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Epiphany // 1-4-09
Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian and St. Aidan’s Episcopal Churches
Scriptures Isaiah 60:1-6 Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14 Ephesians 3:1-12 Matthew 2:1-12
A New Pair of Glasses
Prayer: God, why do we storm heaven for answers that are already in and around our hearts? Every grace we need has already been given us. Lead us, O God, to the Beyond within and among us all. Lead us to don this new pair of glasses.1
How do you like them? My new pair of glasses?
I had resisted getting them for so long. But as the family driver, I knew that, with a ten-plus hour overland journey ahead of us on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day both, it would be best for all concerned in that car and on the highways that I get them.
And now, I’m afraid, I’m growing a bit dependent on them. They’re not my style, really. But life in general has gained a bit of a new focus.
As I imagine life did for the magi, wandering westward to Judea. Zoroastrian wise men, according to ancient legend; three of them in number, contemporary legend has it. Their perception changed and challenged by – and now dependent upon – a new pair of glasses known as a guiding star.
But first, they had to discern whether their newly acquired vision was a clear one. So Gentile court paid courtesy to Jewish court, and they dropped in on King Herod. “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” they asked him. “For we observed his star at its rising, * and have come to pay him homage.”
Herod. Poor, poor Herod. Imperial politico and Temple-rebuilder extraordinaire. Wily enough to get himself appointed by the Roman Senate in 40 BCE as – could you believe? – king of the Jews.
And now, from the lips of these visionaries, these internationally-respected wisdom bearers – Gentiles, no less – guided by a rising star, Herod hears of a rival to this title.
Not only that, but this man whose star so long ago rose and crested in the imperial firmament hears the magi tell him that, while they may have seemed to pay his royal highness homage … they have actually come that he might direct them to some mysterious child-king, in order that they might pay him homage.
As a modern-day spiritual classic puts it: “Fear says, ‘You dare not look!’”2 And Herod dared not look – for upon hearing the news of a new king of the Jews, Herod and all of Jerusalem, we are told, were “frightened.” Rather, being the practiced politico he was, the appointed king of the Jews conscripted the magi to do the looking – to wear the glasses – to see the vision – for him.
“Go and search diligently for the child,” he tells them. “And when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
As if!
And so the magi leave Herod and continue to follow their starry vision on their own. A star rising.
Until, quite suddenly, that star simply stopped.
For once at Bethlehem, the story, star, and vision linger. A heavenly hovering, over an incredible scene. So incredible as to be comical to all of us who would dare honor the dim mirror of our humanity. An incredulity well-captured, I believe, by that zany British troupe known as Monty Python. Listen, if you would, to their version of the dialogue between the magi and a woman the magi believe to be the mother of the new Jewish king:
MOTHER: Ohhh! … Who are you?
WISE MAN: We are three wise men.
MOTHER: What?!
WISE MAN: We are three wise men.
MOTHER: Well, what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o'clock in the morning? That doesn't sound very wise to me!
WISE MAN: We are astrologers. We have come from the East.
MOTHER: Is this some kind of joke?
WISE MAN: We wish to praise the infant. We must pay homage to him.
MOTHER: Homage? You're all drunk. It's disgusting … Bursting in here with tales about oriental fortune tellers. Come on! Out!
WISE MAN: No, no. We must see him.
MOTHER: Go and praise someone else's brat! Go on!
WISE MAN: We were led by a star.
MOTHER: Or led by a bottle, more like. Go on. Out!
WISE MAN: We must see him! We have brought presents!
MOTHER: Out!
WISE MAN: Gold. Frankincense. Myrrh.
MOTHER: Well, why didn't you say? He's over there. – Sorry, the place is a bit of a mess … 3
Such a hilarious scenario of proverbial lions laying gifts before the Lamb of God begs literary counterpoint. And so Matthew concludes the tale with haste, resonant still to both the surreal and subversive tenor of it all: “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, (the magi) left for their own country by another road.”
The magi have followed the rising star of their vision … until, without warning, it stops. For it’s here they experience their epiphany, and ours. So fantastic as to appear comical: a new light shining in the darkness for all to see and experience.
And it’s also here that they discover, as never before, that those who would call themselves the Messiah – the King of the Jews – could never share their vision. For they could never share the light. Indeed: They would – and must – extinguish it, until the only star that shone would be their own.
Too many of us would live as if we were the lone star that shines in heaven’s firmament – not unlike, I’m afraid, our current President. Either that, or our own night might seem so dark and deep to us that we would hitch our wagon to whatever supernova – perhaps our President-to-be – that would happen along.
Until an epiphany that makes no sense to us whatsoever embraces us – if we would but embrace it back. A new year’s vision, beckoning us to give up our kingly pretensions – internally or ex – in order that we might simply give.
Give up, to give … this coming week with the men’s overflow shelter, to those who continue to find no room in the world’s inn.
Give up, to give … this coming year, to a vision of church that St. Aidanites will be seeking out in a communal discussion next Saturday morning, and a three-year vision of church that Northsiders, led by this year’s Session, will intentionally bring to a Bethlehem close the end of 2009.
We may have our doubts. We may pause along the way and inquire among the world’s courtesans – chew over that word carefully – what our next steps should be. Or, whether we are even traveling the right road, to begin with.
We who would bear the gifts of God’s creation to life’s margins might even don these courtesans’ imperial lenses – seeing if they could clarify our vision, lest its comic foolishness run away with us. We might even abandon the Bethlehem road to lay claim to the “ownership society” so championed by our current Herod. So championed, that is, until so many entrées of subprime and overcooked margins of a different sort led us all to the medicine chest for bailouts for our indigestion.
And yet – in the end – that which we would possess is that which would possess us.
And yet – in the end – “nothing – nothing – before God belongs to us as our own … if not our ability to say thank you.”4
Thank you … for a new pair of glasses. Our gracias – that is, our graces. For God’s grace.
In the words of one of the finest Catholic theologians of the last century – the late German Jesuit Karl Rahner – writing literally amidst the rubble of Hitler’s Herodian intentions:
Suddenly you will experience that the petrifying visage of hopelessness is only God’s (visage) rising in your soul, that the darkness of the world is nothing but God’s radiance which has no shadow, that the apparent waylessness is only the immensity of God who does not need any ways because (God) is already there.5 (Prayer, p. 9)
God – God’s visage – is already there.
For there is a stopping place for whatever star – whatever ever-fleeting vision – we are called to follow. For all our visioning and dreaming gives way, in the end, to the waylessness of God. Away … in a manger.
And when that star stops, and that epiphany comes: May God grace us to see the world anew – with the newest pair of glasses yet.
That we might become like the magi, who – we are told – “(w)hen they saw that the star had stopped, * they were overwhelmed with joy.”
Whoever has ears to hear – let them hear.
1A close paraphrase of a prayer by Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB, as found in Answers in the Heart (Hazelden Meditations, 1989), January 3.
2Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (NYC: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.), p. 49.
4Quote from Jean-Louis Chretien, as found in Martin Marty’s “Context”, January 2009, 41:1, Part A, p.1, and as drawn from an article by Norman Wirzba in “Modern Theology”, April 2008.
5Karl Rahner, S.J., The Need and the Blessing of Prayer (translated by Bruce W. Gillette) (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), p. 9. | 
