Sermon on The Feast of the Epiphany

As we’ve just seen today finally marks the completion of the wise men’s long journey to Bethlehem and – after a very long wait – we’ve add them to the manger scene.

Ironically, the theme of waiting – that so dominated Advent – continues after Christmas as we wait for the final arrival of the Magi at Jesus’ side.

And wait we should. We may not know how old Jesus was by the time the Magi arrived, but he clearly wasn’t newly born.  Given Herod’s determination to eliminate all male children under two years of age, Jesus could easily have been a year or so old.

If the wise men showed such patience in seeking out Jesus, then perhaps, so should we be prepared to wait until tonight before adding our wise men to our nativity scenes.

Like all the other stories associated with the birth of Jesus, the arrival of the Magi offers us much food for reflection.

Whoever the Magi were, and wherever they came from, and there is much debate on both points, scripture clearly tells us that their journey didn’t turn out as they expected.

You will recall that the Magi went looking for a new King precisely where you might expect to find one – in the political and religious power centre of Jerusalem – only to be told by the very person most threatened by the arrival of a new King – Herod – to look elsewhere and go instead to Bethlehem.

The Magi’s ignorance of the Jewish scriptures confirms to us their foreign origin but also betrays to us their secular expectations. Paradoxically, thanks to Herod, what began as a search for a political heir becomes instead the search for a divine one. What began as a search amongst the powerful elite, ends as a search amongst the poor and marginalized. This new King is clearly a King of surprises, a King that is going to turn expectations upside down.

All this makes even more powerful the theological significance of secular Gentiles being amongst the first to recognise and acknowledge this new ‘King of the Jews’. Not only is this new King above and beyond the mortal realm of politics, the Good News of Jesus Christ is also intended for all people and encompasses the entirety of creation. The story of the Magi is the story of a God whose appeal is universal yet also a God we cannot contain, control, define or circumscribe. Our God is simply too big and too great to be constrained by our language, our understanding or our expectations. Our God is God.

Yet our God is also intimately accessible, through the person of Jesus.

And it is this that the wise men realised as they knelt down and unwrapped their rich treasures of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Face to face with the person of Jesus, the penny drops and they realise for the first time in whose presence they really are. The wise men have their Epiphany moment. They encounter God in Jesus and believe.

And this is where the story of the Epiphany becomes our own. Each of us, I am sure, can point to a moment of revelation in our own lives. We may find it difficult to recall or to discuss, but somewhere in our journey our eyes have been opened, our hearts warmed and our souls enlivened by a recognition of the divine, whether in art, music, creation or in one another.

Epiphany moments in our lives may seem very rare. But that is less to do with God and more to do with us. God is permanently waiting for the opportunity to encounter us; it is us who are so often less than willing to be prepared to encounter God.

The story of Baboushka, Russia’s equivalent of St. Nicholas, is a good illustration of this. An elderly woman, with no family, Baboushka lived deep in the forest with little else to do than clean her home.  One cold evening, when she was busy scrubbing her floors, the three Wise Men passed her house on their way to see the Holy Child. They spotted her in the window and asked her to come with them to see the Messiah. But she refused stating that her floors were not yet clean.

She invited them to stay the night but they said that they were in a hurry and bid her farewell and went on their way. Later, that night Baboushka regretted her decision not to accompany the strangers and so, gathering a few trinkets from her meagre possessions, she set off to find them and the Holy Child. The story goes that she is still looking, and that everywhere she visits, she leaves trinkets as gifts in the hope that they will help her find Baby Jesus.

I am sure we can all recognise times when we have been too busy with things that don’t really matter to grasp the opportunity to encounter God.

Yet there is always hope.

Like Babouskha, the wise men of Matthew’s gospel get things spectacularly wrong.

They search for the wrong kind of King in the wrong kind of town. But the story of the Magi shows that this is no barrier to the workings of God – God can even work through people as despicable as Herod.

But that is only possible because the wise men also get things spectacularly right. For a start, they commit themselves to a search that must have taken months and at considerable cost and risk to themselves.

Secondly they remain open to possibilities. They didn’t ridicule Herod for his suggestion of Bethlehem as Jesus’ birthplace nor did they ignore the dream that warned them to return home by a different route.

The experience of The Epiphany for us – moments in which the manifestation of Christ is revealed – depends not on our perfection as Christian disciples but upon our commitment to the spiritual search and upon our willingness to accept the unlikely and surprising, perhaps even the seemingly impossible, as signs of God’s presence.

Which makes Epiphany a fantastic season with which to kick off the New Year.

Let us be expectant that God will reveal himself to us this year. May this be the year in which we search more diligently for Christ in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. May 2012 be the year in which we remain steadfastly attentive to the possibility of God at work in this congregation and in this parish.

But above all, may we remain open to the God whose track record suggests that the presence of Christ is to be found in unlikely places and amongst unlikely people. And as our Epiphany moments dawn, let us be ready as the wise men were, to give thanks, to offer the very best gift we can – ourselves – and to worship Christ our Lord and our God. Amen.