Rev Angie's Message for Epiphany

5 Jan 2025 • From our Priest-in-Charge

EPIPHANY - 5 JANUARY 2025 - MATTHEW 2.1-12

It’s the twelfth day of Christmas, and in a gesture towards the well known song, I have some numbers to help you know what to expect from my preaching this morning: I have for you eleven famous names, ten reflective questions, three lovely locals, unknown quantities of witches and one astounding God.

***

As I set out on my morning walk with the dog yesterday around St Weonards, which included our regular Saturday pilgrimage to the shop to collect the weekend paper, I was, in conversation with God, pondering what to bring to you for reflection today. Having returned, although we’d had a lovely walk involving lots of friendly conversations and pleasure taken in the beauty of a frosty day, I hadn’t come up with anything much. Then as I sat with a cup of tea and the paper, I realised something. On our walk, I had met three wise men! What are the chances!

Firstly, there was Peter, carrying a strange and wonderful contraption he had made for warming the bell ropes in the tower during icy weather. His wisdom was acquired from another experienced tower captain which he then developed and enhanced.

Next was Tim, who, despite still recovering from being horribly unwell over Christmas and New Year, nevertheless carried that resilient twinkle in his eye and spoke to me with the wisdom born of creative endeavour and deep wells of imagination and biophilia.

Finally, I met Ray, a countryman taught well by the land, leaning on his stick, made wise in the endurance of pain, in the waiting for surgery that promises relief, in the remembered experience of previous surgery that had given him new life in his frame and form.

Well, I did ask for some heavenly help!

Wisdom, you see, takes different forms, and is honed in different ways: through learning, experience, spirituality, our shared humanity, imagination and divine inspiration. It usually involves a curious mind, and well developed practices of listening, observing, pondering, reflecting, and discernment. It will sometimes be found amongst the devotedly pious or the academically rigorous. And it will very often not. It is most often found in people of a humble spirit.

We can only take a guess as to what afforded these visitors from the East the adjective ‘wise’. Maybe they were in reality ‘learnéd’, scholars and polymaths with a spirit for adventure. I’m picturing Rowan Williams, Hildegard of Bingen, Leonardo da Vinci and David Attenborough intrepidly roaming around on camels.

Or perhaps they were people of deeply compassionate wisdom, like Gandhi or Dumbledore or Mother Theresa or Dolly Parton.

Or, we are sometimes told they were astronomers or astrologers: maybe they were wise in the ways of the natural universe or of mystical things, like Brian Cox or St Francis of Assisi or John Dee, or all those women of healing, burnt or drowned centuries ago, accused of witchcraft.

Whatever, you can let your imaginations fly with that one.

We do know that these wise ones were bringing their collective wisdom to bear in their search for the child born to be king. They were guided by stars, by dreams, taking them far from familiarity and comfort, into the unknown. They sought help and information. They experienced overwhelming joy and then reverence when they found themselves arrived before the Christ child. Through the experience, they increased in wisdom and their hearts were changed.

Does any of that have echoes of your own journey towards and alongside Jesus?

If you are on that journey, at whatever stage, have you known the guidance of learning, be it by reading, listening, observing?

Perhaps you have had mystical experiences that sparked and crackled with the love of God.

Perhaps you have stood amidst nature and known within your depths the sacred presence of God.

Have you been taken far out of your safe comfort zone, found yourself in the discomfort of unfamiliarity?

Have you, surrounded by darkness, seen that one small chink of light and followed it as though your life depended on it?

Have you reached out and sought help, support, advice? Have you leaned into the wisdom and understanding of others, and weighed it in the balance, discerned, pondered and reflected?

I did a bit of leaning into the wisdom and knowledge of another as I did some reading around our passage from Matthew.

There’s a phrase in our gospel reading that has for a long time confused me. The travellers from the East have come to Herod to seek an audience with the child born to be king of the Jews, to ask where they might find him, and there in the third verse we read: “When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all of Jerusalem with him.” I have never been able to understand 1) how all of Jerusalem managed to become privy to this conversation, and 2) why it made them afraid.

Then I read some exegesis by theologian William Herzog which shunted me into a possible understanding. He said that historically, when Herod was frightened, people died. We all know that there are few things in the world more potentially devastating than a person who holds power, with an ego that is the size of a mountain but paper-thin and as brittle as eggshell. If people in Jerusalem heard that Herod was fearful, they had reason themselves to feel very, very afraid.

So, although going to see Herod might be considered less than wise - if understandable - our pilgrims increased in wisdom by that experience, combined with reflecting on the messages in their dreams. They weighed it all in the balance, and, from their discernment, they returned home by another route, changed and grown.

Have you, in your journeying towards and alongside Jesus, allowed your curiosity and imagination to take you to deeper places of change and growth?

We are all journeying alongside one another. We have God and each other for company. What wisdom, I wonder, are you using, are you sharing with others to inspire them, in gentle, humble, compassionate ways?

And finally, have you known, do you know, joy and awe in the awareness that God’s love is ours unconditionally through the very fact of Jesus Christ, God with us? Through his transcending, transforming companionship?

***

My three wise men from yesterday’s dog walk each shared with me something precious. From Peter, I received knowledge towards understanding. From Tim, encouragement and compassion towards creativity. From Ray, inspiration towards resilient hope. So much to be thankful for on that little leg of my journey.

Thank you God, for travelling companions, for the wonder of your love, shown in the story of the wise travellers from the East, to be not just for a select few, but for the whole world. Challenge us and encourage us as we journey on together, give us curious minds and wide open hearts. In the name of Jesus our King. Amen.