Blogging toward Sunday

Erin Martin
Matthew 2:1-12
January 6, 2008

Bow before his brightness

For a preacher, the challenge of Epiphany is that it comes every year. The story unfolds as it always does: King Herod, the wise men from the East, gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. By now, the pageant is overplayed. The star of wonder has lost its awe. How, in this over-handled text, can anything new break through?

Yet this year something new did break through. As I read Matthew’s account of the journey of the Magi to Jerusalem in search of the child born king of the Jews, I was struck, not by the aspects of prophecy fulfilled or the astrological phenomenon of the star, but by the wise men’s raw, unrestrained response—they worshiped. Earlier biblical translations read, “When they saw that the star had stopped, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” The description bends over backward with expression! The NRSV tries to subdue the hyperbole, saying simply they were “overwhelmed with joy,” but that sounds like an understatement. Something amazing happened to the wise men. They had a moment of revelation, a transcendent experience of the divine, and they could not contain their joy. Ronald Goetz writes, “They had lost the composure and reserve of scholars and sages, giving way to an ecstasy of naked adoration.” When was the last time that happened to you in worship?

The celebration of the epiphany is an invitation to praise. It is an opportunity to be so moved by God’s appearing in our midst that we cannot help but “fall down and worship him.” In this case, the task of the preacher may be to just get out of the way and let the people pay their homage.

St. Theresa of Avila in the 16th century asked, “How is it that there are not many who are led by sermons to forsake open sin? I think that’s because preachers have too much worldly wisdom. They are not like the Apostles (or the wise men for that matter), flinging it all aside and catching fire with love of God, and so their flame gives little heat.” What worldly wisdom could we possibly add to the already intense heat and brilliance of God’s loving manifestation to us in Jesus Christ? What if this year we attempted to say little but instead tried to bask much in the beauty of God’s perfect light given to us in the Christ child? What if we just knelt down?

Erin Martin is a pastor serving at Wesley United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon.

Comments

[maggie]

I was very excited about this blog when it first began. It was different from other lectionary preching resources, of which there are so many. It actually offered me a sort of a framework which I might use for developing my sermon. Now it is just someone's comments on the text, sort of their mini-sermon. I wish it could move back to what I thought was the original intention - not to tell us what to think but to help us organize our thinking about a particular text.

[Jason Byassee]

Thanks for your feedback on this feature, we're glad to have it. We do encourage writers to offer fodder for thought. Some do this more in bullet-point fashion, others in more essay-like fashion. We trust that not every commentator will 'work' for every preacher--hence we change the writer every six weeks, which we hope will be enough for a writer to catch her stride. We also shoot for variety in gender, denomination, theological vantage and so on. For example, I'll cherish this bit Erin brings us from St. Teresa, and trust she and others will have more to offer you as well.

[Stan Wilson]

Wow. What a wonderful image - the so-called wise men losing themselves in ecstatic worship. They are losing their rationalistic reserve. I think you're onto something here, especially after it was the so-called intellectuals (the chief priests and scribes) who were at the service of Herod. Here is another vision of wisdom, a type of wisdom which is not constrained by rational, detached book-knowledge. Could it be that such wisdom is less likely to be used by the powers and principalities?

[rick brand]

I am plowing toward Sunday with Ephesians. I read the translation of The Message and it seems to say that Paul has been given the secret of God's grace which is everybody "outside" stands in the same place to God's grace as those who were on the "inside". Gentiles and Jews. Could that be saying that Muslims and Christians stand at the same place before God as a result of the act of God's grace in Jesus? What about those who lived before jesus? Or never heard the preaching about Jesus. could all of them be co heirs with the Jews?

[doubting thomas]

Yes. I believe we all stand in the same place before the completely Other and Holy which we refer to as God. "As in Adam all have sinned and fallen short....so now too in Christ are all made alive....." did just a chosen few fall short of the glory of God? There are many ways up the mountain....There are many sacred traditions, all containing a piece of the moving mosaic mystery...here's to those pieces and the fire burning in them all. Hopefully that which we to refer to as God is much larger than all traditions, combined. This could be cause for ecstatic song, dance.....worship with the wise ones from the East, from ancient, sacred, Persia.....ps Has anyone noticed all the dreaming, the Holy Intrusions happening in the texts over these past weeks? Perhaps those Holy Intrusions can remind us to be aware of those stars rising in us in the night. Meister Eckhart, 13th century mystic, says that Christmas has to happen within us. Here's to all those tiny points of light, shining in and through the dark nights of our world and our individual lives.