Returning by a different way
Epihany: Sunday 6th January, 2002
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's Eastern Hill
'For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.'
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him....
(Mtt 2:2b-3)
As we celebrate things here, Epiphany comes in at the end of the Christmas
season when the decorations that have gone up so early are already coming down
and when our thoughts are starting to look towards the plans and shapes of the
year ahead. We hear startling reports of what are described as Easter Buns
already appearing in supermarkets – and this in the first week of January.
Time, it seems, to move on. If however we were in say Bavaria, this would be
a very big day indeed. Our houses would be about to be blessed with the bottle
of water we would be bringing home from the great tubs at the front of the
packed parish church. We would have witnessed a substantial pageant featuring
most exotic foreign guests and thoroughly enjoyed the big dress up. And it
might well be snowing. In that part of the world, this Twelfth Day of
Christmas goes with a bang.
We in the midst of our Australian summer though certainly would wish to
give this day due honour. Here at The Hill this is a day for a procession
and celebration. It is the final part of the festival, when all the other
masses and carols are done. And we know that it involves us in more than just
an exotic footnote to an already remotely located story.
So far as the Scriptures are concerned, neither Mark nor John considered
these particular things necessary for our reflection. Luke is really our major
source for the birth narratives of the Lord. It was clearly very important to
him. Yet rather than our Epiphany visitors, Luke has only the circumcision in
Jerusalem on the eight day. Simeon and Anna are the extra figures in the story
as Luke tells it – not foreign kings.
So it is to Matthew that we must go for that which we commemorate today,
for our three wise visitors, for this breaking in of the outside world, for
this manifestation of Christ to the gentiles, and only in that one gospel.
So the way we receive the Christmas story, this part of Matthew's narrative,
playing down the sad and bitter killings to follow, is added to what is
basically Luke's narrative of how the birth of Jesus took place. This gives
us the basic ingredients of what we traditionally associate with Christmas.
Even given the limited source material available in the Scriptures, the
tradition has edited the story back. And almost anyone with any connection
with Christmas will know the basic oral shape of this story – if only
from singing the carols. This is what a grandmother will tell again to a
grandchild, or a parent will tell to a child as the figures of the nativity
scene are explained or arranged, year by year.
But the best stories are those that can be heard and told with many layers
of meaning. Stories that can be appreciated by both the child and the adult,
by both the person who has never heard it before and the person who has heard
it a hundred times. So it is with parables. So it is with the Christmas
narratives. By now our crib is getting very crowded. The animals are still in
there. So are the shepherds – local people. And in the centre the Baby
and Mary and Joseph. And nearby angels and of course above a star. Plus now
these impressive and exotic three who have been making their way here these
twelve days of this season. They have been carefully placed in there in all
that straw. The children will notice. So might we all.
The figures in our crib set illustrate and provide the setting for the
traditional representation of the various characters. The central figures in
today's gospel reading are there and we can see for ourselves. The story has
interesting points of detail. Wise men, kings, who knows – but certainly
by their gifts and clothes they are people who are wealthy and powerful. And
each is represented as being racially different – they are therefore
certainly meant to be seen to be coming from different far off places,
different cultures and backgrounds. All and each of them open to God in
their lives. We note that they were wise and astute enough to check in with
the local authorities as they travelled in, because their arrival would not
have gone unnoticed. And they were clever enough to go home by another way
when they realised the potentially very difficult political mess they had got
themselves into. A reigning and unpleasant king with sons of his own is
actually not likely to look kindly on being told about the birth of some
other young king, by foreign dignitaries who are proposing to do him homage.
So it was that our visitors were unwittingly perhaps triggering the
persecutions and slaughter of the innocents that we tend to forget was
immediately to follow their short time in Bethlehem – the actions of an
alarmed and threatened Herod. It is some comfort to consider that their
expensive and valuable gifts would at the very least have provided the
resources for the sudden flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. And these gifts
also provide food for thought – this gold, frankincense and myrrh, so
obviously brimful of symbolic meaning. We still sing of the meaning in our
special hymns for this day. I don't need to remind you.
The tableau of our nativity scene has taken its final form today and now
it is to be dissolved. They are here today and then tomorrow gone again, as
indeed will be everyone in this scene. There is a sudden change of mood,
somewhat like the quick change that we experience through the various days of
Holy Week and Easter. Next Sunday after all, we observe the Baptism of the
Lord at the beginning of his ministry only three years before his death. So
this Christmas season is short. We are left to ponder the significance of all
this in these lives that we are leading some two thousand and more years later.
So what else might we make of this day? There is great value and great
truths in these tales that are handed down to us through the centuries. Wisdom
might be found in what could be lightly dismissed as something only for
children. Emphatic statements about God and God's purpose for this world are
in this tradition which we have sung to each other through the generations,
only partly taking it in.
This final part of the Christmas story is in fact a great connecting piece.
The rest of the world is brought into those events at Bethlehem in Judea with
the arrival of the three travellers. In fact the rest of the world is thereby
welcomed to be part of this wonder. God is shown, God is recognised. By no
stretch of the imagination could these visitors be considered part of the
family, at least as it has been up to this stage defined. Yet they are here
beside the manger worshipping the Word made flesh alongside the children of
Abraham. And a simple shepherd is beside a king. What does this say to us
about inclusion and comprehensiveness?
We have therefore yet another illustration of the grace and care that is
God being available for those beyond the immediately obvious. The blessing
that is 'God with us' is there for these travellers too, indeed for all this
world, for every type and condition of human being, across all boundaries.
And once again we hear again a story about outsiders being attracted,
responding in curious wonder, and in their response showing perhaps a deeper
insight than some of those who are already present.
These truths, these insights, have implications that are to be lived out
in the lives of those who would consider themselves to be followers along this
Way. This is all the more the case in times of uncertainty and even danger,
and without question times of great change. Because alternative responses are
there in the story too: fear, anger, brutality – refusal to acknowledge.
Our kings, we are told, were smart enough to return by a different way to that.
'For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.'
When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him....
(Mtt 2:2b-3)
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