Isaiah 60.1-6; Ephesians 3.1-12; Matthew 2.1-12
Epiphany. The moment when all is revealed. God's big ta-dah! moment, when the world is shown how God will redeem humanity. A baby, lying in a feeding trough for cattle, might not seem that promising. For the band of scholars from the East, the Magi, it is a sight that overwhelms them with joy. It is to these foreigners, rather then the religious clever clogs in Jerusalem, that Jesus is revealed.
Jerusalem had been the centre of people's faith for hundreds of years before Christ. The temple there was where it was believed God dwelt. All the faithful people focussed their attention on this one spot. And as they all gaze in that direction, God slips under the radar and is revealed instead in Bethlehem, a nowhere town.
Hicksville.
A sink estate.
South of the river.
And it is not to the high priests and scribes (so certain that God is pleased with them) to whom Jesus is revealed. But to foreigners. Jesus, from the very start, breaks down the divisions we humans set up between ourselves
God can still surprise us when we are looking the other way. When we direct our expectations in a particular place, we can easily overlook that God is already busy at work, right under our noses.
Where are the nowhere parts of our lives in which God is already at work? The places that are so banal or everyday that they are easily overlooked? As we busy ourselves in prayer asking for this and that, forgetting that God has already answered by giving us the other. Where has God already been revealed to you, but you've missed it?
The scholars from the East bring gifts. Gold, symbolising royalty. They have come to worship a king after all. Frankincense for divinity, for this is God made flesh, dwelling among us.
And myrrh. What does myrrh symbolise? Bit of a bummer, actually. It stands for suffering. For grief, and pain, and loss and death. This child will grow up and die, just as we shall. He will know great suffering, just as we have, or do, or may one day. His suffering will release God's love into the world.
Perhaps our suffering is the nowhere place where we least expect God to show up. We are so busy praying for suffering to be removed that we fail to notice it is here that God is sometimes encountered most acutely. That can be hard to notice, even when suffering prompts us to pray. It is not easy to notice God when our prayers are so busy asking for things that we forget to listen. When suffering causes us to get so wrapped up in ourselves that we fail to spot God's consolation in, say, those who come to comfort us. That in those who treat and heal our ailments and pain and disease, God is also at work. Do we always see that?
On the night before he died Jesus also prayed about his suffering. "Yet not my will but yours be done."
St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) said:
God the Father sent upon the earth a purse full of his mercy. This purse was burst open during the Lord's passion to pour forth it's hidden contents... Peace is not promised but sent us; it is no longer deferred, it is given; peace is not prophesied but achieved.
It is said that in the centre of a whirlwind it is completely calm. That as the storm sweeps across the landscape, wreaking havoc and destruction, the heart of the storm is still. Can we imagine such a place of peace in whatever suffering we might encounter, a point of stillness where God is present to us?
The gold and incense might at first appear to be the really cool gifts offered to the Christ child. But it is the final gift of myrrh that carries the deepest and most prophetic meaning.
As Jesus is revealed to us, what gifts do we bring to him? How do we respond to the peace and mercy and grace that God has given us through Christ?
St Paul, in today's epistle, tells us what his response was:
Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of the saints, this grace was given me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ.
— Ephesians 3.7-8
Paul turns his experience of God's grace into a vocation, in his case to be an evangelist who brings the good news of Jesus Christ not only to Jews but to Gentiles. He works to unite in Christ that which has been divided by humanity.
That may not be your vocation. Whoever you are, whatever age you are, however slight your faith is, the grace of God revealed in Jesus invites a response. What will yours be?
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him: give my heart.
— Christina Rossetti
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