The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Everyone who has read Tolkien knows that hobbits are timid stay-at-homes by nature. When Gandalf and the dwarves show up at Bilbo Baggins' hobbit hole, Bilbo is doing what he likes to spend all his days doing, having tea and biscuits and enjoying the view from his front porch.

Gandalf and the dwarves hope to enlist Bilbo in an adventure. The dwarves plan to recover the inheritance that rightly belongs to them, the gold and jewels mined by their ancestors and the Lonely Mountain that was their ancestral home. The problem is that the Lonely Mountain and their inheritance is in a distant and dangerous land where Smaug the Calamitous, the fierce, fire-breathing dragon sleeps on the dwarves' gold and jewels. And to recover their inheritance, they will need to travel through the dark and gloomy wilderness of Mirkwood, where they will have to outwit evil orcs, fend off savage wolves and giant spiders, and battle wicked goblins.

Bilbo wants nothing to do with it. He likes life the way it is in his hobbit hole, where life is secure and snug and where, most important, there is always plenty to eat and everything is familiar and predictable -- life the way Bilbo has always known it!

But through the wizardry of Gandalf and the persistence of the dwarves, Bilbo is enticed to join them in their quest -- actually snared, perhaps -- and as everyone knows, all this leads to Bilbo's own adventure to the Lonely Mountain and the Desolation of Smaug and to his cousin Frodo's later adventure in "The Lord of the Rings," now playing at your local theater.

There are, in life, those, like hobbits, who are settlers by nature, those who prefer life by the fireplace, cozy and secure, with plenty of biscuits and tea . And plenty of control. And there are those more inclined toward adventure, pioneers who search for treasure that lies beyond the known and the familiar.

The Magi in our story today were pioneers. They were philosophers, astrologers perhaps, who searched the heavens for God, men who looked to the stars and other parts of the natural world to lead them to wisdom and truth, truth about the world and truth about life, and who were willing to travel wherever their stars led them in search of that truth.

King Herod was a settler. He was like a hobbit in this respect, but only in this respect. He was like a hobbit only in the fact that he liked a controlled and familiar life. In all other ways, Herod was more like a dragon. Most hobbits are gentle and good-natured, like Bilbo. But Herod was a nasty, vicious creature who was willing to do anything to keep life at home the way he wanted it, willing to do anything to keep his kingdom, to control what he thought belonged to him, to keep the treasure of Israel for himself.

Herod had obtained great power and wealth as a king. He had built cities. He had rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, where the priests guarded Israel's treasure, the Scriptures and the worship of the people, making sure that everyone knew just exactly what God wanted, according to them, and insisting that everyone make their sacrifices in just the right way. The priests had the job of keeping life secure and comfortable for Herod, who was so afraid of losing his power that he had killed three of his own sons to keep them from trying to take it away from him.

One day the Magi, the pioneers, came to town. It was shortly after Jesus had been born in Bethlehem. The pioneers were foreigners out on the road in search of truth. Such people were always a suspect lot to stay-at-home, guard-the-wealth dragons like Herod. The pioneers were gentiles, strangers who came from mysterious lands in the East. Some say these travelers were kings, although the Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says they were Magi, philosophers or priests of a strange and foreign religion.

But this meant nothing to Herod. What could a bunch of gypsies from a foreign land tell Herod about truth or wisdom? They were pagans from nations Israel scorned! It was, after all, to Israel, to Herod and his priests, that God had revealed the truth and entrusted the Scriptures. And it was Israel who had built God his magnificent house, the Temple, so that God no longer had to roam the world in a tent. Persians and Indians were just pagans wandering around where they didn't belong.

Still, Herod was concerned about what the Magi told him, because they said they had come to worship a newborn king. On the other hand, what star could tell anybody about a king? And what other King of the Jews could there be except Herod? On the other hand, Herod was fearful, so he humored these foreign philosophers and told them that he would like to worship this new king as well, if they would just be so kind as to send back word where this newborn king was when the Magi found him.

But "Herod neither met nor understood the Newborn King," says Walter Wangerin, "because that one's kingship was not of the world, but Herod defined greatness ever in terms of the world. Greater greatness than his own must mean greater splendor, greater armies, greater power -- and a will to kill its enemies. What else could he do then, but fear and hate the Newborn? -- of whom the angel said, 'His kingdom will have no end'....

"It's the season of Christmas -- holy and commercial, both. Again this year we Christians have lamented the way the pagan world has stolen the spirit away. Increasing is important; decreasing is dangerous. So say the marketers. Selling-to-get defines the season, while giving-to-love is precisely the attitude that businesses prey upon!

"The giving of God (who so loved the world that he gave his son) and the tremendous sacrifice of Christ (who gave up his godly authority in order, then, to give up his life for for us) are neither honored nor acknowledged nor understood. The best the world can say of the season is that (Lo!) sometimes humans can be nice to each other.

"An annual burst of altruism: what a wonder! 'And what a miserable substitute,' says the Christian, 'to Immanuel, the loving God among us!

"Thus the lamentation of Christians at Christmas. And in the lament, a resentment. And in resentment, a possible blindness to greater glories of God!

"Awake, O Church!" cries Wangerin. "Be alert to the coming of God. Do not fall to Herod's error, the error as well of chief priests and scribes. Rather, rejoice however the news of the coming of God comes to you, whether from within your communion or from the world and unbelievers!"

This is the news, and the warning, of Epiphany -- that the Light has come. But the Light has come not just to us, the people of the Covenant and the possessors of the Bible, but to the whole world, to foreigners and outsiders, even to those who are guided by the stars, to any who would venture wherever truth draws them and who, when they find truth, would draw near to worship, whereas Herod would not walk across the street to see truth if it did not come packaged the way he thought it should.

Is Herod's error our error? Do we, to whom the Scriptures have now been entrusted, sleep on them the way a dragon sleeps on a bed of jewels, covering them and possessing them as if they belong to us and not to God, smothering their light, their truth, and their life, smothering even the newborn King himself with doctrine and creeds that would exclude those who come in search from the outside?

This, at least, was Herod's error, Wangerin says -- that Herod arrogantly scorned the possibility that light could either come from the gentiles or to the gentiles and that, because he was so bound to his own understanding and power, he was blind to the Light that God had promised through the prophets of his own people. And so he missed Christmas when it happened in his own land.

Herod, in other words, was "blinded to those miracles of truth and divine revelation that occur in the world" when they did not happen in the way he believed they should happen. A star in the East spoke of a fullness and impartiality of the love of God, a love open to all, which Herod found inconceivable.

And if we in the Church do this in our day, says Wangerin, "we will wrap ourselves in the pride of righteousness ('We are the beloved of God!') and, [like Herod, will] cut ourselves off from that fullness of heavenly love which embraces all creation. Worse, we will make bitter enclaves of ourselves and cease to represent the love of God before the world," a love heralded by the Magi from afar, driven by a search for truth and guided by a distant star toward Bethlehem.

There are, says Wangerin, three steps in the sequence of one's coming to God. There is meeting God. There is knowing God. And there is believing in him.

"Wise Gentiles, watchful worldlings, may read in the natural signs of creation certain proclamations of the Deity. God is! God is like this! God is very, very near.

"Thus the Magi. They read holy truth in a rising star.

"Thus the Gentiles of Paul's day: 'For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world [God's] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.' (Romans 1:19-20)

"Thus it is in our day. Nonbelievers have accurate insights into God -- our God, yes; but by his choosing, their God too."

That is step one, the first step the Magi took: seeking God, meeting God, by whatever means one is led.

Next, this search for God through nature will seek confirmation in revelation, Wangerin adds.

"So the Magi came to Jerusalem seeking the newborn king, making theirs a sweeping search, for their knowing was neither precise nor particular. Unto them, the communications of God had never been direct."

But here is where Herod's failing was all the more tragic and bitter, for "Herod and the scribes did have an account of the direct revelation of God, in Scriptures," though they did not act upon it.

"From the prophets" -- from Isaiah and Micah, and many another -- "comes the precision and the confirmation the Magi need." Out of you, O Bethlehem, will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people. The scribes and priests reminded Herod of Micah's words when he finally thought to ask. Out of you will come the Light promised to the nations.

So Herod now knows, but he is afraid. What will happen to him if another king, an unknown king, is born? But for the Magi, for the foreigners on their search, the prophets' word is the strong confirmation they need, the confirmation that their search, begun in their own way and in their distant land, was not in vain, that God was there, in Bethlehem.

"Even so," says Wangerin, "watchful outsiders come yet today to the Church, seeking from the revealed Word (safe in our keeping?) a spiritual clarity for the divinity they've already experienced [outside the Church].

"And here is the heart of the matter: how shall we receive them? [As Herod received the Magi?] If we believe there is no good in a world that demeans our Christmas (our Christ, our God) neither will we trust the truth these wordlings bring to us," any more than Herod trusted the truth the Magi brought to him.

But "Scriptures will surely teach them and lead them, next, through their third stage of knowing God, [because] Scripture belongs to everyone. But the issue here is not their success; it is our participation! Will we take that third step too?

"For the natural proclamation [of God], now confirmed and refined by the revealed Word [of God], must now go toward its personal encounter. Without this there is not, finally, believing, [trusting]. Without this there would be no sense of a loving God, for nature shows us only a righteous and mighty God."

Long journey though it was, "the Magi went to meet Jesus. But Herod and all Jerusalem with him, were troubled by the Magi's search. And the king received no enlightenment, neither from the Magi nor from the Scriptures in his possession. Instead, he feared that authority might be passing from him to another whom he didn't know and couldn't control. No worship in Herod! [No meeting of the Newborn King for him!] He was scheming to keep his power.

"Now you see, Christian, who would most suffer our scorn of [the outsider and] the world. Not the world. But we ourselves. For, fearing that a God not completely in our keeping must be a false, distorted God, we might not truly go, innocently go, like little children go to meet Jesus.

"O Church! Let not your doctrines blind you -- nor let the revelation God has given you make you arrogant! For it is you who would miss Christmas, then, and not the world after all." 1

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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1 Walter Wangerin, Preparing for Jesus, pp. 165-174, passim.