HomeWhen something marvelous manifests in our life or in the world, what is the right way to pay homage to it?
READING
Psalm 72;
1Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
8May he have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
9May his foes* bow down before him,
and his enemies lick the dust.
10May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles
render him tribute,
may the kings of Sheba and Seba
bring gifts.
11May all kings fall down before him,
all nations give him service.
15…May gold of Sheba be given to him.
Isaiah 60
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
2For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the LORD will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
4Lift up your eyes and look around;
they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away,
and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.
5Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,*
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.
11Your gates shall always be open;
day and night they shall not be shut,
so that nations shall bring you their wealth,
with their kings led in procession.
SERMON
Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas—at least by some reckonings. There are those traditions which include Christmas Day in the Twelve Days and there are those which begin with December 26. For those the who count from the 26th, today is Twelfth Day, the Day of the Three Kings, and Epiphany. First, some brief definitions and a brief (I promise) historic review.
The word “Epiphany” means revelation or manifestation. When we have a sudden realization of some deep meaning or understanding we say we have had an epiphany. It is used in religious terms to indicate an appearance or manifestation of the divine. While it is Greek in origin, in English it is related to the word “fancy”, as in to fancy someone or to fancy one’s self important; and to the word “fantasy”.
In the history of the Christian movement, January 6 was a date heavily laden with meaning. Before the Church formally set the date of Christmas as December 25, the birth of Jesus was celebrated in many congregations, especially eastern ones, as having happened on January 6. It also was the date on which Jesus was believed to have been baptized, was the date on which the miracle at the wedding at Cana was supposed to have taken place—which was the site of the very first miracle of Jesus, turning water into wine—and it was the date on which the Magi were said to have found Jesus and given him gifts.
One of the reasons the early church fathers wanted to separate the birth of Jesus from the baptism of Jesus is that they found there was what they considered some confusion among some Christians who began to believe that the baptism was the birth of Christ, that is, was the moment when Jesus the human being was anointed by God and became the Christ. This could give rise to a form of Unitarian rather than Trinitarian thinking as it could imply that Christ is merely a title bestowed by God upon a human person, and is not the second person of the Trinity. Separating the two dates helped to avoid what those Church leaders viewed as a heresy.
All four of these events, the birth, the adoration of the Magi, the baptism, and the first miracle, all of these are--within the Christian tradition--considered epiphanies, manifestations of divinity.
The epiphany that I am focusing on today is the visit of the Magi, or the three kings. In many parts of Europe and the Americas, children went to bed last night knowing that special visitors would appear during the night. Some children filled a shoe box with grass and placed it under their beds; others left treats elsewhere, these for the camels of the kings. And this morning children awoke to find presents left for them by the three kings. In other cultures, it is Befana or Baboushka who leave presents.
But today I am talking about these three kings. Now we know their names, where they were from, and exactly what they looked like: (commercially produced resin “statues” of three kings on animals placed on pulpit.) Their names are Gaspar, king of India; Balthazar, king of Nubia; and Melchior, from undefined origin but he of the golden hair.
How do we know there were three, how do we know that they were kings, and how do we know their names were Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar?
In the Book of Matthew we are told that Magi came from the east seeking the king of the Jews and that they gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. That is really all we know. The word used for them was the Greek word “Magoi”, which is the Greek masculine plural form of the word “Magus”. That tells us only that there were at least two, and that their gender was unknown or that at least one of them was male, because in Greek the convention was to use the male form in the plural if those involved were either all male or were a mixed gender group or if the sex was unspecified. In the western Christian tradition, there are three Magi, apparently because there are three gifts; the gold, frankincense and myrrh. In some Orthodox Churches, however, the number of the Magi is said to be twelve. Both three and twelve are sacred numbers in numerology and seem to strike human beings as important. Also, the number of the tribes of Israel was twelve, and the number of the disciples was twelve. Anthropology and sociology tell us that the number twelve is significant because it is about as big as a circle of human beings can grow without instituting some form of leadership structure and/or bureaucracy. And in group process twelve is about the maximum workable size for a group. Beyond that it just does not function well.
Now the Magi came from Persia, but the word has two different applications. One group of people who had been incorporated into the Persian Empire, and who had, in fact, had an Empire of their own before that incorporation, were called the Medes. One tribal group of the Medes was called the Magi. It appears that this tribal group was known for providing the Empire of the Medes with its priesthood, much as the tribe of the Levites provided the priests for Israel. These priests were astrologers and soothsayers, givers of prophecy. So the Magi who came to Bethlehem could have been either members of the tribe or members of the formal priesthood. It is almost certain that Matthew intended them to be the prophetic soothsayers. When the Medes were overthrown by the Persians, the Persians continued to use the Magi as a source of prophecy. But their fame extended well beyond Persia and would have been known to the people of Judea.
The word “Magi”, but the way, is where we get our words “magic” and “magician”.
At the time of the birth of Jesus, Herod was king of the Jews, having inherited the throne from his father who had been placed upon it by the Romans. Herod was partly Idumean, a people who had been forcibly converted to Judaism within the previous century, so many of the people of Judea felt that he was not really Jewish. So, in the story, when the Magi come asking where the king of the Jews is, for they have seen the rising of his star, this is a direct threat to Herod and to his maintaining the throne of Israel. The Magi probably are symbols of an earlier story about Balaam, presumed to be Magi, whom the Moabites had asked to curse the Israelites when the Israelites were heading for Canaan. Balaam blessed them instead. Also, Balaam’s ass spoke to him in that episode, and this is presumed to be the source of the folk tradition that the ox and the ass spoke at the birth of Jesus and that animals speak at midnight on Christmas Eve, though that is also an old folk tradition that attaches to other festivals.
The presumption that the Magi were kings is based upon the readings in Psalms 72 and Isaiah 60, which I used as the reading today. If you are of a Biblical bent then you would read the stories and the legends as showing that the prophecies came true. If you are of an historical bent, you might decide that Matthew and the legends were crafted to fit the earlier writings.
The symbolism of the Magi as kings is multiple. The kings of the gentiles recognize Jesus as king of the Jews while Herod and his royal court do not. The three kings also were said to be form three different parts of the world—just which those were differs depending upon which tradition one reads—but in the western church they are usually described as African, European and Asian. They combine, you see, the three different peoples of the world, that is, they represent the coming together of the sons of Noah who were the progenitors of the three supposed “races” of the world. So, one aspect of the symbolism is that all of the world recognizes Jesus as the king, and is drawn together in his worship. The strangers from afar recognize the new king, the Jews—or at least the Jewish leaders--do not. Remember that a Prophet is not recognized in is own town. The meaning of that becomes much clearer when we recognize that the Book of Matthew was written at a time when the Christians had been or were being expelled from synagogues.
Well, so much for the history. Taking the story from Matthew as filled out by the legends, what are the meanings we may derive?
At the birth of Jesus, one Epiphany or manifestation of the divine, the wise men come and pay homage to him, giving him gifts of a worldly kid.
One does not have to believe the Divine as such to recognize the breaking into the world of that which is awe inspiring or stunning.
When we are faced with a manifestation of the divine or of the marvelous, what is the proper response? How shall we pay homage to it and what gifts should we bring?
The Magi brought three gifts; I propose three that we might bring.
The first gift, I think, is simply to notice it, to recognize when the awesome has occurred. In the story of the Magi, they recognized the rising of a star as the omen of a great event. Herod, meanwhile, and his supporters did not. They were taken by surprise.
I am sorry to say that I am often oblivious to some great event or important moment taking place. My mind is usually pondering some puzzle or toying with some idea and I can easily ignore some important thing taking place right in front of me. It could be as simple as someone sharing an important part of their lives with me; it can be a comment that I take lightly when it was meant to be important, or was difficult for someone to say. I can overlook these things.
To notice, to recognize what is taking place right in front of us, that I think, is the first offering.
In 1968 I attended a conference of Liberal Religious Youth in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Rev. Jim Stoll spoke to the conference and revealed to us that he was homosexual, becoming the first openly gay member of our clergy. Now, I thought nothing of it. I had been raised in a household that was accepting and affirming of people. I heard his words but I missed the import of them, and the meaning for him. Two things were important about this moment. The first was his coming out. He was taking a risk; he was putting his career on the line. He did not know what the response within the denomination would be. By 1967 the General Assembly called for full equality for gays and lesbians, but he could not know in that moment what would happen. He must have been filled with fear and with great courage and with a sense of pride. And I missed it. I heard the words, but I missed the import. The second point here was the fact that he was deeply honoring us. He chose that time and place, and those people, because it was the safest place for him to declare himself; he knew that we young people would be open to what he was saying. I can see in retrospect how important this was; I don’t want to experience great moments in retrospect; I want to experience them as they happen.
This past Thursday I arrived here at the office and as I was walking up the steps two women were looking of to the side of the building with big smiles; their faces were lit up. One of them said, “There are deer over there”, and I answered with some comment like, “Yes there are”. She said, “You see them all the time”, and I acknowledged that I did. But then I stopped myself and looked at the deer. I remembered that though deer are common place for me, their existence and presence is still wondrous.
Sometimes I need to be reminded that the world is full of wonder, and this can happen when we see through the eyes of others. It can happen when we see through the eyes of a child as he or she stands slack jawed before a butterfly, a spider, a bunny rabbit or a puppy, and as the child giggles with pleasure watching a puppy play.
Now when the magi recognized that something had happened, they didn’t just sit at home and share the news with each other, they did something. They knew that there had been an epiphany, a great event, and they traveled miles, perhaps hundreds of miles, to be wherever it was that this event had occurred, to be present to it. What am I wiling to do, what action am I willing to take, when I know that something important has happened? You know, often the only thing we have to do is acknowledge verbally that something wonderful has taken place. Someone shares a personal secret with us, or gives us the present of praise, and just to say that we notice is often as much as we need to do. That really doesn’t take much energy, but I to often fail to do that. I too often fail to say, “thank you for your gift of praise or of self”.
Now, there are circumstances where words are not enough,
where action of some sort is what is right. Sometimes we travel hundreds of miles, even thousands, for a wedding or a special birthday because there are moments in life when our presence is necessary. The Magi did not send a greeting card or an email, they did not join a chat list, they did not send a messenger; they themselves actually went to the place of the event. They did so because human presence, our presence, has meaning. There is something that happens when human beings are with one another, when we can feel the presence of the other in the air around us, that is different from any other form of message or contact.
Human presence, our presence is the second form of offering.
And then there are gifts. Material gifts never have more meaning than the emotions or purpose behind them, but they do count. They are tangible expressions of intangible feelings. That is why I do not get terribly upset about gift giving at holiday times. I did once. There was one year--I think I was about nineteen or twenty--when I told my family I would not give and did not wish to receive any presents for Christmas. It was just too crass and commercial for me. Thankfully, I quickly got over that. When I get the right gift for someone, I feel good, I feel that I have done something special for them and I just know that it is right to have that feeling sometimes. And I know that it is right to let them have that feeling sometimes, so I buy gifts and let people buy me gifts. They are not love themselves, but they are—or can be--expressions of love.
But they are not love themselves, and the truth is that our gifts need not by physical gifts, they can be gifts of the heart. They can be as simple as clearing the dishes for someone, or bringing a cup of tea, or giving a flower.
And in the breaking into the world of some divine or marvelous manifestation, our gift can be a simple smile or embrace or open heart.
Epiphany and Magi, fantasy and magic, these are elements that surround our everyday lives. Too often we fail to notice them. But if we open our hearts to the wonders of the world, we can experience them everywhere.
Give to me the heart of a child, let me dream each night of reindeer and camels, of Santas and kings and Befanas. Let me put grass filled shoe boxes under my bed for the animals that will come in the night. And let me be the Santa, the king, the Befana who fills a child’s heart with gladness. But more than this let me be a person who sees all around the magic and wonder that is; let me be someone who sees in every other individual, even in every other living being, the truth that they are a breaking into this world of wonder, of marvel, of the divine. Let me recognize that truth, speak that truth, and bring the gift of my personal presence to everyone I meet. And let there be times, however few, when I am the one who opens the eyes of another to majesty, to beauty, to the joy of life. So let it be.
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