Richard Davenport
January 6, 2025 – Epiphany
Matthew 2:1-12
It’s unfortunate that kids these days will grow up without ever knowing the joy of putting up Christmas lights. I mean, sure, they’ll put up lights, but not like the lights from generations past. With many of the lights these days being plastic LEDs, they miss out on the joy of sweeping up glass from when you accidentally drop a strand and a bulb smashes, leaving tiny bits of glass all over the floor. Even better, when you get your tree all set up and everything works and then you come back the next day to plug it in and find a strand out. Then you had the joy of going through each and every bulb on the strand, pulling it out and replacing it to see if that fixed the problem. With modern light strands that can keep working even when one bulb is out, it’s trivial to find and fix the problem, thus robbing our children of this valuable character building exercise.
Light is, of course, one of the major themes for Epiphany. The familiar story is firmly fixed in the church year. In and of itself, it may not be a huge deal. It certainly isn’t on the same level as Christmas, Holy Week, or even Pentecost. Yet, it still has much to say. It is also special in that it gives us one of the very few scenes we have of Jesus’ childhood, even though his name is never actually used. His titles appear, Christ, king of the Jews, shepherd of Israel, so we know who we’re talking about.
Mary and Joseph have already seen some inklings as to who Jesus really is. I mean, they’ve been told, but as we see through the Gospels, few people really grasp what Jesus is all about until after Easter has come and gone. Here though, they get another glimpse. What is it about this little child, now perhaps as old as 2, that would draw foreign advisors and dignitaries from a far off land? It’s not as if Jesus sent out some kind of letter, inviting them to open diplomatic relations.
The whole situation gets even more bizarre when you really take a look at the text and what it says. Usually when we talk about this story, we picture the Holy Family at home in a humble home in Bethlehem. They’ve opted to stay there and perhaps Joseph has been supporting them through his carpentry work. Jesus is toddling around, babbling away, trying to help mom and dad with work and chores. Maybe he has a little brother or sister already.
Then these guys show up. They aren’t really described in the text at all. “From the east,” is all it says. The ethnic groups in the East were constantly in flux, warring with one another, boundaries were changing all the time. But, some commonalities still existed. These men could have come from regions we know now as India, China, Mongolia, or any of the other small east Asian nations. They all had advisors who kept track of stars and any then else that might give omens or clues as to the future. They might dress differently in different clothing, depending on what region they came from, but they all filled the same kind of role. Likely they travelled by caravan, with camels or the hardy horses they used on the Mongolian steppes. They needed those kinds of animals for the long trek across the deserts.
Their clothes would be strange, their mannerisms unfamiliar. Usually we picture them fawning over Jesus and praising him as the king. They talk to Mary and Joseph about the circumstances of his birth and learn all they can about him. But the text doesn’t even say that much. Nothing here says they had any kind of conversation. As you go farther and farther east, it gets less and less likely they spoke Greek or Latin. Aramaic is even less likely and Hebrew would probably be completely unknown to them.
Yet here they are, between the star, the conversations they were able to have with Herod’s advisors and the chief priests, and whatever they were able to get from visiting the little boy, Jesus, in the home of Mary and Joseph seems to have been enough to put the pieces together. They knew from the start that they would find something special when they arrived, but they had no idea how wondrous a discovery they would make until they saw the little Jewish boy toddling around with a big grin on his face as he greeted the new visitors from a foreign land.
For the human Jesus, these visitors were full of sights, sounds, and smells, that would keep a curious little 2 year old engaged for hours. He’d smell the incense. He pet the horses and camels. He traced the embroidery on the foreigners’ clothes with his chubby little fingers.
For the divine Jesus, these were men who had been lost in darkness, so lost in darkness so black they didn’t even know they were lost until they beheld the light. Somehow these foreigners were made to see and know that they did not stand in the presence of a mere king or even an emperor. They beheld the face of God. They were not bowing to offer greetings or to pledge fealty, as one might do of a foreign ruler. Matthew’s Gospel says they worshipped him. The wording is intentional. The Greek word for worship here is not used for anyone but God.
Did they understand the realities of sin and the need for salvation? Did they know this little boy had come to die for the sins of the world? Did they know that, through him, eternal life would be given to all who believed in him? Probably not, at least not yet. Perhaps they acquired copies of the Old Testament and read for themselves. We are certainly led to believe they were now faithful believers and that they returned home made new.
Thinking about the wise men in depth gives us some much needed perspective on the story. Why are they so important when their lives don’t actually affect ours? I’ve said before that we tend to over estimate their abilities. We ascribe to them faith and wisdom that Scripture doesn’t attest to and that historical records don’t support. Why would we do this?
I’m a pretty good guy. I’m helpful and considerate. I try not to say mean things and I try to lend a hand whenever I’m able. I work hard and I even pay my taxes without much grumbling. God tells me about this great “eternal life” stuff. Yeah, I guess there’s a sin problem, but it isn’t that big of a problem. I just need to dust myself off a bit, maybe shore up a few of my weak points and that should be all there to it. I mean, I guess I need forgiveness, but that’s just a once in a while kind of thing, for dealing with those times I really put my foot into something unpleasant. Yeah, there I probably need a little help getting cleaned up, but otherwise I’m good to go.
Nowadays the string of lights goes on the tree. You plug it in and there’s that one, that dead bulb that isn’t doing its job. You poke it. You fiddle with it, but no, for whatever reason it’s dead. It needs to be replaced. You pull a new bulb out of the pack, a fresh one, right from the manufacturer with no flaws or blemishes. But the bulb doesn’t just light up when you grab it. It isn’t sitting there in the package twinkling merrily, waiting to be used. It's only when you slide it into the socket that was made for it and then plug in the strand that you finally get light. Without the electricity to power it, without the connection to that source of power and life, you have nothing but darkness. The bulb doesn’t light up by itself. It lights up because something powers it.
The world, both today and in former times, looks at these men who travelled from the east and calls them wise men because of their intellect, their scholarship, their willingness to travel to investigate a curiosity. It calls them wise men because of where they came from. The Christian calls them wise men, not because of what they had when they left home, but because of what they were given when they arrived. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.”
God had set this star in the sky. God saw these bulbs, these dark and lifeless bulbs clattering on the ground. He picks them up and plugs them into the socket, the place prepared for them in his kingdom. They look at the face of the tiny boy who is not just a light, but the light of men, and these dark bulbs are reconnected to the source. The gifts these strangers bring are nice, we do not discount them as signs of their thankfulness, but they are not what are truly important here. The boy Jesus grins with delight to see these strange men, with their strange clothes, and strange ways of speaking, suddenly come to life with the light of Christ shining brightly. Jesus sees his own light reflected in their faces and he knows this is truly the best gift they could bring him.
Even as a little boy, Jesus is at work restoring his creation. He knows we have no life without him. Just as in the beginning, when Adam was lifeless until God breathed his own Spirit into him, connecting this lifeless clay to the source of all life, God is at work reconnecting his people to the source. Baptism takes our brokenness and makes us new again. Communion brings the life of Christ into our innermost being. Through God’s grace we are restored, made new, and reconnected. We receive again the light of Christ. Our lives, our words, our deeds, are his. We live his life and we shine with his light. This is the purpose and joy we find in Epiphany. Like the wise men of old, the Light of the World has brought you to himself and given his light to you, the light that shines in the darkness and that the darkness cannot overcome. Connected to him, you will never go dark again.