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Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany

January 6, 2002

“In the time of King Herod, afer Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?’”

That’s how Matthew introduces his story of the Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, that is so familiar to us as the culmination of the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus. The sign of the coming of the Christ is complete when outsiders, foreigners, pagans who are not part of the covenant between God and Israel, outsiders come seeking to pay homage to the newborn king who is to birth God’s kingdom into their world. That’s where the Epiphany story begins in the Gospel—and in a way, that’s where the Epiphany mystery begins for our experience, too. Because we also look for Jesus, we also seek the presence of Christ in our lives, we also look for the light of God shining into our strange and tortured world—and we also want to open up our gifts and give them to the one who loves us and saves us and makes us whole.

So this Epiphany Gospel sets before us a question: Where will we look for Jesus? Where will we seek the presence of Christ in the world that we inhabit?

One place we can look for Christ is where the wise men in the story look for Christ: in the cosmos, in the natural universe. The wise men were astrologers: it was their profession to observe the cosmos, to watch the stars, and from the stars to interpret the Divine’s will for the world. They came to Jerusalem looking for a new king because they “observed his star at its rising.” They looked for the manifestation of God in the stars.

Now we today don’t put that same kind of stock in the meaning of astrology. Even the TV psychics have a little caption on the bottom of the screen that says, “For entertainment purposes only.” But we can still look for the manifestation of Christ in the stars, we can still look for the signs of the Creator in patterns of the Creation.

I read an astronomy book once where the author—who was not writing from a particularly Christian or religious point of view; it was a straightforward science book—the author pointed out that everywhere we look in the universe, at every scale, we see structure, we see smaller, simpler entities coming together to form relationships, to form patterns and interactions that are larger and more complex and make those entities more than they would be on their own. Stars burn because of nuclear fusion, where smaller atoms come together in new relationships to form larger atoms and to release tremendous energies in the process. Stars come together to form solar systems, and binary pairs, and globular clusters, and galaxies. Galaxies come together to form local groups, and clusters of groups, and families of clusters. At the very edge of our observational range, as far out into space as we can look with the Hubble Space Telescope, we see structure: groups of galaxies are arranged in sheets and strings and formations as far as we can see. Everywhere we look in the universe, we see structure: smaller, simpler entities coming together to form larger, more complex relationships, relationships that make things more than they would be all alone.

Now, on the human level, in our human experience, we have a name for that kind of relationship that makes something more than it would be all alone: we call it love. It is not too much to say that when we look into the universe, when we study the stars, we see love at work, drawing smaller things into larger relationships and making them more together than any of them would be alone. And if God is love, and Christ is the manifestation of God’s love in the world, then when we look up into the stars, we see Christ, the sign and the work and the presence of Christ, creating the universe for love. One of the places we can look for Christ is in the cosmos, in the natural universe.

Another place we can look for Christ is where the scribes in the story look for Christ: in the words of scripture. When the wise men come to Jerusalem looking for a newborn king, the scribes search the scriptures and find the words of the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” Based on their reading of scripture, the scribes can tell the wise men where to look for the Christ.

The scriptures tell us where and how to look for Jesus as well—especially when we read the scripture not just literally, not just for facts about the biography of Jesus; but when we read scripture spiritually, with our imaginations and our emotions and our creatively interpretive powers fully engaged.

When I was in seminary, we had a retreat for all the first-year students, and on the first night the retreat leader took us through a meditation on the gospel story where Jesus heals a blind man. In the meditation we imagined the whole scene: we tried to form in our inward senses the sights and the sounds and even the smells of the setting: we put ourselves into the scene, as if we were participants in the story, as if we ourselves could hear Jesus say to the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you,” and the blind man reply, “Master, let me receive my sight.” And then the retreat leader had us do something different: he had us imagine that Jesus turned directly to each of us and said, “And what do you want me to do for you?”—and we had to answer. I found that, in my meditation, the sense of the presence of Jesus with me was so powerful that I answered his question straight from my heart, I had to go deeper than the pious sorts of things I would “properly” ask in prayer, I had to really ask Christ to be with me and strengthen me and transform me so that I could be a true priest and a minister of the good news in Christ’s name. It was a very moving meditation for a first-year seminarian, and it has stayed with me all the years since.

And that’s what can happen when we look for Christ in the scripture, when we read the Gospel not just as information, but as the living word of Christ to us. That’s why we stand up for the reading of the Gospel, you know: to honor the presence of Christ with us in the word. So another place we can look for Christ in our world is in the words of scripture.

There is yet a third place where we can look for Christ in our experience: and that is in each other, in the members of the community that bears Christ’s name, in the people of the Church that is the Body of Christ in the world. We encounter the living love of Jesus in each other when we gather to make Eucharist, when we meet in fellowship and friendship and fun, when we work together to be of service in Christ’s name in the wider world. We make Christ manifest to each other—and to the world—when we work on a Habitat for Humanity house, or serve a Loaves and Fishes meal, or send a get-well card to a friend who’s just had surgery, or take a class and learn about prayer together, or go to a Christmas party and enjoy each other’s company, or join a small group and learn to share our faith stories, or write a poem or paint a picture or sing a song that tells something of our joy and our sadness and the way we feel God’s love made manifest for us.

One of the places we look for Christ is in each other—especially as we open up to each other our gifts, our gold and frankincense and myrrh, our skills and talents and abilities. We encounter Christ in each other, as we give of ourselves in Christ’s name.

The Epiphany story begins when wise men come asking “Where can we find the one who is born to be king of the Jews?” The Epiphany mystery continues in us when we ask, “Where can we find Christ in our everyday lives, in our everyday worlds?” And it is the Epiphany grace of God that we may find Christ made manifest in the cosmos, in the scriptures, in each other. That is what we celebrate today, and for that we give God thanks and and we give God praise.

In the Name of God: Abba, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.