A Homily for Epiphany All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, N.C. January 6, 2013 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
On this feast of the
Epiphany, we tell the story of the Magi, or Kings or Scholars, who came to
honor the new born King of the Jews. Let’s look at this story like we would a
diamond, from several different facets.
When I was a child in El
Salvador, we North Americans celebrated Christmas on December 25th
but we also played the local custom for all it was worth so that we could get
the presents that would be left in our slippers by our beds by the Magi who
visited on January 6th. Here in the Outer Banks in Rodanthe, we have
the tradition of celebrating Old Christmas on January 5th to protest
the shift in England from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in
1752. On the 5th “Old Buck” is supposed to come out of the woods and
dance with the children.
I grew up
with stories of the Wise Men. I watched the Menotti opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, broadcast every year. They stopped airing
it after I started college, but I have seen several amateur productions live
and it is always a treat.
After my
daughter was born, I used to pull out the 1895 Henry Van Dyke story, “The Other Wise Man”, each year and read
it to her at bedtime over a number of days. It is about a Zoroastrian Priest
who tries to join the other Wise Men, but he keeps getting sidetracked by doing
acts of kindness and selling his jewels to help people. In the end, he dies in
Jerusalem on the day of the Crucifixion, and he has only one pearl left. He is on the way to ransom Jesus when a young
girl who has been sold into slavery asks for his help, and the pearl is used to
ransom her. Then the earthquake hits:
What had
he to fear? What had he to hope? He had given away the last remnant of his
tribute for the King. He had parted with the last hope of finding him. The
quest was over, and it had failed. But, even in that thought, accepted and
embraced, there was peace. It was not resignation. It was not submission. It
was something more profound and searching. He knew that all was well, because
he had done the best that he could from day to day. He had been true to the
light that had been given to him. He had looked for more. And if he had not
found it, if a failure was all that came out of his life, doubtless that was
the best that was possible. He had not seen the revelation of "life
everlasting, incorruptible and immortal." But he knew that even if he
could live his earthly life over again, it could not be otherwise than it had
been.
One more lingering pulsation of
the earthquake quivered through the ground. A heavy tile, shaken from the roof,
fell and struck the old man on the temple. He lay breathless and pale, with his
gray head resting on the young girl's shoulder, and the blood trickling from
the wound. As she bent over him, fearing that he was dead, there came a voice
through the twilight, very small and still, like music sounding from a
distance, in which the notes are clear but the words are lost. The girl turned
to see if some one had spoken from the window above them, but she saw no one.
Then the old man's lips began to
move, as if in answer, and she heard him say in the Parthian tongue:
"Not so, my Lord! For when
saw I thee hungered and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw I
thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? When saw I thee
sick or in prison, and came unto thee? Three-and-- thirty years have I looked
for thee; but I have never seen thy face, nor ministered to thee, my
King."
He ceased, and the sweet voice
came again. And again the maid heard it, very faint and far away. But now it
seemed as though she understood the words:
"Verily I say unto thee,
Inasmuch as thou hast done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, thou
hast done it unto me."
A calm radiance of wonder and
joy lighted the pale face of Artaban like the first ray of dawn, on a snowy
mountain-peak. A long breath of relief exhaled gently from his lips.
His journey was ended. His
treasures were accepted. The Other Wise Man had found the King.
James Taylor wrote a song about the Wise Men who went
Home by Another Way:
Yes they went home by another way
Home by another way
Maybe me and you can be wise guys too
And go home by another way
We can make it another way
Safe home as they used to say
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high
And go home another way
One poem I am fond of is The Journey Of The Magi by T S Eliot which is
printed in the bulletin;
'A cold coming we had
of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
All of these stories have in common the fact that for the Magi, and for us,
the journey is more important than the destination. It is leaving what we know,
our comfort level, and going on a journey where we do not know if we will ever
arrive. However, as we present the gifts we have, we find the old self-centered
part of us dying in living in the light of the new birth as our lives change,
and, no longer at ease here, we end up going home by another way.
