Seekers - Epiphany sermon
Epiphany sermon on Matt 2:1-12 Communion Sunday * Seekers
The beloved magi -
perpetually mystical figures
who might be royal,
who probably are astronomers,
who carry a wise aura.
Mystical yet portrayed in pageant after pageant -
little kids showing us
how to stumble toward Jesus,
clutching a brightly colored gift someone set firmly in nervous hands, saying:
Hold it as if it matters.
Don’t drop it.
Carry it all the way to Jesus.
We long to be like these ancient seekers -
to cultivate habits of study and watching,
orienting ourselves
toward creation - to teach us about the Creator;
toward the night sky - to remind us who is eternal and what it means that we are not.
We should be like that.
Sometimes we are, and sometimes we aren’t, and here we are at New Year’s, a time for resolve and resolutions. Maybe we can cultivate some habits of watching and seeking in this fresh beginning.
The long-awaited fresh start, that we greet with tentative hope though unsure if that hope lies with the Christ-child in Mary’s lap or the promise of vaccines.
Perhaps hope is energizing you:
to be more like those magi,
to be oriented toward the stars whose names are known by God,
and toward the God that named them and knows us.
What does it take to make a resolution like this?
Hope? Yes.
And humility.
These star-watching royals had a posture of seeking because they knew they were
undone,
unfinished,
incomplete,
hungry and
hopeful still though they had much -
they enjoyed comfort, power, wealth.
But they were not satisfied -
we know this not because they tell us
but because they showed us
that they were so eager for something more,
it took only the suggestion that the heavens had shifted
for them to pack up and go.
They were hungry enough for something more that they were willing to leave comfort behind,
to lay down their own claims on royalty to pay homage to a newborn king -
an untried royal,
a head without a crown,
unproven
in battle or political scheme
but merely laying there,
wailing and seeking his mother’s comfort -
what strange rulers seek the One who seeks his mother’s comfort.
This is humility and reversal -
that holy reversal we keep encountering in our sacred text:
that the last shall be first and the first shall be last,
that the powerful will tumble from their crumbling thrones,
and the hungry will be filled.
The hungry will be filled.
The magi found hunger though they had to find it -
they lived lives insulated from need,
but chose to need something more than wealth and power could provide.
The hungry will be filled.
The filled will have to find hunger.
The seeking magi found King Herod and asked:
“Where is the child who has been born a king?
For we observed his star ... and have come to pay him homage.”
When King Herod heard this,
he was frightened,
and all Jerusalem with him;
And all Jerusalem with him.
Frightened. Disturbed. Troubled.
Troubled like Zacharias when the angel appeared to let him know his desperate prayer was finally answered.
Troubled like the disciples would be, caught on the stormy sea and looking up to see Jesus walking on water.
Troubled like the pool at Bethesda that swirled with healing powers at an angel’s touch.
This is a forgivable fear, disturbance, troubling.
This is the feeling we have when we glimpse the promised reversal coming to fruition -
what’s expected no longer is,
what is is entirely unexpected.
For the ones like Zacharias, while they hope for that improbable yes to the impossible prayer, God’s messenger declaring it is so is still a miracle - unusual, uncontrollable.
It is the hoped for outcome, but troubling nonetheless to hear a holy yes.
It stirs something like fear within, to see divinity - something outside of our understanding.
Fear that is an expression of humility, the confession “I don’t understand”, submission to what I cannot predict.
For the ones on the creaking boat at stormy sea, while they hope the winds may still and the waves may calm - the arrival of the One the winds and waves obey is still a miracle - unusual, uncontrollable.
It is the hoped for outcome, but troubling nonetheless to see One walk on waves.
It stirs something like fear within, to see divinity - something outside of our understanding.
Fear that is an expression of humility, the confession “I don’t understand”, submission to what I cannot predict.
For the ones surrounding the Bethesda pool, while they hope for healing - for themselves, for loved ones, for strangers - healing is still a miracle - unusual, uncontrollable.
It is the hoped for outcome, but troubling nonetheless to see one who could not walk emerge on their own two feet.
It stirs something like fear within, to see divinity - something outside of our understanding.
Fear that is an expression of humility, the confession “I don’t understand”, submission to what I cannot predict.
King Herod - and all of Jerusalem - are not villains because they feel fearful, disturbed, troubled.
They are merely human, just like us, trying to make sense of the star-seekers’ declaration that sounds like:
the holy reversal has arrived,
and if you’ve been hungry,
you soon won’t be,
and if you don’t know hunger,
perhaps you should learn it.
We read and sing of the magi and find ourselves in them, and that is good, we should, we seek to emulate them and pause even now to wonder how we might seek more or seek better in the new year.
We admire their humility and cleverness and commitment, their conviction of the prophets as well as the stars, and wonder which one we would be, carrying gold, frankincense or myrrh?
We wonder what precious gift we might bring forward toward Christ this year, a symbol of our faith, our focus, our hope.
We admire their diligence -but we must note:
they are not the only diligent ones.
Herod, too, inquires diligently about the child.
He is convinced that the magi are on to something, and troubled by what they claim.
He does not doubt them -
does not doubt the prophecy.
does not doubt the presence, promise and power of the newborn king.
He is just like the magi in his understanding of how the world has turned.
He is convinced, and he is concerned.
He longs to seek as well - he, too, desperately wants to find Christ.
This should give us pause as we consider ourselves and wonder what kind of seekers we are.
It is not that we must be untroubled in order to seek -
we see plenty of troubled seekers in Scripture:
Zacharias’,
the disciples,
the ones around the Bethesda pool,
and many more.
Indeed, if we lack trouble, what are we seeking, and why?
It is only the hungry who long for bread.
It is only the humble who seek the Christchild.
Remembering that these studious royals had a posture of seeking because they knew they were
undone,
unfinished,
incomplete,
hungry and hopeful still,
we in our seeking must also remain all of those things,
must remain in touch with what troubles us,
what makes us ache for holy reversal,
what makes us hunger for the bread of heaven.
Herod - and all of Jerusalem who were troubled with him - were seekers.
It was not a lack of longing for Christ that makes things go horrifyingly awry in the verses beyond our reading today.
It was not a lack of longing.
It was not mere fear of one powerful king.
It was a denial of need.
It was a willful ignoring of our inevitable undone, unfinished, incomplete state.
It was pretending to be full in the presence of the bread of heaven.
It was fearing the kind of hope that might change everything.
Herod - and all of Jerusalem with him - feared loss of the status quo, feared holy reversal.
Fear, trouble, disturbance -
we have already agreed do not mean unfaithful -
Zacharias experienced this, the disciples experienced this, the ones healed at the Bethesda pool experienced this.
Fear of the new, unfamiliar, unsettling - that fear is reasonable and authentic and does not disqualify us from being faithful seekers.
It is not the fear that interferes with our ability to see and follow the star.
It is what we do next.
Do we enter that fear and turn back -
rather than holding on as the world turns and witnessing and proclaiming holy reversal, do we turn away too soon and miss the miracle?
Do we turn back to familiar things, trying to ignore how the star shines and beckons and illumines the way?
That is what Herod did, and he was not the only one.
He is not the only one.
He spectacularly showed us our capacity for awfulness when we cling to what is known instead of what is promised.
But he is not the only one.
As we enter a year that we hope is nothing like the previous unprecedented one, we would be forgiven for hoping the world turns a bit more smoothly, we are forgiven for hoping for restoration and normalcy and making resolutions along those lines.
And yet, what if the heavens have shifted so that we might see the path to Christ in a new light?
What if we are beckoned along a path not of mere restoration, but of revelation and reversal?
What if this new beginning that shines with hope and promise like that guiding star is inviting us to think bigger than return to normal, inviting us to interrogate all that has been revealed in the tumultuous,
unprecedented, preceding year?
All that has been revealed in us as individuals -
longings revealed in isolation, habits revealed in quarantine, attitudes revealed in cultural division?
And all that has been revealed in us as a community?
We know these revealed things, though we may wish to overlook or forget them:
Inequities as the richest in our country got richer, and the poor suffered and struggled.
What does that tell us about who we value and how we value, as we used words like “essential” to describe workers who were ultimately treated as dispensable?
Inequities as racial injustice drove some to the streets even as the pandemic raged to lift signs and voices to protest the status quo.
Inequities as communities of color suffer disproportionately from the virus, for myriad reasons that are both as simple as historic systemic racism and as complex as the intersection of systemic forces and individual choices.
How do we face a new year when the previous one revealed much that is overwhelming and even shameful?
It’s understandable to long to return to a time when those things were better hidden and more easily denied.
It’s understandable to long for the comfort of ignorance of the suffering of others.
These revelations are fearful, troubling, disturbing,
and we struggle just as much as Zacharias,
the disciples, and the ones gathered at Bethesda’s healing pool
to understand how to react to what troubles us,
to what doesn’t look right,
to what feels unsettling.
It’s understandable to sink into that same fear that Herod and all of Jerusalem felt and say -
I want to know where Christ is, that I may worship, also -
but to say that while hoping we can worship without being changed, hoping we can find comfort that feels like the familiar instead of finding comfort that feels like a heaven we haven’t yet imagined.
We are seekers, like the magi, like Herod.
Created longing for the stars as well as the One who named them.
We hunger.
And sometimes we allow ourselves to be filled with temporary comforts that insulate us from holy reversal rather than leaving us vulnerable to it.
The magi finally arrived to the place the star stopped, where Christ was, and set their gifts down with trembling hands and reached forward tentatively, a question in their eyes: what child is this?
I wonder if Mary said: come close and smell the promise of something new that little ones carry on their heads.
I wonder if she invited those royal star seeking sages to sit, and handed Christ to them one by one, and they forgot about everything else they had ever held, not worrying about dignity lost as they sat on the earthen floor, not worrying about the return journey -
No longer hoping to retrace footsteps, but suddenly seeking an entirely new path.
They held vulnerability and said: this is God.
And from now on, in every cry of hungry I hear - from young or old,
in every cry of pain I hear - from friend or foe,
in every cry of longing I hear - from you, or even from me,
I will remember God’s cries beneath the brilliant star.
I will remember the God who touched the earth.
I will remember the God who left comfort, power, and order to trouble us all so that we may lose our grip on those things as well.
They cherished those cradling moments and laughed when the child began to cry for things they could not provide, and they rose to leave, carrying the cries in their hearts, and seeking their echo in every child of God they encountered.
The magi were seekers, and they found what they were looking for, and it changed them,
it changed the way they walked back home, and their journey beckons us to look for a new path even while we long to return.
Herod - and all of Jerusalem - were also diligent seekers, but they did not find what they were looking for, and wreaked havoc and horror along the way.
Untold suffering followed Herod’s decision to remain committed to fear of the unknown, fear of heaven’s promise, instead of entering the troubled waters and receiving healing from the insulation of power and privilege.
Herod tried to refuse holy reversal - he failed.
Heaven arrived on earth, and will come again.
He failed, but he caused much damage along the way.
The magi were seekers,
Herod was a seeker,
and so are we:
How will we seek?
In a few moments we will celebrate Communion, a taste that leaves us wanting more.
May we see the magi gathered with us, the physically tired but spiritually rejuvenated star seekers, laughing as they pass Christ one to another, snuggling vulnerability closer and whispering “holy One” and “ruler” and “Savior” in those tiny ears.
We see them passing the little one back and forth and picture that sharing as we share the bread and cup.
“Christ is the bread seeking hunger,” St. Augustine wrote.
Christ is the bread seeking hunger.”
Are we hungry? For the hungry shall be filled.
But those who are protected from hunger? What of us?
May we seek hunger as we seek the hungry this year, every year, always.
Amen.
(this sermon was preached at Willow Creek Presbyterian Church of Argyle on for the Jan. 3rd worship service, available here: https://youtu.be/mici7BL5bvs)
