The Adoration of the Magi by Edward Burne-Jones

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72: 1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

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        Most of the stories we read in church are about the good examples.  Most often, we read of how God comes into people’s lives to change them and make them more holy, and these people turn to God and say, “Here I am, Lord.”  But not everyone.  Every now and again we get someone who isn’t exactly the best role model for our kids or grandkids.  Some people see God coming and they hide themselves, like Adam and Eve.  Some hear the word of God and they run the other way, like Jonah.  And some, like Herod, when they hear of a new star rising in the East, they are afraid.

And this story about King Herod comes on an important day.  For today is the Feast of the Epiphany, one of the major feasts of the church year.  Traditionally, there are three gospel stories associated with Epiphany: the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first public miracle; the baptism of Jesus; and the coming of the three wise men.  In each, something new is happening.  Something unlooked for and un-hoped for comes about.  But in each, what seems like new turns out to have deep roots in the old. 

        But what is an “epiphany”?  This isn’t just a religious word.  We can use it in normal English, too.  It’s a sudden discovery, a sudden and powerful realization of how things are or how things work.  It’s like a scientist crying out “Eureka!”, but it’s not just a mental realization where you figure out how to solve a puzzle, but something where your whole self realizes something deep and true about the world.  It is the appearance of something holy, and something wholly other, in one’s life.  It is, in a way, a revelation of God.

        Epiphanies happen often in the Bible.  The Burning Bush is an epiphany.  Moses is walking along in the wilderness when, suddenly, he sees a bush on fire, yet not consumed.  Suddenly, he comes into the presence of God.  This happens to St. Paul, too.  Before he became the apostle to the gentiles, Paul went around persecuting Christians.  Then, one day, while he was riding into a city, a great light opens up from the sky and knocks him off his horse.  Then he heard a voice crying out, “Why are you persecuting me?”  The voice belonged to Jesus Christ, and it was a voice that turned Paul’s entire life around.  The voice and the light were epiphanies of God.

        But Epiphanies also happen outside the Bible as well.  They happen in ministry all the time.  One of my friends, another new priest who serves a parish down in Arkansas, told me about one the other day.  He had just gotten back from seeing some family after Christmas, and he was sitting in his office trying to get back into the swing of work.  But he felt unfocused in that Monday-after-a-vacation sort of way, and so, after fiddling around a little, he looked up and said, “Loving God, what do you want me to be up to today?”  And, literally fifteen seconds later, a gallon and a half of water pours through the light fixture above his desk.  “Ahh,” he said, “I see you want me to minister to the HVAC system upstairs!”

         Sometimes God calls us through a person in need, sometimes God calls us with water through the light fixture.  But all jokes aside, we witness to Epiphanies – we come into contact with God – when we are out in the world in ministry.  It doesn’t take a priest to see it.  A few weeks ago I mentioned how important our ministries – that to us can seem so small – are for people in need.  And when we are in people’s lives, living a life of hope and love, we see God at work constantly.  Miracles happen.  Sometimes they look like a sudden turn in a person’s health, and sometimes they look like doubt turned to hope in the final hours of life.  I saw them often while teaching.  For in teaching, like Christian ministry, you’re allowed into another person’s life, even for just a few moments.  But in that tiny amount of time, you’re given the opportunity to do such great acts of love.  Often it’s just being present, being just another human being sitting beside someone, often someone who’s confused or lost or doesn’t know where to go.  And that connection between two people, that’s where miracles happen, that’s where the love of God is made real and alive.  For, as Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them.”

        And yet, King Herod is afraid.  Jonah hears the word of God, and he runs the other way.  Adam and Eve hide themselves from God’s presence.  And, in a way, we can understand this fear, because we ourselves have felt it, too.  I know there are many times when I myself have heard God’s call and said, “Nuh-uh” and booked it.  But, from knowing Herod’s fear in our own hearts, we also know what it does to us.  It hardens us, doesn’t it?  When we reject God, we shut everything else out, we see and we hear less clearly.  We put up walls like medieval castles, where you can only get in through big, strong doors defended by armored me with swords and arrows.  We think we can do it alone, where God says, “I give you a new commandment: that you love one another.”  And love always reaches out, not waits around to bite.

        Fear is never an aspect of God.  When the Bible talks about “fearing” God, what it means is respect, trust, hope, and loyalty.  But fear – that feeling to push away something, to turn and run from it, to stop up our eyes and our ears and our hearts because something is too big or scary – that fear is not what God’s about.  And because of that, it’s not an part of the Christian life.  The Christian life is to live with an open heart.  And that doesn’t mean that we can’t reflect on what is before us, or hold it in prayer before God.  But we must begin with that open heart.  And that can make all the difference.

        And this is why King Herod’s opposite in the gospels is Mary.  And not because she accepted the angel Gabriel’s word where Herod rejected it.  Remember back to the story we heard on Christmas Eve, when the shepherds come to Mary and Joseph, telling them that they’ve seen a great heavenly host.  What does Mary do?  She treasures these words and ponders them in her heart.  Or think back further, to the story of the Annunciation: when Mary hears that she will bear the Son of the Most High, what does she do?  She doesn’t turn away in fear like Herod, nor does she hop up immediately and say, “Here I am, Lord!”  She takes it all in and contemplates these things in her heart.  She is open to the words, she discerns them and considers them in love, and only then does she say, “Yes, be it unto me according to thy word.”

        We live in difficult times.  We live in times where people are constantly trying to draw lines and separate people.  And we Christians are called to resist those lines and that separation.  So, let us begin this new year with open hearts and hope that the foundation of this world is not fear and doubt, but God Almighty, the very source of all life and light.

Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 15 (The Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55)
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55

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        While I was in seminary, some of my friends and I went down to what is called the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.  It was a massive structure out in the rural farmlands of the South.  St. James’ church could easily fit inside its courtyard, and it seemed like a giant could fit inside its doors.  The inside of the shrine was majestic, with pillars of marble and an altar all colored gold.  And above the altar was what’s called a monstrance: a kind of sunbeam to hold the consecrated Eucharist for adoration.

        It was a pretty amazing church, and praying there was a deeply beautiful experience.  But the church building itself wasn’t what struck my heart most deeply.  Downstairs of the nave, tucked away in a sort of corner off away from everything, was an alcove.  And in this alcove there were two pictures and a bench between them.  On one side was an image of Mary holding a child Jesus.  Jesus was about six or seven, and his hair was full and gold and curly.  Behind Mary was, if I remember correctly, a scene of Heaven, with golden clouds and angels attending the two.  And the look on her face: was joy.  Deep, calm, powerful joy down to the bones.  Untroubled joy, pure and kind.

        And on the other wall, opposite it, was a painting of Mary holding Jesus, dead, at the bottom of the cross.  Everything was grey: Jesus’ body, the muddy ground around the cross, and Mary’s face, which was no longer filled with joy, but sorrow and despair.  In both pictures, Mary was the same size and at the same height, so that when you turned your head from one to the other, the images of this woman blurred together.  It was a haunting image, and one that, for me, struck me deeper than any collection of gold or marble.  For it was an image of a person – a woman – not an figure or personality, but a human being.  It brought the story of Mary home to me like nothing ever really had.

        And one thing that these two images do, and one thing that Mary does for us, is challenge our understanding of what it means to be blessed.  For Mary’s song is one of the most beautiful in the whole of the Bible, and it’s beautiful because it knows that greatness, that being blessed and favored, doesn’t mean just being lucky.  But we use the word this way sometimes, don’t we?  I once heard a friend, talking about a mutual friend who seemed, somehow, to avoid mishap and failure that, “Well, Frank just lives a blessed life.”  Or, I once saw a post online where someone, who was a student, celebrated that he had done well in a class by posting “#blessed.”  And while I don’t like to criticize other Christians from the pulpit, there are some Christians out there who believe that the more stuff you have – the more successful you are – the more blessed you are.  If God loves you, they think, God will show it in the form of money, stability, and joy.

        But I don’t think that’s the way God works.  I don’t think that’s what “blessed” means.  And it’s certainly not what “blessed” means in the Magnificat, in Mary’s Song.  For here, being blessed doesn’t mean being favored over others, or having a lot of stuff, or being lucky.  Being blessed means being loved.  It means being lifted up when we’re low; it means being given food when we’re hungry – and not just any food, but good food.  It means being granted mercy, and mercy often when we don’t even deserve it.  Being blessed means having love as our foundation.

        But it also means more.  Being blessed doesn’t just mean being loved.  God loves us all, and that’s why he sent Jesus Christ, to be with us and walk with us, to teach us and to heal us.  But being blessed also means being given life, and the responsibility of life.

        Back when I was first getting into the study of theology, a friend of mine gave me a book by John Paul II called Love and Responsibility.  Now, as a young man, I was taken aback: “love and responsibility”?  I thought love was about freedom, about joy, about the fullness of life (you can probably guess how old I was when I got this book).  I balked at the idea of a “responsibility” in love.  But then I got married, and then I had a daughter, and then two.  Last week I spoke about the joy of holding my daughters, and that is a deep joy, but there’s also a weight, a weight of love that ties me to these children, to a future, to laughter and to tears, and to life.  It is a weight of life that I now carry with me.

        And all this is to say that being blessed didn’t keep Mary from grief.  Being blessed didn’t mean that Mary was allowed to live a life free from care, where all her needs were met, and sorrow and grief were unknown things that other people deal with.  Being blessed didn’t keep her from joy, either, of course, but it didn’t keep her from grief, either, because being blessed did not keep her from life.  Mary was entrusted with life, as we all are, and that weight of life brought her to the golden heavens of one picture and the grey despair of the other.  And the Christian life is sitting on that bench between the two.

        Think, for a moment, of your own lives as Christians.  Think of the lives that you have touched.  Think of the good that God has done in this world through you.  Think of the people you’ve lived with: those who’ve been sick, or heartbroken, or lonely; or the children you’ve taught and guided, that you’ve spent a few extra hours or even just minutes with so that they know someone’s cared.  Think of the people you’ve prayed for, those who have lost their homes in the fires in California, or Father Yohana’s Little Scholar’s School, who ask for things as simple as clean water.  Think of the people who come to the food pantry who you give bags of food to without any question.  Think of all the lives you’ve touched, even the ones when, if someone compliments you, you say, “Nah, that wasn’t all that big.”  Think of all those lives for whom you have been a blessing, because you have been, for them, life.  And think, too, of those who have been life for you, and in all these things you will see an image of the Church, which is Christ’s body in this world for the salvation and redemption of us lost and broken people.

        And this life, this little life which is the infant Christ, and this life that will then die on the cross, and this life that will then rise from the dead.  This life that is God, the one who is and was and forever shall be, world without end, this life is the life that we are given.  We are given Heaven in Jesus Christ.  And this is a life that will heal the world.

Malachi 3:1-4
Canticle 16 (Luke 1:68-79)
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

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        Goodness gracious, Luke.  I didn’t know this was going to be a history test!  What’s with all these names?  “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius (oh, which one was that), when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea (oh, good, I know him; he’s the guy with Jesus at the end), and Herod was ruler of Galilee (I know him, too; he’s the guy who kills John the Baptist, right?), and his brother Philip (who?) ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis (wait, where?) and Lysanias ruler of Abilene (huh?), during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas (I think I remember that last guy), the word of the God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”  That’s.  a.  mouthful.  I had to look up half of these names to figure out how to pronounce them.  And if John hears the word of God in the wilderness, what does all this stuff about kings and emperors and rulers who have been dead two thousand years have to do with anything?  Why does Luke care, and why does he think we should care about who ruled what when?

        Well, let’s try this.  Instead of talking about biblical times, let’s do Luke’s thing in our own time.  So: “In the second year of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in the year when the film E.T. – the Extra Terrestrial was wowing audiences, when Michael Jackson released his hit album, Thriller, when John Belushi died of a drug overdose, when stamps cost 20 cents and a movie ticket about three dollars, and in the year when the first artificial heart was implanted in a human, your vicar Timothy Hannon was born.”  Fwew.  Did you get all those references?  Now, I could easily have said, “I was born in 1982”, and this would have given you all the information you needed about how old I am.  But that would have been just a number, and a number isn’t what’s important about a person.  I hope that when I was describing the things that happened in the year I was born, you heard a little voice say, “E.T. phone home”, or you saw in your mind Michael Jackson doing the moon walk, or thought of the Blues Brothers, or thanked God, perhaps, that we have such medicine as artificial hearts.  I hope you experienced that, and more, in one sweeping image.  That’s the world I was born into, and knowing that world helps you learn just a little bit more about me.

        This is what Luke wants us to experience as well.  And while we might not know who Herod’s brother Philip was, and while we might not be moved in the same way by the name Lysanias of Abilene as we might be the name Ronald Reagan, I think we can still see what Luke wants us to see: the gospels are no fiction.  This all happened in history, and Luke wants his audience back in the first century to remember what it was like living under Pontius Pilate, or of the stories their parents and grandparents used to tell about Herod.  And John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, Peter and Judas and the rest of the apostles, they did not walk around in some never-never land.  As my high school chemistry teacher used to say, “This ain’t no play-like.”  No.  This is real.  John called on folks to repent beneath the same sun we sitting under today; and Jesus went to get baptized in the river Jordan, that same river that, if you don’t mind a long plane trip and have the money, you yourself can go and see and swim in.  And, to skip ahead to the end of the story, Jesus was crucified on a real hill outside a real city.  This stuff is real, and it really happened, and that’s one of the reasons it’s all so important.

        Now, I preach often about the “realness” of Jesus Christ.  I think it’s important that we remember, and remember often, that Jesus Christ was a living, breathing human being.  He had hands, he sat by the fire and listened to stories, he slept and sneezed, laughed and cried.  Remembering this teaches our heart that God is not some far distant entity, sitting alone in some heaven that we can’t even hope to reach.  God became a human being to bring a message of love and hope and peace.  And when Luke rattles off the names of six rules like it’s nothing, he’s trying to remind us of just this fact.

        But there’s another sort of realness that Luke’s trying to remind us about.  It’s the realness of the world.  Now, in the Bible, oftentimes “the world” is the bad guy.  We Christians are called to live apart from the world, to step away from the ways normal people live and accept a higher and more godly calling.  We Christians are meant to be counter-cultural, and not in the way that we all should be hippies or something, but that we are called to be guided by something much different from what our cultures say is good and right to do.  St. John, in his gospel, reminds us that we should only have one father, one single person who we follow, and that is our father in heaven.  We Christians follow a higher law.

        But, that said, we Christians are called at the same time to work within the world.  The world is real, and it is a place where we may – and often do – encounter God.  For God is everywhere, everywhere trying to push his way in to fill the world with a greater light.  One of professors at seminary used to tell us this, half joking, when she said that we need to develop a theology of administrative work.”  We all laughed, but she was series.  She said, “When you become priests, you’ll be called to fill out schedules; to record attendance for annual reports; to answer the phone; to chair meetings; and to call the repairman.  You might think all this is all just extra stuff, but that leaves God out of so much of your work.  Being a priest isn’t only about the deep, spiritual stuff; you will do all the boring, little things around a parish.  Find God in all aspects of your work, and you will forever be gracious and loving.” 

The Rev. Dr. Patti Hale up in Springfield taught me this one day.  Back while I was discerning a call to the priesthood, I was shadowing her to see what it was like being a priest.  And, one day, I pulled up to St. Matthew’s and there she was, out in the front of the church, pulling weeds from the garden.  “This is also the work of a priest,” she said, wiping her brow.  “Because God’s in the dirt, too.”

        At the end of every service, the deacon always says (and since we have no deacon, I say it) what’s called the dismissal.  “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord” or “Go forth, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”  And what this means is, “Go, and lift the world to God with love.”  Because, goodness gracious, the world needs it.  Pain and suffering are real, and people – real people – live lives in lonely despair without hope.  And St. Luke reminds us, St. Luke together with all of the Bible, that it was to this world where darkness and despair are real that God came to do the work of salvation.  And so we are called to do the same.  We are called to be a light to the world, to remind a grieving world that goodness and love and hope are not just nice things to think about when the weather’s fair, but that they are the foundation of true reality. 

        So go into the world, and rejoice in the power of the Lord, for you are all torchbearers for God.