Epiphany

That word Epiphany: it’s about the penny dropping: it’s about something being discovered, realised or understood that makes a difference to the person it happens to. It’s the eureka moment, if you like. And today is the Feast of the Epiphany. It’s always nice when that happens to coincide with a Sunday; but it’s also the start of a season that’s the whole of this month, in which the penny drops in many different ways, with many lives changed.

Today we focus on the first of these: wise men from the east who’ve been poring over star charts and making observations of the night sky, come to Jerusalem searching for a new king - one born to be King of the Jews. So here’s where the story of Jesus begins: in culture, in history, in geography and in language, the story starts in Palestine, in a Jewish nation ruled by King Herod with the permission of the Emperor in Rome, in the Hebrew language and in the Jewish faith. So how come he didn't stay there, as the Messiah many Jews expected, who would come to save them, and only them?

I’m reading Tom Wright’s fascinating biography of St Paul at present, in which he brilliantly shows just how crucial was the role of Paul in taking the good news of Jesus out beyond Jewish territory into the wider world. But it didn’t just happen because of Paul; right from the very beginning it was implicit that Jesus came not for the salvation of just some people but for the salvation of all. Matthew’s Gospel is arguably the most Jewish of the four in its content and setting, but it’s in Matthew that we read about these men from the east - men who weren't Jews but Gentiles - who came to visit the new king. And as we read about their visit we discover that here in Bethlehem something new had begun that would change the destiny of all and the direction of history. The travellers who come bring gifts for the king and these gifts are themselves hugely symbolic: for they bring gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

Gold is obvious enough, I suppose. The child is a king, and gold is a king's coinage. As a king this child will take authority and exercise power, and he will rule over his people; but his kingly rule will be very different from the rule of Herod. But Herod would have seen the point of gold, and he’d have understood the incense as well. Frankincense speaks of priesthood, and kingship and priesthood are closely connected. Monarchs are anointed as they are crowned, as a sign of a kingship held under God. And if the role of a priest is to stand between the people and God, and between God and the people, that is also a high ideal for a king.

But then there’s the myrrh, and myrrh adds something more to the mix. Myrrh makes for a rare and costly gift, but you can’t escape the fact that there’s a link with death. It was used to anoint for burial. For Jesus, to be king and priest won’t be about acquiring status and power, but letting them go. Paul wrote, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” Jesus himself said, “I am among you as one who serves.” In the Letter to the Hebrews Jesus is both perfect priest and also perfect sacrifice, offering himself to bear our sins, and dying so that we might live.

Gold and frankincense are gifts of symbolic power, but it's the myrrh that most deeply expresses what this king will do. He is the servant-king who will offer himself, and in that offering he crosses human boundaries and breaks human barriers. Myrrh stands for the self-giving love that changes hearts and lives, the limitless love of the God Jesus teaches us to call “Our Father”, who as a Father loves even the most wayward of his children.

And so we see that Jesus will be more than just a Jewish Messiah. We see it as the wise men bow before him; but it was in his death that what the wise men saw in the stars was fully revealed and proved. The love of the cross embraces the whole world.

“Are you a king, then?” asked Pontius Pilate, in John’s telling of the Passion story. “Not in a way you’d understand,” Jesus might have replied. “My kingship is not of this world.” And it’s not. His kingdom has no geography, no human boundaries. He’s the King of Love, the Servant-King. The child to whom the wise men offered their precious gifts can never be the possession of any one race or culture.  He is a Jew, but his message isn’t limited by what is Jewish; we may imagine him as very much like us - in the altar reredos of the Stanbury Chapel in our Cathedral, the Christ-child looks very sweetly English - but we can’t keep him for ourselves either. This child is a gift to be received with joy and then also passed on and shared, for he is for all, for the freedom of everyone, everywhere, and in every age.

And every Church should treasure his symbols of gold and incense and myrrh. Gold because Jesus shares his kingship with us as he calls us to follow him, to be like him, as he says to us, “Let the one who would be greatest among you be as the servant of all.” And the incense because we’re all priests: we are a kingdom of priests, as Peter tells us. Every Christian share a call to speak of God to the world, and to speak for the world to God, to be people of prayer and witness and service.

And myrrh as well, because Christ’s people are called to die to sin, and every day to take up our cross to follow more nearly. Paul says that our baptism joins us to the death of Christ, for we die to our own selves, to receive his risen life and the new wine of his Holy Spirit. To be a disciple is to lay down the old stuff that is about pleasing ourselves, and to say to Jesus, “You alone will I serve; you are Lord of all my life.” And though we may fall short of that, we must always resolve to offer all we can. As Christina Rossetti wrote, “What I can I give him - give my heart.” A Christ-centred, servant-minded Church will be truly proclaiming the death of Christ, until he comes again.

I wonder how much of this the wise men caught hold of as they knelt before the child and offered their gifts. They’ll have been surprised, that’s for sure: It wasn’t what they’d expected. But they knew that what they’d found there was the truth - otherwise surely they wouldn’t have offered their gifts. They could see that the birth of this child was something very special, something that couldn’t go unmarked, something that would change them as it changed the world. T.S. Eliot’s wonderful poem ‘The Adoration of the Magi’, has the wise men returning to their homes, but “no longer at ease . . . in the old dispensation.” In Bethlehem they've discovered something new about both birth and death, something that challenges everything they've thought and believed before. Today we celebrate God's free and loving gift to the world he can never cease to love, and pray for that love to be lived out in every church, and in every life of Christian service.