By a New Path: Matthew 2:1-12
Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, December 31, 2023
Sometimes at the beginning of the year, dictionaries announce new words that have come into the language over the last year. This year our attention was called to “rizz” – a short form of the word “charisma,” as in “He’s got serious rizz.” Today we are talking about an old word, epiphany. It comes from the ancient Greek epiphanea, “manifestation or appearance”. It describes a sudden and striking realization. At the beginning of each year, the Car Talk guys, Click and Clack, from NPR, used to announce their own list of suggestions for new dictionary entries. A couple of their proposals were “Inoculatte” (to consume coffee intravenously) and “giraffiti” (vandalism spray-painted very high). One of their invented words is “stupiphany.” According to Click and Clack, a stupiphany is to realize, suddenly, that you’ve been an incredible dolt.
I have had many stupiphanies in my life, and maybe you have, too, but today we will talk about Epiphany, also known as the Twelfth Day of Christmas – as in the famous carol. Epiphany is perhaps my favorite church holiday.
It’s not observed much here in the U.S., but in the Eastern Orthodox Churches and in many Latin American countries, it is the official Christmas Day. That includes Puerto Rico, where we lived from 1982 - 2006. There Epiphany is celebrated as Three Kings’ Day (Día de los Tres Reyes) by giving gifts and eating lechon asado (pork BBQ), tembleque (a delicious coconut dessert), and coquito (Puerto Rican eggnog, which can be surprisingly strong). Studies have shown that Puerto Ricans are among the happiest people on earth – and I think one of the reasons is that they get to celebrate Christmas twice. The Americans brought the December 25 tradition with Santa Claus in 1898, when Spain ceded the island to the U.S. after the Spanish-American War, but Puerto Ricans never stopped celebrating their original Christmas on Epiphany. That means that Puerto Rican kids get presents from Santa on December 25 and presents from the Three Kings on January 6. They leave out cookies for Santa and shoeboxes filled with grass for the wisemen’s camels. When Christa was little, my parents always celebrated Christmas in the U.S. with my brother and his kids,
then joined us in Puerto Rico after the New Year to celebrate Three Kings Day. It worked out perfectly!
As I mentioned, “epiphany” means a sudden appearance or realization. It often refers to “the manifestation of a supernatural or divine reality.” At Epiphany we celebrate the visit of the Magi as the moment when the Incarnation of the infant Christ was revealed to the world. The Magi represent the Gentile nations – all persons outside of Judaism – who seek the Son of God. Thus, the worship of the Magi was the moment when Jesus’ divinity was revealed to the world at large, not just the Jews.
This morning at the threshold of a New Year, the journey of the Magi can serve to guide us as we, too, embark upon an unknown path. Like them, we, too, search for signs of God’s presence on earth, as we seek to draw closer to God in this new year. Like them, we also have guidance from God – perhaps not in the form of a star, but in scripture, prayer, and the encouragement of our fellow believers. Like them, we don’t travel alone.
The magi were thought to be Zoroastrian priests from what is now western Iran, home of ancient Babylon. They probably had access to the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures, brought there by Jewish exiles from the time of the Babylonian conquest in the 6th century B.C. They would have known that the Jews expected a Messiah to appear. Knowledgeable about astronomy, the appearance of a new star in the sky attracted their attention. It seemed to point to this Messiah’s arrival. So they decided to travel nearly 1000 miles across the desert from Babylon to Jerusalem to inquire about the one born as “King of the Jews.”
It's worth noting that they didn’t just suddenly get up one day, pack up their camels and set off. Before they departed they had spent years studying the sky and reading the ancient scriptures of the Hebrews. Perhaps they had spent time in prayer and meditation. If we are serious about finding God, or drawing nearer to Christ, we, too, must dedicate some time and effort. It starts with being observant – “They observed the star,” Matthew states. Are we watching for evidence of God’s presence and actions in our lives? Coincidences are often “God-incidences.” Impossible to explain miracles do happen, but much more often, God sends flesh-and-blood people to help us. We sense the prompting of the Holy Spirit in subtle ways – a song, a sunset, an unexpected kindness. Sometimes we are moved to be the one God sends.
We went to Puerto Rico so Joe could do fieldwork for his Ph.D. Young and naïve, we underestimated how much money it would take to live there. After six months we were running out of cash and Joe’s work was not done. I was feeling discouraged when I heard a child next door singing, “Isn’t the love of God something wonderful” over and over. A few days later, while doing fieldwork, Joe “happened” to meet a group of geologists and their students out on a field trip. They were interested in his work and told him they were looking for an professor in his exact area of expertise and would he like to apply? He did, and we spent the next 24 years of our lives on that beautiful island.
None of this was miraculous, yet an observant person could still see the hand of God in it.
I received my call to ministry there, encouraged by getting to know some women pastors for the first time in my life. I studied at the Seminario Evangelico de Puerto Rico, a fully-accredited seminary which only cost a fraction of seminary studies in the U.S., so that I graduated without any student debt. When we are watching for God, trying to be alert to what God is doing in our lives, amazing things can happen.
So, having observed the star in the sky, the wisemen set out. We know they were looking for the Messiah, possibly a king, because of the gifts they brought: gold, symbolizing royalty; frankincense, an incense burnt in the temple symbolizes divinity; and myrrh is an anointing oil, used to consecrate priests and kings; it was also used to anoint the dead, thus it foreshadows Christ’s death on the cross. These were costly, kingly gifts. The magi knew who they were looking for. They headed across the desert for Jerusalem, to inquire of King Herod about the birth of one “born as King of the Jews.” After being advised that they should go to Bethlehem, they found the child, with his mother Mary, and worshiped him.
God had guided them to their goal, and God will guide us, too, if we listen for God’s voice and try to discern where God is leading us.
Herod could have worshipped the Christ Child, too. When they arrived at his palace, he could have asked to go along and present a royal gift. But Herod was afraid. “Afraid of what?” we might ask. Why should a great king fear a tiny baby? Herod feared a loss of power, a loss of control. He feared that he might be replaced as ruler of the people. Isn’t that at the heart of what we fear? That God might take control of our lives and we would no longer be free to act totally as we want? We might have to stop and actually greet and listen to an unhoused neighbor. We might have to apologize and try to make things right with someone we have offended. We might have to pray for someone who has hurt us, and even try to forgive them. We might have to give up something we want to hold onto. From Herod’s point of view, there was a lot to fear, a fear that strikes at the heart of our individualistic, materialistic culture – we might no longer be in charge. God would be.
Once God is in charge, all we have belongs to Him. Herod wasn’t interested in belonging to God.
After their visit, the wisemen were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, but rather to go home by a different road. Encountering Christ always sets us on a new road. We cannot go back to our old ways. Our path is forever altered. As we face a New Year, we all face a new journey. Will it be down the familiar, well-worn path we are accustomed to, or will we heed God’s call to take a new path, perhaps in a different direction? God is calling each of us to trust Him in this New Year, to listen to his voice, to observe his star, to follow the guidance he is offering. Will we accept that challenge?
Like the wisemen, let’s not travel this new road alone. The Bible doesn’t actually say there were three magi – that idea comes from the three gifts they brought. But we do know that there were more than one. They are mentioned in the plural. The magi knew that setting out on an unfamiliar path alone was unwise, that in numbers there is strength.
That is why God puts us in the church – so we can encourage and accompany one another, so that when the journey is rough, we have companions who can help us.
When the wisemen found the Christ Child and worshiped him, Matthew tells us “They were overwhelmed with joy.” This is my prayer for you in the New Year – that you will find the Christ Child and be overwhelmed with joy. That you will offer Christ your gifts – not just of gold or silver – but the gift of your life, your talents and time given to serve others, to make the world a better place. The world needs our gifts. As we offer them at Jesus’ feet, he can use them to build the kingdom of God, to do justice, kindness, and mercy, to bring light in the darkness, as Isaiah prophesied. And after we have worshiped together, we will be strengthened to follow a new path, a new road, into the new year, in a journey on which God will walk with us, every step of the way. May it be so. Amen.
©Deborah Troester, 2023