was sitting in the dining room eating a meal. Our little house had a picture window in the living room across from an open door way so you could look from our front porch into the dining room.

It was just us four kids and Mom and Dad. There was no company so it must have been a Sunday after Church since that was the only time we would have actually sat in the dining room, or all sat down to eat at the same time for that matter. Whatever the occasion, it was during the Christmas season.

Now, I had never seen my mother afraid of anything, never heard her scream or flinch. Dad either. I come from tough stock, from folks who are not easily rattled and keep a stiff upper lip. But that day, when Santa Claus himself knocked we were all startled. That’s because Santa didn’t knock at the door - he knocked on that picture window. And he didn’t just knock, he banged on that big window and started shouting “Ho Ho Ho’s from the porch and I mean we all nearly hit the ceiling! Mom was screaming. Dad was screaming. My brothers were all running around and trying to hide under the table. It was like a bomb went off in our front yard!

But Dad went and let him in. And we all quickly realized this was not the real Santa. But it wasn’t a stranger either. It was our friend from church Wes Davis. Mr. Davis was a big man who could really fill out a Santa costume. But he also had a really big and unmistakeable voice. So I knew his wasn’t the real Santa. Having Mr. Davis surprise us like that was great fun and a family memory we still share.

Recently, I’ve been pondering how things have changed in our world from that time when neighbors stopped by unannounced and doors were left unlocked and strangers were invited in.

Radford is a rare and wonderful place in that most of us still live that way. But most of the rest of the world, as you may have seen in the news, seems to have gone crazy.

One of the things I have come to struggle with lately is the increase of distrust in our society, even in small towns like Radford. I’ve been reading a bit about this and found thousands of scholarly articles about our general distrust of government, distrust of strangers, distrust of people from other countries and cultures and distrust of other religions. I decided not to read all of that. It’s too depressing.

But I did some reading this week about the general distrust we have of each other. This is sometimes called tribalism. The theory of tribalism is that groups of like-minded people tend to stick with their own and distrust other tribes. The thing that really got to me as I studied this was the news that people don’t trust each other anymore even inside of tribes. The statistics that indicate this increase in distrust across the board are huge.

So, if Grace Episcopal Church is a group of like-minded individuals, statistically speaking, in recent years, our chance of distrusting each other has increased. But we’re not really surprised by stats that tell us we distrust anyone outside of our group - our parish - our town. We don’t trust the diocese, we don’t trust the bishop, we don’t trust the local government, the State, the White House, Congress other countries. Statistically speaking, in any group, we don’t trust any other group any more. But the more scary news is, statistically speaking, we are at risk of not even trusting each other within our smaller circles.

This is strikingly opposite the norm of just 75 years ago when trusting your inner circle and your government was at an all time high and people even trusted other groups and countries. As one scholar puts it:

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, while looking back at the first decade, we are reminded of the introductory sentences of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859/1997, p. 13: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”) We began the new millennium filled with great possibilities only to be met with 9/11. The first decade (of the 21st century) began with great prosperity driven by globalization only to end with global recession and growing distrust of organizations and those who lead and manage them. The decade that began with hope and optimism has given way to fear and pessimism.[1]

But as I said, I didn’t really study this academically. I’m just left wondering about the obvious question, “Who then do we trust?”

When Jiminy Cricket sang the iconic song, “When You Wish Upon a Star” to Pinocchio, we all sighed and believed that dreams really do come true. (Dreams to become the real persons we already are!) Now we laugh at fools who believe in wishing on stars and draw the blinds and don’t answer the phone and keep to our own devises - and by that I mean phones and iPads and laptops - devises - and you know the old saying about those who are left to their own devises!

Who do we trust?

When the wise men traversed afar to bring gifts and pay homage to Jesus, we are told they followed a star. They were astrologers - so they would have noticed a star which would lead them West - to Nazareth.

The symbolism of the star in this story is an answer to the belief of the day that the birth of a savior would be accompanied by celestial signs. In the Old Testament, a strange seer from the East, Balaam, spoke of a star arising out of Jacob. (Num. 24:17). So this is a really old story.

Some scholars will tell you that the religion represented among these visitors was likely Zoroastrianism which is the world’s oldest religion - older than Judaism.

We’ve wrapped the story of the Epiphany from Matthew in with the Nativity story from Luke and shoved the celebration of it to a fixed date on January 6th so that it rarely lands on a Sunday (like it did last year). So we’ve lost our awareness of the importance of this story amid the chaos of our celebration of the birth of our Lord and the end of our fiscal and calendar year. And that’s too bad because this story from Matthew is, in some ways, the more important story than Luke’s story.

The word epiphany means “to be manifest” or “to appear openly.” We have come to understand the word to mean something more like a surprise than a gradual dawning of new life.  I used to explain the meaning of the word Epiphany by reminding folks of that old TV advertisement for the tomato juice called V8 - “I could’ve had a V8!” But smacking our foreheads and acting surprised every January 6th is really missing the point. There is way more to this story than camels along side the donkey in the manger scene. This is the story of the whole world coming together because of the incarnate love of God.

These wise men or seers as they are more appropriately called, were real - though the number three is not in the Bible. The idea there were three is a tradition based perhaps on the trinitarian number of three but also to indicate at least three different cultures - or tribes.

These seers are a symbol of the incarnation coming into all of the world, of the nations coming together under One King. Other religious leaders from the near east who also believed in and were waiting for a messiah came to see and saw and believed that Jesus of Nazareth was The One sent from God to save the whole world.

This story took place much later than the Bethlehem story. These seers came to the house of Mary and Joseph so all that flight to Egypt part must have past by then and they were back home in Nazareth. It would have taken that long for them to get the news and travel that far. And Jesus would likely be a toddler by then.

It’s also important to remember that these events were providentially guided. We are not listening here to a story of good fortune, happy coincidences, and historical accidents. Jesus is the son of God, king of the Jews, and Davidic ruler. It is no surprise, then, that his life was not only divinely begun, but announced with extraordinary signs and preserved providentially from the threats of a jealous tyrant.

When she was in middle school, just a few years after her childhood days of Jiminy Cricket, Judy developed a huge crush on Donny Osmond. She had a poster of him on her wall that came from a teenage magazine. She listened to all of his music and watched him on TV. For her 13th birthday present her dad took her to Roanoke to a Donny Osmond concert. Judy was so excited! She dressed up and put on make up and dreamed of her chance to finally meet and fall in love with her idol. In her simplicity and naïveté she actually thought they would meet and she actually thought he would fall in love with her too and they would live happily ever after.

The first clue she was wrong about this was the mere size of the crowd. Their seats were way in the back. Then she noticed the large number of lucky girls who were standing at the front, right at the the stage. Some of them actually even got to touch Donny Osmond when he shook some hands and signed some autographs.

But Judy went home completely disillusioned feeling foolish for having believed in the Cinderella story that the media had sold to her and all of those other young people, like me, who had posters of superstars on our teenage walls. Nancy stopped believing that night that dreaming of and wishing on stars was anything more than foolish.

Jesus is not a superstar. And Epiphany is not a surprise.

Epiphany is a growing awareness of the love and presence of God - at all times, in all places, in and with all people. Epiphany takes a life time. Those lost souls out there who follow power and money and believe only in prosperity and live in denial of the one true God have lost their way by following the wrong stars.

Don’t forget, those lost souls have the same possibility of God that we do.

We believe that we sit in the real luxury of all the world when we sit in this sanctuary, when we take the time to learn more about this God who sent God’s only son, when we learn to pray and enter into relationship with God. We’re the lucky ones. Though we prefer to call it blessed.

That, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about. It is not about this building, no matter how lovely. It is not about even our elegant decorations, which are a beautiful symbol of our adoration of the incarnate God. No, this ancient story of the seers who came to pay homage to him lives on, not because of nativity scenes, but because the whole story lives on in our hearts. This old church could burn to the ground and we’d still have God - in all places, at all times, in each other.

The word seer literally means “see-er.” These were the wise ones who could see the magnitude of this Epiphany. We too can see all of this in our own wisdom. But what do we miss? To what are we blind? How do we need to open our eyes?

The basic question of “who do we trust?” then, becomes “how can we share this Epiphany?” How can we spread the Good News that God is incarnate in Christ? Always was. Always will be. Should we spend the money and dress up and adore the wrong star? Should we dress up like Santa and bang on the windows and doors of our neighbors? Should we even try? Should we wish upon Jiminy Cricket’s star and sing sweet songs and hope that will be enough?

The answer is in the Epiphany of your heart.

And, though I seem to be making fun of Jiminy Cricket’s song, he had something right. “Make’s no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you.” We just need to remember to desire the right stuff.

Instead of material things, we need to remember to desire what is good and true and right with God. We need to trust in the love of God enough to lead others to the story of the incarnation, which we can all trust. We need to remember to trust in God to lead us to the Christ child and then we can lead others there too.

Amen.


[1] Goldman, B. (Ed.), Shapiro, D. (Ed.). (2012). The Psychology of Negotiations in the 21st Century Workplace. New York: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203135068