Isaiah 60:1–6
Ephesians 3:2–3a, 5–6
Matthew 2:1–12
There is much movement in today’s feast. People are on the move. Isaiah has a vision of nations and kings moving toward Jerusalem. Then, he sees that the kings are not coming empty handed. There are animals with them. These animals are loaded with gifts, with the wealth. The camels are carrying precious commodities like gold and frankincense. In the gospel we find magi moving from East to West. They are following a star. That star in turn also moves. The story says it finally comes to rest over the place where a child is living. It is as though the star is leading and directing the movement of the Magi. We only hear of the end of journey in the gospel. We hear of the last few days when the star seems to disappear for a while. The Magi have to consult other resources to find out exactly where the last step of the journey needs to go. Other people in the story seem interested in joining the Magi on their last leg. It seems that their desire is a false one. The Magi are excited about what they will find at the end of the journey. They seem to know something about the aim of their journey. The King wants to make the journey too, but his goal is not delight in the star or the search for someone wonderful. He is motivated by fear and a sense of loosing all he has. He feels threatened. His journey will end in destruction and violence.
Epiphany evokes movement. People move from the sea to the Jerusalem, from distant nations they come to fill this city. Magi too come from East to West to Jerusalem. There they find they have still a few more miles go, in a southerly direction to the true city of David, Bethlehem. But there is also another movement in the feast of the Epiphany. It is a movement into a relationship. It is a movement from being far away to being close, from being at a distance from the city to being in her heart. The Jerusalem that is shining brightly is a Jerusalem that recognizes herself as mother. And being mother is primarily about relationship. The peoples moving toward her are her sons and daughters. She is a woman ready to welcome her own children into her bosom as it were. The activity is the activity of recognizing to whom you belong, where is truly home and who is brother and sister with you. The light shining on Jerusalem is a light of recognition for herself. She is told to wake up, get up and see what is happening to her. She is clearly being summoned to acknowledge her own position and role as the one where other nations will find a true home. She is asked to recognize her treasure. Her shining gold is a wealth that attracts others, not as strangers who might tolerate one another but as her own children, as people to whom she has deep bonds of connection. Her treasure is those who belong to her.
In the gospel, Jesus is recognized for who he is by the Magi from a strange place in the East. They find the child, not isolated, but with his mother, a child in relationship to humanity. There is no doubt that the treasure Israel has is a light that summons people from distant lands. Israel’s treasure is the Messiah. The Scriptures are clear about that. The Magi come to honor and profess their loyalty and service to him whom the Scriptures talk about. …King Herod’s tragedy is that he refuses to recognize the treasure; he doesn’t even know where it is anymore. If the treasure is in his midst, it means he too will have to become involved in movement toward it. The tragedy is that he will not make the journey of a few miles while others will travel for long distances. He will not venture into the movement that Epiphany seems to demand. He will not dare that relationship with this child-king that would give him his true identity.
Epiphany is about gathering and coming together. Epiphany is about recognizing the true center that binds and holds us all together. Epiphany means a light that shines in our hearts so that we see beyond the confines of our narrow mind, our limited national boundaries, our own interests. Like the star it leads us away from the familiar to what at first seems strange but in the end is deeply familiar. Epiphany means movement beyond our own kind to a sight that includes all as my own kind. Epiphany translates into a powerful message that the one city Jerusalem holds a gift for the whole world; the one child born in Bethlehem is a leader for all peoples.
For all the movement in the story of today’s celebration, we don’t hear anything about the movement’s resolution in settling down or making a home. Only the star rests. Instead the home that is to be made is the home found in the new relationships that Jerusalem and the child of Bethlehem call us to. The home is to be found in the connections and bonds that are set up. Home is in the realization of a new world of interrelationships and interconnections. St. Paul says it clearly: the outsider is as much an heir to promise and identity as is the first child. There is only one body and it is not exclusive but is open to all. The child of Bethlehem makes it possible for a true humanity to come into being. We humans like to divide and separate. But the Epiphany is that diversity and richness of culture can be woven into a unity through the child in the house in Bethlehem. That child becomes the new light that shines in the fragmentation of humanity.
The home that must be made today is a home in the heart. It is there that the mother feels the joy at seeing her children. It is from the heart that a person begins to radiate when he or she realizes the depth and breadth of his or her relationship to others through Christ. It is in the heart that we feel the joy, as did the Magi, of finally finding Christ as the true leader of the world, as the teacher who can guide us into ways of peace and justice.
There is no settling down in Jerusalem or Bethlehem. We don’t live with the child and his mother. We have to be like the Magi going back to our own country. Go back to the place where we come from, but forever changed. We go back to be the light born of new relationships that sees beyond the dark clouds that threaten to tear the world asunder. We return and not the same way. Life is different once we have become an heir with Christ in his relationship with the Father. We leave this place, this crib; we return to where we came from so that the gathering begun here with the Word in the Scripture and the journey of the Magi may happen through our presence wherever we may be on our own pilgrimage on earth.
~Fr. Joel