Sermon Preached on the feast of the Epiphany – 5th January 2025
Canon L W Doolan – St Paul’s Athens
The part of the Christmas scriptural narrative that we focus on today is the Journey of the Magi – the Wise Men, and their three gifts, of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
This Christmas season it would seem, is a bumper time for providing Christmas Quiz questions. I could easily imagine Jean Mertzanakis providing a whole evening of Christmas questions at a St. Paul’s Quiz Night. There is ironically a rich treasure chest of questions that can be set. And it is good fun supplementing the very well – known Christmas story with questions that make you think, or trip you up because you have never thought of it before.
It is also a time for the nay-sayers to emerge. Those who think that their rational and historical analysis sheds a whole new light on this well known ‘fable’ from Bethlehem. They delight in trying to prove that the historical figures mentioned in St. Luke did or did not exist. They relish in the fact that there is no historical record in any other primary source that there was a census in the reign of Caesar Augustus.
Another popular game for the people who wish to de-bunk the Christmas story, is to draw the parallels in details drawn from gods, such as Mithras. Rational questions get posed as stumbling blocks to the truth of the narratives about the birth of Christ. Mechanical, clunky questions, such as ‘how does a virgin birth work?’ – parthenogenesis to use its posh name. How is it possible to be an almighty and divine creator of all that exists, and at the same time be a baby in a manger?
Personally I am drawn to none of this. I do not treat Christmas as a puzzle with trick questions. I do not seek to find the natural order or rhythms to dismiss all the possibilities enshrined in this ancient and compelling story – a story that itself, like a star, leads into mystery.
I am more persuaded, my friends, by some human responses recorded in the gospels, in particular St. Luke. At the greeting of the Archangel Mary ‘CONSIDERED what manner of salutation this might be.’ To the visit of the shepherds ‘Mary PONDERED these things in her heart’. These words are my friends and companions. And the human responses of the shepherds who respond to God’s glory by REJOICING and GLORYFYING, and the Wise Men who kneel to WORSHIP, that part of the Christmas Narrative we focus on in our Liturgy today.
It is St. Matthew alone who records the journey of the Magi to the city of Bethlehem, and to the very stable where Jesus lay. The Quiz Masters know their names – Caspar, Melchior, Balthazzar – but this is not given in scripture.
We refer to this feast today as the Epiphany. This we generally translate as ‘manifestation’ or in more contemporary language ‘revelation.’
In terms of today’s feast, through the arrival of the Magi to the stable in Bethlehem, we are celebrating the revelation of the glory of God in Jesus to the non-Hebrew speaking world, that is, to the gentiles. St. Matthew is making it clear that the birth of Jesus has an impact on Jew and Gentile alike – it is a universal event, a truly catholic revelation of God to his entire creation.
Astronomers have tackled the journey of these Magi, star-led, as it is. Was there a special star in that year? Can Matthew’s reference be scientifically proved? We are back to those who analyze and explain away.
More attractively and persuasively poets too have been inspired by the journey of these Magi; Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ is perhaps the most famous, but here is one stanza of a poem by Sir John Betjemin.
For me these three kings symbolise
Jesus revealed to Gentile eyes.
Not just to Jews was Christ revealed
Nor from the rest of us concealed.
He was hailed as God by learned men
From far away. Today, when
I hear of clever scientists
Becoming sure that God exists
And think the Christmas story true,
And when I hear of highbrows who
After long thought at last decide
The Christ was God, the Church His Bride,
I thank Him for those star-led three
Remembered at Epiphany.
(This is the final part of a much longer poem, broadcast by the author on the BBC Home Service on 6th January 1956. Published for the first time in Kevin Gardner’s “Poems in the Porch”, 2008. The Nativity Play.)
There is something powerfully attractive about this slow, methodical, and calculated journey that brings intellectuals from far way to a small Jewish city via a visit to the foxy and jealous King Herod. Theirs is a stark contrast to the unconditional response of the shepherds, with their simple, perhaps even naïve acceptance of the message brought to them by celestial beings.
These Wise Men have something of the status of Patron Saint of the rational, intellectual approach to God and to faith. Thank God for the shepherds, I say! However, our faith is not without intellect. Religion cannot be lazy. Our church practice cannot just be blind and unthinking. We are all on the same journey as those Wise Men, and we journey as a church towards the mystery of the Word- made –flesh. We all need to follow the star to discover the Christ of love, peace, and health in the war-torn, troubled world we are creating at this time.
I return to literature to finish off this reflection on the Feast of the Epiphany – this celebration of the journey of the mind to, reflect, consider, ponder, nurture internally and accept the love at the heart of God in Jesus, born in a manger, the Word made flesh. The closing words of the quote are relevant to situations such as Gaza, Syria, and Ukraine – but other places also. It is the words that Evelyn Waugh puts into the thoughts of the Empress St. Helena on her quest to discover the True Cross of Christ. This is what she says of the Wise Men.
‘Like me… you were late in coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way. For you the primordial discipline of the heavens was relaxed and a new defiant light blazed amid the disconcerted stars. How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot! How outlandish you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts! You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage and the great star stood still above you. What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod. Deadly exchange of compliments in which began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent.
Yet you came, and were not turned away. You too found room at the manger…
You are my special patrons, and patrons of all late comers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth… pray for the great , lest they perish utterly…pray for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.’
Helena: Evelyn Waugh Penguin 1963 pp144-145 passim
‘Lord God, humbled in the Christ-child in a manger, raised to glory on the cross, guide us to your perfect light.’ Amen.
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