Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, EPIPHANY 9.1.22
Epiphany cards tend to get mixed up with Christmas cards. The Epiphany cards are the ones about the three kings, or the three wise men. I always love the one from a feminist perspective: Three wise men? You must be joking!
Epiphany or 12th night was last Thursday. The word means manifestation, and in the church calendar is the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, the gentiles being all those races beyond Israel, you, me all races in every age.
Jesus’ mission was primarily to Israel, but always with the wider universal mission to all people, which followed from Pentecost.
Today’s Gospel says the people were waiting expectantly, standing on tip-toes, as one preacher said. It was a time of disillusionment, dissatisfaction with the existing order which did not satisfy.
And so in Peter Cornelius’ moving carol, three kings come from Persian lands afar, following a star, and bearing gifts of gold, incense and myrrh for the new-born king…
What was the start? Astronomers speculate about Halleys comet (11BC) or the Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn (7BC), but both dates seem a little early. Whatever, a bright light led the travellers on to Bethlehem.
The kings, or magi, were from the gentiles, on a spiritual pilgrimage to find new life in Christ.
In 1927 T S Eliot wrote his very evocative poem. The Journey of the Magi. In that year he also became a British citizen and an Anglican, and church-warden in his local London parish. Let’s read a few lines.
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet….
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill.
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon.
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory….
All this was a long time ago,
were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this
Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us,
like Death, our death…
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
This is a powerful poem for a people disillusioned, dissatisfied, looking for something new. It is true of every generation, of you and of me. Maybe we have lost our purpose in living, or feel the deadness of grief or a broken relationship.
Maybe we find that materialism no longer satisfies, or that hedonism and silken – silken girls bringing sherbet has lost its fun.
But the magi found spiritual rebirth in Christ. They found Jesus as the midwife of a new birth. Any birth can be painful as we let go of the old dispensation with all the idols we cling to.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has asked : “What difference would it make if I believed I am held in a wholly loving gaze which saw all my surface accidents and arrangements, all my inner habits and inheritances, all my anxieties and arrogances, all my history, and yet loved me wholly with an utterly free, utterly selfless love
And what difference would it make if I let myself believe that each person around me is loved and held in the same overwhelming, loving gaze, and that this love made no distinctions of race, religion, age, innocence, strength or beauty?”
That is the message of Epiphany, that God loves us utterly, warts and all, and that that same love holds everyone else with the same intensity so that we are driven out to love everyone with the same love with which God loves us.
The carol of three Kings concludes: gold, incense, myrrh thou can’st not bring: offer thy heart to the infant king; offer thy heart.
A Collect for Epiphany: Jesus, light of the world, let your star shine over the place where the poor have to live; lead our sages to wisdom and our rulers to reverence. Hear our prayer for your love’s sake. Amen
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