• Isaiah 60:1-6

The canonical Book of Isaiah is composed as a crescendo of recurring themes; each time a theme is revisited, the language is a little more extravagant.  In this passage, despite “thick darkness,” which had engulfed the nations, not only will Jerusalem be restored after its destruction and years of ruin, the people and bounty of neighboring nations, some of whom were enemies in the past, will provide the resources for her rebuilding.  Miraculously, “the Lord will arise upon you and the Lord’s glory will appear over you.”  There will be a homecoming that will cast a “light” so bright it will draw other nations and attract “kings to the brightness of your dawn.”  The wealth of other nations– including “gold and frankincense”– will pour into the re-building and re-establishment of God’s people.

• Psalm 72:1-7,10-14

Dedicated to Solomon, this psalm celebrates the restoration of an ideal monarch who will bring justice to those to whom justice is least accessible.  This new reign will be honored above neighboring nations, even those farthest away and most alien.  This justice will “run down” as abundantly and as evenly as “showers.”

• Ephesians 3:1-12

The author of Ephesians is generally believed to be an admirer of Paul.  If mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, this unknown writer was an enthusiastic admirer, even taking on Paul’s’ personal history, but expanding it.  Here the emphasis is on Paul’s mission to non-Jews.  His role is to explain God’s ‘hidden’ plan, now revealed in Christ.

• Matthew 2:1-12

Raymond Brown (The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke), suggests that many of the elements of the story of the visit of magi in Matthew’s gospel can be identified in nearby religions as well as contemporary political events.  In particular, he details the historic visit in A.D. 66 of exotic rulers “from the East” accompanied by their “magi” to Rome, (p. 174).  He also notes the use of a guiding star to herald the births or deaths of great leaders in Greek and Roman mythologies, (p. 170)  The magi, ” a priestly cast that specialized in interpreting dreams and astrology,” (p. 167) come seeking the “King of the Jews,” (a title used only one other time in Matthew’s narrative; as the charge put over the head of Jesus on the cross).

Preachers can get distracted by futile arguments over the historicity of scriptures, or, instead, go straight to the prima facie meaning of the text.  (“Historicity” meaning that invention of Modernity that asserts that a narrative can be written that achieves full knowledge and ‘objectivity’ of past events.)  Although these passages assigned for The Epiphany were written in the context of specific historical events, they nevertheless go after something more interesting; they disrupt conventional expectations.  They suggest to our imaginations that the apparent structures of human authority are always penultimate, contingent.  The scriptures insist that there is always an ideal/ultimate/sublime experience of justice, peace and security for which we long beyond any human accomplishment.  This longing causes constant dissatisfaction with the status quo.  But it also makes clear a goal worthy of our greatest passion and personal investment.  For Christians, this universal human longing and capacity to imagine the ideal is centered in Christ– the content of all he said and did; indeed his very persona and its affect on others.  In the Christ the ideal becomes human flesh and blood and enters completely into the travails of everyday life, including the most mundane failures and victories.  Christ is an “epiphany,” a sudden breakthrough, a revelation which is literally unimaginable according to the usual human assumptions and past experiences.  Therefore, it is only appropriate that the trappings of epiphanies, in this case guiding stars, magi, and exotic gifts, should herald this revelation.  In Matthew’s creative bricolage of scraps from  other traditions as well as poignant references to the Hebrew scriptures, the message and its method of delivery are melded together.  Our unexamined  expectations are disrupted by an ideal of something better, which must present itself to us as at first strange, exotic even a little bizarre and alien.  For Christians, the Christ event is sort of what we expected due to the Hebrew scriptures, but it is also more than we ever could have imagined.  It is somewhat familiar, but still exotic.

In his contribution to Radical Orthodoxy, (Milbank, Picksotck, Ward, eds.), Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt sees that: “With the closure of modernity and the jettisoning of the modern account or ‘necessary truths of reason’ understood as Cartesian ‘clear and distinct ideas,’ however, it once again becomes possible to put forward the notion of the sublime presented through the contingent and historical.”  He continues, quoting Hans Urs von Balthasar [Love Alone: The Way of Revelation, pp 12-13], to show how early Christian witnesses freely and creatively used prevalent ideas, motifs, legends and symbols in the ancient world as “baptizable” anticipations of the God-Logos in person who entered into Israelite history, filled the whole world, in whom were the ideals which were the patterns by which the world was made, and in relation to whom the world could be understood.”  (pp 205-209)

The biblical and other earliest witnesses to the Christ used extant material to announce to the whole world that God did something that had never been done before so unequivocally and that would alter human history.  It was so audacious and “sublime,” it would never stop surprising us!  Its power for revelation would never diminish!  The coming of the Christ never stops causing disruption, because he both announced and embodied God’s pure justice and love.

Biblical texts tell a story to tell the truth.  In Matthew’s story of magi who stumbled on Gods’ truth using their exotic, pagan astrology to follow a star, we are alerted to a truth: there are no limits to the ways God’s truth can be discovered because God’s truth always escapes human expectations.  That was never truer than in the appearance of Jesus, the Christ; the “light” that not only illuminates but dazzles and leads.