Universal

Propers: Epiphany, A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We have always been fascinated by the stars. Every human civilization has been drawn to them by night: their beauty, their clarity, their seeming immutability. For the longest time we believed that stars don’t change; stars can’t change. They were immortal, eternal, even—dare I say it?—divine.

That’s why comets were always such an ill omen: an unexpected star, marring the heavens, changing the design. Nobody liked that. It was only rather recently that we as a species learned that comets can be predicted, that stars can change and die.

Of course, back then there was no notion of stars as brilliant balls of gas, undergoing unimaginable forces of nuclear fusion, billions of miles away. A star, rather, was a light in the heavens, reliable, trustworthy, and true. Most ancient civilizations seemed to think that stars were spirits populating the cosmos—that they were, in fact, gods, or at least representative of them.

That’s why we named the planets Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and so on. Planet means “wanderer,” and that’s what these particular stars were: predictable, yes, but also independent, charting their own unique courses through the sky. There were seven planets back then, including the sun and the moon. And they all had gods, which is to say that it all meant something. It was all divine.

And so we told stories about the constellations, and we sought meaning in the movement of the stars. Astrology is not so far-fetched when you think about it. It is the universal human reaction to wonder and beauty: this conviction that all of it means something, that the cosmos has a purpose, has value.

We still do this today, and I’m not just talking about horoscopes. We still look to the heavens in awe, and ponder what it all means. It was the Christians who first suggested that the heavens obey the same laws as the earth, but this insight did nothing to diminish the wonder behind it all. We still have a class of educated professionals, such as those at NASA, who peer into the night sky searching for answers, searching for truth.

It’s not all just lifeless rock and glowing gas. The stars have value. The stars have purpose. The universe has meaning—otherwise it wouldn’t be intelligible in the first place. Otherwise we couldn’t know anything at all.

This feast of Epiphany, my brothers and sisters, is an ancient observance in the Church; indeed, one of the oldest holidays we have. It literally means “manifestation,” as when a god would reveal himself to human beings. In the Eastern Church, Epiphany celebrated all the ways in which God reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ our Lord: in His Nativity, in His Baptism, in the Adoration of the Magi, and in the Wedding at Cana, the first of His miraculous signs.

Epiphany is the reason that we have 12 days of Christmas: for the West celebrated the birth of Jesus on December 25, while the East celebrated on January 6. Being pragmatic in those days, the bishops simply accepted both. Would that we were still so wise today. We will read the various stories of Epiphany in the weeks to come, but the one that sticks out—the one that captured the imagination of the West—was today’s story of the Magi: Wise Men from the East who came to worship the Christchild by the leading of a Star.

Magi were stargazers. It is from their name that we derive the word “magic.” In ancient Persia—modern Iran—Magi were the priestly cast of the Zoroastrian religion. They interpreted dreams, read the stars, and presided over sacrifices. They believed in two gods: one good, one evil; one dark, one light. And their relationship with Judaism went way back in the Bible. Each religion influenced the other.

Yet for all their showmanship, and all their magic spells, the Magi at heart did what we all do. They looked to the skies, to the wonders of Creation, to seek out meaning and purpose and value and truth. They sought the face of God reflected in His works. And they were not disappointed.

By the leading of a Star they came. We know not how many. While we speak of Three Kings in the West, Eastern tradition presents them as a dozen or so ambassadors sent by their kings, as Magi often were. Now, oceans of ink have been spilled attempting to identify the Star of Bethlehem as a comet or a constellation or perhaps some rare planetary alignment. But the early Church clearly understood the Star to be an angel. That’s why the topper on your Christmas tree is sometimes an angel, sometimes a Star.

Christians knew very well that normal, natural stars don’t behave in the way the Gospels describe. Stars don’t appear only to a select few, nor do they come to rest over one specific house in one specific country. If we’re to take the story at all seriously, we must understand that the Bible uses the word “star” as all ancient peoples would’ve understood it: as a spiritual light in the heavens, leading to truth, pointing to God.

And this illustrates succinctly the great paradox of our faith: that God is at once both universal and particular; known to all peoples yet revealed through one. On the one hand He is the Lord and God and Father of all, the Creator of all of Creation, the one great Truth behind all our religions, all our philosophies, and all our scientific endeavors. All truth is God’s truth, after all. And there is truth, to one degree or another, in every society, every religion, every human culture.

Yet at the same time, God chooses to reveal Himself fully through one people, one nation, indeed through one very specific Person, Jesus Christ our Lord; who does not simply point to Truth, does not simply reflect the Truth, but is in fact Truth Himself, Truth Incarnate, God made flesh for all the world to see.

And so God calls to the stargazers through a Star. And He calls to the pagans through their priests. And He leads them to Israel, leads them to the Scriptures, leads them to the Christ who is born in Bethlehem to save all the world from death and sin. He is both universal and particular. He is both truly God and truly Man. He is the One we’ve all sought for, through the stars, through the poets, through the real truths of all our various mythologies and philosophies and religions.

Here He is at last made Man. And we come one and all, bearing the gifts He has first given us, to lay them down before Him, and to worship Him as the one true Savior of this and every world.

We were Magi once ourselves. We were pagans, foreigners, immigrants. We worshipped in part. We understood in part. Yet by the grace of God we were grafted into God’s own people Israel, alien branches bonded to an ancient root. We each brought our own unique gifts, each of us called out from the nations of the world. And God made of us one people, one Church, one Body of our Lord.

And so we must now ask with humility, Who are the Magi today? Who are those outside of the Church who seek Goodness and Truth and Beauty? Who are those outside of the Church to whom God is speaking in mysterious ways? As Christians we believe that Christ is the fulfillment of every religion, every philosophy, every honest search for Truth. But those who are not yet part of God’s Church nonetheless have real and valuable gifts that God has given to them.

What can we learn from the Buddhists, who remind us of our own neglected tradition of spiritual mediation? What can we learn from the Muslims, whose fierce devotion to their faith so often puts our own attempts to shame? What can we learn from the pagans, who no longer search for God aloft and aloof in the heavens, but who seek Him in the immanent and undeniably holy things of hearth and of home? What gifts have they to offer Christ that we have left ignored?

And how then, dear Christians, can we best share with them the greatest gift of all: the God for whom they all have searched, made flesh in Christ our Lord?

He is in the heavens. He is in the Scriptures. He is the One in whom we all live and move and have our being. And He is born for us in Bethlehem, that all peoples may know their God.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.