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Homily by Laurie Volk
January 6th, 2002: Epiphany of the Lord.
(Is. 60:1-6,  Ps. 72,  Eph.3:2-3a,5-6,  Matt 2:1-12)

Do you ever wonder why you’re here? Not the existential question of why where you born into this time and place, but why are you here at Journey, why do you call yourself to church at all? Why this commitment of time and energy? What is it that holds us together?

Some might say faith.  Faith, then in what? Remember the angst of Philosophy 211? If I remember correctly that’s the class in which one is introduced to the question, “Does God exist?”  After suffering a bit, I came to the conclusion that proving or disproving, the existence of God, was an exercise in futility. One had faith or didn’t and no argument, however profound, could settle the question one way or another.  I found myself, and presume it is so for each of you, numbered among those who had faith.

Recent work on the electrochemical physiology of the brain says some of us are just wired that way.  Set up from birth to have experiences of God. Some of the philosopher-scientists working with this theory suggest that God only exists in our minds.  I am fascinated by the complexity of our brains, think we should learn all we can about them, but think for now at least this is another question in futility. If God exists only in our minds does that make God any less real? Again I find myself reduced to the question of being a person sure of faith or not.

So it is then that faith has gathered us together. The stories make us one.  The story in today’s gospel is one we have known since we were very young. Perhaps, there are, those who took part in the yearly Christmas pageant in their parishes as shepherds and sheep, wise men and gifts, angels and glad tidings, a single bright moving star. Maybe you even got to be Mary or Joseph, or if your pastor really went overboard, the live baby in the manger.  The usual pageant is a mixture of the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew.  Luke writes of shepherds and angels, Mathew of astrologers following a star.

Biblical scholars tell us that both the infancy narratives from Luke and Matthew are literary devices to make certain points that are not present in the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s Jesus just appears on the scene one day. Mark makes no claim that his Jesus had an auspicious birth. He seems to be satisfied that the story of Jesus was profound enough with out the need for adornment and explanation. Luke and Mathew are arguing with Mark’s plain Jesus.  They seem to think it necessary to put Jesus on par with other kings of the day, providing him with a proper lineage and a birthplace that will fall in line with the promises from Isaiah and the other prophets. Mathew first wants to make clear that Jesus is born from a long line of kings, to fulfill the prophecy that the messiah would come from the house of David, hence the long genealogy in the first chapter.  Here in the second chapter, other points are being made to fulfill other scriptures, but also to make it clear that Jesus is a king for Jews and gentiles.

Ancient Israel had no need of astrologers, as the chosen people they had one God to lead them.  For other Mediterranean cultures, astrology played an important role.  Astrologers took up seats among the mathematicians and philosophers of the day.  For many people astrology was as a religion they put their faith in.  A moving star, a comet, was often foreseen as a harbinger of bad news.  Jesus was bad news for the traditional ruler, who taxed their people into poverty, who took even the food from the tables of the poor. The reign of God, he proclaimed, is nothing like the Pax Romana, or any country that exists now or then. Mathew employs magi, magic men, astrologers, to bear this news to Herod.  The magi serve another purpose for Mathew and that is to announce the reign of God, open to gentiles and the people of Israel. 

 So, literally no star in the east and no wise men on camels, bearing gifts for an infant. Is our faith somehow then diminished, because a life-giving story is not entirely factual?  Matthew has written a good story, a story full enough of myth, legend and originality to draw us in.  He has opened the eyes of his readers to the birth of a new king, a king fit to break down the old ways of peasants and patrons, workers and corporate presidents. He opens the region of this new king to any who would follow after him.  By faith have we been lead thus far. Faith in more than our own capabilities, faith in God.

Do you ever wonder why you’re here?  Why you continue to be church? When polled, most people believe in God, but especially here in the northwest few of us make the choice to be church. Faith in God, I say is just the beginning.  Gathering together to be church for one another is another step on the way.  Telling the old stories and joining our lives to those hopes and fears are another.  Daring to break apart those stories to bare bones of theory and theology is another step.  For even in the light of bible study and criticism, “exegesis”, we are left with little intact of the gospels we have know as the stories of our faith. What we are left with is stories that refuse to be watered down. Stories that give us hope as they did the early church, and stories that accuse us personally and culturally as they also did those first followers after Jesus.  I believe we have the strength to hear these hard truths and to live them out.

Faith in God is the beginning that leads us to faith in the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus.  Our desperate longing hope that the reign is real, is possible, is here and on the way, that mission, given to us by one who died and rose from the dead is why I’m here.  I can know God and give praise to God in many places, many times.  It is when I am here with you, when we are church that I begin to see the reign of God.  It is in our singing; it is in our struggling to know what it was that Jesus was really up to. Not sweet infant lying in a manger, adored by astrologers, but driven old man, leading us down the subversive path, of kingship as service, of all called to the feast.    It is in re-imaging ourselves as in the world, but not of it.  It is in knowing ourselves in this place as people with voices that will be heard.