A Sermon for Epiphany

Sermon for the Feast of Epiphany

Thursday, January 5, 2011

Peter Shea

The gospel of Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfillment of one people’s story, the king and liberator of Israel – a local hero. Matthew takes endless trouble to show how the history of this people has prepared a place for this man to do extraordinary things. He is the key that opens a thousand local locks;  his every action fulfills a local prophecy.

And yet – right at the beginning, the foreigners, the immigrants, the aliens crash the party.

Partly, this has to be just Matthew being a good pastor for a community of Jews and gentiles, saying to the gentiles, “There was a place for you in the plan from the beginning.” In the story today, the Magi are set against Herod and the leaders of the Jewish people. The Magi are curious and awestruck and adventurous, while Herod and the leaders are fearful, suspicious, agitated. There’s no mystery which attitude Matthew takes to be better. The most basic human choice: offered something new, possibly splendid, do you retreat, defend yourself, prepare to kill it, just in case it’s bad – or do you go on a journey to find out more, to meet it face to face. I can imagine that there were people in Matthew’s community who had taken great risks, had given up status and power and family peace, to go find out about Jesus and the Christian community, to check out the rumors of something new and promising. The story of the Magi would honor, comfort, and encourage such people, in the face of rejection by their families and by the Jewish synagogue.

There’s another part to the story. These foreigners are Magi, wise people, some blend of philosophers, astrologers, and magicians – people who use all the science of their time to investigate the universe.

We can reconstruct how this would strike Matthew’s audience. Their appearance reminds the educated people to whom Matthew is writing of an earlier foreign Magus in Jewish history, Balaam, the very funny foreign prophet of Balak. Balaam’s a well paid pet prophet, and his king, Balak, has become worried about all these Israelites coming close to his territory – at the end of the time of exile. He wants a curse, to drive them away, and, like generals throughout history who have called on their pet chaplains for a war prayer and a “bless the cannons” ceremony, Balak calls on Balaam for a really spectacular curse in time of need. He takes Balaam up to a hill, so he can see what he’s cursing. Balaam looks down and sees – life, strength, power, grace, and being unwillingly and quite surprisingly a real truth-speaker and not just the king’s pet, he says what he sees and pronounces a blessing. The king is beside himself; he takes Balaam to another hill, where he can’t see so many of the Israelites, hoping that, from this perspective, Balaam will be able to deliver a really good curse. Balaam looks down, and again sees life, prosperity, hope – and so he emits – yet another blessing. Balak tries again, on a third hill, provokes a third, yet more extravagant blessing. He finally gives up and sends Balaam away unpaid. (You can imagine Balaam saying, “Well, I tried to curse them. I just wasn’t in a cursing mood today.”)

So, what does this resonance, this memory add to our story? The presence of foreigners said: Jesus’ coming is not just for the Jews. The added fact that these foreigners are seekers, wise men, Magi says that the life of Jesus expresses what every human heart longs for and can recognize. Balaam from his hill sees: life, power, strength, blessing. The Magi find in their twisty scholarship clues to a new eruption of life, power, strength and blessing. Having followed those clues, at the end of their journey, they encounter something that makes them bow down in adoration. These are not local matters, what’s happening in Bethlehem. They are not special or obscure revelations.They are about what humans have always sought.

The Magi’s astrology seems strange to us now, a minor hobby-science, long discredited. From the standpoint before all the sciences separated themselves out, learning was all  quite like astrology. Astrology is about finding something permanent, reliable, beautiful and nourishing within change – imaged as finding a relationship between the movements of the pure and perfect and invulnerable stars and the messy events of human life. The nerve of learning, of intellectual adventure, of study – to find something to hang on to, to depend on, to admire, when the world is crumbling around you.

George Herbert’s poem “The Call,” – our final song today – speaks for many seekers, adventurers, pilgrims and people who are awake (Buddhas, literally) the world over:

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life :
Such a Way, as gives us breath :
Such a Truth, as ends all strife :
And such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength :
Such a Light, as shows a feast :
Such a Feast, as mends in length :
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart :
Such a Joy, as none can move :
Such a Love, as none can part :
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.

The appearance of Magi opens the door to Christian scholarship, gives it permission to range free among the questions in the world. Epiphany is the founding festival of the Christian college. People like Saint Jerome, pictured on the bulletin today with his homey study and his peaceful lion-pet, are possible because this door was opened. Quite specifically – and perhaps beyond Matthew’s intention – the idea got out that all the seeking in the world, pursued with enough passion, with, that is, the desire to find peace, to be fed, to be mended, to live in joy, to secure one’s love – all this seeking converges on a point where also the Christian mystery waits. So nothing is foreign to the gospel but laziness, half-heartedness, cowardice, and pettiness. The enemy of Christ is not Lucifer – the terrible light-bearer -- but Herod, who won’t hear of anything that threatens his power, who kills babies,  just to be on the safe side, who is even lazy as a villain, not bothering to do his own detective work.

At the same time, the Magi story sets a frightening ideal in front of the Christian college and the Christian student.  It isn’t trivial, what we do. It may seem so, in the middle of dissecting a frog or translating Homer or getting a proof right. The lesson of the Magi story is this:  if what we do as scholars, as students, as intellectual adventurers disconnects from love, joy, strength, healing, nourishment, we become petty, we become trivial, and we miss our call.

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life :
Such a Way, as gives us breath :
Such a Truth, as ends all strife :
And such a Life, as killeth death.