The Epiphany of the Lord: Cycle A 22-23
THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD
Isaiah 60:1-6 | Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 | Matthew 2:1-12
Oh God, who on this day revealed your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star, grant in your mercy that we, who know you already by faith, may be brought to behold the beauty of your sublime glory through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, amen.
In the opening prayer, we asked for mercy. Mercy is unmerited love, and we want to know ⎯ we ask to know, by faith, the beauty of the glory of God. God’s glory is described in many ways, but the way I love to talk about it is God’s glory is human beings fully alive, fully alert, fully aware, living in reality, enjoying every single part of life, both that which is wonderful and that which is difficult. So we go to the first reading of Isaiah, and we see something that is a beautiful image of what I’m talking about, of God’s glory. It’s light. It’s enlightenment. You and I are invited into a process of growing and changing, evolving, and that’s happened over the centuries. It happens in each generation, and it continues to bring us to a greater awareness of simply what is, the truth. And from the readings during this Christmas season, we realize that John, the disciple, the one who was most, I think, in tune with who Jesus really was, made it clear that this figure Jesus was not just a person. He was also God but not God just in the sense that we now know what he looks like but God in the sense of his full revelation. So Jesus is seen as the truth. When Jesus enters the world, if you want to know what we need to know about being here, about living in this world, about achieving the goal that we’re here for, you focus on him, and the wonderful thing about him is what he brought to us: a way of seeing.
So Isaiah says, “Someday a great light will come, but darkness,” he says, “Covers the earth, and a thick cloud covers peoples.” I love those two images, because it means that darkness was more prevalent than the light. Evil was winning, in a sense. Evil was everywhere. You go to Europe, especially a country like Italy, and you’ll see center after center of a city, not in a valley, not in a flat plane but always up on a hill with a gigantic wall around it. That’s the way they lived for centuries, always aware that there was something outside, dark, that could come and destroy them. And then there’s a thick cloud over the peoples, and to me that’s a perfect statement about unconsciousness, people living in a world that is dark. They believe it’s dark. They struggle to return evil for evil, and it doesn’t go anywhere, but it stays in the darkness. So Isaiah is saying, “Into this dark world, into this confusion will come understanding, insight, wisdom and also hope. A light will shine. You will see it.” And I love the image. When you see it, your heart throbs. It means you’re made for this. This is the thing that I’ve always thought the world should be, a place of goodness, a place of love, a place of mercy, a place of forgiveness, and that’s what God has revealed to you and to me. And it’s up to us to believe it, to trust in it.
St. Paul is saying something about this new world, this enlightened world, and one of the things about the world in the past, when it was in darkness, it was always us against them. There was always an enemy out there. There was somebody that was considered the other, and throughout the Jewish tradition, God had always called a special group of people, and that was the only way he could begin to change the whole world, by starting with a small community and getting them to believe, and then it would spread out of that core community of Christians. But what’s so beautiful about this image from Ephesians is that he’s saying there is something so important about this truth that now is revealed by God, and that is God does not have just a simple group of favorite people that he pours his love into and destroys all their enemies. He, in a way, destroys the evil in the world that is connected to separation, isolation. “I’m here. These are my people. Everyone else is my enemy.” So here we see Gentiles, which is like ⎯ we used to use a phrase a lot in our Catholic faith of there’s Catholics and non-Catholics, which I always think is interesting. So Gentiles were non-Jews, all of them, Samaritans, all of them. They were all considered their enemy, impure, being punished by God. All of that is destroyed in this one simple statement that came through Paul that Jesus wanted the world to know deep in our hearts that there is no separation between us and the people around us. We have no enemies unless we create them, and to be enlightened is the key.
So when Jesus was born and he brought this new light into the world, there were groups of people that came to honor him and to say things to Mary and Joseph, and the first group was the shepherds, which happened in the manger. And when they came, they had a message for Mary. We don’t know what exactly they said to Mary and Joseph, but they said things that must have affirmed for them what they believed in their heart that was still hard to believe, and that is that this child was not of human origin but divine origin in a human body. And so they had to dwell with these mysteries, and what I think is really interesting about that manifestation, it showed that Jesus would become someday the great shepherd, the Good Shepherd. But then we have the second manifestation of a recognition of who Jesus is, not just another human but someone who’s to bring wisdom and light into the world. We see not just simple shepherds, and there’s something about Christianity that ⎯ a religion that we always say, “Well, simple people have it, but really wise people and smart people and powerful people don’t need religion. It’s just a little burden on the side, and they can do without it.” But here we have these wise, beautiful men coming from the east, and they’re considered to be great rulers, kings, wise people, filled with wisdom. And they have listened to something that is mysterious, the arrangement of the planets, the stars. They were astrologers. It’s so interesting that astrology doesn’t have a very high esteem in Christian circles, but there’s something to it. There’s something to the way the planets move and how it affects people. Check with anybody that works in an emergency room. They’ll tell you, if it’s a full moon, it’s going to be a busy night. But this was different. This was a star, a light. A light had been created to lead them to the light, and the light was Christ. And the thing that is so beautiful about that image is, when they were brought to this child, they prostrated before him. They offered their treasures, and what they were really saying to them is that this child has a destiny that’s worth everything. Everything is nothing compared to him. You give gifts to someone to honor them, and these were all gifts that were both the image of riches and the image of anointing, even one that’s used in anointing the dead. It’s so beautiful when you look at all these stories and wonder why are they there. They’re there, because they all have one little element in this beautiful mystery of seeing who God really is, and through his Son, his person, his presence in the world, he awakens us to the power of light over darkness.
Now, I’ve never remembered exactly any time before in the world, when I’ve listened to people talk about darkness, and there are many people that feel the world is filled with darkness, and they come up with all kind of theories. And they think the darkness is caused by this one group of people, and they’re out to destroy the rest of us, and there’s all kinds of conspiracies moving around. But the basic core thing that is creating that in them is a fear, a fear the darkness is winning, and they need to know where it comes from, because then they can go and try to attack it. But what they have to really believe, and this is so basic to Christianity, is that yes, darkness is still there, but darkness has been destroyed. Light wins. Light has won, and those who know that are the ones who are filled with light, enlightenment. And they see the value of darkness, and I think everyone who has been through a dark period in their life, who have lost something very dear to them, who have had some experience with something they don’t really want, if they deal with it, accept it, work with it, they’ll find that the darkness has an incredibly interesting role in our lives, and that is it tends to increase our awareness of light. It makes sense physically. A match that you light in the middle of the day doesn’t make much light. It doesn’t seem like much light, but put it in the darkness in a room filled with no light whatsoever and light a match, and it seems to illuminate the whole room. Darkness is essential to discovering and believing in the light. But there is one thing that I think the darkness can create in you and me that you have to watch out far, and it’s fear, fear and doubt that things are really in the hands of a loving God. And when those things come, fear comes, darkness seems to increase, and we’re left in a place where we have a choice: stay there, have a cloud of confusion around you, stay in darkness, or choose to believe. And the light is nothing but reality as things really are. The news is not going to cover things that are positive and wonderful and lift our spirits. No one wants to ⎯ it’s really interesting about human nature. No one wants to sit there and listen to the news about how beautiful the weather is in some part of the world, how happy people are in certain places and the joy of some achievement by some group of people that changes the world. We don’t really want to sit there and listen to much of that. We want to hear something that’s dark and bloody and awful. It’s a weird part of human nature. We’re curious about those things. Maybe it’s because it gives us an emotion of fear, and to feel an emotion is better than having no feeling whatsoever. But all I long for you to understand from this great feast, your heart’s made to throb, to be pumping with blood, to make your organs and your body fill with oxygen and power and nourishment, and you face the world knowing that it’s good, knowing that the darkness has a purpose and knowing that the light has won. God bless you.
Father, it’s your glory that we long to see more clearly and understand more completely how much you’re doing for us in every single thing that happens to us during the day. Help us to be freed of fear and doubt. Fill us with this light of conviction, confidence that we are moving in the direction you’ve called us to move, growing in our awareness of the beauty in this world. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.