Tomorrow is Epiphany, when the church has traditionally marked the visit of the magi to the infant Jesus. Our modern impatience tends to put them at the manger alongside the shepherds, but scripture seems to put their visit about two years later, and the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany is intended to reflect that.
But why do we call it Epiphany? Well an ‘epiphany’ is a moment of great revelation, and the visit of the magi has been understood as the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles. That theme of revelation has drawn other stories into the celebration of Epiphany, and we’ll hear a couple of them this morning. Rather than the traditional scripture readings, we will enter into those stories through three poems by Malcolm Guite, printed together as a kind of Epiphany triptych in his book ‘Sounding the Seasons’.
When we think about the magi, who were likely Zoroastrian priests from what we now know as Iran, we usually focus on the gifts they offered to Jesus. Gold, frankincense and myrrh. There is a meme that does the rounds every Christmas which suggests that the three wise women would have arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, and brought a casserole. It's a harmless enough joke, but it does rely on the idea that the magi's gifts were a bit useless, which does raise my theological hackles a little. In the first place, they were deeply symbolic gifts. Gold to crown a king, frankincense to worship a deity, and myrrh to prepare a sacrifice. They communicated to the holy family, and to us as witnesses through the testimony of scripture, something hugely significant about who Jesus was and would be. The carol “We Three Kings” may get the identity of the gifters wrong, but it is right about the identity of the giftee, when it declares him “King and God and Sacrifice”.
In the second place, they were probably more practical gifts than we realise. As Miri learnt at school and has kept reminding us at home, myrrh is good for stretch marks, especially when mixed with frankincense, so the oils were used in postpartum care as well as in worship and funeral rites. And I imagine gold would come in handy for any family facing the expense of a new baby, especially a family that is far from home and soon to be farther still. These were gifts that would have cared for and sustained Jesus and his parents, at a particularly vulnerable time in their lives. We don't know why the magi chose the gifts they did, or how much they understood of their practical and symbolic value, but we do see in their generosity just how powerful and meaningful the act of giving can be.
The sonnet we heard widens our understanding of gift further, as Guite pictures the magi bringing us to the manger, those who also come from otherwhere, who were not born of the people first given the promise of a special king, but who are invited into the kingdom nonetheless. The shepherds and the magi may not have gathered around the manger on the same holy night, which was almost certainly not silent, but there is a truth that is more than fact in picturing them together. Because those who the Christmas story draws in are rich and poor, and they are neighbour and stranger, and in that dichotomy they stand for all of humanity, so that as they offer themselves as gifts to the child who is God-With-Us, they also open the way for all those they represent to offer themselves. They give us the chance to offer ourselves. As the final couplet has it, “Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice / To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice.”
We've jumped forward around three decades from the visit of the magi. Other than two visits to the temple, one as an infant and one as an adolescent, both of which only appear in Luke's gospel, we know nothing of Jesus' life before his public ministry. I must admit that I do find that frustrating, and I really wish the gospel writers had given us more. Luke had clearly done his research, and it has been assumed from the way his birth narrative focuses on Mary that he had met her in the course of his investigations. I imagine she would have been very happy to talk about her eldest son's life at home with her and Joseph and his siblings, so why does he give us so little? As the priest and theologian Sam Wells has pointed out, Jesus spent three hours on the cross, three years teaching and performing miracles, and three decades living as a son and brother and friend. That ordinary life may seem dull in comparison to what followed, but it is by some measures the greatest part of his incarnation, and the ordinary life we are called to.
Unfortunately there's not much we can do about the stories we don't have, so let's return to the story we do have, Jesus' baptism. I said that other stories had been drawn into the celebration of Epiphany through the theme of revelation, and it is at his baptism that Jesus is publicly revealed as the incarnate Son of God. As the Father speaks and the Spirit descends, we get a glimpse of who Jesus is within the mystery of the Trinity. It is hard to say how much was understood by those who were gathered at the river for their own baptism. Did they know that this Son was unique in his relation to the Father? Did they recognise the dove that hoovered over him as the Spirit? Did they see the connections between it all? Perhaps not, but hindsight is our gift, and we have the benefit of two thousand years of theology to help us, although even so the Trinity remains a puzzle we will never really solve. I am sure that whatever the crowds thought of what they had seen, they knew that it was something special, that Jesus was something special.
In the middle of Guite’s sonnet, he speaks of the meeting of the Trinity at the baptism of Christ revealing “the single loving heart / That beats behind the being of all things”. I think that is a really profound image, and it resonates with an interview I listened to this week, in which authors and podcasters Elizabeth Oldfield and Sarah Wilson spoke about connection as sacred, of love as the thing that holds all else together. In reflecting on how to live at the end of the world, Oldfield quoted 1 Peter 4, in which he writes “The end of all things is near. Therefore...love each other deeply”. She then went on to say “My hope is not that we will save ourselves, but that love is there to catch us, and that as we move through terror into relationship, we remember who we are supposed to be”. We are made in the image of a trinitarian God, a relational God, and so it must be that we most truly find ourselves in connection with others. That is part of what it means to follow in the way of Christ, as “He calls us too, to step into that river / To die and rise and live and love forever”.
The third story associated with Epiphany is usually the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turned water into wine, as this was his first miracle, and the first revelation of his power. It's an odd little story in many ways, and one of those rare glimpses into the more domestic side of Jesus' life that I wish we had more of. It seems he has no intention of doing anything miraculous that day, he's simply enjoying a party with friends and family, but Mary has other ideas. It is her insistence that leads to this first miracle, or sign as John describes it, the miracles all being signs of some deeper truth, in this case the abundance of God and the sacredness of the everyday. It does make me wonder about the relationship between Jesus and Mary. Luke speaks of him growing in wisdom and stature, so I think we are to assume that physically and cognitively, he experienced normal human development. In other words, he had to learn everything from scratch, just as any child would. We don’t know at what point in his incarnation Jesus came to understand who he was, but we can be fairly sure that within the timeline of his earthly years, Mary knew first. How much did her understanding and guidance shape him, not just at the wedding feast but throughout his life? It's unanswerable, but fascinating nonetheless.
And that's a bit of a digression anyway, because Guite actually chooses the gospel reading from the third Sunday of Epiphany in Year B of the lectionary to round out his trio of sonnets. This is the first call of the disciples as told in Mark 1, when Jesus beckons Peter and Andrew and James and John out of their boats and promises to make them fishers of men, although Guite draws in other boat themed stories. You may have spotted references to Jesus calming the storm, and to the ark which saved Noah and his family for the redemption of all humankind. Blending these stories together with the call of the disciples reminds us that the call to discipleship is a call to adventure and to risk, but also to peace and to safety. It's tempting to think we only want the latter, but I think we need both aspects in their proper time. Peace and safety will sustain us, but adventure and risk will take us to places we couldn't imagine. I wonder what sailing feels like for you right now. I wonder if this year you need to steer the boat into wilder seas or calmer waters.
Of course not all rough waters feel like adventure, and not all risks are willingly chosen. Some storms simply batter us down and threaten to drown us. With this in mind, I love the image Guite offers of us all aboard the ark, not untouched by the storm, but together and afforded some protection. None of us know what storms are coming this year, although perhaps for some of us a storm has already arrived, or is gathering on the horizon. We can trust however, that God is in the boat with us, and that we can help guide it together. We do not need to face the wind and the waves alone. May we be “As fellow pilgrims, driven towards that haven, / Where all will be redeemed, fulfilled, forgiven”.
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