7th January 2025

Epiphany

Epiphany

Epiphany – a sermon by the Rt Revd Karen Gorham, Bishop of Sherborne, for the Epiphany Eucharist, 6th January 2025

I expect for you as well as for me, this last weekend has included packing things away.  The removal of most of the decorations, the recycling of cards, and the redistribution of presents, kept for a while to be admired and looked at and now put away in cupboards ready to be used, or eaten or drunk!

Gifts from family and friends are easy to receive, many are chosen with care or requests are dutifully fulfilled.  They are wrapped with love and attention, only to be unwrapped in a joyful frenzy.

It is easy to overlook the visitors to the Christchild, they appear in the nativity scene or on the Christmas cards as familiar friends.  We sing of the shepherds and kings, we know all about them, or maybe legends are more familiar than gospel truth.

Yet these were all strangers bringing their presents, their gifts as well as their presence, their very selves.  In Luke’s gospel it is the shepherds who are the first to witness to the birth of Jesus. The little people — people who were always there, but no one noticed much.  Those ordinary folk on the hillsides, whose worship of Jesus reflected his own calling ‘a ruler to shepherd my people Israel’ as the prophet Micah reminds us. Tending, protecting, guiding and nurturing.  Christ’s rule is distinguished from Herod’s rule by his gentle guardianship, his compassionate care.

Then the magi, whom we remember this evening, people who were rich and important, but also outsiders and strangers.

Who were these strange travellers from the east? Matthew gives us almost no details about them. It is doubtful that they were anything like the camel-riding travellers we usually see portrayed on Christmas cards. These men were certainly not kings and we have no evidence that there were three of them.  Most of the information we can glean from history. These wise men or “MAGI” were the scholars of their time. They were learned men: scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, doctors, as well as the legal authorities in their land. They acted as advisors to kings, including choosing kings—which is why their arrival in Jerusalem would have upset King Herod. He knew these men were king-makers.

These priestly sages from Persia, experts in astrology, were persistent and sincere in their search for the baby born king of the Jews, and guided by God.  Their stay in Bethlehem is marked by great joy, by the worship of the infant Jesus and by their presents, their giving of gifts.  They come prepared and seem to know what to do when they arrive. Expensive gifts, suitable for royalty.  Their response is more important than their motives.

This is all part of the divine plan, an accomplishment of promises made long ago. As soon as Christ was born strangers from near and far were welcomed by him, their gifts and their presence was received by him.  The command at the end of St Matthew’s gospel, to the eleven to make disciples of all nations reflected the larger story of God’s redemption, portrayed at the beginning by shepherds and magi.  Those drawn by the light mark the beginning of the procession of outsiders who see in the gospel the mystery of salvation.

Gifts from family and friends are easy to receive.  However, we are often less welcoming of the stranger.  We tend to treat people with suspicion, the sad history of racial discrimination in the church testifies to this. We exclude and we judge.  However, with Christ as our example the person selling the big issue on the high street should be as welcome as the more respectable members of our society.  This is about the fullness of inclusion.

As we enter 2025 with our decorations packed away, we have a call to open our hearts, to the presence and the presents of strangers in our midst.  To learn from the asylum seeker and the refugee, to include and treat equally all those who seek Christ, as Christ himself does.  From the stable to the grave Christ welcomes all.

The gospel reminds us also that God in all infant humanity does not judge but receives all who come.  This is about our own worship, yes, but also those we choose to be among.  What the magi did not find in Herod’s throne room, they find in an ordinary place among ordinary people — the true king of Israel. For one reason or another, it took a group of outsiders to respond to a strange sign and travel from a distant country to find what they could not, surely, have expected:  the one king, the true Messiah, living unrecognised among his people.

For it is in the stranger or in the gift of a stranger that we can so often experience the God of surprises.  It is so often those who have little, that give the most; or in the humility of greatness that the compassion of Christ is revealed.

2024 has been a difficult year in many ways, for the church and in our world. This year too could easily be marked by division, by accusation, by animosity, by hatred.

It is wise people who stubbornly cling to God in times of darkness and hardship knowing that when they pray, more…much more….may be involved than they ever dream.  Wise people have the kind of faith that knows that God never abandons us no matter how distant God may seem.

Epiphany is a reminder of the world mission of the church, to love and receive love, to welcome and be surprised, to accept what is offered and experience joy, to bow in adoration, refraining from judgement and know God’s peace, to forgive and be forgiven.  It takes silence and it takes words, it requires action, it is about our presence and our gifts, and it takes tones of grace.

That I believe is the hope Christ sets before us today.  So, following the example of the wise men, who having met with Christ returned by another route, may we too, having met with God this Christmas, have the courage to follow a radically different path in 2025.