An Epiphany Devotion - Matthew 2: 1-12

A Devotion for Epiphany – January 6

Based on Matthew 2: 1-12

January 6 is the day of Epiphany, the day the Christian church celebrates the arrival of the wise men to the child, Jesus, and give homage to the newborn King. Epiphany means “revealing,” literally “to shine light upon,” and during the season of Epipany, Jesus is revealed as the Savior of the world. But, the season begins with the arrival of the Wise Men.

I say “wise men” – depending on the translation or the song, you might know them as wise men, Magi, sages, or even kings. Usually, they are described as astrologers, but the term used in the Greek New Testament implies an interest in dreams, stars, and perhaps even magic. They were from the East, presumably the area of Babylon, the region where the Israelites had been taken into captivity 700 years earlier. As to how many wise men there were, we simply don’t know. Traditionally, the story says there were three men – one for each gift. There is another story about a fourth wise man who gave his gift away, so that by the time he arrived at Jesus’ side, he was without a present and, thus, overlooked. Regardless, what we know is what Matthew tells us in chapter 2 of his Gospel: they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Gold, you know: a very expensive, precious metal, useful for the buying and selling of goods. You’re probably less familiar with the other two gifts. Frankincense is a tree resin that can be either dried into granules for burning or infused into an oil. If you know anyone who uses essential oil, there is often a scent called “Frankincense.” Myrrh is a spice, either dry or added to oils to be used for both perfume and for anointing. All three were expensive, special gifts that you didn’t just pick up at the corner market. These were gifts from kings; gifts fit for a king.

What gifts are you giving to Jesus this year? What kind of gifts have you brought that are worthy for the Newborn King? It’s tempting to tap our wallets and checkbooks, thinking we bring Jesus our gifts of finances. How about our prayers and our praises? That’s a good, sanctified answer. Perhaps we owe him good, Christian living.

He doesn’t want any of those things. Jesus doesn’t you to bring to His crib your gold-plated, incense-infused, myrrh-scented self-righteous life. He doesn’t want your money. He doesn’t want your goodness. All Jesus wants from you is your sins, your guilt, and your shame. This is the only gift Jesus wants from you this Epiphany day: your sins, because that’s the entire reason He came – to save you from those damned – I use that word deliberately – and damning sins.

That sounds backwards, doesn’t it? Why, the Wise Men brought gifts fit for a King – gold, frankincense and myrrh – shouldn’t we at least try to do the same, give Him our best?

If Jesus were an earthly King, an earthly ruler, then yes, this might be true. But Jesus is a different kind of King. The perfect, holy, sinless Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, announced by angels, witnessed by shepherds, whose name is Jesus, is a King who will save His people from their sins.

These gifts from the wise men also have a certain amount of foreshadowing to them. No one knew that day as Mary and Joseph oohed and aahed at the expensive treasures that one day the gold would be replaced by 30 pieces of silver that would be used to turn a disciple into a traitor. Mary certainly had no inkling that three decades later, she, along with some other women, would be carrying frankincense and myrrh and other spices to embalm her son after His crucifixion and His death for the sins of the world. Those events were far in the future, but in God’s plan of salvation – His heilsgeschichte, for you German lovers – they were already in place for the redemption of the world.

On this first month of the new year of a new decade, take all of the sins of the past and leave them with Jesus. Don’t carry them any further. Your sins of cursing and swearing, dishonoring your parents, speaking ill of our elected officials, hating the ex, yelling at the kids, gossiping, lying, stealing time from our employers, holding grudges; of having emotional affairs, alcohol and drug abuse, failing to love, honor and cherish your spouse; failing to fear, love and trust in God more than all other things; thinking that you can make yourself better all by yourself… There are many more…those sins you try to bury deep within, but the guilt keeps dragging them to the surface; those things you try to shove into the dark corner of your memory, but the shame – the devil’s favorite lie that you should know better because you are a Christian! – keeps shining a light into those corners and illuminates them for you to remember. Of these, of all of these, give them to Jesus. Bring them to the Infant King in repentance, confess them, and believe that Jesus came to take them from you.

Those are the gifts that Jesus wants. You don’t have to wrap them up pretty; they don’t need bows and ribbons; they don’t deserve pretty wrappings. Give them to Jesus with all their ugliness and nastiness.

Start the New Year fresh, free, and forgiven. Jesus gives you the gift of forgiveness, destroying sin’s damning power. He gives you the gift of joy, that you are no longer burdened by the weight of your griefs and shame. He gives you the gift of peace, that the relationship with God is restored and whole. He gives you the gift of salvation, that eternity with God is yours. He gives the gift of love, that you are able to share with those around you. He gives the gift of faith that enables you to say, “This is most certainly true.”

With Epiphany joy, peace and hope, amen.

Jesus' Christmas Gift for Moms and Dads - Luke 2:40-52

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the Gospel lesson. Luke 2:40-52.

As a dad, this narrative is very frustrating. Let me explain.

If I was Joseph, I would have been furious with my son. For my son to have so completely disrespected me, to not follow obediently, to not travel with us, or at least be in the same group, without telling me what he is doing is just – grrrrr!!!! – unacceptable. Jesus seems to show complete disregard, not only for his dad’s authority, but his mother’s concern, for their joint parental responsibility, their fears, their angst. Overall, it seems Jesus doesn’t care one whit. As a parent, that is very frustrating. So, as a dad, as a parent, I empathize deeply with Mary and Joseph in their frantic search for their missing son.

I suspect that all of you parents, you grandparents, you probably do as well because you’ve been there. You have had that experience of having a child disappear while you were at the grocery store or the mall or at the ballpark. Your son was right there a second ago, playing catch with a buddy at the end of the bleachers; your daughter was standing right next to you while you dug through the clothes rack trying to find her a new outfit for school, but but when you turn around it’s as if – poof – they disappeared. The frantic search, as concern quickly accelerates to angst and then fear; the terrible “what if” thoughts. Have you ever heard a “Code Adam” call over the loudspeaker in the store? It’s a store’s response to a panicked parent’s realization that the child is missing. Employees swing into action, guarding doors, asking shoppers with children if they are family. The police are called. Everyone searches frantically - scurrying down aisles, hunting under clothes racks, looking below the bleachers, to finally find them stretched out on the dog beds in Aisle 29, simply needing a nap, or to see them waddling towards you with two boxes of their favorite cereal under their arms, or standing in the toy aisle staring at the latest and greatest thing they saw at their friend’s house, or playing quietly with a couple other friends, totally oblivious to your frantic and panicked search. Thankfully, most of the time, these panicked searches end up well, but with a bag of mixed feelings: joy the lost child is found, frustration the child left in the first place, and shame that you missed the fact that your child disappeared without your knowledge.

Because you’ve experienced this, you can understand and imagine Mary and Joseph’s frustration, fear, and concern. Luke wants us to see this story through their eyes. He wants us to know their grief and pain, their frantic efforts to find their son. At the evening camp, after a day’s journey – fifteen to twenty miles – from Jerusalem, they discovered Jesus wasn’t there. A quick search among their traveling companions identified Jesus was not among them. Then, the frantic return to the city, swollen in population for Passover, growing and blossoming hour by hour, stretching into a three-day search for their son, their twelve-year old son, their only son.

The Temple was the center of Israel's life, in every sense of the word. It was a community center, a worship center, a political center, even an economic center. If you were looking for someone, it makes sense to start there. But, I wonder if their return to the Temple was motivated by spiritual, as much as physical and emotional, need? You know how it is – in times of great crisis, turning to the house of God for prayer, solitude and – perhaps – answers? A sense that they’ve tried everything else, so perhaps this was the final option? Or was it less spiritual, and simply checking the last place they remembered seeing Jesus?  

And, then, I can imagine – as can you – their mixed bag of emotions when they discover Jesus there, in the Temple, surrounded by the great teachers of the Law. It was apparently an incredible give-and-take between the boy and the men: Jesus both listening to them and asking questions, but also answering and demonstrating great understanding. Mary and Joseph, astonished at what was before them, both seeing and hearing this dialogue; frustrated at their son’s seeming lack of respect and concern; relief to find him safe.

And I have to wonder if she remembered the day she and Joseph brought Jesus to Temple for His circumcision, that strange day that the old man, Simeon, held the baby in his arms, sang the Nunc Dimittis – Lord, let your servant depart in peace – and then he looked at Mary and said:

This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Did she wonder if this moment was the first of more to come?

Was there understanding that in her Son, God deigned to dwell among man, not in a Tabernacle, or even in the Temple, but in human flesh? Did she have any inclination that the day would come when those same teachers  of the law would turn against Jesus, instead of sitting and engaging with Jesus in teaching and learning they engaged instead in plotting to kill Him? Could she have any idea that He would, in 30 years, make His own journey to Jerusalem for Passover? Was there any inkling in her mind that then He would be left behind again – this time not by parents but by everyone – including His Heavenly Father? Did she understand that there would be another three day period where she would be separated from her son who lay, dead and buried, behind a sealed stone and where she would finally find Him, but mistake Him for the gardener?

No…standing there in Temple, watching her 12 year old son with pride and curiosity, with frustration and anxiety, she didn’t have any idea of what lay ahead for Jesus and what was necessary for Him to fulfill His name and be Savior. What she knew is that it was time to go home, back to sleepy little Nazareth, and for Jesus to go with her. He did, Luke noting that He continued to grow in wisdom and in stature with God and man. She had found her Son, where He was most at home – in His Father’s house. But it was time to leave the Temple behind for another year.

I started this sermon by putting us parents in the shoes of Mary and Joseph. Whether you count your child’s lifespan still as weeks and months or by the decade, you have had those moments and experiences of anger and frustration at your children – some were righteously felt, but if we’re honest, others not so much. Parenting is one of God’s great gifts and children are a blessing. The parent-to-child relationship is the foundation of all mankind, one where grace and mercy is freely practiced, and love and compassion are exercised. And the devil cannot abide this. So, the devil loves to take the gift and fill us with frustration and hurt so that we call it a burden, and he loves to take the blessing and fill it with harsh words and broken hearts so that we call it a curse.  Love and compassion are surrendered to getting even and showing who’s boss; grace and mercy are given over to self-justification and self-righteousness. And then, when we realize our mistakes and our sins against our kids, the devil takes that all and wraps it up with a horrible, thorny bow and delivers it to us again either as arrogance, foolishly thinking we were right-as-rain in our sinful actions, or as shame and guilt, that Christian parents would never think such things, or feel such things toward their children. He leaves us parents in our own despair, seeing only our failures and our homes as anything but places where the Spirit of God dwells.

Parents – moms and dads of all ages – hear this Word of God. It's Jesus' Christmas gift to you. Christ comes for you, mom and dad. He, who descends to earth as a human boy, who in holiness perfectly submitted to earthly and sinful parents, is your Savior. For all of those parental melt-downs, fatherly conniption fits, and motherly tantrums, Jesus is yours. In repentance, surrender them to Him. Don’t let Satan continue to weigh you down with those moments. In faith, know, believe, trust and rely that you, too, are forgiven by Christ. In humility, confess your failing to your kids and ask them for their forgiveness, too, without excuses or condition (you know, the “I’m sorry I yelled, but if you would have cleaned up your room…”) and pledge to do better next time. When you do that, you give your child the wonderful opportunity to share the Word of God with you, the Word that says, “I forgive you, Mom; I forgive you, Dad.” You might have to teach them to use those words; that’s OK, and it’s worth teaching. Because there, in the family, united with Christ in Baptism and grounded in the Word, there is Christ.

Amen.