Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 5, 2025, in celebration of Epiphany. Based on Matthew 2:1-12.
Today, I am preaching about Epiphany, which is technically tomorrow. Today is technically the twelfth day of Christmas. No, I don’t have twelve drummers drumming for us, as much as I’d like to.
But since it is still the season of Christmas, we can talk about Christmas carols and hymns. I bet everyone has a favorite carol, or at least a short list that they would choose from depending on their mood. Some carols have great tunes or great lyrics, and some have both. My personal favorite Christmas carol is “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” mostly because the bass line is fantastic. Unfortunately, there is no good way to make its language inclusive, so it hasn’t been included in hymnals in the last fifty years. Of the carols we still use in worship, my favorite is probably “Joy to the World.” It also has a pretty good bass line, and the lyrics and tune fit together nicely. When I was growing up, we used it as the closing hymn for our candlelight service on Christmas Eve, just as we do in this church, so there are those memories associated with it as well.
My mother’s favorite is “In the Bleak Midwinter,” which is #36 in the blue hymnals in the pews. It’s a setting by Gustav Holst of a poem by Christina Rossetti. The poetry is as beautiful as the melancholy tune. Especially the last verse:
What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
Christina Rosetti, In the Bleak Midwinter
In today’s lesson, we read about the magi coming to visit baby Jesus. The magi were most likely members of a priestly caste in Persia, at least that’s where the word comes from. Magi studied the stars; at the time, there wasn’t a clear distinction between astronomy and astrology. They were well known for reading portents in the stars. So it would make sense that they would see something new in the heavens and interpret it as heralding a new king.
After they saw the sign, they set off on a long journey. If they were Persians who came from, say, Tehran, they had to travel perhaps 1100 miles. That’s a long way to go. Perhaps they were wealthy enough to travel on camels or horses, but a good portion of their retinue would have to walk. It would have taken them months. Such was their commitment to honoring a newborn king that they were willing to travel an enormous distance with valuable gifts that would have been targeted by bandits.
The gifts they brought are full of symbolism. Gold—well, that’s pretty obvious. If you’re visiting a king, you should give him money, I suppose. I have also read that gold is supposed to symbolize virtue. Perhaps. Regardless, gold reflects Jesus’s kingship.
Myrrh is used as an embalming oil and as an anointing oil. If we consider its use as an anointing oil, we are reminded that Jesus was the Messiah or the Christ, Hebrew and Greek words respectively that mean “anointed one.” Jesus was anointed by God to lead God’s people and bring salvation to all humanity. If we consider its use as an embalming oil, our thoughts in this second chapter of Matthew flash forward to the twenty-seventh chapter, in which Jesus is crucified and buried. We are reminded that he was anointed to obey God’s will, even to death on a cross, for the sake of the world that God loves.
Frankincense is used in perfume, so it would have been a perfectly ordinary gift to offer a king. But it is also used as incense. Let me read to you from Revelation, chapter 8, verses 3 and 4:
Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.
Incense is used throughout the Bible to symbolize prayer. When the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, he would carry a censer to fill the room with the scent of the incense. Many churches still use incense today to remind the congregation of God’s presence and to symbolize our prayers rising up to God. So the frankincense can be seen as a symbol of prayer, as a symbol of divinity, as a symbol of the magi offering their prayers to Emmanuel, God With Us.
Let’s talk a bit about prayer. How does prayer “work”? In the popular imagination, it’s something like, if you pray the right prayers, then God will grant you what you ask. That’s a very dangerous theology. That opens the door to blaming the sick and dying for their fates because they must not have prayed enough or correctly. Let me tell you how I approach prayer and what I believe about it.
First, prayer is about laying my burdens down and accepting that there are many things outside my control that only God can do. When I know someone who is going through hard times—financially, medically, emotionally, or relationally—I’m usually unable to actually do anything to help them. Through prayer, I ask God to do what no human can, and release myself from the burden of doing the impossible.
Next, prayer is about transforming myself. It’s about attuning to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It’s taking time to let God change me from within. When I pray for peace, I am more able to see violence and see the ways that I can work for peace. When I offer prayers of thanksgiving, I am gently transformed into a more grateful person who can show gratitude to the people in my life who mean so much to me. When I ask for forgiveness, I guide myself away from repeating my sinful behaviors.
Finally, prayer is about connecting with God. Let me tell you about a practice I began sporadically a few months ago and that I intend to make my nightly spiritual practice this year. Here is a picture of a couple of rosaries:
The one with wooden beads is special to me because Jesse bought it in Jerusalem and brought it home to me. That doesn’t make it magic or extra holy, but a little more personal. So because it’s special to me, I normally leave it at home. I made the other one with about $3 in supplies from Walmart and Etsy. It’s my travel rosary. Since it’s cheap and homemade, I can replace it when I inevitably lose it, which has already happened once.
Anyway, a rosary has a cross on the end, then a first bead, a group of three beads called antiphon beads, and then another major bead. The loop has five sets of ten beads called decades, each divided by another bead. What you do is say a prayer of some sort for each bead. You use the beads to keep track of your place. Catholics use the rosary for prayers involving Mary, but I have a different technique. On the cross, I pray the Prayer of St. Francis. Then on the first bead I say the Glory Be, then on the three antiphon beads the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Then on the major beads, I say the Lord’s Prayer, and on each bead of the decades, I pray this: “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha ‘olam,” which is Hebrew meaning, “Blessed be the Lord our God, Sovereign of all Creation.” It’s the opening line of a Jewish prayer that Jesse taught me.
Anyway, you start at the cross, go through the first few beads, then the five decades, then back out the first few beads, and end at the cross. Often, as I pray through the decades, I feel something in my solar plexus. It’s like a yearning of my soul reaching out to God. As I wrap up, I end in a contemplative state where I am open to God’s leading and I feel my burdens lifted.
This is the form of contemplative prayer that works for me, that helps me connect with God. It’s a complement to my morning prayers in which I offer confession, thanksgiving, supplication, and intercessory prayers. My morning prayer keeps me grounded while my evening prayer seeks transcendence.
“If I were a wise man, I would do my part; yet what I can I give him, give my heart.” The task before us this day and every day is to seek God’s will, as individuals and as a congregation. One of my hopes for 2025 is that this church will become a Matthew 25 church. PC(USA) has a whole program centered on the story in Matthew 25 about the judgment of the nations. The sheep will be separated from the goats based on whether or not they welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and free the prisoner. That’s a HUGE task. We need to find our place in it. The PC(USA) program starts with congregational vitality.
In our baptismal vows and our membership vows, we agree to give ourselves to God and to God’s church. We agree to pursue the Great Commandment: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The second is empowered by the first. Only with the strength of God’s love can we hope to truly love our neighbors. We can best tap into the endless fountain of God’s love through prayer.
So I have a task for us all in 2025. Regardless of your current or planned spiritual practices, I want you to add one more. I want everyone to have a prayer partner. Here’s how I envision it. You and your partner will connect at least once a week in person, for five minutes or an hour or anything in-between. You’ll talk about something that is true and meaningful to you. You can talk about the church, or the community, or the world, or your family, or your work, or your hobbies, or anything. Whatever is on your heart. Then pray together or pray for one another when you are apart. Pray for one another every day.
I want everyone to have at least one partner, no more than three. Your partner must be outside your family. I mean, you should pray with and for your family members, too, but I want you to specifically seek someone outside of your family to partner with. If you are an officer, find someone who doesn’t hold the same office.
I want everyone to find a prayer partner soon. Today would be nice. This week would be OK. If you are struggling to find someone, let me know and I’ll help you out. It doesn’t have to be someone you are already close to—in fact, this might work better if it’s someone you don’t know so well. As long as you are both committed to serving God through this congregation, Jesus Christ will be there with you.
Too often, Christians are functional atheists. We say that we believe in God’s power, but then we act as if everything relies on our own efforts. We say that we cannot do more for our community because we don’t have enough time, money, or people. Yet nothing is impossible for God. Through prayer, let us turn our cares over to God and walk with Christ on the next phase of our journey together. Through prayer, let us give our hearts to Christ, so that we might better follow the path He has shown us. Let us give Christ all that we have and all that we are, so that we might truly become the body of Christ. Amen.
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