Sermon for the Day of Epiphany
Impossible and Real
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
I always love to be with this community, my community, Mt. Olive Lutheran Church for weekend worship. Especially on these first weekends of the month when we offer individual prayers for healing, my heart is always warmed and I feel the rare privilege of standing among you.
However, I must admit that, today, my heart is elsewhere and I long to be with my Jewish brothers and sisters, especially my dear friend Rabbi Josh Stanton, at one of the many no hate/no fear demonstrations across the USA this weekend in support of our Jewish friends. The rise of anti-Semitism in this nation and violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters must be opposed in any and every way possible.
We Lutherans, with our German and Martin Luther heritage, have a special responsibility to oppose any and all hatred against the Jewish people. I know you stand with me in this.
No hate and no fear and also no war. My heart is also heavy today as our nation appears to be on the brink of war against Iran. You can argue the merits of our military’s killing of Iran’s top military leader last week, a person many consider a terrorist and others consider a hero, but the prospect of another war in the Middle East is one that makes me shudder in sadness. Our faith and tradition, as well as our church’s official statements on war and peace, would suggest that a war with Iran is not justified. I hope and pray our leaders think long and hard before they send our men and women solders into what seems like another in a string of endless wars in the Middle East. I pray daily for peace in this world and today especially that we not go to war with Iran. I hope you stand with me on this.
And now to my sermon:
Sometimes what seems impossible actually happens. I have always really liked the wise men of the story of Jesus’ birth and, when you think of it, the story of the wise men visiting the baby Jesus is one of the most improbable stories in the Bible.
What you heard read today and see in your bulletin is everything in the Bible about the wise men. Nowhere in the Bible are they called kings. There is no mention of three wise men or of them traveling on camels. While our Nativity Scenes picture them with the shepherds at the stable, this text says they visited Mary and Baby Jesus at a “house.” Joseph is not in this story.
The text calls them “wise men” which some translations footnote as “astrologers” from the Greek word “magi” from which our English word magician comes. They are not named in the Bible, although tradition has named them Melchior (from Persia), Caspar (from India) and Balthazar (from Ethiopia). They certainly were brown or black skinned, not white as portrayed in so many Nativity scenes. Some connect their knelling before the baby Jesus to the beginning of the practice of kneeling in Christian worship. Others connect their gifts for the baby Jesus to our custom of giving Christmas gifts. Their gifts are unusual – gold, of course, would be most helpful to Jesus’ poor family and tradition suggests Joseph may have used this gold for their travel expenses when they fled, just days after this visit, to Egypt to keep Jesus safe while King Herod killed all of the children under the age of two in the Bethlehem area. Myrrh was used as an anointing oil and frankincense as a perfume. Some have suggested that gold symbolized Jesus’ kingship on earth, frankincense symbolized his godliness, and myrrh, often used in embalming, as a hint at his death to come.
The Day of Epiphany, January 6, “Three Kings Day,” which we are celebrating a day early this year, this day is celebrated in many cultures. Some of you know the Louisiana-begun tradition of the “King Cake,” a ring-shaped cake into which a figurine of baby Jesus is often placed. My Puerto Rican friends talk of “Three Kings Day” wonderful family gatherings, the exchange of gifts, and noisy all-night partying. My favorite singer, James Taylor, even recorded a “three kings” song in 1988, “Home by another way.”
Lots of wonderful traditions and stories.
But, with only one short Bible mention, lots of legends, and no independent historical evidence, it is a fair question to ask if the Magi were real? Did they actually make their way from a distant land in the East some 2,000 years ago, following a mysterious star all the way to Bethlehem? And did they really bring the Child Jesus those gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh?
These are good questions.
And these questions are not without folks who try to answer them. Every year around this time astronomers, both amateur and professional, every year around this time astronomers offer some innovative scientific explanation for the appearance of the star. An unusual conjunction of planets, they most often explain. And reputable historians will be happy to tell you that soothsayers and traveling shamans were undoubtedly a colorful and important element of the ancient world. Then as now, people wanted to understand the deeper meanings of life.
The Magi were, to be sure, outsiders in most every sense of the word – gentiles, non-Jews, after all, surely as incongruous and out-of-place as anything or anyone could be in the heartland of the ancient Jewish world. And most likely, if we read between the lines, they were clairvoyants and magicians of sorts. And, they must have been wealthy. How else to explain those gifts, costly in any age? For all we know, the Magi may well have been the David Copperfields, Shin Lins or David Blaines of their day.
Yet for all that, their agenda was deceptively simple and straightforward: to find the King of the Jews, to worship him and to bring him their gifts. And it is this simple agenda that leads them from their own far-off lands to King Herod and beyond on an unlikely journey of discovery and epiphany.
What could be more real than that?
Epiphany remains for us in our own age an astonishing sign of the hardly believable yet very much real – God’s wisdom masquerading as human weakness and folly. For, as we readily see, God’s eternal wisdom is found not at King Herod’s magnificent court, but rather in the humble village home of a small and vulnerable child and his parents. Perhaps it does take show-business-like conjurers – themselves no doubt masters of surprise and the unexpected – to recognize the real in what may seem impossible.
And sometimes, even in our own times, what seems impossible does come to pass. Think of some recent historical examples: In my own lifetime, I have seen the fall of both the Soviet Union and the Apartheid regime in South Africa, both led by mass movements of Christians and both in their final transition with little loss of life. And both something I did not believe possible, or, at least, not possible without major bloodshed. Others would add the election of an African American as President of the United States to this list. And would anyone have predicted the progress of marriage equality across this country in just the last few years? Sometimes what appears as impossible does come to pass.
Thus, I believe there are wise men – and women – among us still.
After they present their gifts, the Magi, their task accomplished, return home from their journey “by another road” as the gospel tells us, “home by another way,” as James Taylor sings, and have not been heard from since.
They have not been heard from since. Well, maybe, but I believe, and the recent examples I just shared with you would support this belief, I believe that wise men and women are still among us and on their way. For all we know, they may be journeying among us here and now in our congregations and communities, bequeathing to us from time to time their precious gifts of wisdom, knowledge and understanding – gifts that remain as rare today as gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Perhaps that is why the church has given us this special festival day of Epiphany, to celebrate the wondrous and amazing things in our own lives. And to give us courage to follow, in our day, the star of the Magi as it leads us – just as it did them – to Bethlehem and the Child Jesus.
I believe the Biblical wise men, the Magi, are improbable and maybe even impossible, improbable and impossible, and yet still real. And, real or not, the wise men lead us once again to Jesus who is very real and very much with us and among us, on this Day of Epiphany and all days. The Magi help us see the impossible yet real in our own lives. Their story helps us also have the courage to follow Jesus in all times of our own lives. This day and all days.
Amen.
(With thanks to the Rev. Dr. Frank Hegedus).
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
January 4 & 5, 2020
