Sermon - The Gift that Changes Us (1/3/2021)
Epiphany of the Lord (Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12)
Why are you here this morning? If you were asked why, of all the things you could be doing on a Sunday morning, you are in a Zoom meeting, or of all the things you could be watching or reading on the Internet, you are here, participating in this service today? If you had to articulate what brings you here, what would it be?
I suppose your answer is that you are looking for something. We might not all name that Something we are looking for in the same way – even if we say that we are looking for God, what exactly do we mean by that? Perhaps we are looking for inspiration and beauty, perhaps for hope, perhaps for consolation and comfort, perhaps for forgiveness, perhaps for connection and community, perhaps for healing and peace, perhaps for stability in a confusing world, perhaps for a spark of change in a distressing world. Whatever it may be, we hope to hear from beyond ourselves a word of good news, a word of blessing and promise that comes from outside ourselves.
The biblical story begins with a wise man from the East by the name of Abraham. He came from a rich and, by the standards of four thousand years ago, technologically advanced city, but from a city and a people who knew nothing about the true and living God. He was, like the wise men from the East in today’s gospel passage, a heathen – a worshipper of idols, of gods conceived by human beings, of gods that reflected the values of the rich and the powerful who controlled the temples and their treasuries.
The story of God’s coming among us begins with God’s introducing God’s-self to Abraham and Sarah, and telling them: “Go from your from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 12:1-3)
So God calls Abraham and Sarah away from the world they knew, just as God calls you away from whatever else you would be doing right now, and says: I will give you the things you are looking for, land, offspring, honor, blessing. I will bless anyone who blesses you, and I will curse anyone who curses you. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. God promises good news, blessings for Abraham and Sarah, but that blessing will go far beyond just lucky Abraham and Sarah. God also promises to bless all those who bless Abraham and Sarah, and ultimately to bless everybody, the whole world, in them. The coming of God was good news for Abraham and Sarah, but from the very beginning God made clear that the good news for Abraham and Sarah was going to bring good news to everyone.
Centuries later, when the prophet Isaiah looked at the ruined city of Jerusalem, destroyed by armies of heathen from the East, he comforted the people living there in poverty trying to rebuild with the word from God that we read today: Right now your future may not look very bright, but get up, shine, your light has come. In a world where thick darkness covers all the peoples, the glory of the true and living God will appear like a bright star over you, Jerusalem. And then everyone will come to you seeking the light, seeking the blessing that God has given to you. They will come bearing gold and frankincense, the gifts one gives to powerful kings, the wealth of the nations will come to you, and they will proclaim the praise of God, for you will have been a blessing to them.
That’s how the prophets of Israel imagined that the people of Abraham would be a blessing to the world – that God’s light would shine on them, that God’s presence would be so visible in them that all the peoples of the world would come to them bearing gifts in order to see the brightness and the wonder of God. And the poets of Israel thought the same. In the poetic prayer for the coronation of a new king that we know as Psalm 72, the psalmist prays that this new king will provide such justice to the peoples – that this new king will deliver the poor in their distress, stand up for the oppressed and the helpless, defend the needy, rescue the poor, crush the oppressor, treat the lives of the weakest and most vulnerable as precious. In his time, the psalmist prays, let justice and peace flourish so much that all the kings of the earth would come and bow down before him, do him service, offer him gifts and tribute.
This is how the Old Testament Scriptures we read today envisioned the blessing of God on the children of Abraham would bless the whole world. By the power of their example of justice for the weakest and most vulnerable, by the light of God’s glory visible in the way that they lived, that all peoples would recognize and come to see the goodness of God. People from the world over would come bearing gifts and giving honor for God’s people, and indeed for God, because of how well they were living God’s truth, because of how visible the mercy and blessing of God had become in them.
There are a lot of Christians who think about their own churches and their own faith in exactly this way – when people see how God has blessed us, when people see how God is at work in our lives, when people see that God has the power to change lives and do good, they’ll want what we have, and they’ll come to us. And if people haven’t done that yet, it just means we need to try harder.
It is a comforting thought, to think that if only we would be better Christians, more loving, more committed, more transparent, then everybody else would want what we have, and everybody else would come and be like us. And there is some truth to this – as Francis of Assisi supposedly said, always proclaim the gospel, and if necessary, use words. We bear witness to the good news much more effectively through the example of what God can do in our actual lives than simply by words alone.
And yet the gospel story of the Epiphany shows us that while God will bless others, indeed the whole world, through us, the way God will do that is not simply by getting others to want to be like us.
The story begins just as the prophets and the psalmist had envisioned it. The new king has been born, the new king who will do justice to the poor, deliver the oppressed, bring peace to the nations. A bright light has appeared in the heavens, signaling to those with eyes to see where the glory of God may be found. Heathen wise men from the East come to Jerusalem, bearing gifts of gold and frankincense, to pay homage to this newborn king – exactly as had been foretold.
Of course, they assume that they will find this newborn king in the king’s palace, in the household of King Herod – they are heathens, after all. They can be forgiven for expecting the all-powerful God to show up in the place of the powerful and might prince. But when they visit King Herod, they find only a rich and powerful man who is interested only in protecting his riches and squashing any threat to his power.
It’s not until they get to Bethlehem that they find a king who has given up all his riches to be born in a stable, a king who has given up all his power to be born as a helpless baby. And here they discover something new about God, and they return to their own country by a different road. As different people than they used to be.
In Jesus the wise men from the East indeed found one whose birth meant blessing for the whole world. But not because he seemed so self-evidently blessed, the way they expected a baby born in a royal palace to be manifestly one of the lucky people born to a rich inheritance. No, they found blessing because the God revealed in Jesus is wholly committed to us, and does not seek glory for God’s own self except for that glory that is handed over for our sake. The second-century bishop Irenaeus said that the glory of God is the human being fully alive – and in Jesus the wise men learned that God desires nothing for God’s self but rather that God desires everything for others – for human beings, for the creation. This is a God truly worthy of worship, a Master truly worthy of following.
The glory of God, it turns out, is not like the oxygen mask on an airplane, something you have to put on yourself before you can help others with theirs. The glory of this God is a glory that is found only when, like God, we can forget about our own glory long enough to discover the glory of God in our neighbor. As the World War II-era archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, famously said, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” For it is when we act, not first and foremost for ourselves, but for the benefit of all those whom God wishes to bless through us, that we discover who God really is – a God who receives only by giving, a God who finds glory in giving it away, a God who promises life abundant only for those who take up the cross.
We come here this morning, like the wise men from the East, seeking blessing for ourselves. It’s normal, it’s only to be expected. What we discover is the God revealed in Jesus Christ: the God who promises blessing to those who have so much faith and trust in God’s goodness that they can fully turn to seeking blessing first for others – and who then discover to their surprise, on the other side of the cross, true blessing and life for ourselves too. When we meet this God, we can do nothing but lay down our gifts, fall down in worship, and return home by another road.