Sermon at Parish Mass, Epiphany 2013

Isaiah 60:1-6

Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6

Matthew 2:1-12

The TV quiz programme “QI” sometimes has some trick questions to which no-one knows the answer, such as “how can you tell the age of a lobster?” and “what do the signal bars on your mobile phone mean?”.  The contestants can win extra points if they spot this and wave their “nobody knows” card. 

Another “nobody knows” question that could be asked is, “who were the Magi?” We meet them, of course, today, the feast of the Epiphany, and we know what they did in their brief appearance in St Matthew’s Gospel. But Matthew just says that they were Magi, magoi in Greek, without explaining what that means. He says that they came, literally, from “the land of the sunrise”, which is poetic, but doesn’t actually locate them anywhere. The land of the sunrise is like the end of the rainbow: however far east you travel, it’s always further still. He also doesn’t say how many there were - the idea that there were three of them is surmised from the fact that there were three gifts. And he certainly doesn’t say that they were kings.

So these Magi, these visitors from the land of the sunrise, are quite mysterious. They must have been wise, scholarly, well versed in astronomy, and with the means to undertake a long journey carrying expensive gifts. And that’s about all the clues we have. They could have been priests or astrologers from Persia or Babylon. But they could equally have come from  almost anywhere else. And perhaps that’s the point. The Magi represent the whole gentile world, the whole world outside Judaism, with all its richness, learning, and wisdom. 

Quite early on the tradition of the Church amplified the story of the Magi to make this point. In art, we usually see them as men of three different races, representing the three known continents of the time: Europe, Asia and Africa. Quite often, too, one is old, one young, and one middle aged. They were assigned exotic foreign-sounding names - in Western tradition those that stuck were Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, but other parts of the church have different names. The Magi are very inclusive! The very mystery that surrounds them makes them universal. 

They are outsiders - people from beyond Judaism, outside the covenant and the law of Sinai - and yet they receive a sign from heaven calling them in to the heart of all that the law and the covenant mean, into the heart of God’s revelation of himself. They represent all the longings and insights of every culture and race, converging on Jesus. They are drawn out of themselves by the mystery of Christ’s birth, only to find themselves on the inside after all, at the heart of the mystery that called to them from afar.

And they are called to worship. That is the most important thing that the Magi do. Before they present their gifts, they worship the Christ child. They fall down before him and worship. 

The Magi are called out of themselves, out of their familiar world, to seek Christ, and worship him. And these mysterious outsiders stand for all of us. The vocation of all human beings is to be drawn out of ourselves into the mystery of God. The journey of the Magi represents our own interior journey, our fundamental orientation as created beings - to go beyond the boundaries of our ‘self’, so that we can truly find ourselves in God. And it is also, paradoxically, a journey into unity, just as the Magi gathered at the crib represent all nations gathered into one in Christ. It is a journey which seems to have two directions, which are really one: into the mystery of God, and into unity in Christ.

For Christians this is expressed above all in the worship of the Church, the liturgy that we celebrate day by day and week by week. Our corporate worship reminds us both that we are drawn together as one people, united in Christ, and that we are called beyond ourselves into the mystery of God. 

This is realised above all in the Mass, the Eucharist, which is the one act of worship we have received from Christ, “do this in remembrance of me”. Although a priest or bishop presides, Christ himself is the true celebrant at every Eucharist, his real presence is at its heart. The Eucharist is the highest worship we can offer, for in it we are united with Christ in his own offering of himself, his eternal and perfect worship of the Father. 

It is in the Eucharist above all that we see the two directions of worship, like the two directions of the Magi’s journey. We are gathered together in one, made one Body in Christ through the sacrament of his Body - not just this congregation gathered here today, but every Eucharistic community throughout time and space, all are one body, one Church.  

And the Eucharist also points us beyond ourselves into the mystery of God, into the very worship of the Trinity that the Son offers to the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the Eucharist every human group is broken open and made partakers in the cosmic mystery in which we worship with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven. 

All the apostolate and service of the Church flows from this worship, from partaking in the life of the Trinity. Just as the Magi bowed down in worship, and then offered their gifts, so too the Church lives a life of service and self-giving in the world because we draw that service and self-giving from the heart of the worship of God. It is a grave mistake to see the Church as a human group committed to social activism first, and worship second. The Divine worship given to us in the Eucharist is fundamentally what we are about; everything else flows from that.

The two directions of worship are expressed physically and symbolically in how we celebrate the Eucharist. The use of set liturgies, holy days, vestments, forms that have been hallowed for centuries, are not actually part of Christ’s commandment to us, but remind us that the Eucharist is something we do not devise ourselves. It is worship that comes to us from beyond us, that we receive and enter into. 

And the adornments of worship, music, incense, lights, images, all speak to us of the transcendent, our worship drawing us beyond ourselves into the mystery of God. But at the same time we gather together to celebrate the Eucharist as the people of God, joining in the assembly with our brothers and sisters every Lord’s day.

As you may have noticed, during Christmastime we have rearranged the sanctuary and have been celebrating Mass facing East, in the older tradition of the Church. This is a temporary arrangement, partly occasioned through the way we have had to use our limited space at this season. But it does help to remind us of the transcendence of our worship. As we pray we all stand facing the same way, facing East, the sunrise, the symbolic direction of the resurrection. This helps to remind us that our worship calls us beyond ourselves, from out of the closed group into the mystery of God. 

And when the altar is back and we celebrate in our more usual way, with the clergy facing the people, we will be reminded more of being gathered together into one in Christ. 

But whichever way we arrange the sanctuary, we need to bear in mind that both things are always going on: our worship draws us out of ourselves into God, and at the same time draws us together into the unity of the Body of Christ. Our worship would be impoverished if we forget one or the other. 

This feast of the Epiphany, at the beginning of a new year, is a good day to commit ourselves afresh to offering the best we can in intelligent and lively participation in this greatest act of worship. Christ calls us, like the Magi, to seek him and worship him, so that we can be drawn into the very life of God, and at the same time discover our unity with one another in Christ. This is our fundamental vocation as human beings. The Church worships in Christ, with heaven, and on behalf of all creation, so that in God’s purposes all things may find their fulfilment in his Kingdom.