Epiphany 1/3/21 Sermon

Epiphany 2021 Matthew 2:1-12 & Isaiah 60:1-6
Having been a life-long Lutheran, I’m sure I first learned that “Epiphany” meant this
festival, commemorating the visit of the magi to the Christ child. When I started to study
literature, we used the word “epiphany” to mean an “aha” moment in a story. Very often, the
truth that seemed to suddenly dawn on a character was already evident to the reader—already
part of reality that just needed to be revealed to them. Thinking of epiphany as that sudden
“aha” begs us to ask what is being revealed to us when we as the church celebrate this
Epiphany. It’s not merely the star revealing the birthplace of Jesus to the magi. The gospel
shows us that the God of the universe is incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. But much like a
novel where the reader knows what’s really happening before the character’s “aha” moment,
that God incarnate in Jesus was revealed first to the magi shows us a God who is already
working outside the boundaries of our expectations.
Although legend, tradition, and song give the magi names, a number, and nationalities,
Matthew doesn’t really tell us that much about them. They bring three gifts, which is why we
traditionally picture three of them. All of my nativity magi figurines are carved with crowns,
although Matthew never says they are kings. The word magi more closely meant something
like astrologers, which makes them practitioners of some pagan religion, looking for signs in
the stars. They are from the East, which is not so much a specific location as it is Matthew’s
way of saying “they’re not from ‘round these parts” —that is, they weren’t Jewish or from
Israel. It is significant for Matthew—who does not include local shepherds in his story—that it
is not any of the Jewish residents of Judea but these foreign, pagan visitors who first honor
Jesus as the new King of Israel.
That the first people to worship Jesus are Gentiles has sometimes been interpreted as a
turning point in salvation history, as if God suddenly decided to include people beyond the
people of Israel in God’s ongoing covenant relationship with humanity. But I wonder if the real
revelation here is not so much Jesus being revealed to these outsiders, these Gentiles, as it is the
revelation to Matthew’s readers—his first readers and us—that God is already at work in places
and people beyond those we have come to expect. Matthew was writing to Jesus-followers who
belonged to a Jewish community; so Matthew frequently includes in his stories Gentiles who
turn out to be faith heroes—believing Jesus can heal or recognizing his divinity when the
Jewish characters around them do not. Matthew didn’t write those stories to make Gentiles feel like they were part of the Christian church; he wrote those stories so that his Jewish community
would welcome Gentile outsiders who also wanted to follow Jesus. Observant Jews would
never have expected foreign, pagan astrologers to be the first people to recognize the Messiah;
Matthew begins his gospel this way not so much as a sign that God is up to something new but
as a wake-up call to all of us who think we already know everything about how God operates.
Faith can make us devoted, hopeful, and courageous. But faith can also make us narrowminded,
insular, and arrogant. We see our own experiences as authoritative and start to think
that God only works in the ways that God has worked with us. Then we are, at best, surprised
when we recognize God active in the world beyond our expectations; at worst, we refuse to
believe that God is present with people and in circumstances that would stretch our preconceived
ideas. But either God is the God of the universe and is therefore acting in all sorts of
places and spaces beyond our vision and comprehension, or not. Epiphany reminds us that any
time our limited human perspective tells us to draw a boundary for God, we can expect to find
God on the other side of that line—and not because God just got there, but because God has
been there all along; we just didn’t see it.
Our reading from Isaiah today commands us, “Lift up your eyes and look around…then
you shall see and be radiant.” Yes, there are some things for which we have to wait and look to
the future, but God is also at work now; and we’ll see that, if we lift our eyes and look around.
In this uniquely challenging time through which we are living, we sometimes need that
reminder—to look for God. When we learned to look around outside this building, we could
see that the church was not closed; the church was us, worshiping and serving all over the place.
That didn’t just happen; that’s always been true; we just needed to see it in a different way. For
a practical example, that’s what has been happening as we’ve watched the scientific method
unfold during the pandemic: the virus itself has been out there, behaving fairly consistently; but
it took us awhile to see how best to avoid it, treat it, and prevent it. Changing in response to
new knowledge can be frustrating; it means, after all, that we have to admit we didn’t already
know everything, and we have to adjust some of what we’ve always thought and some of what
we’ve always done to make space for something new. But to be an Epiphany people means we
not only learn to expect revelation, we welcome it, because it means that we get to find joy in
seeing what God is doing—which probably isn’t new, but may be new to us. At the beginning
of this new year, may we lift up our eyes and rejoice to see the glory of God shining around us.