Rosedale United Church

“The Three Wisdoms”                                     Epiphany Sunday, January 3, 2010

Rosedale United Church

(Isaiah 60: 1-6 , Matthew 2:1-12)                               Doug Norris

To hear audio of sermon

It always feels like on the first Sunday of a new year we should be saying something by way of a blessing directed at the coming months.  A prayer for 2010.

It is also always the Sunday on which we celebrate the Epiphany, that is, the church tradition of the visit of the three Magi, the Kings, or ‘Wise men’,  to the newborn Jesus.

So for today, I will begin by telling an old legend, then root around for a couple of blessings for  the year ahead, before we turn to the Table.

The Legend goes like this.  It is from the Travels of Marco Polo, in the mid-1200’s.

Marco Polo, traveling in Persia, came upon three very elaborate tombs, and when he made enquiries, was told that they belonged to the three Magi who had followed the light of a star to greet Jesus at his birth.

The three Magi, who were Zoroastrian priests, were a younger man, a middle aged man, and an older man.  They took three gifts – Gold, for an earthly king, Incense, for a god, and spices, for a healer.  The gift he accepted would tell them who he was.

When they arrived, after a journey of about a year, the young man went in, and was surprised to be greeted by a man, Jesus, about his own age.  Jesus accepted the gift of gold.   Next the middle aged man went in, and encountered a Jesus of his own age.  Jesus accepted the gift of Frankincense.   Next the older man went in, and found an older Jesus, who accepted his gift of Myrhh.

They compared notes, and decided that this Jesus was to be an earthly king, a god, and a healer.  They went in to see him together, and found a baby, only several weeks old.  They bowed to honour the baby, and Jesus gave them a gift, in a small wooden box, which they carried back to Persia with them.

On their  return, they opened the box, and discovering that it was simply a stone, and that they had no idea what to do with it, they tossed the stone in a nearby well.  As soon as they threw the stone in the well, a massive light came down from the skies and into the well, which burst into fire.  From that time on these priests and their descendants kept a sacred fire burning, and if it ever went out they would travel to find another fire that had been lit from theirs, and they would re-light their own.

So, a couple of Epiphany observations :

I’ll call the first one ‘Nobody Saw the Gorilla’.  And I will explain that in a moment.

I am puzzled by something in the story of the Magi.  I wonder why there weren’t a lot more people making the trek to see Jesus, following the star.  Nowhere in the story does it say that only the three magi could see it, like it was some personal mystical vision – it was a star or a comet hung out where everyone could see it, but apparently only these three noticed it.

So, was nobody else looking?

Let me tell you about an experiment I saw not long ago.  It was a very short video, online, and in fact it may have been one of you who sent it to me.

It was a speaker talking about our capacity for observation, and he said to the audience that he would show a 30 second clip of a group of 6 people passing two beach balls back and forth and you are to keep track of how many times a ball gets caught.

So he showed the clip and of course I carefully kept track, and after people called out numbers – 36, 42, and so on.  I was fairly close, so I had watched carefully.

Then he asked the audience – ‘How many of you saw the man in the gorilla suit walk through the circle while the balls were being tossed?’  There was a murmur in the group, because there had been no man in a gorilla suit.  Nobody put their hand up.

So he replayed the video clip, and sure enough, a man in a gorilla suit had walked into the circle and stood there, waved his arms, walked around a bit, and walked off.   Nobody saw it.  I never did.

Which leads to the obvious question, which is now an existential question – What else am I missing?  What else am I not seeing?

Are there lights in the sky or messages on the faces of people nearby that I am not yet aware of?  Small wonder that when Jesus the healer did his work he was often healing blindness – he understood that we don’t see well and so we miss so much that is holy.

There are all kinds of reasons to not be aware – likely the same reasons that kept all the others from seeing the star way back when – we are very busy and have to pay attention to what we need to do day to day, so who has time to gaze deeper to see what mysteries might be out there?   And besides, it may be risky to see too much – what if we see things going on that disturb us so that we can’t go back to how it was before?

This is the first Epiphany observation.  And the blessing is this :  May you understand your hunger – cultivate your desire to see deeply

The second observationI’ll call ‘Sometimes I’m Up, Sometimes I’m Down’.

Goes like this.  The whole story, like every single other story in the Christian narrative, can be threaded back through time to an old Jewish story.  Like a colleague of mine once said, if you’re walking through the New Testament without knowing the Old Testament you’re hopping on one foot.   These things always connected.

600 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah had a powerful moment – where he saw that the exile of his people was about to end, the Jews would be allowed to go back to Jerusalem and Judea, and rebuild.  In fact, he said – and they must have thought, at the time, that he was getting a bit excited, a bit ahead of himself – in fact, he said, you will go back and rebuild and you will build such a place, such a community, that all the world will notice how justice and peace flourish there!   Listen to the hopeful sounds of Isaiah , in chapter 58 :

If  you do away with the yoke of slavery,

If you do away with the clenched fist, the wicked word,

If you give bread to the hungry,

And relief to the oppressed,

Then your light will rise in the darkness

And your shadows become like noon,

You will be like a watered garden,

You will rebuild the ancient ruins,

You will be called ‘Restorer of Streets to Live In’.

If there is a single aspiration to which any church, anyone following Jesus of Nazareth should aspire it might be these words – ‘You will be like a watered garden, you will be called ‘restorer of streets to live in…’.

So Isaiah peppered his beaten down people with this vision, and then he spoke what has become the traditional text for us for the day of Epiphany :

‘Arise!  Shine!  For your light has come!

God’s glory – the glowing power of the holy Presence – is rising on  you!

Even though night still covers the earth,

And darkness the peoples – the nations will come to your light,

Kings will come to the dawning of your brightness!’

Now, who to whom do you say ‘Arise’?  To people who are down.  To people who are beaten, nearly lost, unsure of the way or unsure even if there is a way, to these you call out ‘Arise!’, get up, it is time to live again.

So if you are already up and doing well and feeling pretty good and sure about things then this message may not mean much – but to any who are down, who are discouraged, who are lost in grief, depression, who are broke, broken, lonely, to this unlikely nation we call out a blessing, with Isaiah – Arise!  Light is on you, if you will see it.   Life is in you, if you will feel it.

What seems to be a stone is a fire, and if we look up in time to see it, in ourselves and in the night sky and in the face of the neighbour or the stranger, then we will build something beautiful, and we will be a watered garden, a sign of hope, and this will be a year of grace.

May it be so.