A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ, Harrisburg, PA<\/p>\n\n\n\n
by Rev. James Eaton, \u00a9 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Epiphany Sunday \u2022 January 8, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isaiah 60:1-6 \u2022 Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14 \u2022 Ephesians 3:1-12 \u2022 Matthew 2:1-12<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rise, shine, give god your glory. I can\u2019t help hearing the old camp song when I say this; do you know it? Rise, shine, give God your glory. Today is Epiphany Sunday here, two days after the actual day, January 6. Sometimes it\u2019s called Three Kings day and in the rest of the world, it\u2019s when gifts are given and the promise of Christmas celebrated. \u2018Epiphany\u2019 is a Greek word meaning manifestation. I said that once and after the service someone said: great you explained one word I didn\u2019t understand with another I don\u2019t get. It means seeing suddenly some flash of God\u2019s presence. It\u2019s as if the whole world is lit up, it\u2019s like a dark night split by the instant flash of lightning. Epiphany is God\u2019s light shining into the world and as John said, as we read in our call to worship, the darkness has not overcome it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I grew up with the Three Kings: did you? My grandmother had a small nativity scene, little wooden figures like the ones we have here but much smaller. Every year we\u2019d set it out on a low end table. When she wasn\u2019t around, my brother and I would take the figures down and play with them. I liked making sailboats out of a pointy board and a dowel mast; Joseph and the shepherds became crew. Mary and the baby were passengers; the animals came on board too, like the ark. But the kings on their camels weren\u2019t meant for shipboard life; they galloped on the shore. Originally they were joined by a chain but that got broken; so did one of the camel\u2019s legs. We saw them as toys and didn\u2019t understand when my grandmother got angry at us for playing with them. That\u2019s what the Three Kings are for many of us event today: the last toys of Christmas. No other Christmas characters have had so many stories made up about them; no others are so richly embellished with fantasies and made up things nowhere in the Bible. Today, I want to put away the toys, stop playing with the figures, and see how this story in Matthew can help us rise, shine and give God the glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who are the these three? They are Magi. The word gets translated \u201cWise Men\u201d\u2014although the text says nothing about gender\u2014or \u2018Kings\u201d\u2014although the Greek text doesn\u2019t call them kings. In the area that\u2019s now Iraq and Iran, schools of magicians and astrologers and dream interpreters existed for hundreds of years. They were called Magi, from the same root word that gives us \u2018magic\u2019. We have such people. They are the talking heads on TV, who guess about the future, they are the therapists who help you look forward, they are the people who magically make Alexa work for you. They aren\u2019t kings, and sadly even the camels that were so much fun in the cr\u00e8che aren\u2019t in the story. There is something else to understand about the Magi: they are rich Gentiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re all Gentiles, so we often miss how important this is. Yet in that time and place, no more fundamental distinction existed. So it\u2019s surprising to see them here in this Jewish story. Matthew gives us a long, detailed genealogy of Jesus, connecting him with Abraham, detailing how he is descended from King David. Then he tells us about Joseph\u2019s reaction to Mary\u2019s pregnancy, and how it takes an angel visit to get the two together. Not a word from Mary but isn\u2019t that just like a patriarchal culture to tell us about a birth by telling how hard it is for the father without mentioning the mom? After the story we read today, we hear about Herod\u2019s slaughter of young male children which is so like Pharaoh in the time of Moses. When Herod dies, the whole family goes home to Nazareth and we pass to John the Baptist. These are all good Jewish stories and yet here, right here, smack in the middle, is this strange story of these rich Gentiles, the Magi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They know what they are doing; they\u2019ve seen a star, read the ancient Jewish prophecies, risen up from their daily lives and gone on a long journey. Now they\u2019re near the end; they go to the Jewish king, supposing he will know what\u2019s happening. Yet here is Herod and his advisors without a clue. Bethlehem is about five miles away but the Magi who have come over a thousand miles know more than Herod. They are the emblem of what the Apostle Paul will later call a mystery; that, \u201c\u2026the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.\u201d [Ephesians 3:6] No more fundamental distinctions exist in that time than Gentile and Jew, rich and poor. But here is God breaking boundaries, bringing rich Gentiles to poor peasants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why are they here? To give gifts. The one part of the creche Magi that is in the story are the gifts. A lot of stories have been made up about the gifts but the truth is these gifts are the working tools of Magi. Incense is burned when mysterious things are done; myrrh is used for magical tattoos. And gold always comes in handy. The other thing in the real story which often isn\u2019t in the creche is a star. To all who had to navigate before GPS and maps, stars were a real gift. Since ancient times, humans have used the stars to mark a path. The story tells us the Magi saw a star and it leads them to Mary, Joseph and Jesus; they give their gifts and then a dream tells them to go home a different way. No names, no genders, no kings; instead, a story of the gift of a star, the gifts to the child, the gift of direction. This is a story about gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gifts aren\u2019t always easy. Sometimes we don\u2019t recognize them. One father told this story about a special gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nI was cleaning my 6y.o. son’s room, and doing my annual purge of crap he’s managed to hoard. I have this big pile of stuff to throw out in the living room, when he comes in, pulls some stupid paper butterfly out of the trash pile and tells me I can’t throw this away because it was a present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He goes to a lot of birthday parties and gets a lot of goodie bags with this sort of thing, so I tell him it’s junk and it’s going in the trash. Besides, it’s all bent up and I tell him\u2026that if he values things he should take care of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He leaves, and some 5 minutes later he returns, visibly distraught (he’s clearly been thinking hard about this). He says “It was a present…for you.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“For father’s day.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n