Sermon: Epiphany (observed) – 2023

4 January 2023

Text: Matt 2:1-12 (Isa 60:1-6, Eph 3:1-12)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany – which actually falls on January 6.  It marks the end of the Christmas Season, and begins the Epiphany Season – which takes us up to Lent.  Of course, this season is also known as Carnival – which literally means a “Farewell to Meat” – a time to use up all the good stuff in the pantry before we start fasting on Ash Wednesday.

But what makes Epiphany important is not the cultural part of the celebration, but rather, like Christmas, Jesus is the reason for the season.

An Epiphany is a kind of revealing, a showing of something that was previously hidden.  An Epiphany allows us to see things as they really are, revealing what was previously a mystery.  But the beautiful thing about the coming of Jesus is that one mystery leads to another, and like a series of presents being unwrapped, the news just keeps getting better and better.

The Incarnation of our Lord, that is, His taking human flesh and being born, brings the extraordinary and the ordinary together to a remarkable intersection.  For on the one hand, what did the wise men see?  A baby.  Babies are born every day.  They are not mighty men, not Olympic athletes, not great inventors, not heroes – at least not yet.  They are just little helpless infants.  And every baby has a father who sired him and a mother who birthed him and nourishes him.  Family life is the most ordinary thing in the world.  And yet, in this ordinariness, the magi also understand that this child is a king, and not just an ordinary king.  He is a King who is to be worshiped, the King promised by the ancient Scriptures, the King who is God who created the stars including the star that guided the wise men to see Him.  This is no ordinary child, but one to be lavished with extraordinary gifts: “gold and frankincense and myrrh.” 

Dear friends, we know how extraordinary this ordinary baby is.  He is God in the flesh.  He will grow up to speak the Word of God from His own lips.  He will cure the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the leprous.  He will forgive sins.  He will raise the dead.  He will die sacrificially for the sins of the world.

He will call disciples from all of the people, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, from all nations, who will confess Him as Lord and God, as King and Savior.  As St. Paul says, “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”  The entire world, even those from the heathen nations of the east, will be blessed and brought into communion with God through Him.  And He will select from these disciples certain “sent ones,” apostles, who will “go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” teaching and preaching and confessing and administering the sacraments.  Ordinary men with an extraordinary message and gift will spread this Epiphany of Jesus far beyond first century Judea.

And while Jesus is fully God, He is also fully man.  On the one hand, He is ordinary.  He is not ten feet tall.  He doesn’t walk about in a golden crown or driven about in a carriage.  But even His enemies know that He is extraordinary: preaching with authority unlike anyone they had ever heard, forgiving sins, and performing signs and wonders. 

For here is God in all His fullness, and yet a man in all His limitations.  This Jesus is the God who created them, and yet He is also the man whom they can arrest and bind with rope.  He is the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God, and who is God, and yet, they will be able to crucify Him, kill Him, and bury Him in a tomb.  Of course, His body will lie in the tomb, seemingly ordinary for a time, but on the third day, He will emerge from the tomb alive, in an extraordinary body that can walk through walls.  And yet, His body is still ordinary enough to show His wounds to the disciples, and to eat ordinary food.

It is fitting that we close out the Christmas season by reflecting on this Epiphany, the revelation of God in our ordinary world. 

The wise men were perhaps familiar with the prophecy of Isaiah: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

And when the revelation was given to them, they did indeed “arise.”  They rose and followed the light of the star, emerging from the darkness of superstition and false Gods to the One True Faith, which shone upon them from the face of Jesus.  And even as they arose to see the Lord, this Lord indeed “will arise upon you.”  For He will arise from the grave, and will make the face of the Lord to shine upon all the nations, and nothing will ever again be the same.

“A multitude of camels shall cover you,” says Isaiah, “the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.”

The wise men indeed had Good News and praises of the Lord to bring back to their own country, light in the midst of darkness, knowing that this Christ has come into our world as the King of Israel, but for the sake of all nations.

Now, we may be tempted to see the Lord’s Epiphany as nothing more than past history, an interesting story that teaches us that Jesus is God in the flesh.  But there is so much more, dear friends!  For the Epiphany continues, the intersection between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the crashing together of the natural and the supernatural has continued right up until our time.

For you heard Jesus speak to you again tonight.  He said, “I forgive you all your sins” and He did so in the extraordinary and powerful name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  You heard this from the lips of an ordinary man, but the message from Jesus Himself is anything but ordinary.  For think about what Jesus has said to you, dear friends.  He invoked the name into which you were baptized.  For that is the most important part of your identity, not whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, American or foreigner, man or woman, black or white.  You are baptized and bear the name of the Trinity.  And you are blessed because Jesus said you are: the extraordinary through the ordinary.  Your sins are forgiven, and you have a new lease on life – a life that will never end.  How often we are wrapped up in the ordinary things of this world and we miss the extraordinary, the eternal.

And you have heard this Good News from the Holy Scriptures: the very Word of God, read and preached by an ordinary person.  But the Good News is most extraordinary, dear friends.  For you are given the gift of eternal life.  You are rescued from sin, death, and the devil.  And almighty God speaks to you in ordinary things of this ordinary world, like ordinary books, paper, and ink, read in an ordinary voice.  But what an Epiphany, dear friends!  God Himself is speaking to you!

And what’s more, there is an even greater mystery and Epiphany that we have the privilege to share: ordinary bread and wine.  This is not a table prepared for kings but for ordinary people: simple fare.  And yet, who comes to our simple table but the King of the Universe, whose Word declares that these ordinary elements are extraordinary, for they are His body and His blood.  They are not symbols.  They are not something extraordinary for you to merely look at and be amazed.  No indeed.  They are there for you to eat and drink, to take into your own flesh and blood, the extraordinary presence of God in ordinary food and drink.  And the extraordinary blessing is in the Words of Jesus Himself: “for the forgiveness of sins.” 

He is here for you, with you, and in you: “This is My body…. This cup is the New Testament in My blood:” ordinary words delivering the extraordinary Word Made Flesh, in an Epiphany that retains its mystery.

Dear friends, this is why we come to this place that may look ordinary to the world.  But it is extraordinary to those with the eyes of faith.  And when we celebrate this extraordinary supper, we do just as the wise men did: we bow before Jesus, before the flesh and blood that is miraculously divine, though which to the eyes, appear ordinary. 

So let us hear and believe when He forgives us, when He comes to us, and when He shares His body and blood with us here in ordinary space and time. 

You are forgiven.  You have been blessed with Good News.  You receive His true body and blood by means of a miracle.  And you are made extraordinary: one given the full righteousness of Christ as a free gift, one who is in communion with God even unto eternity.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”  That is our extraordinary Epiphany. 

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.