St Luke’s, Havelock North – Epiphany 2008 – Sermon

“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”

We take a short trip back in time today as our gospel reading moves from Herod and the killing of the children, which we heard last week, back to the arrival of the wise men which precipitated that whole affair. But here’s the question; should we care?

It more or less passed most people by I think, but in late December we had the annual Christmas shock story about some high profile clergyperson debunking some of the Christmas traditions. This time it was no less than the Archbishop of Canterbury who in the course of an interview with the BBC suggested that the virgin birth and the three wise men were most likely more myth than fact – shock horror!

Predictably there was a feeble cry of outrage in some parts, but hardly a squeak here, and nor should there be. There’s nothing at all new about such claims, although it’s not surprising that some people react strongly to them. After all, Mary’s virginity, the guiding star and the three wise men are all part of the richness of the Christmas story so many of us love and hold dearly. Challenging those parts of the story is almost like challenging the lot, and beyond that challenging our values, our traditions – something we Anglicans take rather seriously – so of course that’s difficult, and there’s a lot we could discuss about the merits or otherwise of trying too hard to bring some reality into a story that has long been more fantasy than fact as far as many are concerned anyway. But I don’t want to do that this morning.

I don’t want to do that because no matter whether we believe in the virgin birth, or the wise men or the traveling star or any of it at all really, what they represent remains.

Today we celebrate Epiphany. Traditionally it’s the end of Christmas and I guess our hymns and readings offer us a kind of last yuletide gasp before getting back to some semblance of reality, but the real focus is revelation. We even used to call it that, ‘The feast of the Revelation of The Lord to the Gentiles’ – but Epiphany is a whole lot shorter. Which is quite a good summary really; An epiphany is when we suddenly recognize something as being something else, revelation though can speak of a far more gradual and underlying process.

Revelation is a far more accurate title as far as Matthew’s gospel is concerned. It’s important that we remember that Matthew isn’t really concerned with providing a historical account of Jesus’ birth and childhood. Rather, Matthew’s first priority is to place Jesus in the history of God’s interaction with humanity. Hence why we find lots of ‘this happened so that the scripture might be fulfilled’ moments in this gospel. The overriding and urgent message of Matthew is that this is the one! This Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is the messiah we have been waiting for. A baby, in a stable, under threat of death and forced to become a refugee in exile.

That’s the revelation Matthew outlines, but equally important is who he chooses to reveal it to. We’ve already noted that Matthew’s Christmas story is harsher and grittier than Luke’s, but it differs in another key way too; while Luke chooses to have the birth of Christ witnessed by some shepherds, some of the poorest and least powerful of the Jews, Matthew ignores them entirely and instead has arriving at Mary and Joseph’s house some wise men.

I don’t intend to spend any time here dwelling on the differences between the Greek and the traditional English renditions of who these guys were. Suffice to say, they certainly weren’t kings and the word ‘magi’ used to describe them suggests a more academic bent, so wise men is close enough, if they even existed at all of course.

Whether they existed or not though what they represent remains vital to the rest of the gospel story, and for those who really want to play the game the wise men provide some fascinating insights into what Matthew is trying to do.

For whole chunks of Matthew’s gospel, including the Christmas story, the main focus, as I’ve said, is an attempt to connect Jesus with the religious history of his people. So Matthew unhesitatingly quotes the Hebrew scriptures almost constantly, claiming that this or that thing that Jesus does fulfills what these ancient and sacred writings say. It’s a credibility thing. You want people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, prove it! And the people you really have to prove it to are those who have been expecting the messiah all along, the Jews.

But then Matthew does this. In the introduction to the life and times of Jesus, this long awaited Hebrew messiah, Matthew has him discovered not by the priests of the Temple, or by any of the Jewish authorities, or even by the poor and the undervalued in Hebrew society whom Jesus would focus so much on later, but instead those who arrive to pay homage are foreigners.

If the wise men existed they were almost certainly from Persia, what we now call Iraq. But even if they didn’t the symbolism of the story remains and it remains particularly pertinent today. Here we have foreigners, non-Jews, unclean Gentiles becoming the first witnesses to the birth of the Christ. For those hearing Matthew’s gospel in its own time, that would be shocking, and I wonder if we think about it what it says to us who have watched the tragedy of Iraq for so long?

Here is the second great message of Matthew’s gospel; that the messiah has come in a completely unexpected way and been revealed to a totally surprising group of witnesses.

That’s the message of Matthew, and that’s the message of Epiphany; the messiah has come in a completely unexpected way and been revealed to a totally surprising group of witnesses.

I guess the unexpected way part might be hard for us to really appreciate. After all, we’ve been celebrating the manger story for centuries, but I think we can still, if we allow ourselves to, grasp some of the miraculousness about it.

What hasn’t changed, I believe, is that God still reveals these things to the most surprising of people. Just look around, how many of the people sitting next to you look like likely recipients of God’s revelation? Do they look as likely as the shepherds? Or a bunch of Iraqis? Or all the people out there who aren’t in here?

So why is it, I have to ask, that so many of us seem to so often forget that Epiphany message? Why is it that some people seem determined to try to restrict who should be allowed to be the receivers of God’s revelation? The proposed Anglican Communion Covenant, for example, attempts to put in place a system whereby God’s revelation concerning certain things can only be accepted if it’s received by the majority of the members of the Communion.

Just imagine if Matthew and others had said, ‘Right, this Jesus fellow can only be the messiah if the majority of the Sanhedrin say so’. But they didn’t, thanks God.

On Christmas Eve I spoke about the value of tradition. I talked about wanting our Midnight Mass tradition to remain as it is, I argued in favour of valuing the constant repetition of what we do that night and the meaning behind it. There is a place, I argued, for things that don’t change. But there’s also a place, I believe, for things that do.

We can get tied up in knots if we really want to about the details of the story and all that surrounds it, but if we resist that urge and choose to really engage with what Epiphany has to offer what we’re left with is a challenge to throw off what’s left of Christmas, to accept that we’ve completed our annual celebrations of the arrival of the Christ child, and move on. Moving like those surprising witnesses, the wise men; willing to seek, wanting to see, and prepared to pass it on.

Fact or myth, it’s a great story, an important story, and it’s just the beginning. Thanks be to God.