Happy Epiphany!
With today’s service we begin our season of Epiphany. This season gets its name from today’s celebration, one of the least-known and most under-appreciated festivals of the church year. Epiphany is the big closing party for the Christmas season. Epiphany is when we place our attention on the infant Christ one last time before we celebrate His demonstration of His divine nature in His life and work in the coming season. Epiphany is the day when we give thanks to God for His salvation–and especially that now, in Christ, salvation has come to us Gentiles as well. One of the long-standing nicknames for Epiphany is that of the “Gentile’s Christmas”. The Gospel appointed for today is instructive. Matthew 2:1-12 has a large cast of characters–many of whom are, surprisingly, Gentile. Herod himself was only half-Jewish, which contributed in no small way to his paranoia with regard to his status as the King of Judea. And the wise men, or magi, who are at the heart of today’s Gospel, were very much Gentile–from the East, we are told, probably from Persia. On the other hand, Matthew is a very Jewish man–his Gospel has historically been known as the Hebrew Gospel–yet he writes here of the importance of Jesus’ birth to these Gentile wise men.
And this reading is very important, not because of Herod or the star or any of that, but because we here get to see God’s faithfulness and graciousness to all the people He has made, not just to a small subset. The blessing we find in Epiphany is precisely that the one who is called Emmanuel, which means, God with us, is with us, the Gentiles, too.
Perhaps this is something we tend not to think about. Christ was from the tribe of Judah. He was a Jew, through and through. Jesus came, as a Jewish baby boy, to save the Jews. And this is right to remember. Gentiles in general were not looking for a Messiah, as they did not know the true God. They did not know the promises which were going to be fulfilled by the Christ. Yet the good news we receive in this Epiphany season is that our God has taken on flesh and made Himself known to us Gentiles, too. The prophecy made through the Gentile prophet Balaam so many years before had now come to place: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” (Num. 24:17) The Star of Jacob has arisen and shone upon all people. The good news is that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of Jew and Gentile alike and that He has made Himself known to Jew and Gentile alike. The word “epiphany” simply means “appearing” or “making known”.
Jesus has appeared to us. And for that we ought to rejoice! This is no minor thing. Take the Magi, for example. For centuries the tradition has been to take the term that Matthew gives them–magoi, the plural form of magos, and translate it as either “wise men” or directly transliterate it as Magi. Some even held that these were kings, as in the old carol, “We Three Kings”. Yet, as a few Bible scholars have pointed out, the only other instances of this word in the Greek New Testament unquestionably are translatable as “magician” or “astrologer”. Basically, the Magi were idolaters. They worshipped the stars and the movements of the stars. And yet when they saw this particular star, something was different. So they went to the city where they thought they could learn just what this star meant–Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. Here, they found no baby. Their stars had let them down. But they did find people conversant with the Word of God–the Word which told them that Jesus was to be born, King of the Jews, in the little nearby town of Bethlehem.
Upon reaching Bethlehem, they found Jesus, and they worshipped Him. They didn’t worship the stars. They didn’t do any of those other things which they used to do, but they worshipped Jesus. Now they knew the truth which they had sought in their searching the stars. Yet this truth meant they were now strangers in their homeland, foreigners on their own soil. Seeing the baby Jesus and realizing who He was meant that they would have to die to their old ways and be born anew–a new life which would not be easy. And so they would no longer be at ease with their old ways and means. A new beginning had come and taken them with it. To worship Jesus meant that part of them died. T. S. Eliot, the British poet, said it well when reflecting on both his conversion to the Christian faith and the visit of the Magi:
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
(Journey of the Magi, ll. 37-42)
When we are made part of Christ’s kingdom through Baptism, we become strangers in our own land. We die, in a real sense, to our old selves, and are made the new people of God. We are among an alien people clutching their false gods–these false gods of power, wealth, status, and influence which so readily would ensnare us as well. The false gods of family, of sports, of anything which would keep us apart from Christ and His Word–all of these now become strange to us. This is what Jesus was talking about when He told us: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)
Becoming a stranger is not just a one-time deal, either. Although we are baptized only once, the old ways, the old desires, keep flaring up in us. And so daily, by contrition and repentance, we need to continually put to death those sinful desires, those selfish urges. And this truth too has appeared to us, been made known to us, by the one the Magi worshipped, the Baby in Bethlehem.
The Magi saw and believed in Christ. They worshipped Him. The shepherds didn’t worship Jesus. They praised God, to be sure, but they didn’t worship Jesus, because they didn’t know that He was God. But the Magi, not being Jewish, had no such impediments. They knew that God had come to earth, and so they worshipped Him. They presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They gave to Him most precious gifts befitting a king–gifts of richness. And yet, gifts also foreshadowing the end.
They gave Jesus gold–that most precious of metals in the ancient world, still today a symbol of permanence and steadfastness– used for wedding rings for that reason. Gold was refined then by heating it, mixed with salt and so burning away its impurities. Jesus was tried and tested in Gethsemane, in Jerusalem, and on the Cross, and was pure throughout, taking the dross of the world’s sin and burning it away. Jesus was as good as the purest gold, for He is God in the flesh. He had no impurity of His own to burn away, but took ours and removed them once and for all.
They gave Jesus frankincense–that glorious scent, that rare perfume. It was a powerful fragrance suited for a sacrificial offering, to make a sweet smell before the Lord. Frankincense was a smell offered to a god in ancient culture, and an integral part of the grain offering in Jewish temple ritual. So Jesus was the powerful fragrance, the perfect offering before the Lord. Jesus offered His body for the sins of the world, and was accepted by His Father as a sufficient offering for the world’s sin. By offering this frankincense to Jesus, these Magi indicated that they knew He had some special standing before God.
They gave Jesus myrrh. Myrrh was a precious fragrance, yet one associated more with death than with life. Myrrh was an aromatic resin which was often used for burial. In fact, we hear from the apostle John, the other very Jewish-focussed Gospel writer, that myrrh was used in the preparation that Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus, who had come to Him by night, who was on the Sanhedrin, had made for anointing Jesus’ body.
And so even here, in the splendour of the joy of Jesus’ birth and early childhood, the magi brought something which pointed forward to how Jesus would truly become their king–and ours. The Magi’s gifts pointed forward to Jesus’ coronation as King by Pilate, the crown of thorns He would wear, the Cross upon which He would be lifted, the grave in which He would be buried as He awaited His resurrection. The Magi’s gifts pointed forward to the death Jesus would die so that you and I would be made a part of His holy and eternal Kingdom.
For as I mentioned earlier, today really is a blessed day. Today we see that Jesus is King of the Jews, and of the Gentiles as well. We see these great men from the east bowing humbly before this child. We see them offer worship and lordly gifts–gifts which were yet insufficient to convey just how amazing this visit with Jesus truly was. And so we too, Gentiles blessed by the grace of God given us in Christ Jesus, gather gladly to give and offer Jesus all thanks and praise for His salvation, so graciously given to us in His Word, applied to us in Baptism, shared through His Body and Blood.
Happy Epiphany! The Star of Bethlehem foretold of old has pointed us Gentiles to Christ the Lord, the only hope and source of salvation for all who believe in Him. As we consider His blessings throughout the coming year, may we always rejoice in His goodness to us by including us too in His family. Christ has come to be not just the saviour of the Jews, but your Saviour, too! Amen.
Last updated January 2008 by the webmaster.