Celebration of the Epiphany John B. Valentine
Matthew 2:1-12 January 3, 2021

“OFF BY NINE MILES”

It’s the first Sunday of the Year of our Lord 2021. Wow!

• That means I get to say Happy New Year! to all of you.

• That means 2020 is over ... Finally! Thank God for THAT!

• That means we’re actually entering a new decade ... because I was reminded by a linguistic purist a couple of days ago that the decade that is the 2020's formally starts in 2021.

But ... truth be told ... we’re NOT celebrating New Year’s weekend here at worship this morning ...

We’re celebrating something different.

We’re celebrating something traditionally known as “Epiphany”.

We’re remembering the journey of the wise men from the east to visit the baby Jesus ... and ... as Pastor Pam noted at the outset ... we’re remembering “who” it was and “why” it was that got those magi to get up off their couches in the first place.

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Now ... granted ... it isn’t REALLY Epiphany Day ...

No ... that would be actually January 6th ... the day AFTER ‘the Twelfth Day of Christmas’ .... the day after the ruckus of those twelve drummers drumming has died down.

But the ‘Feast of Epiphany’ has kind of fallen off the official church calendar in recent years ...

And yet somehow it seems too significant for us to just ‘pass up’.

After all ... the Feast of Epiphany is a celebration of the ‘disclosure’ or the ‘unveiling’ of the Son of God ... and that seems to me to be a fairly significant deal.

So let’s start the new year right ... with my best Epiphany joke!

Do you know why is was wise MEN whom the Church celebrates as bringing gold and frankincense and myrrh to the Baby Jesus twelve days after his birth?

Because if it had been wise WOMEN ...

• they would have asked for directions ...
• they would have arrived on time ...
• they would have helped deliver the baby ...
• they would have cleaned the stable ...
• they would have made a casserole ...
• they would have brought practical gifts ...
• and there would be Peace On Earth!

But ... seriously ... though ultimately we’re here to celebrate the arrival of wise women and wise men ... and wise girls and boys for that matter ... to worship Jesus ...

The story that is the focus of Epiphany talks about wise men ... stargazers ... coming from the East ... to pay their respects to this child who was born King of God’s people.

And we should probably begin by acknowledging that we know precious little about these fellows.

You see ... if you paid attention to this morning’s gospel lesson ... as recorded in Matthew chapter two ... which is the only witness we have to this event ... it doesn’t say that there were three of them!

It just says that there was more than one ...

That they brought three gifts ... gold ... and frankincense ... and myrrh ...

And that they were star-gazers ... fellows who looked to the heavens for guidance and insight.

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You ever spend any time looking up at the stars and/or the planets?

Any of you perchance take the time to check out the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn last week??

• That once-in-a-blue-moon event that last happened in 1623 and won’t happen again until like 2080 ....

• That thing that some insisted was really the Christmas star ....

• That thing that got our collective minds off of COVID-19 and politics for all of like five minutes ....

I did take time to check out the “Great Conjunction” ... but not for all that long.

But the magi in this morning’s Gospel lesson ,,, the wisemen ... THEY would have been fascinated by an occurrence such as that.

For they were fellows who invested a lifetime studying the motion of the stars and the sun ... the moon and the planets ...

And they used their knowledge to guide travels ... to confirm decisions .... and to predict important events.

And they looked up into the sky ... and determined ... based on their collective wisdom ...

that a child had be born in the land of Israel who was destined to be king ...

and that that child was going to have a life of significant ... even cosmic ... proportions ...

and so they set out on a journey to see this thing to which the stars had testified.

Problem was ... they missed it by nine miles.

Nine miles.

The nine miles between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Not that you can really blame the wise men for their miscalculation.

After all ... if you had inside information that a child had been born who was going to be king ... you’d probably go to where kings are born ... wouldn’t you?

Kings are born in palaces ... so they went to the palace in the capital city ... they went to Jerusalem ... and missed it by nine miles.

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But ... you know ... I was reading an article the other day that suggested that ‘missing it by nine miles’ is actually a pretty common practice.

The wisemen were mislead by their assumption that kings are born in palaces ...
And they missed it by nine miles.

The wisemen assumed that power and prestige beget power and prestige ...
And they missed it by nine miles.

The wisemen bought into the lie that money is the source of all human authority ...
And they missed it by nine miles.

The wisemen were duped by their own wisdom into believing that the world’s ways are God’s ways ...
And they missed it by nine miles.

The wisemen operated with the assumption that the one true hope of this world is found in the places ... and the palaces ... of power ...
And they missed it by nine miles.

But then this article went on to suggest that ...

When we look to Washington and/or Wall Street for solutions to everything that ails us ...
We miss it by nine miles.

When we look to the school district to ‘fix’ everything that is ‘wrong’ with our kids ...
We miss it by nine miles.

When we look to the medical community to make us ... not only ‘healthy’ ... but ‘well’ ...
We miss it by nine miles.

When we look to science and technology as the one true hope for the future ...
We miss it by nine miles.

It even was so bold as to suggest that when we look to denominational structures and religious institutions to be the fountainhead of love and joy and peace ..
We miss it by nine miles.

Because God came ... and still comes ... to the Bethlehems of the world ... not the Jerusalems.

Because God comes in simple ways to common people.

Because God is one who comes to ... and for ... the last, the lost, the little, the least and the dead.

Because ... as Martin Luther was want to note ... God cannot be “wise, righteous, truthful strong and good, unless we believe Him and submit to him by confessing that we are foolish, unrighteous, liars, weak and evil.”

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You know ... I started this sermon by questioning the wisdom of the wise men.

And I ought to go back and reconsider that thought.

After all ...

though it may seem utterly foolish to give gifts like gold and frankincense and myrrh to a baby and his none-too-wealthy parents ...

there are two things which the wise men do toward the end of this story that prove them to be far wiser than most.

First off ... they admitted that they were wrong.

I don’t know if any of the rest of you have been attending to all the falderal that’s been going on in our nation’s capital over the course of the past year ...

But I find it absolutely fascinating how precious few of our politicians can actually admit that ... at some point or other ... they were wrong ... that they made a poor decision ... that they needed to learn from their mistakes.

Because it seems to me that one of the true definitions of wisdom is a willingness to admit our shortcoming and our errors.

But the wise men ... for their part could admit it. They were willing to own up to the fact that they’d missed it by nine miles ... and were willing to redress their errors.

And secondly ... the wise men were willing to go home by another way.

Having encounter the infant king in Bethlehem and not Jerusalem ... they were willing to change their patterns of behavior ... do things differently than they had done them in the past ... to not just return to the same ol’ same ol’.

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So let me end this morning by simply quoting for you a verse from my own favorite Epiphany song ... a song which Tommy Henry and friends will share anew with you in just a couple of minutes ... a song aptly entitled “Home by Another Way”:

It's best to go home by another way, Home by another way
We got this far to a lucky star, But tomorrow is another day
We can make it another way, Safe home as they used to say
Keep a weather eye to the chart on high. And go home another way.

May we be numbered among those who are willing to go home by another way.