January 6, 2008

Epiphany

Communion Meditation

The Rev. A. Thomas Carlson

 

Scriptures:     Isaiah 60:1-6

                        Matthew 2:1-12

 

            As I thought about today's meditation, I came up with some "Wise Men Trivia!"  This trivia helped me see more than three kings and their camels in a traditional nativity scene.  So here goes:

 

1.         Wise men were priests, not kings, who came from Persia (modern      day Iran).

2.         Wise men's specialty was interpreting the stars.

3.         They and many others believed new stars appeared when great           leaders were born.

4.         The wise men visited a home, not a stable when they found Jesus.

5.         Their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh made it financially     possible for Joseph to move Mary and Jesus to Egypt before     Herod's slaughter of innocent male children.

           

            Perhaps we need this kind of trivia in an attempt to set the record straight.  Yet, I will always feel the nativity is incomplete without three kings and their camels!  The significance of these men from the East rises above the differences and discrepancies regarding the details of their visit to the Christ child.  In fact, we can discover a lot about our own relationship to Christ as we reflect on their relationship to Him.

 

            What we have in this passage from Matthew's Gospel is the importance of the path we choose and the direction our lives are headed.  We can choose the path of political prowess (represented by Herod in the story) or God's "strange wisdom" (represented by the wise men and the babe).  Tony Robinson elaborates on this in his weekly lectionary column.

 

            "The wise men embody a wisdom that is not, seemingly, available to Herod or even to the chief priests and scribes.  For our own world and time, this suggests a spiritual wisdom that is given over against a technical knowledge that is grasped or grasped at.  Like Herod and Jerusalem, much of our own world has gone deaf and blind to God's wisdom, preferring our own calculations and machinations.  Epiphanies of God, and the particular Epiphany that is Jesus, beckons us to travel always by "another road" (Verse 12) different than the established roads and ways."

 

            Once we decide which road we will travel, we can forge ahead.  Because we have come here today, I want to believe we have chosen the less-traveled road, open to God's wisdom.  If so, we have also opened our lives to the giving and receiving of gifts.  When gifts are given and received, it happens in the spirit of caring, devotion, and love.  The wise men modeled that spirit as they bowed before the Christ child offering him precious gifts.  When we practice that same spirit as a faith community, we honor Christ and we grow in God's way.

 

            Most of us feel more like the "little drummer boy" than the wealthy magi.  Our gifts will not be gold, frankincense and myrrh.  But behind all this tangible wealth is intangible wealth described by writer Max Lucado as hope, time, and worship.  Those who follow the other, less-traveled road of the magi will have these gifts to offer the Christ child and, in return, will be blessed beyond measure.  I would like for us to imagine that as we come forward to receive Communion this morning that we see ourselves bearing the gifts of hope, time, and worship with us and exchange them for God's gift to us, the bread and the cup!

 

            What does this gift of hope look like, anyway?  When night comes into our world do we see darkness or stars?  Hopelessness or hopefulness?  For the magi and for us, God uses darkness to reveal light.  "The light shines in darkness" (John 1:5).

 

            How about the gift of time?  Have you heard the expression, "I won't give that guy or gal the time of day?"  The wise men most likely gave their quest for the newborn king up to two years before actually finding him!  Are we willing to carve out of our day some time to focus on God's will for our lives?

 

            Then there is the gift of worship.  Can you see your gathering here in Sunday worship as your gift to God?  Here you can offer yourself to Christ, and Christ, in return, offers himself to you.  That, my friends, is what a relationship is all about and it can happen on Sunday morning right here at St. Peter's Church!

 

            Perhaps you can see yourself bringing only one of these gifts forward today in exchange for the gift of Holy Communion.  That's okay.  In the traditional nativity scene, each of the three kings is holding a single gift.  They simply offered what they had and that was good enough!  It is more important just to take the path, follow the road that leads to the place where Jesus is!  That, my friends, is what Epiphany is all about.  Amen.