Sermon for the Epiphany

Feast of the Epiphany (Transferred)

January 8th, 2023

“And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.”

How is it that we know ourselves?

And what does it mean or look like to, to know yourself?

It’s a question that has been and is currently driving a monstrous industry of self-help books, motivational speaker-types, websites, phone apps, courses, etc. Books with titles like ‘Awakening’, ‘One Simple Test to Understand Who You Are’, or ‘the Power of Understanding Yourself.’

Clearly if there’s this kind of huge supply of resources to help us figure out who we are there must be an equally large demand for it. It must be that we are all deeply confused about our identities, about our vocations and our callings, about what we are meant to be, and show, and value in the world. Social Media has become a fantastic outlet for this, giving us an opportunity to create precisely the persona or the image we want the world to see, at our fingertips we can become what we want to be, even if in our heart of hearts we know that it’s just a front because inside we still feel utterly lost, but at least they won’t know that. It feeds a terrible addiction as we turn ever more and more towards the validation of others to affirm this paper-tiger image of ourselves.

Sometimes we think we’ve found it, perhaps in another person or studies, or in a job and sometimes we’re right – that is part of who we are – but often we’re wrong and head back to square-one. But when we think we have it, when that ‘a-ha’ moment comes and we’re sure that we know who and what we are, that we at last have an identity, we have, in that moment, an epiphany. A revelation or clarity of vision, finally we think, I am who I truly am.

But have we? Are we? Or do we each still feel that itch, that slightly gnawing sense within us that we have no place and no identity? That we’re still looking for something that we’ve yet to find?

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, the day on which we remember and celebrate the arrival of the Magi, or the Three Kings or Wise Men, to Christ after their lengthy journey of following a star.

Remember, this particular celebration of the church is not apart from our celebration of Christmas but is really part of it or the continuation of it. Christmastide has technically come to a close on the evening of the 5th of January, the eve of the actual Epiphany but our readings in the coming month will keep us thinking about the Incarnation – Christ’s birth – and what it means for us and for the world.

This whole cycle of our church year, December 25th through to February 2nd, is a time that is all about unveiling or revelation; the word Epiphany literally means a revelation or manifestation of something and we are taught through these Sundays that Christmas is one such revelation or manifestation, for as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son...He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”

Until that night in Bethlehem God spoke through humans or through burning bushes, God wasn’t seen but rather heard by a certain few, but then God reveals himself, manifests himself in human flesh in the infant Jesus. And this great festival of the church – this whole season – is not just, I think, about a revelation of Jesus’ identity but it is also about a revelation of our identity.

The Magi followed a star from distant lands looking for, ‘the child born king of the jews,’ and what they discovered at the place where the star led them changed the course of their lives.

The 20th century poet T.S. Eliot captures this in his poem Journey of the Magi when he writes from the perspective of one of the three Wise Men, “A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of year. The ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.” The Wise Man goes on to talk about having to deal with ornery camels, lazy camel drivers, about cold nights sat around fires dreaming of the warm places they left behind at home and wondering why they bothered to follow that star to begin with, a sentiment heard in the line, “At the end we preferred to travel all night…with the voices singing in our ears, saying that this was all folly.”

It’s a good reminder from Eliot of what we know for ourselves to be true – that finding and following Jesus can often be neither easy nor pleasant. It’s not a ticket to earthly happiness or joy. It won’t take away sorrow, we will still get sick, those we love will still die, and sometimes it’s easy for us in the midst of struggle to think, with the Magi, “this is all folly.”

But it’s actually in finding the child Jesus that the lives of the Magi are changed, when they, I think, come to know not just the identity of the child but themselves as well, and they realize – as we pray that we may also realize – that their lives can never again be the same after meeting Jesus. “Were we led all that way for birth or for death?” asks one of the Wise Men, pondering the fact that this child was born to die, “I Had see birth and death but had thought that they were different. This birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like death. Our death.”

What strange words to describe the birth of a child. The glorious birth of this baby was for them like encountering their own death. They came to celebrate his birth but saw that in him birth and death are intertwined, just as they are for us. Jesus’ love is to die; and our love for him is – in some sense – to let ourselves, the identities we build of ourselves, die so that we can become new creations, new people, in and through him.

His birth, for the Magi, was like death because they saw that their old selves needed to die, but in him and in this identity his life gives them, they found something better.

This is why at the end of the Magi’s encounter with Jesus we are told they return home by another road; not just because Herod was hunting for Jesus and would surely have captured them, but because when we know Jesus, when we encounter him truly, we can never be the same again.

In the poem the Magi return to their far-off kingdoms, places where Jesus is not known, but the Magi find that they’re no longer at ease there, they no longer fit in, “with an alien people clutching their Gods. I should be glad of another death,” says one of them in the last line of the poem. That is, we should rather find solace and joy in giving up our lives for Jesus than building our lives without him.

Books and courses can be helpful in our lives but are no replacement to the identity we are meant to find in Jesus. The Wise Men gave up something of themselves to follow the star and find the Child, they had to do what King Herod could not do, but what we all must do – to give up the idea that we are the centre of it all, that our ways of knowing and loving are the best, to give up our self-identity and seek our identity in Christ.

In the poem when the Wise Men come to Bethlehem they leave winter behind and descend into a valley teeming with the new life and growth of Spring. To follow the newborn king, to have our lives teem with growth and new life, we need to Jesus what the Magi gave, however hard it is.

Our Gold, for a king, acknowledging his power and rule in our lives.

Our frankincense, our worship of him and not the other idols in our lives.

And our myrrh, our burdens, our suffering, our death.

The promise of Epiphany is that though the journey and the task before us be difficult, whenever we offer him ourselves, our identity, and our weakness, he will in return off us his very life.

Amen.