Sermon Archive
The Epiphany
Sermon preached by John Armes at Holy Communion on 6 January 2002
Blofeld and Goldfinger from James Bond, Voldemort from Harry Potter, Sauron the Dark Lord from `Lord of the Rings' - film and literature has no shortage of master villains making a play for world domination. Yet the 20th century showed us that truth is often more frightening than fiction, and our short experience of the 21st century suggests that nothing has changed. Every year brings its petty dictator, its political windbag ready to strut and threaten his (or occasionally her) hour upon the world stage. We enter a new year less capable, I think, of deluding ourselves that the world, our world, is inevitably a safe place, or that we are protected from moral compromise.
If so, then this is a good way of approaching the feast of Epiphany. For this season is one that makes grandiose claims on behalf of our faith. This is true, whether we stick with the Western tradition that claims Epiphany for the wise men, or the Eastern that sees it as the manifestation of Christ to the world at his baptism.
What was Matthew getting at with his story of the strange figures plodding their way to Bethlehem? To us there are always three, always on camels, always silhouetted against the starry sky. And we often go one stage further and turn the wise men into Kings, paying homage to the King greater than they, more powerful, more entitled to dominate the world. We can do dangerous things with stories.
So let's try to stick with Matthew's version. Wise men from the east, he doesn't specify how many or by what means they travelled, he doesn't give them names or skin colours. Wise men, magi, not so much magicians (although the word is used that way to describe charlatans elsewhere) - not so much magicians as astrologers - those who read the heavens to advise on the ways of fate. Astrology was a perfectly respectable and mainstream profession in those days. And this time they have concluded that the heavens declare the glory of God in a little child. Angels and stars together bear witness. And whilst the angels bring shepherds, the wise men bring tokens - gold, frankincense and myrrh - gifts fit for a king.
What is it we said at our midnight communion?
Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, day in night,
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one whose all-embracing birth
Brings earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
And in the prologue to John's gospel?
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.
We do not need to inflate our wise men into kings to get the point. This child was something pretty special, not just for the world but for the universe. And rightly so, for if we are to find God among us we must recognise that for God to be God God must encompass and comprehend not merely our planet or solar system, not merely our galaxy but the whole lot, the infinity that defeats the most fertile imagination.
This year, especially in the season after Trinity, we shall be following Matthew?s Gospel. Matthew is often described as the most Jewish of the evangelists. Certainly, he seems to take great pains to emphasize the continuity between Judaism and the teachings of Jesus. And yet there is a strongly universalistic thrust to his gospel too, beginning with his first sentence describing Jesus' descent from Abraham, the father of many nations, to almost his last where Jesus commands his apostles `to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (28.19). The wise men following a star from foreign lands fit well within this universalistic theme.
And whilst Matthew may emphasize continuity he also underlines that Judaism has been superseded, the synagogue must give way to the church: `the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom' (21.43). A people that is, neither Jew nor Gentile, but a new people of faith.
This is where I begin to feel uncomfortable. It is not, I hope, because I want to downgrade God or, indeed, to undermine the call for us to present the challenge of God, as we see God in Jesus, to the whole world. It is that history tells me that Christianity has too often transformed universalism into imperialism. I know I have mentioned this before, but I am not ready yet to let go of the lessons we have been forced to learn in the last few months - the realisation that the church has, through the centuries, colluded with the power-mongers, grasped power itself and sheltered behind the claim that it is the final and only repository of truth. That at times the church has used even baptism as a means to world domination.
So this year of all years we must try to weigh the trumpet blasts of Epiphany against the simple story at its heart - some wise men came from the east. They came several centuries before the prophet Mohammed was born in the east, it is true, yet Mohammed himself devoted many pages of the Koran to honouring Mary and the child she bore. They came from the east and, quite incongruously, presented treasures of kingship to a child of humble and even dubious parentage.
Epiphany means manifestation, the showing forth, the revelation of Christ to the world. The question for us is how do we make Christ manifest in our lives, in what we say and who we are? How do we at St John's, as a very visible part of the church here in Edinburgh, continue to bear witness to the light of Christ? How do we learn to embrace the humble and the dubious and receive thoughtfully and compassionately those who now come to us from afar, whether following the star of freedom or of economic opportunity, but come to us nevertheless able to share their wisdom and their gifts? In the end, let us note that in Matthew's story too the wise men are na?ve political pawns who stumble into the minefield of Herod's court and, as they flee, leave his wrath to fall on the innocents of Bethlehem.
The point is, I suppose, that we cannot manifest Christ except by holding close a memory of Jesus' human origins and, even more importantly, the tragic way his life ended. For these proclaim a kingship not of this world. Frankincense and gold, yes, but myrrh above all spoke of his kingdom, won not through the power of world domination but through weakness.
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