Becoming the Light

Today we celebrate Epiphany – we are a couple of days early since the feast day of Epiphany is on Tuesday. Epiphany is the season of revelation – the time when we think about how Jesus was and is revealed to be the Word, the Son of God, the True Light, and we start that process today with the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles in the form of the wise men from the East.

My good friend Ann, who is our musician this morning, thank you Ann, asked me the other day what I would be preaching about and I said that although its commonplace for us today, the inclusion of Gentiles in the revelation of God must have been mind-blowing for the Jews of the time.

And that’s very true – that the light of Christ is not just for the physical descendants of Abraham but for all people – is astonishing. But if we go there today we miss something rather darker and yet just as important.

You know that this year we are reading from Matthew’s gospel which is the only gospel that talks about the wise men. It tells us that they defied Herod by not returning to Jerusalem but “left for their own country by another road.” And - we skip this bit in our Sunday readings – Herod is not pleased, to put it mildly. Herod is so threatened by this baby that he sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the male children of two years or under.

But he misses Jesus, because Joseph has a dream in which God tells him, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." Then, we are told, Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. 

If we focus on the coming of the light to the Gentiles, we miss this important backstory of murder and flight, of fear and migration.

If this were a movie we might be tempted to call it “The Clash of the Kings” Except it isn’t really a clash – Herod is lashing out and Jesus is taken away.

Perhaps “The Babe against the Tyrant King” or “A Tale of Two Kingdoms” might be better titles. Over this next year we will hear Matthew talking a lot about the kingdom of heaven. It’s a phrase which appears over 30 times in this gospel but not at all in the other three. And in this story about Herod’s anger, he’s setting up the context, beginning to develop the theme of the contrast between the kingdom of human empire grounded in violence, and the kingdom of heaven which is grounded in love.

They are quite different. The politics and economics of human empire depend on division and inequality. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, those who can, bullying those who can’t. In contrast God’s politics and economics – the kingdom of heaven – is about healing all the divisions that keep us in conflict. It is about establishing true justice with equity for all God’s children and God’s creatures, indeed it is about the flourishing of all creation. It is about mutual service among equals, never about oppression of the weak by the strong.

That’s why the Son of God didn’t just appear on earth, but was born as a human baby with all the same dependence on his parents for food, hygiene, safety and love as any other baby. That’s why he was born in a stable. Because God identifies with, we can even say he has a preference for, those who are weak, those who are outcast, those who are poor, those who are running for their lives. If God were to incarnate today we might find him in Gaza or Sudan or Somalia or Venezuela or in a displaced persons camp.

It is just so counter-intuitive that the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, would be born not in New York or Geneva but among the poorest of the poor, the least powerful in a world where power is worshiped.

But Jesus broke the mold. Jesus offers an entirely new way of being human. That is the king the wise ones came to see and to worship – a king whose kingdom is not of this world, a king who does not fight but whose power is in non-violence, in humility and patience. Whose people dream dreams and hear the Spirit leading them.

This is our calling, people of God, followers of Jesus.

We are called to be an entirely different kind of human. We are called to cultivate peace and humility in our hearts and our lives. We are called to forgive our neighbors, our enemies, and yes ourselves as well. We are called to respond to events we can scarcely take in with compassion not only for the victims but also for the perpetrators.

And that is why we are here today. We are not here just to see our friends, though that is a joy; we are not here just to sing, though that is good for our brains and our immune systems; we are not here just because people who go to church live longer!

We are here to be transformed. We are here to learn how to follow Jesus. We are here to be sustained in our journey by the presence of God in this place, in one another and in the eucharist. And we are here to pray.

Prayer is our superpower. Prayer is what lets the light in. Prayer is how we align ourselves with Spirit and how we invite Spirit into our hearts and into our world and into Congress and the White House and the Pentagon. And that is powerful. So powerful.

The wise men, the Magi, followed the star which led them to Jesus. We don’t need a star, we can come directly to the throne of God, to the feet of the one who is both our big brother and our Savior. And there we can ask for grace, which is always freely given. Grace to love where we have never dared love before.

Because that is who our God is. Our God is light and our God is love and our God shows us in Jesus an entirely new way to be human. And by deep, gentle, humble loving we become the light of the world. God moving in us and through us can do more than we have ever imagined possible.
Alleluia!

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall