Here is a sermon for Epiphany, about getting home after Christmas — about what it means to return to ordinary life once the magic of Christmas has done its work.
(Readings: Isaiah 60:1–6; Matthew 2:1–12)
This morning I want to take up the star of wonder
and see how far we have come this Christmas,
exploring the way to the manger,
and how on earth we get home.
Our readings cover many miles —
the miles in the reading from Isaiah,
the miles nations will come
to the light of the glory of God,
the miles rulers will travel
to the brightness of the dawn
of a new day, a new time, a new year.
The miles the children of Israel will travel:
sons coming from afar,
daughters carried on the hip.
The miles wealth will cross the seas,
and the camels… the camels —
from Midian and Ephah,
even from Sheba,
bearing gold and incense,
proclaiming the praise of the Lord
when he comes.
And in the gospel for today
there are the Magi from the east —
the Magi who believe in the magic of life,
who follow the star of wonder,
always wondering what kind of magic
can turn hatred into love
and a world at war into a world at peace.
Our readings cover miles of wonder.
The magic the travellers trusted
was not illusion or trickery,
but the stubborn hope
that the world could be other than it is.
It is a hope as old as time.
It is God’s hope we join.
The Magi are ones who travelled so far,
going first one way,
and then finding a better way.
First they went the usual way,
the old way, the well-trodden wrong way.
They found themselves in Jerusalem,
in the twisted streets of the medina,
the religious capital,
the political and social capital.
Everyone said they would find
what they were looking for there,
because that’s where we always expect God to be —
close to influence, respectability, and control.
There’s no doubt that Google Maps
had led them to a king.
But Herod wasn’t who they were looking for.
There was no magic in his palace —
just the same old rules,
the same old rule of oppression,
ruling out the magic
of the least, the lost, and the last.
They stayed awhile — long enough
for the priests and lawyers
to consult the ancient books of magic,
the scriptures that had forgotten
just how dangerous they really are,
to remind themselves
that the place of magic
is the smallest of places,
never Jerusalem.
They’d got it so wrong.
Nine miles wide, one theologian says —
the distance between Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
the distance between power and promise,
the distance between knowing the words
and recognising the child.
Nine miles on, they saw the star
stop over the place where Jesus was.
Overwhelming joy brought them to their knees.
They bowed from their lofty heights.
They opened up their gifts —
all their power and glory:
their gold, their frankincense, their myrrh.
Gifts laden with meaning —
the gold of their wealth,
the incense of their power,
the myrrh of their mortality.
They handed them all over.
They do not leave Bethlehem lightly.
They have loved this place.
They have loved the silence,
the smallness,
the nearness of God in a child.
They have lingered long enough
to be changed by what they have seen.
And then they went home another way,
considerably lighter.
We are in the same room as the Magi.
We are with them in Bethlehem.
We too have travelled far this Christmas.
We too have knelt at the place of wonder.
But no one can stay in Bethlehem.
It was too dangerous for Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
They had to flee from Herod’s terror
and his slaughter of the innocent.
Nor could the Magi stay.
They had to return to their own country.
They had two choices.
They could go back the way they came —
through Jerusalem,
through Herod,
through the centres of religious, social, and political power.
Or they could take the road less travelled.
They chose to follow their dream,
to heed the warning,
to go home another way —
refusing the way of fear and exclusion,
the way that protects power
by crushing the vulnerable.
And nor can we stay at the manger.
Christmas does not ask us to linger,
but to return.
There are just twelve days of Christmas,
and we are nearly at the end of them.
The road home opens before us.
We go back to the same people,
the same work,
the same complications and demands —
just as the Magi did.
The question is not whether we go home,
but how we go home.
Will we go back the way we came —
shaped by fear, habit, and power?
Or will we go home another way —
refusing fear,
trusting the stubborn magic of love,
seeing God not in the centres of control
but in the smallest of places,
among the least, the last, and the lost?
Home calls us —
the place that knows us,
the place we know,
the place whose joys and wounds
we carry in our bones.
The Magi return to their own country —
to their villages,
their households,
their responsibilities and loves.
They go back to the same world,
but not by the same road.
And so do we.
We go home
not because Bethlehem has nothing left to give,
but because it has given us enough.
Enough light
to see differently.
Enough love
to travel lighter.
Enough hope
to believe the world can be other than it is.
That is the road less taken —
and it is the way
into a new year of grace.
Grits and Grains 