Searching
(based
on Matthew 2:1-12)
You’ve probably heard and sung
the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”?
Well, Christmas is not just one day. It’s an entire season. And the first day of Christmas actually
begins on December 26th, and the season of Christmas ends on the
twelfth day which is January 6th, today, known
as Epiphany.
The scripture reading this
morning is the Epiphany text and it’s the same every year. In our Christian tradition, Epiphany marks the
day when the wise men, or magi, or three kings, whatever you want to call them
come to visit the baby Jesus. In Greek, the word epiphaneia means “manifestation”
or “appearance,” and on this day, we celebrate how the Christ child appeared to
all the world (represented by the wisemen from the East), not just to the Jewish
shepherds who were watching their flocks the night Jesus was born or to the
local townspeople of Bethlehem who first met the couple, Mary and Joseph, as
they came looking for a place to stay.
The gospel of Matthew traces Jesus’
genealogy all the way back to King David and even to Abraham. But these magi came from far-away lands,
probably Persia, and they came from a different culture and probably spoke a
different language than Jesus and his immediate, human family.
So, for people who weren’t
Jewish, who didn’t’ look like Jesus, who didn’t speak the language that Jesus
did or shared the same culture or ethnicity as Jesus, for people like me and
you, the presence of the magi represented an epiphany, a manifestation of God
to us, the rest of the
world, and it signified that all would be welcomed and included in Christ, and
that all should come to bow down before him and worship him, even those who
lived in far-away lands, like Persia or China, even Europe and the Americas. That is the great Epiphany, manifestation or
appearance, that the Christian tradition celebrates in January.
For those of you who don’t
know it, I collect Nativity Sets from all over the world and this is one of the
reasons why. Each set represents the
manifestation of Jesus to their culture, their traditions and their heritage. In the visitation of the three kings on Epiphany,
Jesus has come to all of us.
For most people, however, when
we think of the word “epiphany,” the inclusive message of the gospel is not
usually what immediately comes to mind. An
epiphany, for most of the world is an “aha” or a “eureka!” moment when
metaphorical light bulbs go off above your head.
That word, “eureka” in Greek,
means, “I have found it!”, and legend has it that as the scientist Archimedes
was getting into the bathtub, he saw the water level rise as he climbed in, and
all of a sudden he just understood the concept of volume and density. It hit
him, right then and there. So, he shouted, “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”) and
was so eager to share his discovery that he supposedly leapt out of his tub,
forgot to get dressed, and ran through the streets of his town naked. Well, that’s what legend says anyway.
Perhaps when the wisemen
finally made it to Bethlehem, stopped at the palace to ask the King about the newborn King, and then finally found
the baby Jesus with a humble couple in a small modest home, they too may have
shouted, “Eureka! We have found him.”
In this New Year, perhaps you
are in search of something: a new beginning, a new purpose, a new practice that
helps your physical, mental, or spiritual health. Or perhaps you are looking for an epiphany, a
sudden realization that helps you make sense of this journey called life.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
once said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to
its old dimensions.” Epiphanies are like that, they stretch your mind, your
understanding, your social and cultural norms, and you are left changed in some
way. Perhaps in this New Year, you are
trying to find your way to an epiphany. Unlike
the magi who went searching for an epiphany and actually found him, our
epiphanies often happen when we’re not expecting them.
Like Archimedes. He probably spent hours at his desk searching
for the formula for volume and density. He
probably racked his mind trying to think of it, knowing that it was there, but
not able to grasp it. Maybe he was at
the point of giving up when he gave a sigh and said, “I need a bath.” And right then, as he’s doing something he’s
probably done a thousand times before, an epiphany found him.
I wish I could provide for you
what you’re searching for today, that answer to your question; that revelation
you seek; that epiphany you so long for. But I can’t.
I can only hope and pray that something, somehow will touch you and
change you. I can only hope and pray
that God will break through, maybe through a song or a special event or in something
that you’ve done a thousand a thousand times but suddenly see with new eye and
a new heart, and help you find an epiphany moment.
Here are some things I believe
we can do, to
help us find our way to epiphany. The
first is simply to look and listen for God, each and every day in all that you
do and in all that you experience. The second
is to study God’s word a bit closer in a new and interesting way. The third way is to be part of a community
that welcomes you as you are and loves you enough to challenge you and maybe
even change you a little or whether that community is here at church among those
sitting here in the pews or if it is among family and friends outside these
walls. Our lives of faith are personal,
but they aren’t meant to be private. I
can’t tell you how many epiphany or eureka moments I’ve had through
conversations with amazing, yet ordinary, people who’ve allowed God to use them
to speak to me. And finally do something
different. Allow yourself to experience
some cognitive dissonance, some discomfort, some change. Try doing something uncomfortable, something
different, something that’s out of the ordinary and out of the box for you.
Scripture tells us that the
magi went home by another road; they went back a different way. So, go home a different way or walk down
another street.
In order to start this epiphany
search and allow those moments to possibly break through for us, I’m doing
something different for you during these winter months leading up to Lent: I’ve
started a Scavenger Hunt Game for all of us to play, if you’re interested. Most of the instructions are available in both
the newsletter and in the half sheets in your bulletin.
Explain:
Each Sunday, there will be a
small sheet of instructions for that week’s Scavenger Hunt. You’ll need to go and read and study the
lectionary passage from that morning a little closer to find the clues. Once you’ve found the clues, you’ll be able
to do the challenge. I’ve made this week’s
clues and challenge pretty easy to figure out.
You can figure out the clues on your own, if you want to, but I’ve made
it so that the challenge can not be done alone.
Instead, it must be done with another person or persons. You can do as many challenges as you wish,
all of them or none of them, it is solely up to you.
However, the week’s challenge
must be completed by the following Saturday at midnight. You will not be able to go back to a previous
week and do an expired challenge.
The challenge will always
include sending me a picture of what you are supposed to do or find with you
and your partner or team in the picture.
You can send it to my email address at revwaltp@gmail.com. That information will always be on each instruction
sheet, in case you forget it.
On Sunday afternoon, I will
post a collage of those pictures with no names attached - just the pictures -
so you don’t need to be worried that your information is anywhere on Facebook
and on Instagram.
I will also post the
instructions for the upcoming week’s challenge.
For every challenge that you
complete successfully, your name will be entered into a drawing. And at the end of the eight weeks, we’ll pull
a winner. So, the more you enter and do
the challenges successfully, the more options you have of winning. But whether you win the prize at the end or
not, I hope you find something in the process.
Maybe, through this process of doing something new and unusual, an
epiphany will come find you. Or
unexpectedly, you’ll find it.
Happy Three Kings Day, my friends.
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