Year A Epiphany
On my way down to Louisiana for Will’s wedding I took my IPod. I wanted to spend the long hours on the plane listening to the modules for Einstein’s God – our Lenten study modules. They are quite good I might add. I am excited about doing this series. I love my IPod – especially when I am traveling. I get to listen to all the music that I like. Wish I had had one all those years when I was carting teenagers around from soccer game to sleep over. They give new meaning to Thoreau admonishing us to walk to the beat of our own drummer.
Just in case you do not own one…. They are these little boxes with memory devices inside. They work in concert with your computer and a website called ITunes to sell music for 99 cents per song. Commuters wear IPods on the subway. They stick the earphones in their ears and become oblivious to the people around them. I like these clunky things because they don’t hurt my ears after hours of listening.
But IPods can be isolating too. Whenever I meet with a youth group the first thing we do is put all of our cell phones and IPods on the table as an outward and visible sign of our inward and real presence in the place.
When they first gave it to me my children thought that I would download a lot of my music, but I quickly learned that ITunes had more than music. They have books. And I found out they have poetry – and even some poems read by the author. On my trip I ran across a recording of Robert Frost reading The Road Not Taken. Remember that poem? I immediately thought of our lessons today with I heard it.
|
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
|
|
|
And sorry I could not travel both
|
|
|
And be one traveler, long I stood
|
|
|
And looked down one as far as I could
|
|
|
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
|
5
|
|
|
|
|
Then took the other, as just as fair,
|
|
|
And having perhaps the better claim,
|
|
|
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
|
|
|
Though as for that the passing there
|
|
|
Had worn them really about the same,
|
10
|
|
|
|
|
And both that morning equally lay
|
|
|
In leaves no step had trodden black.
|
|
|
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
|
|
|
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
|
|
|
I doubted if I should ever come back.
|
15
|
|
|
|
|
I shall be telling this with a sigh
|
|
|
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
|
|
|
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
|
|
|
I took the one less traveled by,
|
|
|
And that has made all the difference.
|
|
This poem, according to Frost, was written about a friend of his named Edward Thomas who was a poet himself. He, according to Frost, when they were walking - would come to different paths and after choosing one, Thomas would always fret wondering what they might have missed by not taking the other path. About the time this poem was published Thomas joined the military and was sent to fight in WWI. He continued to be agitated about decisions that he made in his life – worried about what might have been if he had made a different decision. The poem has been and continues to be used as an inspirational poem, one that seems to be encouraging self-reliance, not following where others have led. But I don’t think that Frost was trying to make a value judgment on Thomas’ decision to join the military. The poem does not moralize about choice, it simply says that choice is inevitable but you never know what your choice will mean until you have lived it.
As I began to pray with these lessons today I was totally caught off guard and captivated by the decision of the Wise Men to go home by a different way. It seemed to me that they had to choose between two divergent paths. They could either go back to Jerusalem and keep the promise that they had made to Herod or they could break their promise and sneak out the back way. Remember that we know that Herod had mischief on his mind, but the Wise Men did not know that, at least according to the story.
According to Matthew they were “warned in a dream not to return to Herod”. No reason was offered to them. I think if I had been in the Wise Men’s shoes the path to choose would not have been as clear to me as it might seem to you or me now. And I suspect the Magi felt the same way. What did seem clear to them was that something wonderful had happened in the world and neither they nor any other human had been the author of it.
Scholars would most likely say that this story of the Wise Men coming to worship Jesus was a story that Matthew told to illustrate that Jesus’ birth is grounded in Hebrew scripture and that God had sent Jesus to people outside the Jewish world. Matthew probably had the Isaiah reading from today’s lesson in mind - Israel is brought back home from exile to a place of grandeur. Other nations – their adversaries, had become aware of the power and the glory of the God of Israel. The Magi had other roads in front of them. They could have stayed home and prospered as wealthy nobles. They could have gone back to Herod and been rewarded for their deed. But they chose the road less traveled. The road that led them to the stable and to Jesus, They came - bringing the finest of gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh, because they sensed God’s hand in the making of this miracle and they wanted to know more.
The glory of God is meant to shine on all people. But that possibility should not take away from the truth about God’s revelation to us in Jesus. Because Jesus is not born into the grandeur of a King’s palace. Jesus is born in a stable and that is where the Wise Men find him and that is where they worship him. Today our lessons turn upside done all of our notions of what God’s Glory or a Kingly Messiah should be. What we hear today is that God comes not in grandeur, but in humility and not to be powerful and controlling but rather to bring justice and peace and to be the liberator of those who are unable to help themselves. Epiphany calls is to a stable to worship and then when it is time to return home to follow the path of servant, the path of peacemaker. This is not some event that took place in antiquity – it is as real today as it was 2000 years ago and we too have a choice to make about which road we will take.
Each day that we live we make decisions about how we live our lives. You do, I do, we all make decisions about what paths, what journeys our lives will take. And so we need to ask ourselves – what are the sources or resources that we have to help us make decisions. Unlike the Wise Men we may not be able to count on God’s revelation coming in our dreams. People of faith have other means by which they discern or choose the path to follow. Although the semantics may differ there are some commonalities.
· One is listening to the inner voice. Spending time in quiet and in prayer. Letting the welling up of joy within us lead us to places where we feel God’s presence and God’s Love for us.
· We test the paths we are to take in community. This is the basis behind worshipping together on Sunday morning, having a youth group, of living in families, coming to Bible studies and Christian formation groups. I suspect that the Wise Men had a little conference before they left to go home. I am pretty sure that the decision to avoid Herod was made in community and that all known options were considered.
· And I think people of faith try to take the focus away from self and consider the needs of others. As Christians it is Jesus’ ministry that leads us to that place. As Christians we learn from scripture that God wants us to live a life of service and compassion to others.
Today we are celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany. The wise Men, the Magi, have finally made it to the Crèche that we blessed on Christmas Eve. It is a feast day to remember the revelation of God’s mystery in the coming of Jesus. during Epiphany, the most prevalent symbol, visible both in the liturgy and in the lessons is the image of light. In our lessons from Isaiah the prophet tells us that the light, the gift of God, carries with it the power to transform Israel so that Israel is restored and also that those outside Israel are inevitably drawn to the light seen in Israel. Matthew tells us that it is this Light, emanating from God that drew the Magi, the foreigners, to Bethlehem. They knew nothing of the ancient scripture of Israel, but they sensed the importance of the star. Matthew wants us to see the difference between the path back to Jerusalem that leads to wealth at the expense of the poor and exclusion of those who are different and oppression of those who are weak. That is the path that led back to Herod. The other path was one that led to a stable and out into the world transformed by God. If we are to live into the Light of the Epiphany then we are called to walk an unsure path, but we are guided by the one sure Light of Christ. Like the king of which the psalmist speaks our path is to be a path of service, a path of faith, a path of showing love and compassion to the weakest of all.
Epiphany calls our attention to how we are to respond to the revelation of God in Jesus. That revelation reminds us that God’s light penetrates the darkest of places. God’s light reaches into our very souls and knows us as we are and not as we pretend to be. God’s Light warms us and makes the path clear for us so that we will not stumble. The paths that we choose to follow in the woods do not always come with clear cut options of which is the best way and so we must continue to watch for God’s star, listen for God’s still small voice in our hearts, and trust that whichever path we choose to walk Jesus will walk it with us. Amen
|