Homily for Epiphany 2008
Someone asked the rhetorical question other day: Where do you find a wise man or woman these days? (It was a woman who asked!) There are those who think themselves wise because they claim to have the answers. There are others who have few answers to life's questions and despair of finding wisdom. People in the West still look to the East to find wisdom in Eastern religions as spiritualities.
The wise men from the East have a high profile in traditional portrayals of the Christmas story. Yet the term 'wise' is inaccurate and does not tell the story well. They were 'Magi', a term Matthew uses which suggests they come from Persia. It seems they were a sort of Persian priest who had special claims to interpret dreams and the stars. As such they were influential advisers to kings. In this capacity they were the wise men of the society. The gifts they bring also suggest they were people of Arabian desert countries.
We continue to call them wise I suppose because they we shrewd enough to recognize in the child of Bethlehem someone whom they would worship even though they themselves were gentiles not Jews.
So they followed the star which for them was a portent of the birth of an important person. A star is associated with the coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament (Numbers 24:17). They tried to seek the truth of what it meant. But what they found in Jerusalem was only the deception and lies of Herod. They had to go to insignificant Bethlehem to discover what they sought. It turns out as a triumph of truth over lies, light over darkness. They did not give homage to King Herod but to a child.>
(It is interesting to note that Matthew tells of men from a place like Persia which had resisted Alexander the Great's imperial expansion a few centuries before. They come west to Palestine, which is very much a part of that Greek and Roman empire Alexander established, and pay homage not to it's king but to a child in an obscure Judean town.)
Whatever the historical realities behind the story it still describes our world still accurately. As people seek wisdom and life the powerful destroy the powerless. As always children are the first victims be it in Darfur or Gaza or Australia. The child is often used to hurt others, especially in failing marriages. The child is feared as a potential threat to position and status. Their deaths can cripple an enemy. They are expendable in war as we know from Iraq and elsewhere.
The wise men, the magi, from the East, followed a new star and found the child Jesus. And they did him homage. They offered gifts: Frankincense is offered to Jesus as divine. Gold is offered to Jesus the King of the human race, the summit of creation. Myrrh is offered to the savior of the world who suffered and died for the salvation of all.
These gifts highlight the claims of Christianity about the centrality of Jesus. That Christians claim a unique place for Christ in salvation does not mean that God has abandoned everyone else. Rather that God's nature is above all to be found in emptying himself and becoming as we are. In Christ we have a privileged access to God.
The thirteenth century mystic Matilda of Magdeburg said:
"The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw - and knew I saw - all things in God and God in all things".
Mechthild of Magdeburg, (The Flowing Light of the Godhead) 1210-1285.
Epiphany celebrates Jesus revealed to all nations as saviour not just as a wise man. The men from the East in a beautiful and simple liturgy offered gifts and received a great gift in return. What gifts to we bring today? That is our worship.
Fr Graham