Manifestation

Matthew 2: 1-12

Today I would like to introduce you to our new friend Epiphany.  Unless you are super hip and hanging out with her other liturgical church calendar friends, you might have missed her.  Our friend Christmas has gone and left us and now we are trying to move on.  But it feels hard.  We prepared for Christmas for weeks and maybe even months.  We wrote letters and prepared food, we made gifts and cleaned our house, but Christmas stayed for such a short visit.  As much as we loved him, we must admit that his brief stay was a tad irritating.  I know I am trying to move on.  I took down the red bow over my fireplace and put away the lights and the whole time I couldn’t help but to grumble at Christmas as I think to myself that maybe next year he will hang around a bit longer.  But as much as I love Christmas and wait for him, when he leaves, it seems that all that remains are memories and a mess.  But Christmas is gone and today I would like to introduce you to Epiphany.  Epiphany has a way about her.  She is the type that wants everyone she meets to pause and reflect, to take it all in.  Epiphany sits us right down and says, “wait a minute, do you realize what just happened?”  She doesn’t want us to get over Christmas and move on.  And we say to Epiphany, “Yes of course, our messiah is born among us.”  Given her name, we might be suspicious of Epiphany.  We know she wants us to go deep, to greet a sudden, intuitive perception or insight.  We know that Epiphany wants us to take in what God is doing among us, to notice how God is manifesting God’s self.  That’s just what she did for the Wise Men over two thousand years ago.  They wanted to get on with it and clean up, but she opened their eyes to what God was doing among them. Epiphany wanted them to see God clearly.  And it was almost as if the sight of God in Jesus made them look at themselves differently- as if the sight of a holy baby changed them. 

And have you noticed that?  Have you ever noticed how babies make people behave in odd ways?  When my nephew was born my step dad turned to baby-loving mush.  He is over six feet tall with broad shoulders and a strong personality but when Phoenix, my nephew came into the world he did just what the Gospel of Matthew tells us the Wise Men did, he “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.”  Seeing God clearly has a way of doing that.  Seeing God manifest like that changes everything.  And that’s just what happened.  The story that our friend Epiphany tells is probably familiar to you.  It is found only in the Gospel of Matthew and it is such an odd scene that we know it could only be the work of God.   Wealthy foreigners and royalty travel East to present gifts to the Messiah, the Christ Child, the one for whom they had waited.   Can you imagine?  Royalty stops by the rough part of town to see what everyone has been talking about and they bring really nice gifts, I mean really nice gifts.  And the Wise Men lost it.  Epiphany sat watching with a smile.  It was just what she was hoping for.  The Wise Men lost it at the sight of God manifest.  Even with all of their velvet robes and gold thread cloth, with their stomachs full of wine and delicious meat, they lost it.  The sight of God manifest right there was too much for them.  Ronald Goetz says, that the Wise Men “lost the composure and reserve of scholars and sages, giving way to an ecstasy of naked adoration. There was no possibility of rational detachment in the situation; they could only praise and pour out their gifts in their dumbfounded worship of the newborn infant.”   Seeing the baby, seeing God manifest, made them loosen up a bit and in those moments they could only experience sheer baby bliss.  And that’s just what Epiphany wanted…slow down, open your eyes, see what God is doing among you.  And their first response was joy- absolute joy!  They couldn’t control it or contain it.  They couldn’t keep their composure until the ride home.  At the sight of God in a baby, they experienced over the top, right down to the tips of their toes kind of joy!  Seeing baby Jesus made joy dance through their veins- seeing God changed everything. 

Epiphany wanted them to let go of worrying how they might look.  Epiphany wanted them to let go of keeping up appearances or maintaining order- the sight of God manifest forced them to lose it- to laugh and praise, to look awkward and funny, to be totally real right there among strangers that would become friends.  And as Epiphany sits here with us today, I wonder what the sight of God manifest might do to us.  What would it look like for us to lose it totally?  What would it look like for us to let go of worrying how we might look or to let go of needing to show up here with all of our ducks in order?  It seems to me that it was no accident God came to us in a baby, seeing God in a baby forces us to let go, to release sheer, unadulterated joy and to be real among strangers that will become friends.  Maybe one way to honor greeting God here is to be willing to lose it, to let go of our need to arrive at church all put together. 

On one of my recent pastoral visits, I sat with a woman whom I hadn’t yet met.  She was in the hospital and in need of God’s healing.  She hasn’t been to church in nearly a year so I didn’t know what she looked like and the nurse brought me to her bedside.  She was so relieved to see me and I was sorry I hadn’t been there sooner.  I didn’t know that she was in the hospital because she has withdrawn herself from this community since the death of her husband last winter.  We prayed together and when we were finished, she was silent.  Tears welled up in her eyes.  “I haven’t been to church,” she said, “because I don’t have it all together.”  And I know her sentiment is a common one.  It is not unusual for people to check out when life seems to be falling apart.  Many of us feel as if greeting God here requires a soul in order.  We feel as if we must arrive here fresh and ready.  But despite our need to feel like this is the place where we show up with our clothes ironed and our emotions wrapped, that is not what God wants for us.  Maybe if God wanted us to come to church all put together, God would have came to us as an accountant or a banker.  But God came to us in a baby.  And at the sight of God, the Wise Men lost it and let their raw humanity spill out into the cradle where Jesus lay.  And I want to be the church, the community of faith where we are invited to let loose, where each of us at the sight of God manifest bring our joy and laughter, our sadness and tears, our real selves to this place.  Church is the very place where we are invited to let our hearts spill out.  Our friend Epiphany, sits with us, and invites us to see fully the manifestation of our God, right here, just as the Wise Men did long ago.  As we enter a new year together, what would it be like for us to be the church where we each bring the real stuff of our lives, where we let ourselves spill right out into the arms of our God and into the hands of our brothers and sisters in Christ…  Amen.

This idea inspired by “Epiphany Communion Meditation” by F. Jeffrey Van Orden

“The Highest Knowledge (Matt. 2:10-11)” by Ronald Goetz, in the Christian Century, December 21-28, 1983, p.1176.