A Sermon for the Day of Epiphany
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
Isaiah 60:1-6,9
Psalm 72
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
"Wise men still seek Him" the bumper sticker says. Whether or not they're following a star, people still make long journeys searching for a new king, looking for some ruler or something to make sense of their lives.
I've done it myself: I got on a camel – well first on an airplane – and traveled to Jerusalem. There were lots of others there: people who went " even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us."
We're looking for an epiphany – a manifestation of God; we search for a place where God will show God's self to us somehow.
So there I was at last. In Bethlehem, in the church built over the place where Jesus is said to have been born.
A very holy place;
it looks,
as my step-daughter Christie points out,
like someone's shower drain.
Only the shower curtains are gold brocade and there are
lots of lanterns and
hundreds of pilgrims and tourists peeking inside the curtains.
I don't have an epiphany looking at that most holy place. I turn away from the crowd and toward the dark, canvas-hung walls. And my digital camera has an epiphany. The walls that look almost black to my eyes are manifested in the tiny digital window as biblical scenes.
There is Mary and some angels and the baby.
I knew Jesus would be here somewhere,
but this wasn't quite what I expected.
I capture the tiny epiphanies on the camera's computer disk and make my escape. Hoping to sneak out a different way from the crowd and to find a quiet place for prayer before going back to the bus, I turn up a narrow, winding staircase. Halfway up I have to move aside for a vested acolyte; he's rushing along, probably late for the Latin Mass in the chapel below. Moving further up the stairs, I run head on into the priest. White haired, solemn and regal, he's fully vested in a festival chasuble of silver and gold. There is a shock of recognition, when he simultaneously notices my priestly clerical collar AND my floral skirt. His eyes widen briefly. We don't speak. I assume he's Roman – really Roman, like from the Vatican, where they even think in Latin. He's a wise man from the West come to Bethlehem. And I am a scandalous, heretical priest in a woman's body.
Then I look down at what he carries in his arms on his way to celebrate mass in this holiest of places.
Well, I may be a scandalous, heretical woman priest. But he is carrying a plastic baby doll. There's a sheepish grin. Then a sudden flash of recognition. Our eyes are opened. A wordless, mutual blessing is exchanged as I move aside to let him pass.
It is an epiphany. We both see something new: He sees a priest of the church in a woman's body; I see the baby Jesus cradled in his arms.
Epiphanies are like that. Something ordinary -- like a bit of plastic collar or doll last summer, or a newborn baby two thousand years ago, or even treasures like gold, frankincense and myrrh – suddenly shows itself to be holy, set apart to show us a bit of God.
The wise men's gifts, while valuable, may not have been exactly what Mary was wanting for her new baby. Shepherds offering wool for baby blankets might have been more appropriate and welcome. What's a baby going to do with precious metals and oils?
The gifts of the wise men were like the baby doll – in the Christian story they are symbols of something more; they show us something about God.
The wise men offered all their treasures: their power and the result of hard work symbolized by the gold, their inner spiritual lives and prayers symbolized by the frankincense, and their sorrow, bitterness, and wounds symbolized by the myrrh. The embalming myrrh, though valuable, may not seem a treasure for a king. And those sorrows are often the most difficult for us to offer. Yet scripture is pretty clear that God desires those gifts and is able to transform them into holy treasures.
Today's gospel suggests that bringing gifts to the king is a good idea. Christians have always brought their offerings to the church. In the Early Church they brought to the altar not only bread and wine for the communion, but other produce and foods to share in a common meal – an early pot luck. They offered the fruits of their work to be shared with the community and for those who were in need.
Today we still bring our offerings to God, gifts for the infant king in the manger; we bring offerings to the church for the body of Christ that is God's people gathered together.
Our sorrows and our thanksgivings we still offer in prayer. Sometimes, like the wise men, we too offer incense as a symbol of those prayers. Today more often the fruit of our work is cash rather olives, wheat, or fish; so we, like the wise men, might offer the modern equivalent of gold.
Our gifts are given to the community of the church, for those among us in need. Scripture says very little about an offering to support a professional clergyperson and nothing about an offering to maintain a building. We can offer our own gifts for ministry in place of paying a professional; that's the gift that total ministry can be. And the beauty of a building, too, might be a symbolic offering of ourselves to God. A gift offered to God always becomes something more.
When we offer in homage to our king whatever we have, the ordinary stuff – money and time, energy and abilities, cans of food and toys – God receives all that we offer as treasures.
When we bring forward that offering plate, it symbolizes, in the words of the old prayer book, an offering of "our selves, our souls and bodies."
And just as happens to the communion bread, God takes the gifts we offer, blesses them, breaks them, and gives them in turn to the gathered community. What we offer to God is then used to nourish the Body of Christ today.
We are part of the Body of Christ so it is literally in giving that we receive. It is in this kind of giving and receiving that epiphany happens: God is manifested; God is on display for us to see.
The other priest in Bethlehem and I each journeyed to pay homage to our king. And we each, perhaps inadvertently, brought a gift. The gifts may have seemed at first inappropriate, even tacky: who brings plastic to a king? – a cheap plastic clerical collar and plastic baby doll. The gifts were offered to the king, but each gift was received by others who also gathered to worship the king.
God only knows how many pilgrims were blessed that day by bits of plastic. I know from the looks on the faces and from people who spoke to me that many were touched simply by seeing a priest in a woman's body. And I'm certain that many who attended mass that day were touched by the "Real Presence" of Christ cradled in the arms of the kingly priest.
God only knows how many will be blessed by the gifts you offer. Let us all, like the wise men, open our treasure chests before the King.