Homily for
Epiphany: Matthew 2:1-12
Where did they come from? Where did
they go? We do not know. To make sense of the story, we must pay attention to
its symbolism. Read in that way, we find that the story has five stages. The
magi, whom we also call the wise men, saw;
they searched; they found; they worshiped; and they returned
home.
They
saw
A farmer kept a flock of tame geese
which freely roamed the farmyard, always looking down for food. One day the
farmer noticed that the geese were nervous and restless. They were looking up.
In the sky he saw the reason. It was autumn. Wild geese were flying south. The
farmer’s geese flapped their wings and made a lot of noise. But they did not
fly away.
Many people are like that. Something
unusual happens to raise their minds from life’s routine. They become aware of
greater possibilities, a higher call. But they fail to respond. The opportunity
passes. The old routine resumes. The wise men were different. They were not
content with looking up.
They
searched.
Doing so required courage. How their
friends must have mocked them.
“Following a star? What on
earth for? Have you taken leave of your senses?” To set out in the face of
ridicule, on what seemed like a fool’s errand, took courage. Sooner or later, it always takes courage to
be a follower of Jesus Christ. His standards cannot always be made reasonable,
or even intelligible, to unbelievers.
At times the follower of Jesus Christ must have courage to swim against
the stream: to say No when everyone else is saying Yes; or Yes when all others
are saying No; to appear to reasonable, prudent people reckless, even crazy.
The wise men had such courage. They set out on their seemingly mad search, and
persevered in it until –
They found.
For this they are rightly called “wise
men.” To the clever people who mocked them they seemed mad. In reality they
possessed, along with courage, the truest wisdom there is: the spiritual
insight to recognize the unique call of God, and to follow it regardless of the
cost. As their search neared its end, Mathew tells us, “they rejoiced
exceedingly with great joy” (2:10). They had reason for joy. They were
successful. They were vindicated. It was they who had been proved wise; their
critics were the fools. From the wise men’s point of view the search had been
all theirs. In reality it was God who was seeking them. That was crucial: for the wise men, but also for us – as we
see in the story of a small child.
This little one came home in tears.
When the child’s mother had dried the tears, she heard the reason for them. “We
played hide-and-seek. I hid. No one looked for me.” When you are only three,
that can be crushing. “No one looked for me.”
Someone is looking for you – right now. God is looking for you. He is drawing you to himself, as he drew
the wise men by the star. If only you will look up, and be bold, you will find
him. And then, like the wise men, you too will rejoice with joy. To know that,
even now, God is looking for you, drawing you to himself, is already cause for
joy. The wise men’s joy is not the end of the story, however. When they finally
arrived at the end of their journey –
They
worshiped.
Their
worship was not merely reciting prayers by memory or from a book. They offered
the best and most costly gifts they had. Which of us would not like to do the
same? And yet, when we
look within, we see not wealth but poverty: broken resolutions; good that we
might have done and yet failed to do; evil that we could have avoided and did
not. We wanted to give Jesus so much. What we have given up to now is so
little. We ask ourselves: What can I give?
Over a century ago the English poet,
Christina Georgina Rossetti, asked that question. Her answer is beautiful.
What
can I give him, poor as I am?
If I
were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I
were a wise man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him C give my heart.
The
wise men’ gifts were symbols: gold for a king, incense for a priest, and myrrh
for his burial. Jesus was different, however, from all other kings. He had no
palace, not even a fixed abode (cf. Lk 9:58). He never lorded it over people.
Jesus was a shepherd-king who came,
he said, “not to be served, but to
serve” (Mk 10:45), even to the extent of laying down his life for his sheep
(cf. Jn. 10:11).
Jesus was also a priest. A priest is a
man for others; someone set apart to offer God prayer, praise, and sacrifice on
behalf of others. From antiquity the smoke of incense, curling heavenward, has
symbolized this priestly activity. From a purely utilitarian point of view,
judged by results, burning incense is a sheer waste. So is prayer, if we judge
it by measurable, visible results. A skeptic, seeing a priest praying the
Breviary, the Church’s daily offering of prayer and praise to God, asked: “How
do you know anyone is listening?” Without faith, that question is unanswerable.
You cannot prove that anyone is listening. With
faith, however, no proof is necessary.
Jesus exercised his priesthood in
those nights of solitary prayer which we read about in the gospels. He was no
less a priest, however, when he healed the sick, consoled the sorrowing, and
comforted people weighed down by suffering and sin. The supreme example of
Jesus’ priesthood came, however, on the cross,
where Jesus
offered his heavenly Father not merely the prayer of his lips and his heart,
but his very life. To anyone without faith the cross is a scandalous waste and
utter defeat. For those with faith,
however, the cross is the place of ultimate victory. The most eloquent symbol
of that victory is the empty tomb of Easter morning, which shows that the power
of death and evil has been broken. Because of the sacrifice offered on Calvary by Jesus, our shepherd-king and priest, evil
cannot control or master us, unless we consent.
After the wise men had worshiped, by
offering their gifts --
They
returned home.
They go back to the people who had
mocked them when they set out. Matthew
tells us, however, that they returned “by another way” (2:12). The ancient
Church Fathers seized on that phrase and said: “But of course!” No one in
Scripture ever encounters God and returns home by the same way. The wise men
return home changed. They have been touched by their experience, touched by
God. They have a message for those who thought themselves wise, but turned out
to be foolish.
We return home from church each week
(some of us daily), from our encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist. We too have
been touched by God. We too have a message for others. It is this. God is not
far off. In all our sorrows, in all our temptations, sufferings, difficulties,
and joys, God is with us. That is one of God’s
names: Emmanuel, God-with-us. God is close to us always – even when we
stray far from him. We imagine that we must storm heaven with our prayers to
get God’s attention. And all the time it is God who gives us the ability to
pray. It is God who is searching for us, leading us onward, drawing us to
himself. That is the message we have to proclaim. That is the gospel – the good
news.
And when we grasp this good news, the
story with its five stages begins again: the seeing, the searching, the
finding, the worshiping, the return home. That is the story of the Christian
life: the royal road by which untold millions have walked, the road God wants
us to walk for as many more weeks and months and years as our journey may last.
Until it ends in Him; and journeying and searching and struggle are over,
because we are home: where there will
be no more weariness, no more discouragement, no more loneliness or injustice,
no more sickness or suffering, no more death. Where God himself will wipe away
all tears from our eyes. Where we shall experience ecstasy: for we shall see Him face to face.
