January 8, 2023

Epiphany (transferred from January 6)

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Matthew 2:1-12

Happy Epiphany, Epiphany!

To celebrate and to mark the occasion, get all dressed up warm tonight or the next night that the sky is clear and go outside for awhile. Go outside and look at the stars. If you know your constellations then look around at the wonder of it all. Name the constellations that you know, constellations that would be there doing whatever it is that constellations do whether anyone noticed them or not. Trace the lines with your fingers, figure out where they are in relation to Mars or Venus or the moon or one of Elon Musk’s world domination satellites. No, forget the satellites. But look at the stars that you know and then think about all the stars you don’t know and that most of us have never seen. And just marvel at it all.

If you don’t know anything about stars and constellations, if you can’t even find the big dipper let alone…I don’t know, Cassiopeia or something like that, go outside and look anyway. See if there are patterns, trace the line from one to another with your finger. I have a friend who isn’t even remotely interested in knowing what any of the stars are named or what constellations they form. She gets mad if you try to tell her how to find the North Star. But she could spend hours just gawking at the hugeness and the wonder of it all. So go ahead and gawk for awhile. It’s quite something.

It might even be our duty as members of Epiphany Lutheran Church, to go outside and stare at the stars, because on this feast of Epiphany we celebrate the visit of a handful of astrologers who have spent a lot of time outside, gazing up and gawking at the stars. Maybe we should hold our AGM on a Sunday evening under dark skies. And our planning and deciding and voting should be put on the back burner until we’ve taken the time together to go outside and gawk at the stars for awhile.

As this Epiphany story goes, a handful of travellers come to the city, arriving in Jerusalem late one evening. They’ve come a long way, probably from Persia, what we now call Iran. They’re called magi, which is a fancy name for scholars from the east. They’re not Lutheran, they’re not Christian, they’re not Jewish. They’re probably Zoroastrian, part of a religious tradition that stretches back over twenty-five hundred years and still has around 100,000 adherents, mostly in Iran and India and North America. They’re probably not kings, even though the song is called We Three Kings. It’s more likely that they are astrologers, and they know their stars and constellations and the signs of the sky. They probably gawked and marvelled at the whole thing as much as you or I might, and maybe even they were amazed at how much they didn’t know about the stars, even though they knew so much.

And here’s the neat twist in this story that we know so well. They follow the stars, and they end up kneeling at the feet of the very one who first cast the stars into the night sky. And it’s a child.

Who knows where gawking, or dreaming, or imagining, or gazing at the stars might take us? Maybe that kind of thing isn’t flaky or impractical; maybe it’s just biblical and faithful. So feel free to look at the stars, Epiphany. We might just end up face to face with the one who put them there in the first place. All those stars….

And all those people…. This whole story we remember today, this Epiphany story, this story that is our story, is all about stretching our imaginations, and it’s about a gospel that reaches where we might not expect, and it’s about good news that can’t be contained in one house or building or nation or people. This Epiphany story is about a child who placed the stars in the sky, it’s about a child who terrifies a tyrant named Herod, it’s about a child who will one day be a refugee, it’s about a child who welcomes travellers from the east and the west and the north and the south, it’s about a child who will die and that same child who will be raised and who will give us life. And this Epiphany story, our story, is about a child who is here for Persian astrologers, for Norwegian fishers, for Saskatchewan farmers and Bangladeshi factory workers; for Tanzanian students and for Inuit lawyers; this child is for the executive who’s got the corner office and for the person living on the street or waiting for the next EI cheque; this child is even for a gang of people in a church right here on the other side of the world two thousand or so years later. All those stars; all those people. There’s room for us all at the side of this child. That’s Epiphany.

We start this next season with travellers from far away who come to see Jesus. He hasn’t even spoken a word yet, and it’s already starting to look like his reach is a big as the sky that covers us all. Nearer to the end of the story, a few days before he is arrested and taken to a cross, Jesus tells one last story (we’ll hear it on November 26th, so mark it on your calendar). All the peoples of the world are gathered together before the throne…of Jesus…like the wise men who gather at the throne which is a manger or a crib tucked away in the corner. And Jesus talks about giving food to one who is hungry and water to anyone who thirsts. He tells of welcoming a stranger and giving clothing to someone who has none. He says, “you took care of the sick, and you visited me, anyone, in prison.” And that whole last story ends with this: “Whatever you did to these people, you did to me. How you treat one another, friends or enemies or strangers, is how you treat me.” Jesus is there in our neighbours; When we see one another, when we see anyone at all, we come face to face with the one who put the stars in their place.

When I said that thing about our AGM, and holding it in the evening, and starting it all by going outside and gawking at the stars…. I was kind of kidding, but I think I’m actually a little bit serious.

Because staring at the stars gives us perspective. The world is so much bigger than whatever is eating up all our time and attention. Not that the things we work on and worry about aren’t important; it’s just that there’s more going on in the world than only what’s going on here.

And maybe looking up at the stars will turn our eyes back to the world around us and to all the people. This Epiphany story tells of a star that settled over the house where Jesus was. Just one star. But maybe we walk away from this story now and we see that our real Epiphany story isn’t just about a single star over a single house. Maybe we’re learning now that there’s a star over each house, and that the one who set the stars in the sky lives in each house and bus shelter and tent and city park and trailer and condo and sleeping bag under a bridge and…and meets us in all the people we see. Whatever you do to the least of these, right?

Persian astrologers went out and gazed up at the stars and ended up seeing things they never would have imagined: A child who set the stars in the sky. A king who’s scared of children and a child who terrifies tyrants. A child who is for all the people close by and all the people far away. They look at the stars and their lives open up to surprise after surprise.

Persian astrologers step out into the cold night air and look up at the stars, and they invite us to come along too. To have a look, to see what there is to see, to gawk a little, to be surprised….

AMEN.