TS Eliot and the Magi

Here is the crux of this year's Epiphany sermon at Queen Anne United Methodist Church. It seems to me that Epiphany calls us to go down new paths. More than that, though, in our time of intense international conflict and uncertainty, the idea of all nations seeking light to lead us all to peace is a wonderful thought.



Soon after his conversion and baptism in 1927, TS Eliot wrote “Journey of the Magi,” which begins:

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’

Eliot wrote this poem during a time of deep personal and spiritual struggle. His marriage, which had been difficult for a number of years, was coming to a close. His newly forming faith demanded that he leave behind parts of himself to which he had grown accustomed. Everything was changing. New life was born out of a series of deaths. The poem concludes:

'All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.'

The story of the Magi, which culminates in the Adoration of the Magi on January 6 – Epiphany – is a story about uncertainty, journey, death, and birth. Many of us look back to the story of the Magi believing it to be part of our spiritual history, but, a more mature faith looks to the story as something much more meaningful. It is about us searching for God. We struggle. We search. We come to what feels like unsatisfactory endings to our travels only to be led down yet more paths to unknown destinations. We go through periods of deep uncertainty. Like the Magi, we little understand the culture or the ways of Jesus and his family. Like the Magi, we are distanced from them by space. Unlike the Magi, we are also distanced by two millennia; time is its own ocean we must cross to meet the Christ-child. Like the Magi, we must die to our gods in order to enter into the presence of the God of the Most High.

Epiphany is our celebration of the gift of ourselves to God. We bring all that we have – our best, our most precious selves and we kneel in awe and wonder at the miracle of the Divine One right here among us. Epiphany is for all who struggle and weep, for all who wrestle with God, for all who question whether we will find God at all. Epiphany is our way of experiencing together, if only for one day, a reality that is both in and outside of our world. God is here. In the humble places. In our fear. In our dreams. In the dirt, slime, and muck of the world. God is here. Despite our doubts. Despite our wars. Despite our greed. Despite our proclivity to wound one another. God is here. God knows the pain of birth, life, and death. God knows all that we experience because God experiences it with us. Birth and death. So close together. As we start our new year together, I wish you healing deaths and vibrant life. I hope that we, like the Magi, learn to die that we might live. I hope that we, Queen Anne UMC, can hear the beauty and the calling of the words of TS Eliot, whose own journey to the manger led him to realize:

'I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.'

Epiphany A - Something Dark

Something dark happened yesterday. A shooter walked into a Safeway in Arizona and let loose a barrage of bullets that killed six people, including a federal judge, a former social worker turned Congressional aid, and a nine year old girl. The target of the shooting was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Every week when we assemble in worship, someone in this room brings something dark with them. During prayers of the people, we pray for people going through divorces, people living with addiction, nations and peoples torn apart by strife and war. We pray for people living with cancer. We lift up the names of families living with tragedy upon tragedy: suicides, deaths, financial ruin. The world is not short of dark times.

January 6 was Epiphany. Twelve days after Christmas Day, the Church celebrates the arrival of the magi or the Wise Men at the house of Mary and Joseph where they bring gifts to the Christ-child. Herod, who was the King of the Jews, was frightened by the news that a new “king” may be born. He called the Magi to him and commanded them to collaborate with him in eliminating this threat. Just a few verses later (16-18), Herod, in an attempt to quell his competition, sends his men to kill all boys of Jesus’ approximate age. This passage is often called the Slaughter (or Massacre) of the Innocents.

This political setting is important if we are to grasp the truly amazing nature of Epiphany. We cannot hope to experience the power of the light, the power of the revelation, the faith of the Magi, or the love of Jesus’ parents without fully grasping the peril in which they find themselves. Unlike Luke’s Christmas story, which is filled with angels singing, shepherds proclaiming, and cloths swaddling, Matthew gives us a grim tale of Jesus’ birth. Matthew begins with 17 verses of family lineage and then a few short sentences of verbal contortion to show how Jesus could be both the son of the Holy Spirit and Joseph. Joseph then has a dream that tells him not to put Mary away from him even though she is pregnant and then the birth, as such, which goes like this: “24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” That is the entire Christmas story. No inn. No wrapping him in swaddling clothes. No census. No manger. Stark and dark.

Into this walk the magi. The only thing we know about them is that they came from the east, they interacted with Herod, they brought gifts, and they fled. However, the lack of detail about them does not diminish the power of their witness. The story of the magi is filled with meaning: what they mean - what Epiphany itself means - is that by the power of God’s light the Word of God is revealed to all the world. Epiphany, the word, comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia,” which means “manifestation” or “revelation.” Epiphany is the celebration of God’s revelation or manifestation in Jesus the Christ to all the earth. God’s light splits the darkness of the world, and by its power, draws us near to the divine - even if we must walk through perilous places to get there, even if we must confront and be confronted by the powers and principalities of this life in dangerous and threatening ways. The magi, after giving Jesus their gifts, went home by another way, knowing that Herod sought them for no good end. Gregory the Great believed that this story meant that once we have come to know Jesus, we are forbidden to return the way we came to him. This story is about finding a new path in life - a path directed by God’s light, filled with God’s revelation, and known by our gifts.

God’s light does not ask for us to pretend that dark forces are not at work. The magi understood Herod’s nefarious intentions and responded to them. But, as the forces of this world try to keep us living in death and in fear, God’s light leads us by another way.

Whether one watches FOX News or MSNBC or listens to NPR, we are hearing spin on yesterday’s tragedy. This is tragedy upon tragedy. More than anything, what is happening in our public sphere causes me deep sorrow because in the midst of the darkness of our world, I see glimmers of God’s light at work in the world, desperately trying to lead us by another way. Is there not a less vilifying way to engage in public discourse? Is there not another way to discuss health care, immigration, abortion, taxation, trade agreements, government funding, homosexuality, and other difficult issues than to evoke mental images of Communism, Naziism, or Anarchy? Has the church no role in standing up and crying out for us to go by another way, and, by our own witness and example, show that God’s manifestation changes how we live in the world? People are hurting and our public discourse does nothing more than heap salt into wounds. We are not pursuing a common good. We are not lifting one another up in love and comfort. We are fighting like children, using grown up language and grown up tools. This is a dangerous combination.

Every day I receive articles - in magazines, online, and in periodicals - that talk about the demise of mainline Christian Protestantism. We live in a time and place that is suspicious about organized religion, that sees the hypocrisy in denominationalism, that shrinks away from choosing one “brand” of Christianity - or even religion - over another. But I know that the church is needed more than ever to bear witness to God’s manifestation among us. Our voice is needed to stand outside of partisan politics and to declare that there is another politics that claims our lives - God’s politics - and that this organization of public life relies upon personal and social holiness and leads to radical transformation. It is our holy and sacred duty to be strong in our Gospel proclamations and yet also humble, that we not fall into the hubris of believing we own this Gospel. We do not. It is something at work in our lives and in our congregations, changing us, leading us by God’s light onto paths down which we have not yet tread or mapped. This light leads us to confront governments that oppress and slaughter the innocents. It leads us to give the best of what we have and all that we are to the service of God’s holy and blessed word known and manifest in the weak and fragile bodies all around us. God’s light illumines our path and sends us into life by a different way, unable to return down the same path by which we came or even to remain the same people who first began our journey. The church is needed to be a place where soul conversation can rise above the partisan conversations that frame too much of our public discourse. The church is needed - the real church - the one that will repent when it is wrong, that seeks unity in God’s holy light, and that moves forward without apology to God’s holy dwelling place.

Something dark happened yesterday. And it will happen again. Today, tomorrow, and every day after that. But something light is also happening. And by this light, all the earth might be changed. We celebrate this light as we celebrate Epiphany, which begins a season filled with stories about call, transformation, and holy vocation. Walk this path with me. I would love to walk it with you. And, maybe at the end of it, we will wonder at God’s work in the world. Amen.

a society of wanderers

Yesterday I returned home from a week long break. The planes were fairly crowded; the airports were, too. We are a society of wanderers. The gift of easy travel (despite how it feels sometimes) has taken us far from the homes of our childhoods. Sometimes this frees us to be who we know we are. Sometimes it removes us from our anchors. We have become wanderers, pilgrims, nomads - even homeless. I wonder how different our wandering is from the journey of the magi, who set off to find the King of kings, the Christ child. Our wanderings may feel more like meanderings than journeys, but I believe we all set off for a reason. It's this reason that determines whether we are aimlessly meandering or wandering with a purpose...journeying, if you will.

I'm too tired to write much about this, but as I climbed aboard the plane yesterday to cross time zones, mountains, and over a thousand miles, I knew that I was crossing more than geography. I left behind the family with whom I share a history that stretches to the beginning of humankind. While I love the life that I've chosen and that I've worked hard to establish, I know that I, like many others, live a somewhat dislocated life. Maybe my dreams will make this more clear for me. All I know is that as I think of the magi this Epiphany I think of some books on my bookshelf, including "The Homeless Mind" by Peter Berger and "Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles" by Walter Brueggemann.

Note to those not raised with a liturgical calendar: Epiphany, for those in the Western Church, ends the Christmas cycle. It is the feast day on which we remember the arrival of the magi. While pictoral representations typically show three "wise men," the Bible doesn't enumerate them nor does it name them. Tradition has given them the names Gaspar, Malchior, and Balthazar, and they have come to represent the gentile's, i.e. non-Jewish people's, recognition of Jesus as the Anointed One, the King of kings. One this day we celebrate the hope of the entire world worshiping the God of peace. The origin, calendar date, and meaning of Epiphany differs between the Eastern Church and the Western Church. The meaning has also changed over time. But, for all intents and purposes, Epiphany marks the end of the twelve days of Christmas, is followed by Baptism of the Lord, and then we begin "Ordinary Time" or "Kingdomtide."

So...as I celebrate this feast day I will also celebrate those who have given me life and love and those with whom I seek that now. I remember that Christ came and offered all people home in the covenant community. And I hold a hope for the Church that we will provide a place of belonging and home for all who come searching for it.

twelve days of christmas (christmas just started!)

I didn't think that I would post again before going on vacation, but there is something that I want to highlight, especially for people who have not been raised in a liturgically based denomination. Christmas is not a day. It is a season just like Easter, Lent, and Advent. As a season, Christmas lasts twelve days and ends when the magi, bringing their gifts, appear to the Christ child - Epiphany. So, when we sing about the twelve days of Christmas, we are singing about the days after Christmas, not the days before.

Even more little known among people is Twelfth Night, which falls on January 5, the day before Epiphany. Twelfth Night is a great time for feasting, celebrating the King of kings and looking ahead to the joy of Epiphany, which arrives the next day. Feasting on Twelfth Night is both an English and a French custom, which includes eating a King's Cake. Some have also reserved the King's Cake for Epiphany; both customs are traditional (FYI, King's Cake is part of Mardi Gras in the USA...this is where the custom comes from).

Remember, Christmas has not ended; it has just begun. For each of the twelve days of Christmas, we are invited to experience the miracle of the heavens and the earth co-existing in new and unimaginable ways. Many Christians, especially progressive Christians, have spent such a great deal of time demythologizing our faith that we have lost the mystery and miracle of our story. It is possible to separate myth, legend, and fable from fact and still hold to the truths of our myths, legends, and fables. The truth of our story doesn't reside in its factual accuracy; it resides in the ageless truth that life is stronger than death, that our worth doesn't arise from our birth or cultural position but out of God's grace, that God's deepest desire is for shalom - peace. Christmas has come. Let's not pack it away unmindfully, too quickly. Advent invited us to prepare for these twelve days. Let's enjoy them and marvel at how the heavens crashed into the earth, and the Prince of Peace struggled into the world amid the violence and greed of politics, amid the mess and stink of poverty, amid the scandal of his parentage, and amid the condition of humankind.