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The Epiphany

"Bethlehem and Jerusalem"

The Rev. William H. Joyner, Jr.

When ESPN promotes the Carolina-Duke basketball rivalry, they invariably use the phrase “separated by eight miles of pine trees and a couple of shades of blue.” It’s interesting that Jerusalem and Bethlehem, from the gospel, are also separated by eight miles: eight miles of desert and a couple of shades of difference. One was a powerful center of empire, and the other was a small rural backwater – I’ll allow you to make your own correspondences with Carolina and Duke whichever way you like. But if you get off Interstate 40 at the 15-501 exit and turn the wrong way, and you’ll end up in the wrong place.

Despite their guiding star, the wise men from the east did turn the wrong way, and end up in the wrong place. Without one of today’s fancy GPS systems that talks to you in various languages and accents as you drive, they end up in Jerusalem, not Bethlehem, led also by today’s first lesson from Isaiah, which is talking about Jerusalem becoming the gathering point of the wealth of nations, the destination of kings and camels, the center of the light and the glory of the Lord. The wise men go to Jerusalem seeking the new king who is to bring this prophecy about.

The real epiphany, the real manifestation, in this lesson, is when they realize, and Herod realizes, that they are in the wrong place with the wrong king, the old king. Herod’s advisors, having read Micah as well as Isaiah, point out the real directions to the wise men. Not here in a palace, but there, eight miles away, in a stable. Not on a throne but in a manger. Not wrapped in fine robes but in swaddling cloths. The real epiphany, which occurs to Herod and the wise men and the chief priests and scribes, is this realization: the be-all and end-all of our world is not here in Jerusalem. It is not here in the temple. It is not here in the palace. It is in a small, rural town, in a stable. Something very different is happening. Our destination is different. Our GPS will have to recalculate.

Another remarkable thing abut this lesson is that the wise men are not disappointed when they get to this distinctly un-king-like scene. According to the gospel, “they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” They opened their gifts, and worshipped Jesus, and returned home, being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, by another way.

Some of us may be as lucky as the wise men, to see a guiding light, to find God, and to get back home secure in this discovery. But many of us are still be on this journey, which involves taking wrong turns, looking for the wrong king, and losing our way home. The search for us may be frustrating, as it was for the Welsh poet and priest R. S. Thomas, who wrote: Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.
We may even feel we are wandering in darkness, though we are here in a community and a season of light. Thomas continues, and asks,
Was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that, in times
like these, and for one like me,
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather, and
inexplicable, as though he were in here?

Like Thomas, we may not see God “plain and out their;” we may not know the way, or see the star. We may see only darkness. But even darkness, if you will, has a bright side, for in the day we cannot see our guiding star at all, but only when night comes. The Epiphany message is that God is revealed, not just to people of the official religion or the right belief or living in first century Palestine, but to the whole world. If we wait and watch, we will see that God is being revealed to us too. And even as we may seem to be wandering in darkness, which many of us are, one of our Epiphany jobs is to be a light to others, to hold our light, as flickering and as uncertain as it may be, even if we unsure we have a light, so that the path of all of us is illuminated, a path that we, in the coming weeks, will take, ironically, back the eight miles with Jesus from the Bethlehem of the manger to the Jerusalem of the cross, wondering with a chill whether the wise men were right at their first stop after all.

The monk Thomas Merton describes in his famous prayer, which is both disturbing and comforting, what may be for some of us our epiphany journey, a journey that we are not on alone, but are joined by shepherds and kings, the high and the low, those from east and west, even believers and nonbelievers, even Tar Heels and Blue Devils – by all to whom God is revealed. Merton says:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know my self, and the fact that I think I am following you does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

© 2008: Chapel of the Cross