Good morning – happy Epiphany!
Today marks the end of the Christmas season –
yesterday was the 12
th Day of Christmas – and from now until Lent,
we’ll be looking at what it means that Christ has come into our world – as a
baby, and as our Savior.
Epiphany in its
general sense – outside the specific day in the Church year – means a sudden
realization, a flash of insight, the sort of experience that might make you
say, “Eureka!”
It’s like what happens
when a light shines in the darkness, and suddenly, it all starts to come
together.
Which is what makes it a perfect word to describe the
experience of the Magi that we read about in today’s Gospel. A little background, first, on the Magi. Even though we often refer to them as “kings”
– the song, “We Three Kings”, the traditional King’s Cake that some people bake
on Epiphany, artwork that shows them all crowned-up and royal-looking, in truth
they were probably actually priests, from the Zoroastrian religion. I won’t go into all the details of what
Zoroastrianism is, but it is an Eastern religion, and the ancient priests
didn’t do witchcraft or magic or sorcery, they were into astrology and dream
interpretation.
But they also lived in a part of the world – most likely
Persia, what is now Iran – where there was some influence and knowledge of the
Jewish religion – because of who had conquered whom in various wars, and who
had been exiled to where, there were pockets of Judaism, and at least an
awareness by local religious practitioners of what other religions were up
to. And so these Magi, the Zoroastrian
priests, knew a little bit about Jewish prophecies of a Messiah. And somehow or another, their astrological,
philosophical religious tendencies led them to interpret the star that they saw
in the sky as announcing the birth of this Jewish messiah they had heard
of. So they get on their camels, and
they head west.
Next question: how many Magi, or wise men, were there? We
sing about the We Three Kings, but were there three? Well, nobody actually knows. The tradition of there being three comes from
the listing of the three different gifts they brought…but that’s a Western
tradition. Eastern Orthodox Christians say
there were twelve. In any case, they
came, and St. Matthew tells us that they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Last piece of background information now, and here’s where I
have to shatter a few illusions, unfortunately.
All the Nativity scenes we see, with the wise men all squeezed in around
the shepherds and angels…they’re wrong.
The Magi, coming from Iran, were at least 1000 miles away from Bethlehem. Realistically, we’re looking at at least a year, maybe more, from the
time they would have seen the star, until the time they could have gotten to
Bethlehem. The shepherds were long gone,
the angels were back in heaven, and Matthew reports that they went to the house
where the baby was – I’m quite sure Mary was glad to have moved out of the barn
by then… So if you’re out there right now, feeling a little unnerved about the
validity of Nativity scenes, or like something comfortable has just been shaken
inside you – well, that’s ok. Deep
breath. When things that we’ve held on
to for a long time are challenged or changed, it can be hard. And I imagine that’s what the Magi felt, as
well. They were priests of a whole
different religion…and yet, they saw this star…because of their religion…and
the Holy Spirit gently tugged them towards it.
I’m thinking that on that 1000 mile camel ride, they had
plenty of occasion to be a little nervous, to wonder just what they were going to
find, to question if they weren’t just crazy to be leaving behind everything
that they knew and believed and trusted.
And this is where we start to ask questions about other
religions, right? Because Christmas (and
Easter, of course) put some pretty big claims out there about Jesus – about his
kingship, and the nature of it, and how important it is. Baby Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and that’s really
important for Christians, but if you’re not Christian, then it’s not all that
important, because, you know, other religions have their own special things
going on, and good for them, you know, everybody should believe in something,
right?
Is it true that other religions are just “all paths to the
same thing”, and we need to “find our own truth”, and “every religion is as good
as the others”? That’s what the world
today wants us to believes. That it doesn’t
really matter what religion you follow, that they’re all basically the same
thing, that it just comes down to personal preference about what makes you
comfortable.
But the Magi would tell you, “No, not so much.”
Because the Magi had a religion. They were the leaders – the priests – of this
religion. And while there are some similarities in Zoroastrianism to Judaism,
so what? There are some similarities between Christianity and Judaism, and
Christianity and Islam, but we don’t celebrate their holidays. We don’t do Yom Kippur or Ramadan, and we
certainly don’t jump on a camel and go 1000 miles to see “an exciting thing” about
somebody else’s religion.
That’s nice for them, we say, and we wish them a Happy
Hanukah, or whatever.
The Magi say, “No, not so much.” The religion they had, the God they
worshiped, was not the same as the Baby Jesus.
And they knew it, and they took it seriously, and they recognized Truth –
with a capital T – when they saw it.
This baby was the King of the Jews – that they knew – not the King of
the Zoroastrians – this wasn’t their religion, they were under no obligation to
worship him and bring him gifts – in fact, according to their religion, it
would be heresy to do so. They knew this
was something different, something wildly different, and yet, they followed to
where the star led, and they did the only thing we can do when we come
face-to-face with Christ –they worshipped him.
See, it’s not really fair to conflate Christianity and all
the other world religions – it’s not fair to Christianity, and it’s not fair to
those other religions. We don’t all believe the same thing, and we
shouldn’t pretend that we do.
This does not mean, of course, that we are allowed to be
hateful towards people who are not Christian.
God has not abandoned those who practice other religions. He doesn’t write them off as a bunch of
heathens who have no hope, and neither should we. God loves them, and cares for them – He died
for them, just as much as he died for you and me. And yet he wants them to know the Truth, and
he will work to reveal that truth to them, just like he has worked – and
continues to work – to reveal that truth to us.
He may work through other
religions – just as he used the Magi’s penchant for astrology to lead them to
Bethlehem. He may work through us – just as he used the Apostle Paul.
And to be perfectly frank, and to expand the conversation a
little more, even those of us who call ourselves Christian, well, a lot of us
end up having our own sort of private religions, do we not? What is thing that you most trust, and most
believe, is going to get you through this life?
For a lot of people, it’s money.
If I just have “enough” – whatever that is – then we’ll be set. If I just have a good job or convince the
right person to marry me or get good enough grades or have the right friends or
eat right and exercise or really stick to my New Year’s resolutions this time,
then it will all be good. And the
problem with all that is that it’s just as far off the mark as your average atheist
or Magi. Being rich or having a good job
or good grades has no more power to overcome sin, or death, or the power of
evil, than any other world religion. Eating
well and exercising are good things, but they are not Truth with a capital T.
But the good news is that God wants to work – he is working –
he will continue to work – to lead people – all of us – to the Truth – the Truth
of the baby in the manger and the toddler in the house in Bethlehem. The Truth of the innocent man hanging dead on
the Cross, and the Truth of the victorious God in front of the empty tomb. The Truth that is different than all the
other so-called truths, of all the other religions and “keys to success” in the
whole history of the world – and that truth is this: that God has come to us.
God comes here. God comes down from
heaven to be with us, to suffer with us and for us, to save us, to show us just
how much he loves us. And that is the
fundamental difference. Every other
religion or “lifestyle choice” out there, when you get right down to it, is
about how to climb the ladder to heaven, how to get to God, how to achieve
wisdom or perfection or happiness – how to do what you have to do to save
yourself or to never die or to fix the world or to earn God’s love.
And the Truth –the Truth that only Christianity has, that
only Christianity proclaims is the truth that “You. Can’t. Do. It.” No matter how hard you try, no matter how
much you want to, you can’t stop sinning, you can’t escape death, and you can’t
overcome the power of evil in this world.
All of which would be very depressing, if it weren’t for the second half
of that Truth – You can’t do it, but God can, and God does.
God does not just send
a tiny baby – God becomes a baby –
God the Father, God the Son – in order to be with us. God does not write out a plan for fixing the
world – ending sin, stopping death, and overcoming evil – that we are to
follow, like a prescription from your doctor where you have to go to the pharmacy
and you have to pick up the pills and you have to swallow them and you have to
deal with side effects. It’s not like
that at all, actually. God himself is the plan for putting the world – and each
of us along with it – back to rights.
God. Comes. Here.
That is the Truth of Christmas, and the Truth of
Epiphany. That is the Truth that the
Magi encountered, and it is the Truth that caused them to walk away from all
the old things they had believed and trusted, to rejoice greatly and to worship
the Baby Jesus. It is the Truth that
asks us to do the same thing – to walk away from all of the other things we
believe and trust – whether it’s other religions or money or a career or success
or our own internal strength and power of positive thinking – to let go of it
all as the thing you trust, because it doesn’t work, and instead to rejoice greatly and worship the
one thing – the one person – that does – Jesus Christ, our Lord. I hope and I pray that, just like the Wise
Men, you know this Truth today.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Amen.
