| "We've just heard Matthew's account of Wise Men bearing gifts, of their coming from a great distance in the east first to Jerusalem, to the court of King Herod, and then to Bethlehem, to a rude house, in search of the one whose birth was being heralded by the advent of such a wondrous star. The Wise Men were coming in search of the one who had just been born the Messiah of the Jews, the one sent by God for the saving of all nations and peoples. Well, wouldn't you know it, this Christmas, our Child's Play Director, Holly Nedelka, received really quite an irreverent Shoebox card, one claiming to quote "The Top Ten Things Overheard on the Wise Men's Journey to Bethlehem": things like, #10, "Man, I'm starting to get a head rush from [burning some of] this frankincense!" and, #6, " If [God] can send [us on such a long journey], why can't [God] make a [camel] saddle that doesn't chafe," and #4, "I hope we get to an oasis soon. My butt's starting to go numb," and finally, #1, "All this staring at a star while riding a camel is making me woozy." Well, the card Holly received is certainly good for laughs, and it is quite important for us at Christmas time to preserve our sense of humor, but the card really does miss the point that the most important thing that could have been overheard on the Wise Men's journey to Bethlehem must have been something serious, like: "Man, I just can't wait to behold this epiphany!" "Epiphany"-a fancy word meaning "a flash of recognition," "a moment in which that which is unknown is suddenly made known, in which Truth reveals itself, in which God appears." And this morning we Christians affirm that the day when Jesus was born, over two thousand years ago-that that day was the moment in time when all of us humans received a definitive answer to our question, "Who is our Creator, who is God," an answer given to us by our Creator in the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. That moment in time was the Epiphany-when God was made plain to the world. "Who is God," we humans ask. And the New Testament proclaims, "Look to Jesus! For Jesus is the perfect image of God. In Jesus, God is made plain." This is a day for us Christians to celebrate the Epiphany, the greatest gift to humankind conceivable-the appearance among us of God's very own self and being, in the person of Jesus. And this is also a day for us to remember and to reflect upon the gifts that were offered in return for that great gift from God, offered in return by some ancient travelers-the gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh presented by those Wise Men from the east, those magi representing all the peoples of the world, those priestly Gentile sages seeking to find the holy child whose birth had been marked by the sky-born appearance of such a wondrous star. 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 secular "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. Matthew here contrasts ever so starkly the Old Age of darkness to the New Age of light, and Matthew does so through the figures of their respective kings, Herod and Jesus. 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 went about establishing their realms! And what a difference it makes to which of these two we decide to offer our gifts and our allegiance! The Wise Men of old discovered that epiphany occurred 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 the gifts of divine being and of perfect love, a love offered even unto death. And in response to God's gift of the Christ Child, the Wise Men offered their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Gold and frankincense and myrrh-all of them gifts fit for a king, all of them counted among the most highly prized items to be found in the first-century world. Gold-the precious metal that is most frequently mentioned in the Bible, linked with what was sacred and of utmost value. And still today gold is highly prized by all of us humans as "one of nature's most perfect substances." And frankincense and myrrh-these items are today not nearly so well known nor so highly valued as they were at the time of Jesus's birth, when they were considered to be of even greater worth than gold. Both of them are resins exuded when cuts or incisions are made into the bark of two particular kinds of trees, kinds that grow only in northern Somalia, in Africa, and along the southern Arabian Peninsula, from Yemen to Oman. The high value assigned by the ancients to these two resins arose from their properties, both aromatic and medicinal. Frankincense is a sweetly aromatic milk-white sap, and it was believed to cure "everything from bad breath to skin infections," and modern science confirms that it does have "wonderful antiseptic, anti- fungal, and anti-inflammatory properties that make it a useful dressing [for wounds] as well as …a bronchial dilator" helpful in cases of "lung infection and asthma." Myrrh is a pungently aromatic reddish sap, and it "is biochemically similar to frankincense, though its value in the ancient world was actually many times greater. A drop of myrrh could double the price of cheaper perfumes, and Egyptians used myrrh to embalm royal mummies. The opening of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 released wafts of air so rich in myrrh's scent that it almost bowled the researchers over. [And for the living, m]yrrh was prescribed for [an even] wider range of ailments than frankincense." It was, for example, considered to be a remedy for baldness and obesity, an elixir for prolonging life, and an anesthetic for numbing pain. And of most relevance for the baby Jesus, myrrh was used by the very few who happened to possess it for treating diaper rash! Yes, gold and frankincense and myrrh-these were the valuable gifts to the Christ Child offered by those first Gentile visitors long ago. But what are the valuable gifts that we today can offer to God in response to this priceless gift to us, God's gift, through the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus-God's gift of becoming so clearly and incomparably visible to us, of becoming so wondrously comprehendible by us? Yes, what are the gifts of value that we today can offer to God? Well, do you remember the words we sang during the last verse of this morning's Prayer Hymn? "O Christ, what can I give You, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can I give You, give my heart." Ah, the gift of our hearts! That's a gift truly worthy of being given in response to God's gift-the gift of our full devotion, the gift of our very own self and being in response to the gift of God's very own self and being. This is a gift of value that we are able to make to God whether we are rich or poor-the gift of our hearts, of our very own self and being, given not to the rulers and powers of this world, given not to any modern Herod, but given rather to God! Now, having just experienced this past Christmas season, we are, I'm sure, quite familiar with the various moods in which we have offered our gifts, moods summarized for us Americans some forty-two years ago by Robert N. Rodenmayer, in his book Thanks Be to God. Rodenmayer wrote: "There are three kinds of giving: grudge giving, duty giving, and thanksgiving. Grudge giving says, 'I hate to'; duty giving says, 'I ought to'; thanksgiving says, 'I want to.' The first comes from constraint, the second from a sense of obligation, the third from a full heart. Nothing much is conveyed in grudge giving since 'the gift without the giver is bare.' Something more happens in duty giving, but there is no song in it. [Whereas, t]hanksgiving is an open gate into the love of God." Thanksgiving is an open gate into the love of God! I'm pretty sure that, were we to reflect on our gift giving for this past Christmas, most of us could identify examples in our own experience of each of these three moods of giving. Well, needless to say, it is my hope that our Epiphany gift to God, the offering to God of our hearts, of our very own self and being-it is my hope that this Epiphany gift from us to God will be one offered in thanks-giving, one that will consequently open for us a gateway into the love of God. You see, God becomes visible today not as we reach out on behalf of ourselves, but as we reach out beyond ourselves, to offer our very own self and being in thanks-giving, through acts of love and mercy, to those who inhabit the realm of King Jesus-namely, 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 the light and joy of God's presence dawning in their hearts. It has been in their meeting and satisfying of human need through a heart filled with thanks-giving that they have experienced epiphany, the face of Christ, God's presence with them. You see, we, too, like the Wise Men of old have been offered a vision of light in the night, a star in the sky; we, too, have been offered the experience of epiphany, of seeing the face of Christ in a person in need. For the epiphany of God which came in the first century, and which comes still today, is to be found not among the proud but among the humble, not among the powerful but among the weak. And just as the Wise Men of old offered their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh not out of duty but in thanks-giving, so we, too, have the opportunity to offer the gift of our hearts, of our very own self and being, not out of duty but in thanks-giving, having been 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 20th century-Dr. Thurman said something about the end of our Christmas season, about the time after Epiphany, that strikes me as quite profound. It's quoted on today's bulletin cover. And I invite you to look at it now 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." To these thoughts of Dr. Thurman I need to add only this: that the work of Christmas to which he refers is in reality not a task to be fulfilled begrudgingly or out of a sense of duty, but rather a task that is to flow naturally from having offered to God in thanks- giving the gift of our hearts, the gift of our whole self and being, the gift that opens for us a gateway into the love of God. "O Christ, what can I give You, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can I give You, give my heart." Let us pray: Amen |
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