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1/11/15
Feast of the Epiphany
Matthew 2:1-12
Many of us have been profoundly touched by the awful news coming out of
Paris this past week. Terrorism in any instance is appalling , but when its so
clearly an assault on something we tend to hold dearly - the freedom to
speak our minds - it can feel as if the ground under our feet is trembling.
Its all so horrible that I hesitate to force this coincidental analogy, but here it
is: the earth shaking alienation that traumatizes France and the world in
2015 recalls more of the early significance of the Epiphany narrative than we
might imagine. What am I talking about? Just this: in the early life of the
church, just about the only thing about those kings, or wise men, or star
followers, or gift bearers that mattered was that THEY WERENT JEWS.
It may be hard for us to fully appreciate how radical that whole concept was
to the first followers of Jesus. For more than a millennium, ever since the
exile in Egypt before Moses led the tribes of Israel through the wilderness
and into the Promised Land, one of the central tenets of Judaism centered
around the dangers of syncretism - the corruption of outside influences. In an
area of intensely competing creeds (as it so devastatingly remains today)
whether those threats were strictly secular or expressions of contrary
religious beliefs, protecting the integrity of the faith was paramount. The
tension of maintaining both doctrinal and cultural purity came to be part and
parcel of what it meant to be a Jew. The outside world was to be kept out, not
brought in.
We can see powerful echoes of that obsession with purity in our own faith
today, and Ill get to that in a moment, but before doing that, we need to
understand at least a little of how the first followers of Jesus came to be
confused and conflicted about exactly who they were and who their
coagulating faith was FOR. Boiled down, it came to a dispute between Peter the loyal Jew who saw what Jesus was about pretty much entirely in the
context of the law and prophets of the Old Testament - and Paul - also a
zealous Jew who, having been converted and reformed himself, translated
his own experience into a doctrine in which the salvation Jesus offered
belonged to Jew and Gentile alike. Paul said let those non-Jews in. Yes, Jesus
was a Jew, a prophet and rabbi, but his resurrection heralded the coming of
the kingdom - a realm from which no one need be excluded.
Let me take a slight detour to try to set up an analogy for how the wise men
fit into this. Its pretty well known that dreams, what Freud called the royal
road to the unconscious, can figure heavily in the world of psychoanalysis.
Psychotherapy often works to open up and discover meaning and,

eventually, healing in the interpretation of dreams. Whats less well known is


that the process by which this works isnt too concerned with exactly what
was dreamed. It isnt what you actually dreamed that matters as much as
what you remember and think about those dreams when bringing them into
your wakeful interactions, whats known as the dream work, that potentiates
useful growth and healing.
The analogy is that the details of the magis visit, including whether or not
there ever actually were any magi, matter much less to the functioning and
beliefs of Christianity than what the story about them symbolizes. The story
itself, featuring early non-Jewish witnesses to the incarnation of Christ, is the
analog of dream work - the part that matters. And its meaning is pretty
indisputable - even in Matthews gospel, which is clearly written for a Jewish
audience - that faith in the Son of God isnt just for Jews but for everyone.
Whatever else it does, the Epiphany reinforces Pauls side of the dispute
about who properly belongs to the Christian faith. What defines that faith has
evolved from strict adherence to the law of the Torah to immersion in the
spirit of the one who dined with tax collectors and prostitutes and held up
Samaritans, a prodigal sons forgiveness, and insightful, faithful women as
the new standard. This was a radical change. Enormous.
Okay. So what? Why should we care about old changes and disputes in the
church that have long since been settled? Well, theres a big so what - a
huge one, not just for theologians and authorities, but for all of us in both our
individual and collective lives.
The history of Christianity, as with that of most religions, is fraught with
conflict. Its perhaps the most troubling aspect of religiosity everywhere. How
is it that faith in the One God who brought shepherds and angels to the
peaceful, idyllic scene of the manger manages to morph into, what?,
oppression, persecution, war, discrimination, terrorism . . . in fact, just
about every human ill you can think of? In a word, the answer is tribalism.
We humans tend to congregate with our own kind, sometimes to good effect,
but more often to the opposite. And then we tend to justify our actions and
claims by assigning them some kind of transcendent authority. The towers
were destroyed and thousands killed because it was the will of Allah, not
because of base human envy and rage. Native Americans were dispossessed
and just about wiped out because it was Gods Manifest Destiny, not because
of arrogance and greed. . . and so on.
My former bishop Jack Spong has described the Christian faith as containing
a kernel of truth - the real gospel - encrusted by false doctrines and corrupt
practices nurtured in the soil of tribalism.

All we need do is look at our history as well as that of other religions to see
where he arrives at that notion. But again, so what? So we have a lot to
condemn in our heritage. What does that mean in our lives right now? Should
we hang our heads in shame or renounce our faith and become atheists?
Well Im not a big fan of shame, but to tell the truth, Im glad there are
atheists out there to challenge us and at least set up a framework to keep us
honest. And I believe we and all faiths deserve a little satirizing, in fact grow
because of it. I think the so what has a lot to do with honesty . . . with truth
and love.
I think it may help us to a more truthful, loving adherence to the gospel of
Christ if we can see those magi before anything as not of our tribe, as alien
to us as they must have been to the Ephesian Jews in this mornings Epistle
who found themselves trying to digest how those gentiles theyd been raised
to regard as evil threats were in fact parts of the same body as their own.
Looking out through their eyes may help us to grow above our own proclivity
to tribalism. Whenever we find ourselves in an us vs. them mode, our faith is
calling us to step back and to see those others, those opponents, as not as
alien as we may think . . . as, in fact, fellow travelers, fellow children of the
One God.
When were first born, the world around us and everyone in it appears as
totally split, either black or white, with virtually no gray at all. Just look at a
hungry, unattended infant - how instantaneously a howling face, purple with
rage because her need isnt being met, turns into a gurgling, radiant smile
when nourishment finally arrives. Its only with the maturity of several
months, and them even more years, that she comes to see and accept that
the source of her frustration is also the source of her gratification. John
Taylor, the former Bishop of Winchester, England put it this way: The
newborn infant thinks of his mothers arms as his own creation and only
gradually comes to accept that this isnt so, that the source of creation lies . .
. elsewhere.
Thats more or less how it is with us and with our faith. Because of whatever
impulses there are that drive us into our tribal identities - fear, perhaps, and
superstition and the way were raised, our cultural heritage - its only with
maturity and the sacrifice of our inborn narcissism that we come to see the
valued places of those others, not just as people we should tolerate, but as
essential parts of the same body meriting nothing less than our love.
As I said, I welcome the challenge of atheism, and Ill add the challenges of
our differences with faiths different from ours. We need our own equivalent
of Gentiles. I see them as a refining fire that might just burn away at least
some of the shortcomings and abuses of our institutional religion and

individual life practices. We need to be challenged, not so we can diminish or


abandon our faith but so we can forever grow in it.
Who knows? Its just possible we might someday find ourselves reminded
that even if we have impassioned disagreements about, oh lets say, whether
or not our church should keep its name, thats no reason to stop listening to
each other . . . no reason to stop loving each other and striving to find a way
to work together towards serving not just our own feelings but our common
life.
In all our struggles, lets not lose sight of that star - a reminder that the true
light comes from above, from realms outside our usual frame of reference.
Ive been thinking about the analogy of light pollution. Without the light that
we ourselves manufacture, we stumble and find ourselves diminished in the
darkness. Our light does help us find the way. BUT it also obscures the
greater light, the spiritual light. Even here on remote Edisto, our very light
blots out the full glory of the night sky. The manufactured light is our own
narcissistic sense of enlightenment, our arrogant assumption that, even if we
dont have it ALL figured out, still we know best. But the truth is that the true
light lies . . . elsewhere.
That Epiphany star looms to remind us not only that we need to welcome
those others, whoever they are, as parts of the one body, but we are others
too - all of us aliens in an alien land, all of us called to kneel in reverence at
the intersection of the divine with our own flawed existence.
Amen.

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