Epiphany Carol Service by Fr Jack
St Matthew’s Gospel Chapter Two - The Magi visit the Christchild
St Matthew’s Gospel Chapter Three - The Baptism of Christ
St John’s Gospel Chapter Two - The Wedding at Cana
TS Eliot - The Journey of the Magi
Epiphany - revelation. showing. a moment of eureka. Epiphany.
And the church layers up these moments of revelation, not by chronology but, by tradition, thematically with the Wedding at Cana, water into wine, Christ’s first miracle.
His baptism by St John in the Jordan, and the visit of the Magi. Here in our Epiphany House today, the shepherds have wandered off, and here are the Magi.
But even this showing is not a simple one. It’s easy to be nostalgic and fluffy about the Magi, maybe. But that would he to miss out. TS Eliot shows us the way…
Lancelot Andrewes, having been vicar here at St Giles’ goes off to Westminster Abbey. It is there that he becomes the principal genius behind the King James Version of the Bible. It is also there that he writes a sermon for this time of year, and he includes that line that TS Eliot dug out and used to open the electric poem we just heard: ‘a cold coming they had of it…’, our fourth reading.
Eliot’s poem speaks of the Magi and the Christ-child. tick. It speaks of flowing streams and the watermill. That is of course the Baptism in the Jordan. There are the three trees on the horizon - they are of course the three crosses on Golgotha, Christ’s, and the two thieves either side. There is the Pale Horse, who, Revelation tells us, is death. There is the vine over the door and the empty wine skins: the Wedding at Cana. Tick. It’s all there. But just as exciting is this…
Eliot holds life and death in a rather dizzying tension. Jesus has it all before Him. We, who sit here two thousand years later, of course know the story ahead for Jesus. 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 an unease in the air as Eliot finishes. I think there’s an unease in parts of St Matthew’s account too.
But being disturbed and entangled by this story is not actually a negative thing. It is in fact the invitation to life, to faith. 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 need or doubt or ‘other’.
The vision sketched out for us by the Christian Good News is completely the opposite of this. God shows us this Himself. Christ doesn’t come among us as a handsome, rich, clever, able political leader. He’s a baby. Babies need more love than they can give; they need protection and feeding and changing and cherishing.
God entangles Himself in our story in this humble messy way, that we might freely entangle ourselves in His story. It is actually in our entanglement, in our inter-dependence, in our weakness and sharing others’ strengths, in our belonging not our independence (from each other and from God) that we discover what it means to be fully human.
Entanglement is a good thing then, that unsettling tension between death and life that Eliot’s wise men find themselves in is a place of life so much more real than their formerly comfy palaces. This is an invitation to us too. To allow ourselves to be threads entangled in the weave of this greater story, this tapestry of life God, me, us.
To live a life of faith, to be a christian is to live in this space between two deaths - the death of Jesus, and our baptism into it, and our own mortal death. And between two births, the birth of the Baby Jesus to whom the Magi come, and the birth of the Kingdom, of which Christ Risen and Ascended is the first fruit, the first citizen. It is to be open to the sacred mysteries of life and love that defy the instagram ready, reductive categorisation of life we so often fall into.
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.'"
As we begin this New Year, we are invited to live in that messy place between, with each other and with God, seeking to be becoming fully human together. This is an exciting journey to be on together. There may not be any camels, thank goodness there are no ‘silken girls bringing sherbert’, but it is still a journey and there is a priceless treasure to be revealed in this revelation that is at the heart of life if we’re really open to living: me, us, and God together.