Eve of Epiphany B* Jan. 5,2012 St. Francis Church

Rev'd Jennifer M. Phillips Isaiah 60:1-9;Eph.3:1-12;Mtt.2:1-12

 

"And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod,

the magi departed to their own country by another way "

 

These wise ones, who appear and disappear from the Christian story in the magical blink of an eye, who come and kneel and offer their peculiar gifts to the Christ child, drawn by dreams and eccentric starlight and depart by another road... they haunt my imagination. We are not to know the fruits of their encounter, not the country of their origin, nor what they said of their journey arriving home at length. But we wonder.

What did the holy family say when such august visitors arrived in the most unexpected of circumstances? Did they remember Sarah and Abram and the three visitors under the oaks of Mamre? Did they ask the guests in eagerly or shyly, fearfully? Was there a brazier in the close confinement of the cave or stall where Mary and Joseph had taken refuge, so that the sweet smell of gold and frankincense and myrrh swirled around them as it does us tonight? Was the night of their coming sultry and still, or was it a cold damp night with the warm breath of the beasts making wreaths of steam outside the door? Did the magi come clothed in exotic splendor or wrapped in dark cloaks to travel unobtrusively in a strange country?

We wonder, too, what was the special wisdom of these magi? What their gifts of prescience, of seeing, of intuition, of understanding the hidden workings of the universe? Were they magicians, mighty rulers among their people who manipulated the physical stuff of the world in marvellous ways, astrologers who read the stars, or those who saw with uncanny insight into the hearts of others and spoke the truth of what they saw?

Wisdom is a curious thing, so often contextual in our experience. The ancient Greek philosopher Thales envisioned the universe as contained in a bubble; later centuries flattened the world into a finite plain with edges; still later generations saw the earth as the center of concentric spheres of the planetary motions, and then in time, the sun; our age has conceived of, first an infinite universe extending in every direction, and then a space-time continuum looped back upon itself not so unlike the exterior of that sphere of Thales.

"Whoever loves pleasure will suffer want; whoever loves wine and oil will not be rich" says the wisdom of the Proverbs of Solomon; "There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in their toil", advises the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. The wisdom of the world jostles us back and forth between contradictions, leaves us guessing. "All things in moderation" was the wisdom of my family, borrowed from the Greeks. And so, we select and temper the wisdom passed down to us based on our own lights and experience and that of the communities in which we are embedded.

I like to think of the encounter between the three wise ones and the Holy Child as a meeting of wisdom and Wisdom. It is the special delight of this season that in its most graphic images...three crowned and venerable and multi ethnic foreigners crouched beside a baby in a cattle stall... we are reminded that God's Wisdom is folly to the world, and the world's wisdom bends before the holy foolishness of God. Not just that; the wisdom of the world is transformed by the genuine encounter with the Divine; three magi come via Herod's court to the mangerside but they depart by another way.

Just so for us, as we bend our hearts beside the present Christ, as we still our own sense of wisdom and power before the wild, vulnerable, and impossible foolishness of God's grace. Our presuppositions about what is important are shattered; our carefully constructed public personas count for nothing; the nakedness of our hearts greets the nakedness of the Holy Child, who looks at us with love and laughs and welcomes us. Our agendas are skewed; our career paths and aims for success may be shifted north to south, or derailed entirely and sent by a new route; washed in the water of baptism and the fire of the Spirit we are sent off in a wholly fresh direction home. But also, our gifts are accepted, whatever it is that we manage to bring and offer here at the Infant's feet, humbly and hopefully; it is enough, it is welcome, it is received in God's delight.

The magi had their world de- and reconstructed in a single journey. One who was trusted, a peer, a person of importance, was revealed to be given over to death, as both its subject and its author. A peasant child was revealed to be set for the falling and rising of many: a governor of the people, but not even quite in the way the prophets might have imagined.

Light broke forth in a new way, yet not in a fashion that all the world might instantly see and know the power of God. The principalities and powers in the heavenly places... oh, they knew! The angels sang, and the powers of darkness trembled in fear, but the mystery of God hidden for ages seeped out little by little, heart by human heart, word by word passed on, dream by dream, and does today. Christ Jesus is our access and our boldness in approaching and knowing the Holy One of all Blessing. This Christ Jesus has risen upon us and filled us with glory, but in the little course of our earthly lives, we know this light in the intimations of our hearts that we, too, are being sent by another way.

 

T.S. Eliot's magi wonder:

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.[1]

 

We are bearers now of the light which has been revealed to us as those who have died to the world and been reborn into the Reign of God, as those who travel home by another way. Our road is beset by danger, dogged by disappointment, filled with obstacles, doubts, and stumblings, and the world no longer offers us its comfortable certainties and easy consolations and comforts; it is the way of the cross along which we are called. A new Wisdom possesses us and we must be measured as fools by the standards of the country we inhabit in order to speak its true word. We have laid our treasure down at the Child's feet and travel more lightly now with only the unsearchable riches of Christ as our inheritance. We travel swiftly, now, and with purpose, stripped down for the journey like carriers of the Olympic flame. Lead us who know you now by faith, O Holy One, Author of Light, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.