Sermons

Epiphany 2008
The Very Rev. Tracey Lind
January 6, 2008

There is a minor controversy now brewing in some parts of the Episcopal Church about the Presiding Bishop's Christmas card that features a painting by Janet McKenzie entitled Epiphany.

"Epiphany" copyright 2003 Janet McKenzie
www.janetmckenzie.com
Collection of Barbara Marian, Harvard, IL

The artist's website says:

"Wise women throughout time and in every culture know themselves to be seekers and seers of the Divine. In Janet McKenzie's interpretation of the Magi, women around the world find an image of the Epiphany that includes and validates their encounters with the One Who Saves, celebrated here in the powerful, protective and tender manifestation of a mother and her child, embraced and nurtured by a loving community. Here is global inclusiveness and a vision of mutuality and interdependence - the giving and receiving of the three gifts essential to life itself: presence, love and daily bread. Epiphany proclaims again and anew: Christ for all people. God's favor extends to all!"
(www.janetmckenzie.com)

The Bishop of Fort Worth and a few others in the Episcopal Church are upset by this image and its message. They see it as demeaning to the Christmas story. They ask: how could our Presiding Bishop send a holiday greeting that envisions three wise women surrounding Jesus and his mother Mary?

Why not? What makes us so sure that a group of wise women didn't visit and attend to this mother and child? It was, and in many places still is, the custom of women to care for mothers and their newborns. Moreover, women, like men, have always been seekers of the divine.

Frankly, the whole thing reminds me of an old joke with many punch lines. What if the three kings had been three queens? They would have stopped and asked for directions and not been late; or they would have brought useful gifts, like diapers and dinner.

Diapers and dinners might not seem so outlandish, and in the words of poet and author Norma Farber, the women might have been late.

The Queens came late, but the Queens were there
With gifts in their hands and crowns in their hair.
They'd come, these three, like the Kings, from far,
Following, yes, that guiding star.
They'd left their ladles, linens, looms,
Their children playing in nursery rooms,
And told their sitters:
"Take charge! For this
Is a marvelous sight we must not miss!"

The Queens came late, but not too late
To see the animals small and great,
Feathered and furred, domestic and wild,
Gathered to gaze at a mother and child.
And rather than frankincense and myrrh
And gold for the babe, they brought for her
Who held him, a homespun gown of blue,
And chicken soup--with noodles, too-

And a lingering, lasting, cradle-song.
The Queens came late and stayed not long,
For their thoughts already were straining far-
Past manger and mother and guiding star
And a child aglow as a morning sun-
Toward home and children and chores undone.
(Norma Farber, "When It Snowed That Night," 1993)

In the ancient tradition, gold symbolized royalty; incense represented the high priesthood; and myrrh (the resin used in ancient embalming) was offered as a gift in anticipation of this newborn child's ultimate death. Because these gifts were offered by foreign, non-Jewish outlanders, this story in Matthew's gospel allowed his primary audience, Jewish followers of Jesus, to imagine the unthinkable - God's grace extending to outsiders, otherwise known as Gentiles. The idea that the Magi could have been women would have been too outrageous for even the first century author of Matthew's gospel to imagine.

However, the whole story of Epiphany is a subversive, political parable that turns the power structures of the world upside down. This poor, innocent, vulnerable baby Jesus, not the powerful and wealthy Herod, is declared king of the Jews; and this vulnerable, homeless infant, not the almighty and enthroned Caesar Augustus is declared Son of God. He will usher in the Kingdom of God which will be greater than the Empire of Rome and he will embody Shalom (God's peace) which will outshine the Pax Romana. No wonder the powers and principalities were and are so threatened when the Christmas/Epiphany story is really claimed by the people of God.

In my former church in Paterson, New Jersey, we celebrated the Feast of Epiphany with a pageant. One year, the youth group took over its production, and a new tradition was born. The Epiphany pageant at St. Paul's Church became a contemporary rendering of the story of the three magi (both kings and queens). The stage set was a decaying urban apartment building. The magi arrived with their boom boxes, baggy pants, and bulky black jackets. They strutted down the center aisle to Joan Osborn's blasting song, "What if God was one of us...Just a slob like one of us....Just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home...."

When the magi met the baby Jesus, they presented to the Christ child, and to the gathered community, gifts of poetry, prose, music, dance and visual images. In the rough rhythm of city streets, these wise people - White, Black and Latino - proclaimed truth as they saw it.

One year their gifts were freedom of expression, engagement, and acceptance. Another year, they presented the gifts of tradition, uniqueness and energy. And other year, their offerings were diversity, creativity and unity. Each year, the magi and their gifts changed as the members of the youth group changed. But in the end, they always offered the gift of themselves, the gift of their incarnate love for God, their community, their world, and one another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this essence of incarnate love when wrote:

"The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore, the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own doing. This is right and pleasing for it restores society in so far to the primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift..."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and English Traits, Essays, XIII, "Gifts," 2)

You know that in your own life, the greatest gifts you've ever given and received have been those that convey the biography, the story, the heart and soul of the giver. God's gift to us - the eternal word incarnate and divine love enfleshed in Jesus the Christ - conveys the biography of God's very own self. Our gifts are all responses to this greatest gift of all.

As I watched the kings in our annual Boar's Head Festival approach the high altar with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, I remembered the cadence of my young friends in Paterson, and I wondered: who are the outsiders and outlanders in our world, and what gifts will they bring to us and the Christ child in this coming year?

Will they be gold, frankincense and myrrh? Might they be a gown of blue, chicken soup, and a cradle song; or diapers, milk and warm clothes? Perhaps, they will be the offerings rendered by Janet McKenzie: presence, love and daily bread. Maybe, if Mary, Jesus and the rest of the children of the world are lucky, the gifts will be world peace, universal health care, and clean water.

On the feast of Epiphany, we come to the end of the Christmas season. This week, we will take down the trees and the greens, we will put away the ornaments and the creche for another year. But as Howard Thurman reminds us:

When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins.
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner,
To teach the nations,
To bring Christ to all,
To make music in the heart.

May the gifts of the Magi remind all of us in Trinity Cathedral, The Episcopal Church, and the worldwide Anglican Communion of the work to be done in the name of the babe who was born on Christmas Day. And may we be about doing that work rather than fighting over who should be allowed to do it. Then, as Isaiah prophesizes, our light will shine and we will show forth the brightness of dawn and the radiance of abundance. Like the angel messengers of God, we will be bearers of good tidings, and like the Magi, we will bring gifts worthy of a king.