Most ministers have their special fav of all the great days we get to celebrate in the church and this day is one of mine. I am pretty enthusiastic about all of them, really, but I am a particular fan of Epiphany which means, “appearance or showing” –celebrated each year on January 6. I love it because it represents “aha” spiritual moments when God is revealed in the everyday—a practice I want to hone in my own journey. Historically, Epiphany is connected to a variety of traditions, depending upon your country of origin or your branch of Christianity. For some, January 6 is Christmas–the day Jesus was born, for others, the day he was baptized by John in the Jordan, and for others, the day when the wise people arrived, bearing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In Tarpon Springs and in other areas where live many folks of the Greek Orthodox side of the Christian family, there is a ceremonial diving for the cross on this day to commemorate Jesus’ baptism and offered as a rite of passage and a friendly competition between the young men of the parish who, after a formal blessing ceremony and beautiful processional down to the water’s edge, dive for a specially designated cross that is blessed and then hurled into the water by the bishop. The diver who surfaces with the cross is particularly blessed for the coming year and honored to keep the cross as a special reminder. I’d like to go to Tarpon Springs someday and see this event, but I admit I’m partial to western Christianity’s magi tradition. I have always wondered if the wise ones knew what or whom they were seeking all the long way, as the journey unfolded, or if they were just doing what they did: learning, following, charting the course, not really taking it all in, in the moment. I know for me, life’s roads are often made by walking, and on some of my most momentous journeys, I haven’t known fully what was the subject of my quest, till afterward.

Years and years ago, I used to go to my friend Daphne’s house every January for a Feast of the Epiphany party. She always invited her church members and an odd assortment of other friends like me. We would gather on Epiphany night in her brightly-lit farmhouse parsonage which clung to the edge of a steep mountain road lined with snow-covered frazier firs. The house was filled with dogs and children and an interesting variety of families whose ancestors had lived in those hollows for generations. We would sing carols accompanied by dulcimers and fiddles and mandolins all crafted and played by their owners. There were artists and potters and a few folks who just weren’t sure how they felt about Daphne, a liberal, outspoken Yankee–and first woman pastor of their small Lutheran Church, but they all gathered, year after year, to eat her chocolate pizza and to encourage the children in their yearly tradition at her house, the wise person hunt. She collected Nativity scenes from many cultures and made of every conceivable material, and though the creches themselves with the usual suspects inside were strategically placed on display on shelves and tables throughout the house, the three magi and their camels from all the different nativity sets were nowhere to be seen. Daphne reasoned that since tradition says the magi did not arrive right away at the birth of baby Jesus, that they should not appear at the manger until later. So she hid them all through the house. “They are on their journey,” she explained to the children, who were all wide-eyed and waiting for the signal to hunt, “and so you must find them, and bring them to their Christ child.” I sometimes wondered if she ever stumbled across one or two of them, still lost and wandering in the middle of July, forgotten behind the books or amongst the paper clips in the way back of a desk drawer.

It is a wonderful story, this one of the magi, their exotic and mysterious identities, their quest, their valuable gifts, metaphorical and full of meaning. Gold in ancient stories is not only a symbol of riches, but also, and more importantly, gold is representative of all that is physical treasure–the material of Earth and her elemental children, flesh and blood, and bone and rock. God in Earth, Earth in God. Frankincense is the sweet and smoky incense of worship, handled by the practitioners of the holy mysteries. And myrrh, the embalming spice used to anoint the bodies of the dead, the reality of mortality–gold, frankincense and myrrh–gifts of the material, the metaphysical, and the metamorphosis. When they saw the star, the wise ones were overwhelmed with joy, and they broke open all they’d brought to the moment and offered the journey itself to the poor Christ child, and then traveled on, aware of the dangers, returning by another road.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, T.S. Eliot, Dar Mikula, and Jan Adkins, whose names all belong in the same sentence and worship service because of the beauty and wisdom of their words, the magi were changed—or at least in so far as we read into and compare their journeys to ours. They challenge us to be present to the stand-on-tiptoe opportunities that come with every brand new year, with every epiphany in between. How will we dare to show up to the pilgrimage we certainly are on—that journey we call our lives–sometimes given questions and confusion, sometimes guided and gifted. What star guides us? I like to use this story as a reflection for our own lives, for don’t we have our own gifts—material, spiritual, and mortal, the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of our own existence, inviting us, calling us on the life journey? Invite the questions for your life–how will we live on and with, Earth, walking lighter and more open-hearted on our way, and with kindness? How will we grow deeper as spiritual beings and practice our spiritual lives in tangible ways for the common good? And how will we be guided by the awareness of our finiteness, that there is a time stamp on every life? If you didn’t get a little jar of myrrh this Christmas to remind you of the gift of your mortality, no worries—there is a phone app, and I’m not even kidding, called WeCroak. Five times a day, WeCroak sends an alert to its users. The alerts arrive at random moments, but always say the same thing: Don’t forget, you’re going to die.

In this new year, how will you and I choose to tap into our own integrity, become the person we want to be, redeem the time? Who speaks to us on the road? When do we, like the magi, stop to hobnob with Herod and find ourselves deluded, delayed, and diverted from the mission of our lives– just a bit off course, wasting time? We are, like the wise ones, reminded to go carefully, to know they are there, these Herods of pride and violence and lies and fear and greed, those tricksters. What shall we do with our one wild precious life in 2019?

This new year, the journey of your life, like that of the magi, will include a variety of juxtapositions unfolding—and as Eliot reminds us, sometimes when certain realities are birthed in our lives, we may experience them like deaths. We can’t go back and unknow them. The magi were wanderers, seeking more light, daring to follow mysteries ever unfolding. And then and now, there is adventure and there is violence that threatens to obliterate the holiness. This story reminds us to trust ourselves, to dare full-hearted living, to believe our intuition, examine our dreams, heed the warnings, and sometimes, to keep our own counsel and to go home by another road.

In my experience, the life journey always asks of us new light and new truth, invites us off the charts, beyond the edges of any map. And yet, sometimes, we may get weary and decide we want no more new light. Sometimes, we may be tempted to pull the covers over our heads, resisting epiphany. I don’t know if the wise ones resisted the epiphany as they bore their gifts along. I don’t know if, like Mackay Brown’s call to worship says it, if they stopped at the first way station, halted before the barriers, sighed after hard climbs, and said, “No thanks, I’m done, no more insight, if you please.” It seems to me that sometimes there can be lots to suffer before the light dawns.

When he founded his community on the isle of Iona, George MacCleod said, “Yet and still, follow it, follow truth wherever you find it. Even if it takes you outside your preconceived ideas of God or life, even if it takes you outside your country and into the most insignificant alien places like Bethlehem. Be courageous, but concentrate on your search. Truth is one. All roads lead home. The seemingly devious route will take you to the star. You will find it is the morning star for you. In the end you will see the sun behind all suns. Follow the light you have been given and pray for more light.”

May we find the grace and the determination to break open the gold of our best physical, earthy selves and the sweet incense of our mysterious, creative spirit selves, and the myrrh of our mortal, living and dying selves, for when we do, it can make all the difference in the course of the journey. Our calling this new year is to be willing to fall off the map, to reach up and off the charts, grasping for the stars, to live curious lives, and to be compassionate with ourselves and others, knowing we’ll be, at times, unexpectedly diverted, and somehow to find our courage, knowing that sometimes, when we follow our path, there will be hardship and danger. May our hearts be lifted up in joy, too, for to experience epiphany is to achieve, even for selected sacred moments, enlightenment! May your journey be a true adventure in this blessed new year.

Prayer: May we recognize our gifts and use them well and wisely this year. Amen.

Matthew 2: 1-23