Epiphany Eve – Receiving the Gift

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

The Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1488-89)

Eve of Epiphany 2025
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Matthew 2:1-12

…they departed to their own country by another way.

– Matthew 2:12b

+ In the Name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is Epiphany Eve. The Feast of the Epiphany- a word meaning “a revelatory manifestation”- is one of the 7 principal feast days on the Christian calendar. It is also a fixed day—the twelfth day after Christmas—so that it migrates through the days of the week. We are observing it today, on its eve, to give this major feast it’s due, as we can’t really understand the fullness of the mystery and promise of the Incarnation without considering what this feast teaches us. When contemplating the infant Jesus who is the Incarnate Word, Epiphany gives us a wider perspective than merely the manger and the shepherds and the angels. It says to us “But wait, there’s Myrrh! ” (If you’ll pardon the pun.)

In many parts of the world, Epiphany is a bigger holiday than Christmas, with rituals of gift giving tied to treasure-bearing wise men instead of old Saint Nick. Today is the day of gifts. In some places, children leave shoes filled with hay outside their homes. The hay is for the camels of the wise men, who leave gifts for the children in the shoes as thanks before resuming their journey to Bethlehem.

The wise men. Tradition gives us three, corresponding to the three gifts. It also gives us names, legends about where they were from, possibly that they were Babylonian sages or Zoroastrian priests, or maybe even kings themselves based on the cost of the gifts. There’s not much else. What we do know is that Scripture tells us they come from the east, are involved in the study of astrological and astronomical signs, and that they have left behind their home, the security of their lives, and all that they have looking for a new king. They are seekers, who fulfill the prophecy from Isaiah that we have today: that nations and even kings would come to the light revealed in Israel, that sons and daughters would come from far away. They also, of course, confirm what we hear from Paul in Ephesians 3:6, that through the Gospel, even the Gentiles are fellow heirs of the promise. That the Magi are willing to leave everything behind is explained in the prophetic description of Jesus in Psalm 72: unlike the tyrants and despots of their own lands, the king that the star promises is one who judges fairly, defends the oppressed, and provides peace, so that the poor and the godly alike may flourish. This king is one who merits the huge undertaking of such a pilgrimage. Jesus is worth leaving behind what we think we know, leaving behind the familiar. And so, full of hope and promise, the Magi leave as seekers of something better.

We live in a seeker culture today. Statistician Vera Korhonen, in a 2017 study found that 30% of people in America aged 30-49 identified as “spiritual but not religious,” which is to say that they believe in something beyond mere materialism and are looking for it, but outside the bonds of traditional religious faith and communities. Methodist pastor and author Stephen Bauman writes:

We live in a time of great spiritual agitation; our culture is rife with seekers of every sort, who attempt to make their way to the most fulfilling destination as they respond to deep interior longing. Many follow or dabble in myriad spiritual approaches, including ancient esoteric traditions like astrology and psychic phenomenon, as well as amalgams of Eastern practices and Western science. Every variety of religious expression is as available as a click of a mouse or a meeting with one’s next-door neighbor.

Seeking, however bespoke or even misguided, should be encouraging to us in the church. At least people are looking. Bauman continues:

any seeker, whether by chance or authentic pursuit, can find his or her way to the manger.

Now, if the Magi are good news for the seekers of today, it’s because they prove that this is true. However, there’s a catch: they also show that we have to leave what we know and where we’ve been. We have to find another way.

See, the star gets them only so far: to Herod’s palace, in Jerusalem. At that point, they have to leave the astrology behind. It is only by turning to the Scriptures that they find that the infant king is not in Jerusalem, but rather Bethlehem. Scripture takes the Magi – and us – beyond our spiritual dabblings and uncertainty to a certain knowledge of where God is to be found. Scripture leads to Bethlehem, and to Jesus. There these wise men find, in the words of St Basil of Casearia:

God is on earth, God is among us, not now as lawgiver…but as one gently and kindly conversing in a human body with his fellow men and women. God is in the flesh… He is bringing back to himself the whole human race, which he has taken possession of and united to himself. By his flesh he has made the human race his own kin.

The surprise here is this: they thought they were seekers. Whereas, in fact, they were the ones who were sought by a God who is making a people for himself. That is the good news for seekers today, and for those of us who have loved ones who do not know the Lord as well. Our God is on a rescue mission.

Now, the story of the Magi also has something to say to those of us who know Jesus, as well. It concerns the matter of the gifts. Whatever the economic worth and the symbolic value of the gold, frankincense and myrrh, in truth, they were worthless. However grand the gesture, these gifts could not blot out the frustration, the confusion, the weariness- and yes- the guilt and sin that are what the Magi brought to the infant king along with their gifts. This is what all humans ultimately bring before God. Which means, if we’re honest, it’s what we bring as well. The great reversal is this: just as the magi thought they were seekers and found out instead that they were sought, so they thought they were giving gifts when in fact, in Jesus, they are receiving one.

Outside of the church, it’s New Year’s season in the world, not Christmastide. Which, of course, means that it’s also the season of resolutions. Of promises to “do better.” What it really is, is the season of the Accusing Law. Culture says: not good enough, not skinny enough, not productive enough, not happy enough. Church culture sometimes adds: not praying enough, not having a Quiet time, not patient enough, not holy enough. The truth, however, is that this annual frenzy always ends the same: forgotten plans, self-condemnation, and general discouragement. As Pastor Ryan Crouch says:

While the law is good at showing you those areas that need attention, it can do nothing to transform your heart. At our core, we are broken, and no amount of self-control or effort to change will fix that. We are so good at deceiving ourselves into believing we can, with enough resolve, transform ourselves into something new and better.

Still, we persist, year-after-year. We fall victim to the temptation to “give Jesus a gift” during resolution season. In addition to trying to get back in shape or to be better spouses, we buy that new devotional, we make new plans for discipleship practices that will really somehow be different this year. Pastor Couch, again:

know this: you are the same you, a sinner who, even on your best day, is desperately flawed… This new year does not bring a new you. Your old Adam still resides in your heart, and he will continue to seek love, acceptance, and worth in all the wrong places, places that will always leave you looking for more.

Nonetheless, ignoring Pastor Couch, we try to “do better” and thus give to baby Jesus something positive, something more than our own frustration, confusion, weariness, guilt and sin. We try, and try, and try, hoping that this year we can be “really Christian.” The problem is, of course, that we are trying to give a gift rather than receive one. We miss the point of the story. Like the Magi- like all the so-called seekers out there- we are gift-receivers, not gift-givers before the Manger Throne. We are invited to leave behind our old way of thinking that we have to- or even can – offer something to God beyond the broken selves that he loves and has sought.

See, the fact of the matter is this: Christ doesn’t need a better you. He loves and accepts you just as you are, fully aware of all your failures, shame, and secrets. Nothing is lost on him, and yet instead of running away from us, he runs toward us, with arms wide open. He is the seeker, he is the gift. We can abandon all our striving and, as CS Lewis reminds us “lay before him what is in us, not what we ought to be.”

After their story ends in Scripture, we don’t really know what happens to the Wise Men. The Cathedral of Cologne, in western Germany, has its relics and legends. The Coptic church has theirs as well. What we do know from Scripture is that, as their story closes, having left everything behind, they return home “by another way.” Gregory the Great comments that:

The return of the magi “by another way” home suggests a spiritual interpretation: As they were advised to take another way, so are we.

Beloved, that way- that truth, that life- is Jesus. And the only resolution I believe is worth making this time of year is the resolve to go home in a different way. Not geographically, but spiritually. Like the Magi- like the Prodigal Son- we are invited to lay aside all our old notions of who God is and how he deals with us, recognizing that we are sought, and Christ is the gift. In him, because of him, we are reconciled we are justified, we are 100% accepted. Seems to me that our only plan for Christian discipleship this year should be, in the words of Jean-Pierre de Caussade, to be

a clean, smooth canvas and not [to] worry ourselves about what God may choose to paint on it, but at each moment, feel only the stroke of His brush.