Sermon, preached on Epiphany Sunday 2021 at Aldersgate UMC
Matthew 2:7-12
Epiphany Sunday marks a turning point, a bridge, if you will, between two seasons – Christmas and the season of Epiphany, which runs from January 6 until Ash Wednesday. It’s marked by the arrival of the magi, or 3 Kings. In many cultures, this is the day for the giving and receiving of gifts as we celebrate the gifts the magi brought for Jesus. Epiphany, then is the culmination of our Christmas celebration, the end of our Advent journey.
But it’s also, of course, the first Sunday of a new year. And 2021 has a lot riding on it as we move into the new while still wrestling with the old.
The magi set out in search of something they knew but didn’t know – with only the star to guide them. They weren’t the first to set out on a pilgrimage – but they may be the first prominent Gentiles to do so. A pilgrimage is, by definition, a journey into the unknown where a person goes in search of meaning, an epiphany. And in the same way the magi set out on a pilgrimage, we too, at the start of a new year, set out on a pilgrimage of our own. We’re not exactly sure where we’re headed and we don’t exactly know what we will find along the way.
The Magi brought gifts to the Christ child – but their journey, their pilgrimage in search of the holy, offers gifts of wisdom to us as well as we journey into a new year.
Are we paying attention to the gifts God sends? God sent the start to guide the magi to Jesus – but if no one’s paying any attention, the star does little good. But the magi had observed the star in its rising. They saw the gift and accepted its call to follow. How many times does God send us a star to guide our way – a person who knows us well, a simple note or observation, a new spiritual practice that opens our eyes in a new way, that helps us find our footing. Are we paying attention to the gifts God sends us, are we willing to receive those gifts with joy?
No one can make the journey for you. The magi stopped first in Jerusalem to enquire of Herod about the new king. We can debate all day whether it was a “wise” decision from supposed wise men to stop at the palace of the current king to ask about the birth of the new king but regardless, there they stopped. But while the magi journeyed on in search of Jesus – Herod sent them in his stead. And in the end, only those who took the journey themselves found the Christ-child; only the magi found God. Our journey to God is not something that someone can do for us – we must each make the effort, take the steps, scale the mountains. Only we can walk our own pilgrimage.
Be open to wonder along the way. “When they saw the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” The past year brought little in the way of good news or happiness, but if we close ourselves off to the possibility of joy and wonder even along the most difficult path, we can easily become hard and cynical. Wonder is what allows us to say with Mary, “here I am, a servant of the Lord” because with wonder, we can embrace the knowledge that with God anything is possible.
Be ready to encounter the sacred in the mess of real life. Whether they arrived while the holy family were still in the stable or, as more likely, they arrived as the text says “at the house” where Mary held the Jesus, the magi didn’t walk into a beautiful renaissance painting. Anyone who’s been in a house with a newborn knows that there’s little clean or calm when babies are around. The magi didn’t journey to a cathedral – they showed up in the mess of real life. But it was there, in the midst of the mess, they found God and bowed down to worship. The Christmas story will never let us forget that the divine and the ordinary go hand in hand, for God showed up to join us in our mess. Are we ready to find God with us amongst the muddle of the everyday? Can we see the sacred and holy in the ordinary?
Bring your treasures and be ready to share them freely. However long their journey, travel would have been more difficult, more dangerous when travelling with precious gifts like gold. And yet, the magi brought their gifts, and, upon encountering Jesus, poured out those gifts before him. What treasures do we carry with us – financial gifts, gifts of time or service, talents and skills? Are we ready to spread those treasures out before our God, to let those gifts be used for the glory of God in the service of God’s kingdom?
As we move from last year to this one, from Christmas into the weeks that follow, our pilgrimage – our journey towards the sacred – continues into the unknowns of this year. We have our fears, our worries. We have our hopes, and, for better or worse, our plans and expectations. Are we ready for the journey ahead?
My prayer for all of us is that we
- Pay attention to the stars – the gifts God sends our way to guide us along the way
- Put in the work, to travel for ourselves – taking short cuts and sending no emissaries to do our work for us
- Will be open to wonder, the unexpected joy along the way. That we imagine how with God, all things are possible
- Will be open to encounters with the holy amongst the mess of real life
- And that whatever treasures we hold, we will be ready to pour them out freely.
There’s so much good before us – so much joy. Because God is good – all the time. And all the time – God is good. Even as we walk into the unknown, we have God’s bright shining star – the Light of the World, Jesus – to guide our way. The God who makes a way in the wilderness has a way for us into this new year. We have only to respond to the gift, to step forward on the road, one step at a time.
*I am so grateful for the words of Christine Valters Paintner and her perspective on pilgrimage and on this text. I was literally more than halfway into a sermon when I came across this blog and had to completely re-write. To make a deeper dive into the idea of pilgrimage, I highly recommend her book, “The Soul of a Pilgrim: 8 Practices for the Journey Within.” Our Women’s Retreat team used this book as we planned our 2019 retreat on pilgrimage and found it to be very meaningful. Here’s the link to Dr. Paintner’s blog. https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2019/01/06/feast-of-epiphany-follow-the-star-a-love-note-from-your-online-abbess-2/
Link to recording of the whole service: https://youtu.be/SlsBD6fHnmI
For information about Star Words and for the prayer I used at the end of the service, check out https://revgalblogpals.org/star-words/
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