The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ - 6th January 2025
Epiphany Crib 2024
So far we have been with stories of Jesus’ birth taken from Luke’s gospel but now we step over to Matthew’s gospel for the richly evocative story of the visit of the magi, which we celebrate as the first showing forth of Jesus’ glory to the wider world represented by these foreign visitors. It is the outsiders who recognise what is happening, who have eyes to see the light.
The magi appear briefly in the account of Jesus’ infancy and then vanish. We have no idea what happened next and it is left to the reader to ponder the meaning of the story and where it points. This episode has given rise to all sorts of imaginative elaborations drawing on various Old Testament allusions and other traditions that have arisen over time.
Balaam’s prophecy in Numbers chapter 24:7 is one probable text lying behind this story: ‘a star shall come out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel’. Balaam described himself as ‘a man whose eye is clear’, a pagan prophet who nevertheless saw God’s truth and spoke it. He endured the wrath of Balak who wished him to speak a different message. His reference to a star might be the reason why Matthew portrayed the visitors as astrologers, ones who knew the heavens, and recognising the meaning of the star are led to Jesus, the king of the Jews.
Another that very clear reference is Isaiah chapter 60, especially verses 3 and 6: ‘Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn… They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.’ This chapter is full of beautiful images of the end times when all peoples will come to worship the true God in Jerusalem and Israel will be at peace. The coming of the magi to Jesus, representing the gentile nations, tells us that the end times are now here, the kingdom is coming to birth. Matthew adds myrrh to Isaiah’s list of gifts, an oil for anointing that was used at Jesus’ burial and so is often interpreted as pointing forward to his death. It is telling us that this kingdom is going to come in a very different way than was expected, through a death willing embraced. Was there also a death that the magi had to embrace, the end of their way of magic as they submitted to the true God? Certainly that is what T. S. Eliot hints at the end of his beautiful poem ‘The Journey of The Magi’1.
It was a death that Herod was unable to embrace and he sought to kill the new born child rather than submit to God’s kingship. For those invested in a status quo that gives them power and wealth it is hard to let that go. Here it is the outsiders to the political and religious establishment who could see what was going on. So often in the gospels those who were ‘professionally religious’, with a stake in the way things have ‘always been’, were unable to see the coming of the kingdom.
The magi made a profession of observing the heavens and reading the signs of the times, being open to what the divinity was communicating. Maybe there is a call here to be observant and open to what is happening around us, not to be too sure that our tradition as we have received it tells us all that we need to know. We have to be open to surprises. The way Matthew writes his gospel is an example – he takes the traditions he has received and reworks them to express this unprecedented event of the incarnation of God. The traditions are not thrown away but recast to open the reader’s eyes to a new way of relating to God.
I feel that at this point in our community’s journey we are being called to keep our eyes open for what new thing God is wishing to do here at the Abbey. We have a rich and beautiful tradition, lived faithfully here for over a century in modern times, but as our older sisters say, it has always been changing. We must cherish what feeds and enlivens us, drawing us in to closer relationship with God, but be alert to what is getting in the way. Let us seek where the light of Christ is shining and calling us to follow him into new life, however unexpected that might turn out to be.
Mother Anne - 6th January 2025
1See The Journey Of The Magi at https://allpoetry.com/The-Journey-Of-The-Magi