Homily for the Feast of the Epiphany

Homily for the Feast of the Epiphany Church of the Resurrection January 6, 2013

On this great feast the church offers us two things to pray over. First, of course, the fascinating story we have come to call “The Tale of the Magi.” And second, a name for the feast; a word not part of our daily vocabulary.

So first, to the story.

Matthew has written a very straight-forward tale. Few details, leaving us to use our imaginations to fill them in. Which is what Christians down the centuries have done. So much so we have made the original narrative all but unrecognizable.

Matthew gave us plain old astrologers. They were fellows who searched the skies trying to discover where the world was heading.

In short order Christian piety turned them into kings. There are none in Matthew’s story. Much less, crowns and gorgeous costumes.

We aren’t told how many they were. In the Eastern churches they suppose there were twelve. But there could just as easily have been twenty-three.

And they had no names. I risk the ire of my dear fourth-grade religion teacher up in heaven when I say it, but sorry, Sister Arsenia, they weren’t called Balthasar, Melchior, and Casper.

As far as Matthew is concerned they might as well be called Larry, Moe, and Curly.

The devil made me say that.

Those are small touches we added along the way; harmless enough. But more important are the people we left out of the story. In all the visual representations over the centuries—statues, paintings, tableaus—where are Herod and the high- priests and scribes?

They have been airbrushed out of the story by a sort of spiritual photoshopping. And that changes the whole drama and meaning of the story.

As Matthew tells it, who do the Magi say they are looking for? “The newborn king of the Jews.”

That’s the name that the tyrant Herod had chosen for himself. And it’s the name that a later Herod and the high-priests and scribes will put at the top of the cross when they crucify him. The fact that they are reported to name him that way is no accident. Matthew is telling us that this child is a threat to the political power of the despot. Herod, we read, was ‘greatly troubled’ so he ordered his sycophants to search out this tiny pretender. This is no bed-time story, it is a story of how oppressive rulers react to any challenge to their power.

In the account we read in the liturgy the church give us only the first part of the story. It ends with the Magi returning to their home. Here is how Matthew end the story:

When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Jerusalem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.

“Two years and younger”—about four years younger than the victims at Newtown. . . The story ends the way every effort at empire-building does—with the slaughter of the innocent.

The church suggests some help to our understanding of the story by linking it to the prophecy of Isaiah in the first reading.

He’s proclaiming a word to the Israelites on their return from exile in Babylon. They had lost everything that was sacred to them, and after fifty years they are finally home. So it is only natural that he proclaims a time of joy and celebration. He foresees their holy city, Jerusalem, becoming a beacon of light up on the hill, drawing all the nations of the world to it.

It is indeed a moment of great blessing. But it is also an ambivalent one, as ambivalent as Matthew’s account. It involves light shining in the surrounding darkness. The coming of the light involves the revelation of riches, for sure; but also the uncovering of things hidden, things we might not have wanted to see.

Later on we rejoice that Jesus will be called ‘the light of the world.’ But we dare not forget all the forms of darkness he will have to overcome, and the cost of that overcoming.

The daily readings of the past week since New Years have been all about light. That brings us to the second gift of this feast (which for Eastern Christians is the real feast of Christ’s coming, remember): its name.

Epiphany is not part of our daily language. What does it really mean?

It’s all about revealing. Unveiling. Illuminating. Bringing that was hidden into visibility and meaning. For Paul, as we read in the passage from the Epistle to the Ephesians, it meant the disclosure of a mystery that had remained hidden for ages: that salvation and liberation from the darkness we inflict on one another are not reserved for the Jews. We are all, every last one of us equally heirs of the promise. We are the Gentiles, the ‘nations.’ The kingdom will be ours too.

But as great as that revelation is, it counts as one of the ‘big’ truths. It is surely inspiring but it can remain too far removed from our daily living.

It can be helpful to read the feast and the story at another level. What does it all mean for our personal spiritual development, for our growth in spiritual maturity? What is the experience of epiphany for me and thee?

What epiphany means at that level depends, I think, on the underlying image the word evokes in us.

For many (perhaps, all of us?) the word suggests a spectacular, instantaneous burst of light. It’s like fireworks.

That’s an approach that characterized the crowds drawn to Jesus during his ministry. He called it “a wicked generation.” They were always seeking signs and wonders. They wanted miracles that would dazzle them. Spectacular miracles compel acceptance. We don’t have to choose to believe, to be responsible agents in following the Lord.

In his ministry and preaching Jesus does bring light. But it comes in the form of insights that challenge our comfort zone, our complacency. The bad guys—the tax collectors and public sinners—turn out to be not so bad. He eats and drinks with them, to the scandal of the pious. The respectable Pharisee up at the front of the pews telling God of all his holy deeds is left standing; the Lord’s eye and pleasure are on the guy in the back pew praying “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

(I am reminded of the wisdom of the elderly woman looking over her eight children, once thought to be little angels, and saying, “There’s not an angel in the lot.”)

Jesus alerts us to be wary and not jump to conclusions too fast, that what looks like wheat may really be weeds. In the line waiting to enter and enjoy the heavenly banquet the prostitutes come before the priests.

Most of us will not receive instantaneous bursts of light. There are rarely fireworks on the spiritual journey. A better image of the way epiphany ordinarily works is that moment when the sun takes its first tiptoe over the skyline of the city on a clear winter dawn. We’ve all experienced it. It can be awe-inspiring. There is hope. There will be a new day. We rejoice to see it, and rightly so. But there are still many hours before the fullness of noon.

There are yet tiny nooks of darkness in each of us that remain through our lifetime. There are biases and prejudices, unexamined attitudes and assumptions about the mystery of life and our companions on this planet, not yet lifted up to the light. We call them ‘blind spots,’ don’t we? But only after they have been illuminated.

And most of the time epiphany only happens when the Lord takes us into uncomfortable situations and we are called to step out from behind the shadows that have protected us from the painful light of truth. The Magi, after all, didn’t really know where they would end up or what they would see.

This great feast tells us that epiphany does happen. God is faithful to the promise. So by all means let us not be afraid to put crowns on the astrologers. Let’s dress them up in fancy robes and give them whatever name pleases our ears. Let’s make them astrologeresses if that helps to make it real. It’s part of the long Christian tradition of child-like freedom to play in the house of the One Jesus encouraged us to call “Our Father.”

But as we feast with The Three Kings over in the hall after Mass let’s be clear that that feast takes all its meaning from the feast we will first share at the table right here in front of us, when the Light of the World feeds our hunger and slakes our deepest thirst in the form of ordinary bread and humble wine.