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William Allberry 6th January 2008 Epiphany 2008 |
| Isaiah: Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. |
| So at last the light has come: and the three wise men from the East arrive in search of the newborn infant. Bearing extraordinary gifts. |
| We don’t know what happened to the wise men, or actually how many they were, or with what message they returned to their homes. There’s a lovely story which some of you may know by Henry van Dyke, called The Story of the Other Wise Man who continued his quest, and who finally as a an old man, 33 years later in Jerusalem, discovered the truth that he’d been searching for. |
| It’s a fantasy, of course. We don’t know. We don’t know what happened to the gifts they gave, or how they were understood at the time. Gold, frankincense and myrrh – representing the wealth and perfumes of Arabia, and taken by the early Church to represent the kingship, the divinity and the suffering of Jesus. But whatever the gifts, whatever happened to the individual wise men, their coming to Jesus was seen as the fulfilment of several prophecies of the Old Testament of the homage which would be paid by the nations to the God of Israel – nations will come to your light. |
| St Matthew makes it clear in his story of the magi at the birth of Jesus that from the outset the Messiah was rejected by those who officially represented the Jews – Herod and his advisers. They only wanted to know so that they could eliminate the threat that he posed. The Messiah was accepted only by the outsiders – the shepherds who were the pariahs of their society, and then the Magi, who were not only able to tune into God’s message, but are also prepared to follow him to the ends of the earth and instantly recognise him. |
| So the birth of Jesus Christ was not just for the Jews, but for all people – from the outset the message was for all of humanity – although of course there were disputes in the early years as Christians fought to keep Jesus Christ for themselves. |
| St Paul, though, was quite clear: it has now been revealed by the Spirit that through the gospel those who are not Jews are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. |
| St Paul speaks of the mystery of Christ – and so often we even today behave as if the gospel is a mystery – to be hidden away, wrapped up in the trappings of religion, kept for special people or just special occasions. But Paul was saying something quite different. The Mystery has been revealed, made known, by God’s Spirit: the mystery – the former mystery – hidden for ages, has now been made known for all to see. |
| The mystery of God has been revealed – not just to a human family in Bethlehem, not just to the shepherds in the fields nearby, nor just to the wise men who came looking for the truth – but to all people, Jews and non-Jews, people in first century Palestine and people all over the world today. |
| If St Paul had known the world today it would surely have rejoiced his heart to know that the good news of Jesus was proclaimed all over the world – although it wouldn’t have surprised him as it was his tireless endeavour to spread the good news of the love of God until everyone had heard. |
| What would St Paul make of us here in Esher? Of course, it would gladden his heart to see us Sunday by Sunday worshipping God and trying to live the Christian life here, centred on our lovely buildings, dedicated for the purpose; of course it would gladden his heart to see the crowds as the Christmas services – but surely he would be sadly grieved by the indifference shown by so many. We’re not told in the Bible how Paul reacted when his preaching fell on deaf ears, but we do know that he was saddened and angry when people fell away from the faith. How he’d grieve to hear how many there are in our society who have no excuse, who have heard the good news, who’ve been brought up in the faith but who have turned away – how he’d grieve to know how many lapsed Christians there are. How many half-hearted Christians, how many once-a-year Christians … |
| We hear a lot about being a missionary church. We hear Jesus’s command to go and baptise all people, to spread the message of the good news of God’s love – but what do we do about it? Our evangelism focuses on keeping the show on the road – and to some extent this is absolutely right, and indeed essential – we keep the buildings maintained and the services running so that they are accessible to the people who come – whether at Christmas or Easter, or for weddings or baptisms or funerals. We say that Jesus Christ is for all people, but do we act as if we mean it? So often our body language is wrong. We declare our faith in the words of the creed, and we sing God’s praises – but do we declare our faith outside these walls? Do our neighbours know we are Christians? |
| We welcome the Christmas worshippers to our services, but we rather resent the fact that they don’t come the other Sundays or even to the other festivals of the year. We want people to come to church – but why? To be respectable, to be like us? If this is what we feel, we’re surely getting it wrong. Our church – and indeed all the churches in the country don’t represent a cross-section of the population of this country. Until the churches are the churches of the people, they’re not fully the churches of God. |
| So in practice, what can we do? |
| First: we can tell the good news. And we can do this in so many ways. Principally by living out the gospel in our lives – by being Christians, aware of the power of God’s love working in us, and convinced that the world needs and will respond to that love. So not only being Christians, but being ready to talk to others about our faith, ready to encourage others to think whether it might be for them too. One thing about today that’s so much better than 20 or 30 years ago is that it is once again respectable to be a believer, to have religious faith. We have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed! |
| And in order to do this, in order to share our faith with others, we need to go out of our way to get to know different people: in the congregation; at work; in the community. We need to go out of our way to expose ourselves to others – and to feel the benefit and the strengthening this gives. |
| Epiphany means a showing. Let us show our faith to others because that is how our faith and our church will grow. |
| … strengthened by the prayer of St Paul, the beautiful prayer which rounds off the third chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, following our epistle reading: |
| For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. |
| Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen. |
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