Christ’s Light Shining Forth

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 2, 2022, in celebration of Epiphany. Based on Isaiah 60: 1-6, Ephesians 3: 1-12, and Matthew 2: 1-12. YouTube archive:

The story of the three wise men is an old one, maybe a little too familiar to us from being retold every year at Christmas. But let’s try to see it with new eyes.

First, imagine yourself as one of the magi. I’m sure you all know this, but there were not necessarily three magi—there were three gifts, so we assume three people. The magi were priests, probably Zoroastrian, and king-makers. Zoroastrianism is an ancient Persian religion that acknowledges one god, Ahura Mazda. The magi were learned men who studied nature, looking for signs of their god working in the world. They found a sign: a star that indicated the birth of a great king, the king of the Jews. Persians knew about Jews but didn’t know all the details, kind of like the way we know about Islam or Buddhism. But they knew that something important was happening. One of their jobs was to choose a king of their own people, so they decided to honor the newborn king of the Jews. They traveled to the region where Jews lived and sought the leaders who should know what was going on and would be able to help them.

Now imagine yourself as one of the scribes. They were scholars, people who studied the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah, which is the first five books of our Bible, contain the law and the deep history, while the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, speak to specific events. The scribes would study these scriptures and try to apply them to their contemporary problems. They knew that Micah had foretold the birth of a great king in Bethlehem, but didn’t know when. They were wrapped up in their scholarly studies and didn’t pay attention to signs in nature. They were ready, though—when someone noticed something, they were ready to interpret it, to give it the right scriptural context.

Herod had yet a different perspective. He was a ruler. He wasn’t a scholar, and probably wasn’t a particularly religious man. He didn’t pay much attention to the details of scripture, but he knew that God’s revealed words to the Israelites were important to his subjects. So he kept the chief priests and scribes handy. He knew a problem when he saw one, and boy did he see one when the magi arrived! A new king—a rival to his throne. Whether or not he believed that the words of Micah were relevant, and whether or not he believed that the magi saw a divine sign, he knew that the Jewish people would believe it. So he used his knowledge of human nature to learn the truth and manipulate its revelation.

Epiphany, which we celebrate today, is a synonym for revelation. We celebrate the day when Jesus was revealed as God’s anointed one, which in Hebrew is the Messiah, or in Greek is the Christ. Magi were king-makers, just like the prophet Samuel was, so like Samuel they went to Bethlehem to find out who God favored. When they found Jesus, they anointed him king of the Jews, a title that would stick with him right up to the day of his death on a cross.

In the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke, we read that God revealed Jesus’s divine nature in many ways to diverse people. First, angels appeared to Jesus’s parents to tell them how Mary would become pregnant and who their son would be. Then on the night when he was born, angels appeared to shepherds to tell them good news of great joy, that a savior had been born for them. Finally, God’s message of a new king and a new kind of kingdom was revealed to foreign, Gentile priests of a different religion, and only through them to the religious insiders and the ruling class of Judea.

One of my core beliefs is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the path to wholeness in God’s eternal kin-dom, both here and hereafter. But another of my core beliefs is that I cannot control who receives God’s wisdom or in what form. God chooses. God’s revelations come through the study of scripture, and also through experiences in God’s creation and through our interactions with other people whom God loves, which means everyone. God revealed the Truth to the ancient Hebrew people, but also to people around the world and throughout history. God’s ultimate Truth is unknowable from any one perspective.

There is an old parable from India that you have probably heard: A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it, they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake.” For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

We are like one of those blind men. We can know God through Jesus, but Jesus was born a Jew in Roman-occupied Judea and raised in Roman-occupied Galilee two thousand years ago. God’s revelation through the person of Jesus of Nazareth was limited by the ability of the Judeans and Galileans to understand. The magi give us another perspective, but still one that is limited. If we want to truly understand God, we need to be open to wisdom from many sources.

One way to do that is to engage in interfaith dialogue. Our campus ministry, Common Call, is part of the Campus Ministries Association. The main event that CMA sponsors each spring is an interfaith dialogue. We strive to get a variety of Christian perspectives as well as people from a broad range of religions. We are often successful in connecting with Muslims, and sometimes with Hindus or Buddhists or atheists. I have found discussions with non-Christians to be more illuminating and satisfying than, say, arguing with Christian fundamentalists about the literal truth of Genesis 1. We are all striving to be who God wants us to be, and to discern how God is working in our lives, whether we revere Jesus Christ or Allah or Buddha or Vishnu. Now, I don’t believe that all religions are equally valid, but I do believe that God’s revelation can come in many forms to many people.

Last Sunday, the world lost Bishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was an Anglican bishop who was in the center of the anti-apartheid movement that transformed South Africa. He was a devout and committed Christian. Yet he worked closely with Nelson Mandela, who was at best a tepid Christian, sometimes described as a Christian humanist who drew deeply on the indigenous African concept of Ubuntu. Now, Ubuntu is itself pretty well aligned with Christianity—it is the belief that an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world. Sounds a lot like the Beloved Community described by the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and lifted up by Christian leaders like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Tutu also worked closely with The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and the world’s most prominent Buddhist leader. Tibetan Buddhism is more of an atheist philosophy than a religion, in the sense that its adherents do not worship any gods. They instead seek enlightenment, which is essentially the elevation of the self into the godly realm. And yet, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu worked closely for decades, learning from each other about the path to wholeness and holiness. I highly recommend The Book of Joy, which is the product of an extended interview with these two holy men giving different yet congruent perspectives on how a person can attain joy in their life.

Let’s return to the story of Epiphany. The chief priests and scribes thought that they had the whole Truth, the only revealed message from God. Yet they were unable to see God’s revelation through the stars, which the magi correctly interpreted. Herod didn’t know much about either scripture or heavenly bodies, but he did know people. It took all three perspectives to arrive at the Truth of Jesus’s birth. In the same way, we need a variety of perspectives to understand how God continues to work in the world. We cannot, on our own, completely understand God, because we cannot construct a box big enough to contain God. Any time we think we have fully described God, we have simply projected our own prejudices and misunderstandings onto the divine. Any time we think we know who is in and who is out, who is favored and who is not, we have allowed our limited human knowledge to corrupt God’s expansive message of love for all people.

I have it on good authority that a conservative church in town has preached that we are struggling because we allow women in leadership, including ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Well, here’s a little bit of my story as to why I’m a member of this church. My sister is a United Methodist pastor. When we moved to Rolla, we wanted to find a church where my family felt comfortable, and I had one non-negotiable requirement: They must allow women in the pulpit. That immediately eliminated most of the churches in Rolla. I did a little research and determined that this church was of a denomination that ordains women, so we gave it a try. The rest of my story is how we were welcomed when we got here.

We have a message of inclusion, a message of equality, and a message of hope for our community. I would guess that more than half of the city’s residents are unchurched, and that many of those only know about Christianity from the media. They don’t know about churches that welcome everyone, that elevate women, that allow but do not require their members to vote Republican, that allow members to question authority, and that tolerate a wide range of beliefs about and interpretations of the Bible. I am proud to be a part of such a loving community. I believe that there are people in Rolla who need Jesus in their lives, but who have not been able to see Christ’s light because of the clouds of exclusion, judgmentalism, authoritarianism, and patriarchy that fill the media depiction of Christianity. Honestly, if all Christian churches were like the ones described in the media, I wouldn’t be a Christian either.

Like the magi, we have seen the light of Christ. We have been called to worship him. We have been drawn into God’s kin-dom, God’s family. We have been given a message of hope, love, joy, and peace. We have been released from our bondage to sin and death. This is good news! This is the best news! Like Paul, we have been given insight into a great mystery, the mystery that God’s grace is for the Gentile as well as the Jew. The magi were partially right: Jesus was born king of the Jews, but he was also born king of the Gentiles. He was born lord of all creation. He was the eternal Word of God made flesh. We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

We are called to shine Christ’s light forth so that all people may be drawn to Him. We do not, and cannot, know the whole Truth of God’s grace. We know only in part. In our humility, we should learn from and not denounce others who have a different understanding of God. But we do have a story to share, a story of love, a story of welcome, a story of membership in God’s eternal family, a story of hope and joy. Let us now seek to discern God’s will revealed throughout the world as we shine forth Christ’s light and draw all people into God’s beloved community. Amen.

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