1-7-2007

The Gifts of our Heart - The Rev. Elizabeth Roles

The Feast of the Epiphany, Year C, 2007

Matthew 2:1-12

Jeremy and I drove through the Midwest after Christmas.  We felt like the wise men following the star across mountains, fields, rivers, and the Mark Twain National Forest.  Our star led us to Jeremy’s 93-year-old grandfather.  During his long life, Grandpa Ken worked on farms and in factories in Iowa and Missouri.  For the last ten years, he has lived in a retirement community in the Ozarks.  He is a special man whose motto is that every day is a good day.  His wisdom, love for his family, and his delight for life shines bright and drew us towards him across all of those miles.

One evening, Grandpa Ken and his 99-year-old friend Pearl Jean taught us a card game called “hand and foot.”  Pearl Jean taught us the rules of the game, and Ken recorded our scores.  Pearl Jean and Ken are both still sharp.  I was curious as we sat down together to see what direction the conversation would take.  At the end of their life, when home, career, and peers have been all but stripped away, what remains?  What is left to say?  The answer was not so surprising.  They talked about people – about relationships.  They gossiped about the other residents.  They talked about the nurses and nursing assistants.  They spoke of the concerns and needs of the people in their lives.  They complained about people getting on their nerves, the rub of living with all these people under one roof. 

Now Pearl Jean said, “Put your cards down, sweetie.”  So here was my epiphany:  At the end of our life, what has been most important to us all along remains – our relationships to one another – the struggle to learn to love each other – the beauty of getting a relationship right.  Whether we are in the home, the workplace, or the retirement community, the daily sharing of our lives with others is our preoccupation.  Relationships, even when they are difficult, sustain our hearts, minds, and souls. This is why God chose to meet us in the flesh, as a person, as Jesus.  God became one of us, taking on human form, feeling what we feel, experiencing what we experience. God came to us in a way we could understand and relate to – as another human being.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, the traditional end to the Christmas season.  Epiphany begins “the shining forth” of the miracle of Jesus’ Incarnation.  The visit of the wise men reveals the hidden miracle that occurred in a dark stable that was past the edge of respectability.  These visitors are not like the Shepherds described in Luke’s version of the nativity.  The Shepherds, like Mary and Joseph, were anonymous members of a Jewish peasant culture.  The wise men, however, were astrologists from the priestly class of Persia or Babylon.  These men merited an audience with King Herod.  They belonged in the courts of power.  Their knowledge of astrology told them that a ruler of worldly significance would be found beneath a star.  They followed the star and traveled half way across the known world to find and pay homage to this little child.  The wise men’s visit to the Christ child announces to the world – not only the Jewish world, the entire world – that a messiah has come to save all people.  All people – not just those assumed chosen.  A messiah has come for Jew and Gentile, man and woman, slave and free.

Upon entering the house, the wise men gave gifts to the child.  They gave gold – a gift for a king.  They gave frankincense – a gift for a priest.  And they gave myrrh - a gift for a victim.  Myrrh was a highly prized component of perfume and incense that was used in the treatment of the sick and in the embalming of the dead.  The gift of myrrh signified that this child would suffer and die as we all suffer and die.  This king will rule by revealing the light that shines in darkness of the world by dying on a cross and living again. 

This Epiphany I hope we consider what we would journey half way across the known world to find.  Like my trip to Missouri, we are quick to answer that we will travel to find loved ones, grandparents, grandchildren, and dear old friends.  Yet the journey of the wise men suggests to us that the star over the incarnate God may lead us to less obvious and more awkward places.

In the coming months, St. Mark’s will offer several ways to travel the road to the incarnate Christ.  For example, a journey through the doors of Carter Hope House or DEO allows us to bring myrrh to the Christ child in people who are suffering in our town.  This coming Lent, our Wednesday night adult education series invites us on a journey towards forgiveness.  I believe we will meet Christ on this journey.  In fact, the Victim King will lead the way

In our life together, let us go to see the child.  Like sages, let us delight at seeing the star.  Let us rejoice even when we feel the discomfort of the journey, the hardships of living together.  For as Grandpa Ken showed me, this is why we are alive.  This is what we have set out on the journey to find.  The face of the little child, the victim king, is the same face that we find in loved ones and strangers.  Let us pay homage to the child with our lives.  Let us open the gifts of our heart.