Epiphany Year B– January 7, 2024
Matthew 2:1-12
Happy New Year! Happy Epiphany! It is the end of our Christmas season and the beginning of church season of Epiphany. A season of recognizing Christ’s surprising appearances or manifestations in our lives. Today we hear the wonderful story of the magi, the wise men, following a star to see the Christ child. It is a story of hope. Hope in the midst of great struggle.
Each year, Jan Richardson creates and publishes a retreat, for what is called Women’s Christmas. Jan is an artist, writer and Methodist minister and I often quote her inspiring spiritual writings on Epiphany Sunday. She has this to say about hope: “I have found hope to be a curiously stubborn creature. It is persistent. It visits when I least expect it. It shows up when I haven’t been looking for it. Even when it seems like hope should be a stranger, there is something deeply familiar about it.
If I open my eyes to it, I know its face, even when I do not know where it is leading me. Though hope may sometimes seem like a luxury—frivolous, groundless, insubstantial—it is precisely the opposite. Hope is elemental.
It is made of some of the strongest stuff in the universe. It endures. Hope does not depend on our mood, our disposition, our desire. Hope does not wait until we are ready for it, until we have prepared ourselves for its arrival.
It does not hold itself apart from us until we have worked through the worst of our sorrow, our anger, our fear. This is precisely where hope seeks
us out, standing with us in the midst of what most weighs us down. Hope has work for us to do. It asks us to resist going numb when the world within us or beyond us is falling apart. In the height of despair, in the deepest darkness, hope calls us to open our hearts, our eyes, our hands, that we might engage the world when it breaks our hearts. Hope goes with us, step by step, offering to us the manna it holds”.
Hope. The wise men had hope that by following that star and finding the baby in Bethlehem, that life would be changed. And their life was changed. Not in the way they thought it would be, but their world was changed. It was turned upside down. Those wise men set out on their journey in spite of their fear, in spite of the fact that they didn’t have all the answers, in spite of the fact that they didn’t know how far or long this journey would last. They were following a star. They found Christ and they went home by another road.
God invites us to take the journey to Bethlehem, over and over again, and to invite others to join us in the thrill of knowing this Jesus of Bethlehem. This life changing Jesus. It is a simple journey and yet an often treacherous and bewildering one.
Jan writes: “I have learned that hope is stubborn. That it is persistent.
That it does not depend on me for its genesis but that it does ask me to open my eyes, my heart, my hands to recognize it when it shows up and to respond to what it offers. Hope knows its own way. It is a mystery, but it has a path, an invitation, a labyrinth for us to walk. As with a labyrinth, the way of hope does not allow us to see far ahead. But this way invites us to keep walking, to dream of how the path will unfold, and to trust that what we need will come to us.”
The only guarantee we have is that Christ awaits us at the manger. That in our journey, Christ is with us, whether we recognize that holy presence or not. Christ comes to us, over and over again. In the darkness and in the light.
In Africa, there is a Zulu greeting that goes like this: I see you.
If you want to let someone know that you recognize them, that you have taken the time to notice them, that you honor how unique they are in all the world, that their presence is a cause for celebration, this is what you say.
I see you.
This seeing, this recognition, is the stuff that joy is made of. And heartbreak, too, for seeing comes with a cost. But that place of seeing—that place where we know, where we refuse to be content with appearances, where we resist the impulse to take things for granted: this is where God lives, and where Christ is born anew. Hope mixed with joy.
Jan shares, “If this season teaches us anything, it is that even in the dark there is cause to celebrate. Even in sorrow. Even in lack. Even when there is too much to do. Even when we don’t feel like it. These days assure us that if we have lost hope, there are those who are hoping for us. If we are in darkness, Christ seeks us even there. If we are aching for light, it is on its way. If we are weary, there is a fiesta waiting for us, and friends to rejoice with, both far and near.
It can naturally become difficult to celebrate when we are too tired, too busy, too overwhelmed by the state of the world or the circumstances of our own lives. This is when it becomes especially important to be with those who will stoke our hope and remind us that our lives are bound together”.
Let us learn how to “see each other” on this journey called life.
I close with the blessing by Jan Richardson, entitled: What Fire Comes to Sing in You:
This blessing had big ideas
about what it wanted to say,
what it wanted you to know,
to see.
This blessing wanted to open your eyes
to the joy that lives
in such strange company with sorrow—
wanted to make sure to tell you,
lest you forget,
that no matter how long it seems absent,
no matter how quiet it becomes,
joy has never
been far from you, holding a space
of celebration, watching for you, humming as it keeps vigil.
Amen. Hope and Joy to you this Epiphany season.
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