Sunday: Epiphany
Reading: Matthew 2:1-12
Preacher: S. James Steen

In preparation for this sermon, I've done the usual homework of looking at what a number of scholars have to say about the magi and their journey. But to be honest, these exegetical efforts haven't led me to any new knowledge or to anything that moves me in a new way. It's no secret that in the ancient world the births of significant figures other than Jesus - Augustus Caesar was one - were also heralded by portents. It's also pretty clear that if we look at the evidence, the events surrounding Jesus' birth cannot be understood as empirical history. We can only understand them through the eyes of faith; and that is exactly how they came to be written down in the first place, by people of faith, writing for particular communities of faith.

Luke, a person of deep compassion, wanted the people in his community in Asia Minor to know that God's love for the poor and marginal, expressed so powerfully by the Hebrew Prophets, was finding a new and even more powerful expression in Jesus. Thus, the lowly shepherds are the first to find the Christ child in Luke. Matthew, a devout Jew, wanted to make it clear to his largely Jewish community that Jesus was the one whom Matthew's people had long awaited; but Matthew also sought to communicate that God's love, expressed through Jesus, was too broad to be limited to the Jews; so in Matthew, sages from the East, beyond Judah, were the ones who followed the star to the Messiah.

People have been proclaiming the Gospel with specific communities in mind since the earliest days of Christianity, and they are still doing so, today. When people leave Hyde Park and move to places like Florida or Texas, they often come back and tell us that they can't find a church like SPR; there just don't seem to be any. This may say something about the churches in those places; but it also says something about the communities in which the churches are interpreting the Gospel. Closer to home, consider the difference between Hyde Park and Wheaton. I'll bet you that we make statements here that would scandalize some people in Wheaton, but which we view as simply going deeper, as well as broadening our understanding.

I have a priest friend, with roots nearby, who expresses positive wonder that SPR is a thriving congregation in what he considers to be one of the most militantly secular communities in North America. I note, ironically, that no other community in North America may have as many seminaries as Hyde Park.

I also have a priest acquaintance who believes that I am a dangerous heretic. My response to both would be that one of the chief tasks of the church in a community like Hyde Park in the third millennium is to articulate a vital, authentic, faith within a culture that no longer takes belief for granted, nor has much use for faith that is contradicted by the attitudes and actions of those who make up the religious community. Actually, I think this task extends far beyond our neighborhood; but what will soon be required even in the suburbs is already true in Hyde Park.

It would be tempting to pat ourselves on the back and marvel that we have found a formula that works. But this is precisely the attitude that is hastening the decline of mainline Christianity. One of the things that has amazed me during the nearly twelve years we've been together at SPR is how quickly cultural preferences change, especially with regard to religious proclamation. I was trained to think critically regarding the Bible and to preach from a form of progressive Christianity that reveled in the historical critical approach to Scripture. I still find this fascinating. But in recent years there has grown up a widespread attitude that what really matters is the narrative, the story, and it doesn't really matter whether it actually happened that way. So, essential truth is seen as existing in the story as much as it is in whatever facts can be ascertained. Recently, this point of view has greatly influenced my own preaching.

Not accidentally, this change in emphasis parallels the recent rise of post-modernism. In modernism, the reigning paradigm when many of us grew up, it was a matter of faith that there was one truth, which, whether or not you found it, was there to be discovered. Not so with post-modernism, which views truth as more relative and allows that there may be multiple truths, all valid.

These ideas are highly compatible with how we at SPR often speak of ourselves as a community of religious seekers. The first line of our Mission Statement makes this assertion: "Our mission is to welcome all seekers." We might call the magi the first great seekers after Christ, and the narrative of their journey, which we proclaim today, is a wonderful vehicle for expressing our openness to people with diverse experiences and approaches. It is an equally fitting metaphor for the second part of our Mission Statement, which makes unambiguous our view that faith is a journey, rather than a single destination. As a reminder to ourselves and an invitation to others, we advertise that it is our mission "to nurture one another on our journeys of faith."

Those earlier seekers, the magi, discovered, through astrology, hardly an orthodox theological method, that far away one who was to become king of the Jews had been born. They might have done nothing but acknowledge this and remain at home; but the magi want to know more. They are sufficiently curious and open to the Spirit that they take off on a journey to a foreign land, and they are so trusting that they consult the conniving Herod. At the same time, they are attentive enough to the signs around them that they know to avoid encountering him a second time.

When they reach the child they are seeking, they don't respond by theologizing. They don't enter the house and begin reciting the Nicene Creed. Instead, they simply worship. Ironically, they don't seem to be put off by the humble circumstances of this new king. They must sense holiness. They offer gifts, treasures from their own cultures. And it is with them, as I believe it is with us, that in their openness, their curiosity, their seeking, trusting, worshiping and in their offering of gifts, they come to believe, not in a dogma, but in a mystery and a relationship and a way of living. And in all this they experience transformation. They are changed in ways that lead them to take a different road than the one they had come by, out of Bethlehem, toward home, and on toward the next epiphany in their journey of faith.

Amen.