Br Ian's sermon for the Feast of The Epiphany 2011

The Magi

Magi 1

He was not what I had expected.  He was a king after all.  King Herod, the king of all Judea, the man who had built the temple in Jerusalem and rebuilt the city of Caesarea.  Yet despite, or perhaps because of his title and authority, he seemed frightened, paranoid you might say.  He seemed to bear the responsibility heavily and was not at all at ease, pacing about and a look of anguish in his eyes.   

We came with the good news of the birth of a child, and he was quick to offer his help in finding the infant so he could go and offer his own adulation.  But we knew he had not really heard and understood what we had said.  He was in no fit state to reflect on the consequences of our message.  He couldn’t hear the real implications of the birth.  How could the good news, strange as it was, pass through his bitterness and suspicion?  I wonder even now if he had been ready to truly listen, how might our journey have changed?

Magi 2

The travelling was fine, interesting in fact.  We are life-long students as well as teachers, so any journey presents another opportunity for study and learning; a new culture and tradition to examine, a new story to explore.

What was hard was the ending.  We had found him of course, and we gave our gifts, but we knew that we were only at the beginning of a new story.  When we saw him he was a child, so he was at the beginning of his life, but it was also the beginning of a new age, the sign of the entrance of a new order in the world. 

But we had to leave him there, and find a different way home and we can’t know exactly how the story will continue. 

So it is with beginnings and endings.  An ending can draw us back to questions left unanswered; yet an ending may also bear the fruit of a new beginning, if you search amongst the dirt and straw.

Magi 3

This was not our first journey of course.  We have been on many before in different directions and for different needs.  But this was the first that ended with a mother and child. 

She held him tenderly as any mother would.  Guiding his feet and watching for obstacles and pitfalls in his path.  He crawled and discovered the nooks and crannies, and Mary, tired yet patient, rescued him from the dangers which went unnoticed to his eyes.  There was nothing unusual in the scene, it has been played out thousands of times before, but for all that it was no less powerful and important.  The love of mother and child.  What had that love already cost her?  Through that love, what new places in her heart and mind would be revealed in the years to come?

We believe that in the future the child will establish a new kingdom; he will be a King to rule his people, but perhaps the most precious and startling thing he might bring will be the manner of his love.  It seemed to me that amidst the gifts and the talk and the visions, it was the reality of love itself which heralded what is to appear.