The feast of the Epiphany or more, familiarly, “The Feast of the Three Kings,” is all about manifestation, which is the definition of Epiphany.  It is about sharing what one has seen and heard.

Pope Francis said as much in a January 6, 2018 homily, just one year ago today. I will use some of his key ideas and then go from there.  Francis said that there are three actions that these astrologers from the east accomplished that can “guide our journey toward” [God]. Another term used for these ancient visitors is, “The Magi,” a term referring to the priestly class, also meaning, “wise men.”  Francis goes on to say, “The Magi, see the star, they set out, and they bring gifts.” 

If we look to the Scriptures for today; we hear the prophet, Isaiah, proclaim, “Arise, shine, for your light has come!” And we might ask, “Who is this light for?” All of us, or just some?”

The writer to the Ephesians says basically that, Jesus is for everyone, no exceptions!  Matthew, in his gospel, the only one by the way who records this visitation of “wise men,” says that the Three Kings, “saw the star and followed it.”  Now this seems to be the connecting piece to the words of Francis—not only did they “see the star,” but they “followed” it—in other words, they did something!

Being a Christian, a follower of our brother Jesus is not a stagnant thing, but a state that calls forth something in return for the gift we have received with our faith.  We must respond by bringing our gifts to bear in our world.

Pope Francis makes a point of saying that the Star of Bethlehem was there for all to see and then he asks, “Why didn’t everyone see it?” He goes on to simply say and I paraphrase, perhaps those who didn’t see the star weren’t “looking up.”  Perhaps they had their eyes on the ground.

So, it would seem that being a Christian is not just something we say about ourselves, so as to claim credit, but something that we must act upon, knowing that it is not about gaining a reward, but simply about doing what is right and just and true—the loving thing, as Jesus always did.

Francis goes on to indicate that some didn’t see the star, even if they did look up because they didn’t know what they were looking for.  We have talked many times here about how we will find Jesus—God, in our world, always hopefully realizing that if we are looking for glitz and power, than we will miss Jesus.

From all the cards and art produced around the Christmas mystery, the Star of Bethlehem is always depicted as the brightest one in the heavens—perhaps, as Francis says, it wasn’t so “bright” as it was, “constant.”

In the terminology of astrologers, this Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a “shooting star”—one that dazzles and is quickly gone, but one that is more gentle, yet true and constant.  The pope compares the Bethlehem Star to how our God invites, rather than demands, a relationship with us.  Our loving God then promises to stay close—this relationship will never be fleeting as some other “stars” we may choose to follow: money, power, prestige.  They are more like “shooting stars”—here today, gone tomorrow!  Not so with our God!

Going back then to the three actions of the kings that we are to follow; we are told that after they, “see the star,” “they set out.”  In other words, they take a risk! Because after all; they don’t know where the journey will lead, they don’t know if it will come to a good end—only that they must go.  We often see this response to God’s call—this urgency.  We saw it in Mary when she hurried to visit Elizabeth during their mutual time of waiting.

If we are truly living our Christian calls to follow Jesus, we likewise must take risks.  We can’t wait for the affirmation of others to answer the call of our hearts to follow Jesus.  And from studying his life, we know that taking a risk won’t always be easy—we may lose friends and family, but we will know that we have brought the “gifts” that we have to bring to the “Christ Child” in all the places that we find “the child”—the poor, the lonely, the sad, the forgotten, the mistreated.

A final point that Francis challenges us with reflects the story of the Magi as we have come to know it—“they kept moving.”  The Magi, Francis says, “set out, went in and fell down and worshipped him, and they, went back.”  The piece we must understand is that their “setting out” once they “saw the star” had no ending, as our journey in the faith must be, in our life here.  We must be a Christian always, Jesus’ follower, every day, in every way.

With today’s feast, our formal Christmas time is over—the 12 days.  Now we must leave the relative comfort of the crib and continue “to see” and to do that which is ours to do as Jesus’ followers.  Amen? Amen!

My friends, Holy Family Sunday, at least through the chosen Scriptures for today would seem to conjure up within us all that is good, true and wonderful about family life.  These readings call forth in each of us how we should behave within our families—primarily with respect, honor, love and caring. They don’t address the situations when members within a family aren’t loved and cared for by the very people that should extend these gifts to them. But, we will leave that for now.

Each year the feast day of the Holy Family comes on the first Sunday after Christmas and it seems well-placed in our church year.  We have just remembered the birth of our brother Jesus in Bethlehem, a small, insignificant place—really.

Our God makes it clear from the beginning that this graced life of Jesus will not be about position and power, but about time, place and action. We get the message through his lowly birth and the circumstances of him and his holy family living as refugees in his first years, literally running for their lives, as so many immigrant families at our borders are doing in our present day, of just who he would be coming to serve.

And for all the Christmas cards and greetings that proclaim this a season of peace, love and joy—we know that our brother Jesus would struggle his entire adult life in ministry to help his followers understand that it wasn’t an earthly kingdom that he came to establish—one that would overthrow the powers-that-be, but a kin-dom of love, care, mercy, justice and equality for all. Unfortunately, in our Church Universal, this later notion of “kingdom” and power-over” has clouded the image of the “kin-dom” that Jesus came to establish.

Ideas of getting at the humanity and the everyday struggles of this young family that we have come to call, “holy” have been discouraged and the ideas of a God asking the ultimate from this child, in time, to save humanity and make it acceptable to this God that we were all taught to fear have been those that have been uplifted.

And what has that done to our faith and belief systems?  Basically, it has made God distant, one to be feared and really one who is unlovable.  The real mystery and beauty of Christmas time is that our God, in all the glory that is God’s alone, freely chose to be close to us, in the only real way that it was possible to do so—by becoming one of us—with us.  The theology that teaches otherwise is clearly wrong! That is man’s theology and I do mean, “man’s,” not God’s! We didn’t need to be “saved,” and we were already acceptable to God, more than acceptable!

The humanity of Jesus and the life into which he was born is only too obvious from the Christmas Scriptures shared this week.  This was a poor family—[they] “laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”   Scriptures don’t tell us this, but the human heart knows that Mary and Joseph were a couple in love—that, is a given, because they couldn’t have raised the man that Jesus came to be had they not been a couple who loved deeply.

A friend shared an article with me this past week that talked about showing this purely, human fact—that of Mary and Joseph’s love for each other being at the heart of the Christmas story by the placing of the figurines of Mary and Joseph in the crib scene, not one on either side of the crib, but next to each other, embracing and supporting each other as a couple in love would do, at the birth of their child as they marveled at what had befallen them!

Marjorie Holmes, who writes so beautifully of that first Christmas in TWO FROM GALILEE,  says that God chose Mary and Joseph to be Jesus’ earthly parents primarily because they already loved each other. Love goes a long way to get people through the bumps in the road of life.  I think of many couples I know, family and friends, for which this is true. The outdated theology that depicts Joseph as a caretaker husband and father and wants to put such emphasis on Jesus’ parents living a celibate, married life is simply silly and not of God.  To have the goodness, the comfort, the physical closeness of a partner for the journey is part and parcel of what made Jesus’ earthly family, holy, as all families are holy.

It was through his humanity and his earthly experience in the home that Mary and Joseph provided, complete with daily examples of love-in-action that Jesus was then able to show us, his earthly brothers and sisters on a larger scale, how we are to love as the God of us all intended.

My friends, this is all so simple, yet in its simplicity, profound. Loving well is the hardest thing any of us will do in our lifetime. Now that may sound strange when we have just come through a time of being with family and friends and hopefully physical expressions of love. And while we may still be basking in the goodness of warm times and moments with loved ones; we all know that true love isn’t always easy.

I am thinking of the “tough love” parents may sometimes have to give to help their children to grow “in wisdom and grace”—to become their best selves. Without this kind of love, in the best sense, and their love for each other; they wouldn’t have the stamina to give their children what they truly need to grow up well and be a credit to their world.

In the beginning I indicated that the readings for Holy Family Sunday might not be comforting and even more so, confusing, to those whose experience of parental love and care may have been lacking or downright cruel.  As I said, these Scriptures don’t speak to this scenario, but Jesus helps us out in other places, indicating the way we must go: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” We don’t take our lead from our fellow creatures, but from our brother Jesus. Jesus and God truly want us to become whole people, doing what is good for others, but for ourselves as well—it’s a balance.

The Holy Family calls each of us in our families to live as they did; keeping our eyes on what is most important—simply put—the love.  Will it always be easy—no, it won’t, but it will always be rich because we can only measure the result by how much we have loved and again, that includes, loving ourselves.  If we have loved well, selflessly for the most part, then even if all doesn’t turn out as we had hoped, we know that we chose the best in the end.

My friends, may each of you find love, joy and peace within family—however you find it in this blessed season. Amen? Amen!