“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jew?
For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage”
Matthew 2:1-2
It’s all over and done for another year. Christmas has come and gone. If you go to the mall you won’t find a single trace of Christmas. No carols playing, no lights twinkling, no decorations glittering, and all the Christmas merchandise has been sold off at marked down prices. The message is loud and clear – there’s no commercial value in a grown-up Jesus. In our society the lights of Christmas fades to black by the end of December… but not in the church. In the church the Christmas lights don’t go out at the end of December, they get brighter and brighter. And that brightness we call Epiphany.
Epiphany is the longest celebrate festival in the church. We’ve been celebrating Epiphany even longer than we’ve been celebrating Christmas. Why? Because Epiphany is the climax of the Christmas season …the crescendo. And Christmas doesn’t peak on the first day of Christmas…December 25th, but on the last day the 12th day of Christmas…January 6th. You see the church realized as important as the birth of Jesus was, even more significant is the fact that God revealed Jesus to the whole world! Jesus is not just a local phenomenon celebrated by a bunch of shepherds, nor is he just a Jewish phenomenon, celebrated by others in Israel. No, Jesus is a world phenomenon…celebrated by the whole world.
The word Epiphany means ‘to reveal’ because this is the season when the glory of Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world. And the first story of this revelation is that of the wise-men, the Magi who came from eastern countries following a star to Bethlehem. We all know that story inside out…in fact some of you have played the part of a wiseman in this very church at Christmas. And here you thought Mary got the cameo role when in fact it was the wise-men! Why them? Because they represent the pagan world, non-Jews, Gentiles who were drawn to Jesus from ‘away.’ The came from the east - Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia. (shocking considering our modern day relationship to these nations) They were people from outside the faith to whom God chose to reveal his Son. So the climax of Christmas comes today when these outsiders discover Jesus and kneel down and pay him homage.
A friend of mine has a little 3 year old boy who understands that Epiphany is the climax of Christmas. He was playing with the crèche figures one day during Christmas. He got it all set up with the cattle in their place, Jesus in the manger and his parents kneeling over him with a shepherd nearby. He looked at the three wise men with gifts in their hands and then had them all march towards Jesus all excited, saying: ‘Hey, we’ve got presents!’ Well that’s pretty good for a 3 year old ! The presents are the climax of the story because kneeling in worship and giving our gifts are exactly the right response to the coming of Jesus.
What’s interesting in this story is how the wise-men first learned about the birth of this king. They didn’t have the scriptures to read. How did they know about the birth of the Christ-child? The heavens told them. They were star-gazers and they witnessed a new star rising in the sky which told them a new king had been born somewhere to the west. Now following stars isn’t an exact science, so they couldn’t find this new king on their own. They had to stop and ask directions from King Herod. And Herod had no clue of any of this, but he asked the chief priests and scribes where the Christ was to be born and they searched the scriptures and said ‘Bethlehem’. So, the wise-men went out from Jerusalem armed with both scripture and natural revelation they found their way to Jesus. Now, this is a particular Matthean insight – natural experience alone won’t lead you to the Messiah, but neither is having the bible either…it’s right there in scripture but it isn’t energized. We need both - we need the truth of the scriptures of old, energized by natural revelation …God awaking our spiritual curiosity to find our way to the Messiah.
And we are living in an age where there is plenty of spiritual intrigue among the general public. People are not yawning when you talk about God or discuss spiritual issues in fact they are interested. The most popular book in recent years has been Da Vinci Code, which is full of spiritual intrigue. And the biggest children’s book is the Harry Potter series, again plenty of spirituality there - not all of it is Christian spirituality but at least people are interested in the spiritual realm once more. And Christmas itself is proof of that. We held three services on Christmas Eve here at Hidenwood and all of them were quite well attended. Interestingly enough, the traditional service at 11pm was mostly people I did not know. Where did these people come from? What brought them to our service? What were they looking for? They were looking for the same thing the wise-men were looking for…the same thing we are looking for...to kneel before the Messiah and worship. And we need to do a better job in the church of doing that…by opening up the doors of this place as wide as we can, welcoming them and sharing with them good news of Jesus Christ. Because spiritual intrigue is important but it’s not enough to find your way to the Messiah…you also need the good news of the gospel. And we need to offer that humbly – ‘as one beggar showing another where to find food.’
I say that because our denomination has not been particularly good at doing evangelism. Evangelism was pretty easy 50 years ago. We lived by the motto ‘if you build it they will come’ and sure enough they did. Hidenwood built its chapel and before it was complete the church had grown so big it couldn’t fit into it! But today evangelism requires more than that. Now we have to provide interesting study programs, good childcare and Sunday school, good youth ministry, solid worship services with a varied music program. And we have to be willing to speak to people about the Presbyterian faith - what we believe and the spiritual attributes of this congregation.
There are 327 denominations registered in the USA and ours, the PCUSA is presently the 9th biggest with about 2.4 active confirmed members. That’s good news except that we are shrinking by about 43,000 per year. And except that statistics reveal that we are not racially diverse – we are made up, 90% or more of a single racial group. Eileen Lindner, a Presbyterian statistician says ‘Our lips may proclaim the inclusiveness of all God’s people but our statistics declare otherwise.’
I was at the mall this past week, tagging along with my wife and daughter as they did some post-Christmas shopping. I had the opportunity to do some people-watching while I was there and two things intrigued me: First, I didn’t bump into a single member of Hidenwood while I was there…maybe you were all home watching the football games I was missing. Secondly I realized how racially diverse our community of Newport News really is. There were Parthians and Medes, Elamites and people from Mesopotamia and regions of Libya beyond Cyrene. And many of these people don’t go to church, don’t know the stories about Jesus, don’t worship our Lord. And up to us to be creative enough, inclusive enough, open enough to welcome all who are spiritually curious into our church. We need to be about evangelism not just for their sake, but for our sake, because we will be a richer, more vibrant as a community the more inclusive we become.
I have been receiving a montly newsletter from Richmond Hill, a Christian community in Richmond. B.P Campbell, their pastoral director writes this in his Christmas newsletter.
“Jesus died to restore community. He acted as if he belonged to a community in Jerusalem where none existed. There in Jerusalem the religious authorities had bought into the class structure, equating true religion with recreational Pharisaism. There in Jerusalem the Jews secured their own privilege over other ethnic groups by agreeing to cooperate with the Romans. There in Jerusalem the absence of community was acted out in the boardrooms, the synagogues, and the dark alleyways of crime and poverty.
But in the streets and in the living rooms as well, something else was happening. The spirit that we see in Jesus was bringing people alive, gathering them in acknowledgement of their own sin and need, inviting them to face back into the difficulties of life for the sake of the heaven it would bring them. The seal on the enterprise came when his blood flowed down the trunk of the cross, after the meal where he called the bread his body and invited the whole table to commune with him.”
We come to that table now, where community is restored and where we get a glimpse of God’s vision of community for our whole world. We gather around one table and are fed from one loaf and drink from one cup and are encouraged to go out and reconcile the world unto God. So his light does not go out after Christmas but shines brighter and brighter in us.
Amen