About 30 years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity of going backpacking abroad with my wife. We travelled mainly in Australia and New Zealand, and on the return journey home we stopped off for several weeks in India.
This was in the days before smart phones, Google search engines, Alexa, and Satnav. If you wanted to know something, you either had to ask someone or read about it in a book. So, on our travels we were reliant on the people we met and on our travel bible, ‘The Rough Guide’. A big fat book that contained everything a traveller might need.
Information on train and bus times, accommodation, places to eat and drink, and what to see and do (and just as important, what not to do!) It was invaluable, without the travel book and the knowledge and advice of those we met, our journeys would have been impossible.
During Epiphany, we are remembering those other travellers who came from the East, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage’.
St Matthew portrays these travellers as ‘wise men’, as astrologers following the rising of a star, perhaps even the intellectual elite of their day. They may have been wise, but like us they still need help to arrive at their journeys end. They were looking for a King, so what better place to start looking than in the palace of King Herod.
But their knowledge of who they are looking for appears incomplete. They say they are looking for a child who is born a King. But when Herod answers their questions, he uses the Jewish title, Messiah. For he knew that the child born on that first Christmas Day in Bethlehem is more than a King. The child that they are looking for is Immanuel, God with Us, the light of the world, the prince of Peace.
Herod, with a dark and deceitful heart, helped the travellers on their way, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.
‘You have arrived at your destination’.
They didn’t need a satnav to tell them where they were. They would have known that they were in the presence of Jesus the Christ child, the incarnate Word of God.
In the Western churches, the Epiphany is understood as the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. When the peoples of the world were invited and drawn to the light of Christ, so that the human story and God’s story could finally come together.
In this story, the three travellers from the East represent us all. We too are on a journey. A journey of faith where we don’t always recognise the direction we should be heading.
But like the wise men, we have faith in the promise of what we will find at our journeys end, and we bring our gifts, ourselves; to lay at the feet of the Christ child, the Immanuel, the prince of peace, the god who comes to be with us.
Remember to bring the big fat book, it contains everything a traveller might need.
Amen
Fr. Gareth Ingham
Feature Image: Girolamo_da_Santacroce_-The_Adoration_of_the_Three_Kings-Walters_37261, Wikicommons, PD.
The wonderful thing about sermons and homilies is that I always learn some thing new.
Herod was a learned man and a Jew, which meant that he new the Old Testament backwards, and, yes, he knew that the Messiah was in king David’s line, and would be born in Bethlehem. So not too difficult for him to assume that the 3 wise men, looking for the king of the Jews were looking for the Messiah.
Thank you fr Gareth