Night Light
© by the Reverend
Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, January 2,
2000; 2nd Sunday after Christmas, Year B;
Celebrating the Epiphany)
Psalm 72:1–7,
10–14 (OT, pp. 589–590); Matthew
2:1–12 (NT, p. 2)
“Epiphany”—a
fancy word meaning “a flash of recognition,”
“a moment in which what is unknown is suddenly made known,
in which truth reveals itself, in which God appears.”
Epiphany—the day
when Christians celebrate
the appearance among us of God and the traveling of wise men
from the East, as representatives of all the nations of the world,
to find + behold the holy child whose birth has been marked
by the sky-born appearance of a wondrous star,
by light bursting forth in the night.
In
the ancient East, in the lands of Babylon and Persia,
the lands we now call Iraq and Iran,
wise men were sages + scholars who, when they examined life,
found it to be more negative than positive.
Life seemed to them so filled with trouble and pain + evil.
Yet these wise men held the hope that God,
who is a God of Light,
would one day redeem their Age of Darkness.
So they constantly studied the movements of
the stars and of the other cosmic bodies,
keeping watch there for signs of hope,
for signs of the longed-for age to come,
when despair would give way to hope,
when goodness would triumph over evil, +
when light would shine forth in the night.
So, the Gospel of
Matthew describes for us
the rising of a hope-inspiring star—
a star marking the time when good would triumph over evil,
when hope would overcome despair.
And Matthew tells us
that some of these wise sages from the East
see this star and conclude that the Age of Light is at hand,
that the one who is to usher in this age has been born.
And with Matthew, we
Christians affirm that that day,
two thousand years ago, was the moment in time when humankind
received a definitive answer to our question, "Who is God?”
an answer given to us in the birth of a child in Bethlehem.
That moment in time was the Epiphany—
when God was made plain to the world.
"Who is God?" humankind asks.
Says the New Testament,
“Look to Jesus.
In him, God is made plain.”
Epiphany— the day
when wise men from the East saw Jesus
and knelt in worship,
the day when persons from the wider world beyond just Israel
first beheld the one who is the perfect image of God.
In this narrative,
Matthew tells us that in the Babe of Bethlehem
the whole world experienced a turning point—
a turning point not just from one year to another,
but from one age to another—
from the Old Age of darkness and despair
to the New Age of light and hope,
from the millennia before the birth of Christ
to the millennia after the birth of Christ.
As Matthew tells it,
when the wise men first arrived in Judea,
they went not to Bethlehem but to Jerusalem,
and there they encountered the King of the Jews,
a man named Herod, the one who soon, out of jealous fear,
would order the killing of all the boy babies in Bethlehem.
Here, Matthew contrasts starkly
the New Age to the Old Age—
and Matthew does so through the figures
of their respective kings, Jesus and Herod.
Herod, the strong /
Jesus, the weak;
Herod, the exalted / Jesus, the lowly;
Herod, the proud / Jesus, the humble;
Herod, the cruel / Jesus, the loving;
Herod, the conqueror / Jesus, the crucified.
How differently each
of these two persons established their realms!
Yet it was in the
birth of Jesus that the visiting astrologers
from the East recognized the appearance of one
who would usher in a new age, the age of light and love.
And it was to Jesus,
+ not Herod, that they bowed down + worshiped
+ offered their gifts fit for a monarch—gold, frankincense + myrrh.
Now the distance
from Herod's court in Jerusalem to Bethlehem
was less than 10 miles.
But when the magi traveled that last short leg
of their long journey they moved from one age to another.
For in the Babe of Bethlehem they found manifest
the goodness and beauty of the sovereign God.
They discovered that the light of God shone
not among the strong, but among the weak.
The wise men
discovered
that hope appeared when they left the realm of apparent strength
and entered the realm of apparent weakness,
that joy became
abundant when they left the region of the proud
and entered the region of the humble,
that peace began
when they left the domain of the conqueror
and entered the domain of the one who offered humankind
love, even unto death.
Now the same journey
that was made by the wise men of old—
that from Jerusalem to Bethlehem—can be made by us today
by saying “No” to the Herods of this world
and by accepting the sovereignty of Jesus over our lives,
for it was Jesus who fulfilled the tasks of the ideal ruler
described in this morning’s psalm, Psalm 72:
ending the poor, delivering the needy,
having compassion for the weak,
saving the lives of those in danger, and
putting an end to oppression and violence.
It is when we accept
as our own task
Christ’s work of ministering to human need
that we can experience in our own hearts
the dawn of light and hope and joy and peace.
Most of us have
probably heard at one time or another
the story by Henry Van Dyke entitled "The Other Wise Man."
The name that Van
Dyke gives to this other wise man is Artemis,
and Artemis is bringing for the king who is born to usher in
a new age three splendid gifts—a sapphire, a ruby, and a pearl.
When
the wondrous star is born in the sky, Artemis sets forth on his
journey, but misses his scheduled rendezvous with the other wise
men because he stops to help a sick man and is delayed.
To help the man recover from his illness, he sells his sapphire.
When Artemis finally
arrives in Bethlehem, much delayed,
Herod’s troops are slaughtering the children, and Artemis
gives over to a soldier his ruby in order to save the life of a child.
But
Joseph and Mary and Jesus have already fled Bethlehem, and
Artemis does not find there the one for whom he has traveled so far.
Determined to find the royal child, Artemis continues his search,
roaming throughout the Middle East and Egypt.
Finally, after some
thirty years of searching,
Artemis’ journey brings him again to Jerusalem.
It is the very day on which Jesus is being crucified.
As Artemis wanders the streets
still in search of the King of the Jews,
he encounters a woman being held in slavery,
and he is moved to surrender his last gift, the pearl,
to free her.
As he does so, an
earthquake strikes,
and a falling stone mortally wounds Artemis.
And it is at this moment,
the moment of his dying, and not thirty years earlier,
that this other wise man recognizes the Epiphany.
He beholds a divine light,
and we hear him responding to it by saying:
"Lord, when did I see you hungry and feed you,
or thirsty and give you drink?
When did I clothe you in your nakedness?
When did I visit you?
When were you ill or in prison?"
And a voice from the midst of the light replies,
sure you as often as you did it
for one of my least, you did it for me."
You
see, although Artemis had not recognized it until his death,
during his quest he had in fact already received from God
a series of epiphanies—
a series of appearances to him of the face of Christ—a
series of appearances made manifest to him in the faces of
the sick man, the endangered child, the enslaved woman.
It was in his acts
of love and compassion toward those in need
that Artemis had done homage to the Christ child,
+ in so doing had brought light into the dark night of the world.
Here’s the irony
of it, you see:
God is not found among the strong,
but among the weak.
God
is not encountered among the exalted, the powerful, the leaders,
but among humble folk in need, humble folk
like the senior citizens for whom we prepare a meal here
at Rutgers Church every Thursday night,
and like the ten homeless men for whom we provide shelter
every weekend.
The message of
Epiphany is that hope and joy, peace and goodness,
are found in surprising places.
God becomes visible, God is made plain,
precisely at those points
where we turn aside from obvious strength
and identify with apparent weakness.
God becomes visible
not as we reach out on behalf of ourselves,
but as we reach out beyond ourselves,
as we act with love and mercy toward the sick, the helpless,
the poor, the homeless, the disconsolate, the oppressed.
As a number of the
people who run our Thursday night meal program
and our Sunday night shelter will be happy to tell you,
it has been in meeting and satisfying human need
that they have found light and joy dawning in their hearts.
It’s in their meeting and satisfying of human need
that they have experienced epiphany,
the face of Christ, God’s presence with them.
We, too, like the
wise men of old have been offered
a vision of light in the night;
we, too, have been offered the experience of epiphany,
of seeing the face of Christ in a person in need.
& just as the
wise men were told to go home to their own country by
a new way, changed by the transforming effect of God’s epiphany,
so too we are charged to go forth from this Christmas season
to the ordinary daily routines of our lives in a new way,
transformed by our vision of the face of Christ.
The Reverend Dr.
Howard Thurman,
a great African-American preacher who proclaimed
the word of God during the middle decades of the last century,
that is, the 20th century—
Dr. Thurman said so well what I’m trying to say.
He said it in the poetic charge
that’s quoted on today’s bulletin cover.
Please look at it along with me as I read it for you!
When the song of the
angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flocks
The work of
Christmas begins:
To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among people
To make music in the heart.
Sisters and
brothers, in the name of Jesus,
go out into all the world during this 21st
century of Christ.
Return to your work
by a new way
in this 3rd millennium of Christ.
Carry the light of
the face of Christ to guide your path
and to bring to others.
And may God, who is
this light, bless you
+ all those on whom your light shines in the night.
Let us pray:
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