Homily for Epiphany 2007

Today as we see in our beautiful crib the wise men, the Magi, the Kings as we have come to think of them, have arrived at the manger, bringing with them their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I am very indebted to Fr Sean for inviting me to preach at this mass because I have always had a great fascination for the Magi, which is why I for my ordination card what was really a Christmas card, a picture of the wise men laying their gifts in homage before the Christ-child.

Who were these strange, exotic visitors who suddenly turn up in the village of Bethlehem and enter the humble cave where the Holy Family are making the best of things with the farm animals around them? What do we know about them really? We have come to think of them as three wise men, because they bring three gifts, but Matthew as we just heard does not say how many there were, he just says “some wise men” and we have come to think of them as kings, and give them crowns in our depiction of them, because from the first the Church associated with them those words from psalm 71 we have just heard- “the kings of Tarshish and the sea coasts shall pay him tribute, the kings of Seba and Sheba shall bring him gifts”. They were certainly important people, whoever they were, and not Jews, for they have come from foreign lands, they have come “from the east”, and they do not know the Scriptures and the prophecies in them about the birth of the Messiah until the chief priests and the scribes explain it all to them. They are called in the original Greek of the New Testament “magoi”, the magi, and historians tell us that magi were people who studied astrology and used all kinds of magic, superstition and charms, in countries like Persia. But, in spite of knowing nothing of the insights into God that the Jews had discovered and written down in what we call the Old Testament, the one true God, the creator of the world and the loving Father of all humankind, nevertheless they have been honestly searching for the truth and have made the sacrifice of a long journey into the unknown to find it.
The wise men, the kings, the magi, whatever we chose to call them, these are complex and complicated people- they are not straightforward and easy to understand, like the humble shepherds who come running in from the nearby fields on Christmas night while the angels are singing in the sky above them. These are people more like ourselves, they are people who come from outside the world of our familiar religion, they have come literally from the outside world. They have tried all kinds of substitutes for real religion, just as many of us have or have been tempted to do, and they are people who think they know a thing or two about how the real world, as they see it, works- they know how to work the system! They follow purely human reasoning, as so many people in our modern world do, and that is fine, but it will only take you so far. They think, well, this baby is going to be the king of the Jews so obviously he will be born in a palace and obviously we must try and use our contacts and try to meet the king, probably he’s the father! How wrong could they be!
The Holy Father preached many times on the theme of the Magi at the world Youth Days in August 2005, because of course they took place in Cologne where the three wise men lie buried in gold caskets in the cathedral. He said at the time “in our hearts we have the same urgent question that prompted the magi from the east to set out on their journey, even if it is differently expressed. …we are no longer looking for a king, but we are concerned for the state of the world and we are asking “Where do I find standards to live by….on whom can I rely? To whom can I entrust myself? Where is the One who can offer me the response capable of satisfying my heart’s deepest desires?” And the Pope goes on to tell us that like the magi we must take the right road if we are to find the child in the manger who has the answer to all this and more. Which road, he asks, shall we take? “The one prompted by the passions or the one indicated by the star which shines in your conscience?” And of course, the God whom we find is always a surprise and a challenge to us- God is not as we imagine him to be, he is far far more than the product of our imagination. The magi had quite a shock, didn’t they- they ended up not being ushered into some wonderful room in a palace to meet a prince born with every luxury around him, but kneeling in the straw in a stable, looking at a baby on the knee of what looked like just an ordinary country girl. As Pope Benedict says, “the new king to whom they now paid homage was quite unlike what they were expecting. In this way they had to learn that God is not as we usually imagine him to be”. Having made one journey, they have now to start on an inner journey, and the Pope goes on “they had to change their ideas about power, about God and about man, and in so doing they also had to change themselves”.

A few weeks ago in this church we saw our own magi, pausing on their search for the truth of God and coming into our midst to ask for our prayers and support- we have in this parish a group of people who have come from all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs who are on the same sort of journey in faith- I refer of course to our own RCIA, which I have the great privilege of organising each year and with whom, with the other clergy, I try to share the insights of our holy religion, so that these good people too will come to recognise the child in the manger as Jesus, their Lord and God, and come to do him homage when they are received into the church at the Easter Vigil.

At this Mass today we approach the altar rails to meet Jesus, just as the magi approached the manger long ago. We are in Bethlehem too, for Bethlehem as you know is Hebrew for “House of Bread”, and in a way this church’ like all Catholic churches, is a house of bread, where Jesus dwells in the form of bread in our tabernacle, and we meet today in the form of bread the same Jesus the magi did two millennia ago. May we too return from our encounter with Jesus changed in our thoughts and in our behaviour, may we too return to our own country by a different way. Amen.