Epiphany, Monday 6th January, by Fr Jack

Isaiah 60.1-6
Ephesians 3.1-12
St Matthew 2.1-12

 

I’m going to start by reading a poem. If you’ve never heard it before, dive in; if it’s an old favourite, try to hear something new.

It is called: The Journey Of The Magi by T.S. Eliot

And the opening line is from a sermon by a vicar of this parish, the saintly Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Taken from a sermon preached before the King’s majesty on today’s subject matter. I am reliably informed, that as was normal in those days, Andrewes had probably preached these sermons here and in other other places before using them at court. So, he may well have said these words himself in this place. Anyway, The Journey Of The Magi by T.S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Eliot holds life and death in a rather dizzying tension in this poem. Like us as we begin 2025, Jesus had it all before Him. We of course know the story ahead for Jesus. Eliot, a devout Anglican, writes characteristically rich with images and half-revealed symbols. The three trees on the low sky - a reference to Calvary and the three crosses, looming even then? The Magi brought myrrh for burial after all. The water mill and the vine - water and blood: Baptism and Eucharist, the vine leaves. The Pale Horse from Revelation, death. But Eliot doesn’t permit us just to know the story he disturbs us to be caught by these events and what will come out of them. Caught. Entangled. Like fish on a hook or thread carried through a weave.

All this could sound very negative, and there is real unease in the air as Eliot finishes. There’s unease in parts of the Gospel account too.

But being disturbed and entangled by this story is not actually a negative thing. It is in fact the invitation to Christian life. So much in our part of the world, in our time, tells us that our humanity is at its best when we are self-reliant, complete and insulated from needs, or doubts or anything that smacks of incompleteness.

The vision sketched out for us by the Good News of Jesus is completely the opposite of this. Christ doesn’t come among us as a handsome, rich, clever, able leader: He’s a baby. Babies need more love than they can give; they need protection and feeding and changing and cherishing. 

Today’s Feast of Epiphany is properly called ‘The Manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, commonly known as Epiphany’. The Jewish shepherds, and Jewish Mary and Joseph - they’ve seen and realised. The angels have had their turn too. Now it is the turn of the gentiles, it is time for the news of Christ’s coming and what that means to transcend the community of God’s Chosen People, and be for the whole world, just as St Paul writes to the Ephesian Church in the second lesson today. That’s why the Orthodox Eastern Christians celebrate Christmas today not on 25th December, because this is when we (although not all of us here are gentiles) turned up, it makes sense. God reveals God’s self, is made manifest. And, just as T S Eliot says, it is as challenging and confusing as it is wonderful and lovely. And it will remain so: just read the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. Just read Jesus’ interview with Pontius Pilate or Nicodemus. 

As CS Lewis wrote towards the end of Narnia’s Last Battle: "'Yes,' said Queen Lucy. 'In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.'" This mystery is not simply sweet (like sherbet) it is dizzying, entangling and disturbing.

We have for a few short years lived in the relative peace and prosperity of the settlement won out of the two World Wars. We thought for a while that this would be how life would be, how life was always meant to be and largely was, apart from the temporary and occasional intrusion of war or disaster, or revolution, or environmental or social calamity. Perhaps we are in the process of relearning now, painfully, and sadly, that that post war settlement was in fact the visitor, not the default. We live on this beautiful earth together, but we cannot seem to do it without destroying it and each other. God has given us this world, this life, and we mar and damage. And very often our attempts to protect ourselves and each other just perpetuate the cycle of conflict, imbalance, and ultimately destruction. Life is precarious, fragile and fraught. That is the truth of this life.  

This was the world Jesus came in to, what the world was like when the Magi set out to worship Him, and found Him. This is the world in which we worship Him now. This one who comes not as an emperor, but child, not as one who seizes power, as we always try to do, however well intentioned, but who entangles Himself and us in mystery and love. He will conquer, but not us; He will conquer sin and death for us. He will reign, but not as we do, with the Father, (Isaiah’s joyful prophecy, today’s first reading, will be so) and in the meantime, shares His life with us as we struggle and usually fail to share life with Him and each other in this beautiful life we have been given.

I should be glad of another death, ends Eliot’s Magi. They have brought myrrh after all. There will be another death. In Holy Communion, we witness afresh, and take into ourselves the death of Jesus, His life, His death, and His Resurrection. Just as St Paul writes: ‘Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes’. 

This moment is life and death, manifest for the whole world to see. In it we see reflected the tragic frailty of our life - as people and as a whole human family. And in it we see God’s answer to those truths, and just like Eliot’s Magi, nothing can ever be the same again.